Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Saving a Piece of History - 12.10.09

The state has published the Michigan Manual every two years since the 1830’s. Now, some want to do away with the reference book. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry thinks that’s a terrible idea.

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You may not know this, but the State of Michigan publishes one of the best books that you have probably never seen. It is called the Michigan Manual, and in my opinion, no home should be without it.

You can certainly see one at your local library. It is a big, beautiful, red-bound book full of pictures, facts, maps and, as the official state description indicates, “fundamental reference information about Michigan - its history, constitutional development, governmental organizations and institutions.” There are generally well-written articles on everything of importance in the state.

You can learn about all of our great universities. The prison system. Find out about the state bird, flower, mineral, all that stuff. Look up something in the state constitution. See how the politicians spend your money. You can see pictures and read biographies of all our state’s elected officials, and get exact, complete, primary and general election returns for every recent race.

Picking up the current one and flipping through it, I learned just now that it was exactly a hundred years ago that the world’s first mile of poured concrete roadway was built on Woodward Avenue in Detroit. That was the year, by the way, that Michigan had more railroad track than ever before or since - nine thousand miles.

I use this book almost every day. As far as I know, the state has published the manual every two years since we became a state. I collect these wonderful books, which are a treasure trove of Michigan history. I have every one since 1897, and a few earlier than that.

My Michigan Manual from a century ago looks almost exactly like the current one, except that it is hardbound -- the state went to a paperback a few years ago to save money. It also has a couple of beautiful, pull-out maps of the state’s railroad lines.

Michigan has published this book through thick and thin, even during the depths of the Great Depression. But now it is endangered. In a penny-wise and very foolish move to save a pittance, the legislative services bureau wants to publish it only on-line.

This would be a terrible mistake. Cyberspace is fine for here and now. But the Michigan Manual is, as Inside Michigan Politics publisher Bill Ballenger puts it, “literally the only documentation of this state extending back to the beginning of our existence in 1837.”

Here’s something people wiser than me know. We are nothing without our shared history, and the books that record what happened before we came. So far this year, we lost first the state Department of History, Arts and Libraries to budget cuts, and then the Michigan State Fair. Now our official book of records is threatened.

Fortunately, State Rep. Pam Byrnes, a member of the legislative council, says she wants to save the manual, and is trying to find support for doing so. Speaker of the House Andy Dillon has also expressed support. I hope anyone who values our history, and wants this state to have a future, will contact them.

Forty years ago, there were those who wanted to tear down our state’s Victorian capitol building. Instead, the legislature rallied to renovate it. It is now one of the most beautiful state capitols in the nation. Saving the Michigan Manual would cost far less. But for our identity and our future, it may be just as important.

Essay: Our Schools, Our Selves - 12.9.09

Yesterday, we learned that Detroit Public School students had the lowest math scores that have ever been recorded. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry thinks we need to reexamine our priorities… fast.

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Two things happened yesterday which, taken together, ought to blow your mind, as we used to say back in the day.

First, we learned that both fourth and eighth graders in the Detroit Public Schools recorded the worst math results in the entire history of the National Assessment of Educational Progress test.

That’s a highly respected test that’s been given nationwide since the 1960s. Essentially, what the test revealed is that the Detroit schools are creating tens of thousands of dysfunctional illiterates every year. This, in a world where only well-educated kids with a set of skills have any hope of prospering in today’s high-tech economy.

Michael Casserly, executive director of the Washington-D.C. based Council of Great City Schools, told the Detroit Free Press that the test results were essentially “what one would expect by chance alone - as if the kids simply guessed at the answers.”

What these test results should say to Detroit and to Michigan and to all of us is that we have an enormous cancer in the center of our state, one that will, if not treated, destroy us.

Do you really believe this state can do well and prosper if it is home to hundreds of thousands of young adults who cannot really read, write, or do simple sums? True, this test measured only the performance of fourth and eighth graders.

But there’s no reason to think these kids are going to make a miraculous educational recovery in high school. Every statistic we have suggests their scores will get worse and worse. Many of them won’t even finish high school. For the few who do, what then?

Unemployment among black teenagers in the city is off the charts. They have no hope and no prospects, other perhaps than crime. What kind of scenario for our state’s future is that?

There are those who, openly or otherwise, would make this about racial inability to succeed, intellectually. It’s not. To quote what the schools’ Emergency Financial Manager, Robert Bobb said yesterday, “there’s nothing wrong with these children’s minds.

There’s a lot wrong with the adults that have been educating them.“

That statement is likely to set off a howl from the teachers’ union, but I don’t think he was talking just about them.

What we often forget is that the problem starts at home with the parents or primary caregivers. Mayor Dave Bing once told me his parents weren’t educated themselves, but made him sit at the table every night until they saw he had his homework done.

Unless and until this society from top to bottom embraces the value of education and realizes it is the single most important thing, we have no hope for a better future and a guarantee of a worse one.

Now, here’s the other mind-blowing thing that happened yesterday. Even as we got this news of complete educational failure, our legislature gave up on the idea of starting school before Labor Day. We can’t afford to hurt the tourism industry, our lawmakers said.

Well, that’s fine. If, that is, we are prepared to employ for life hundreds of thousands of kids who can’t add simple sums and pay them to pick up litter in state parks. We might want to ask ourselves as a people and a state whether we really have our priorities in order.

Everything I see suggests that the answer is no.

Essay: Blowing Smoke - 12.8.09

Once again, there seems to be a chance of passing a workplace smoking ban. Michigan Radio’s political analyst Jack Lessenberry takes a look at the fine art of legislative compromise…

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State Senator Ron Jelinek, a Republican from the Southwest corner of the Lower Peninsula, seems to be a member of a rare and endangered species in the legislature these days.

He is an actual, practical lawmaker who understands the art of compromise. Meaning that we shouldn’t refuse a good solution because we can’t get a perfect one. That might seem like common sense, but these days that seems to be a pretty uncommon thing.

We’ve got a lot of ideologues in Lansing these days, men and women who seem willing to destroy our state in various ways rather than save it. Some would let the schools go bankrupt rather than put their employees on a reasonable health care plan.

Others would allow our great universities to be ruined, rather than raise taxes on the rich by a few dollars a week. And until now, Michigan hasn’t been able to join most of the civilized world in banning smoking in workplaces and restaurants.

That’s because, again, the hardheads have proven unwilling to compromise. Democrats mostly favor a smoking ban, but want an exemption for Detroit’s casinos. They fear that if the casinos were made smoke-free, gamblers would desert by the carload.

They think those who are determined to poison their lungs while ruining themselves financially would, if smoking were banned in Detroit, hightail it out of town to a

Since Indian casinos are governed by tribal law, the state has no power to set smoking regulations there.

Republicans mostly don’t want any smoking ban at all, believing that the free market should be allowed to regulate where smoking is and is not permitted. When asked about children and non-smokers who are exposed to collateral damage, they mostly shrug.

Sorry, can’t be helped. A few even deny that it has been proven that second-hand smoke is harmful, though there are fewer and fewer of those. But to be fair, not all Republicans feel this way.

State Senator Tom George of Kalamazoo is a conservative Republican. But he’s also a doctor, and wants a complete smoking ban, and he‘s not alone. So Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop has said that he will allow a vote, but only on a complete ban.

Democrats have been unwilling to include the casinos, however, and so for a year, no progress has been made.

But now Senator Jelinek has taken up the cause, and thinks he has the votes to pass a workplace smoking ban with exceptions for cigar bars, tobacco shops and the Detroit casinos.

And he thinks he has the votes to get it done. He also has a probable and powerful ally in Speaker of the House Andy Dillon.

The legislature‘s top Democrat says that getting a smoking ban passed this month is one of his top priorities.

That makes sense. As of now, a person might conclude that their esteemed and highly-paid lawmakers haven’t gotten much of significance done this session. That’s probably because they haven’t gotten much of significance done this session.

So it would be nice if they could pass some form of workplace smoking ban. Hundreds of thousands of Americans died this year from smoking‘s effects. Thousands were non-smokers, killed by second hand smoke. Nobody should have to be poisoned on the job.

If Senator Jelinek can get his colleagues to agree on a compromise, he will have saved lives. It’s hard to imagine a more worthwhile accomplishment than that.

Essay: Carping Politics - 12.7.09

For years, the Great Lakes have been threatened by the approach of Asian carp coming up the Mississippi. Now, at last, politicians seem to be taking notice. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry takes a look at the politics of carp...

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How would you like it if the Great Lakes were completely taken over by huge, ugly gray fish known as Asian Carp? They aren’t very good to eat, but they are huge. They can get up to four feet long and may weigh up to a hundred pounds.

They are extremely fast breeders, produce lots of offspring, and suck up all the plankton other fish need to survive. They eat as much as twenty percent of their body weight in a day.

And if that isn’t bad enough, they can kill you. There are two species of these things.

The bighead carp is bigger and uglier, but the silver carp can be deadly. They like to jump, especially if startled, by an outboard motor, for example.

Just think how much you would like to be hit in the face by a fast-moving fifty pound fish. Boaters on the Mississippi River have had jaws broken and faces ripped up. In some places, people have taken to wearing helmets at all times.

These fish like deep and cold waters, and from their point of view, the Great Lakes would be an ideal habitat. From ours, it would be an environmental disaster. But they will be here soon, if we don’t take decisive action, right away.

You are hearing a lot about Asian carp now, not because they’ve just been discovered, but in part thanks to partisan politics. Last week, Gov. Granholm and Lt. Gov. Cherry sent an open letter to Attorney General Mike Cox, urging him to “pursue every legal tool available” to stop the carp from invading Lake Michigan.

They don’t really think Cox is a carp sympathizer, but Cherry is running for governor next year, and Cox is a likely opponent.

This came after the Army Corps of Engineers revealed last month that Asian carp DNA had been found within eight miles of Lake Michigan. The fish are in the Mississippi and have been working their way north, but were supposed to be stopped by an electric barrier on the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal.

But evidently, some shock-resistant carp seem to have gotten through. Actually, experts have been predicting this might happen for many years, but nobody wanted to think about it. Most of the invasive species ruining the Great Lakes have come over in the ballast water of ocean-going freighters. But the carp came from the south.

Many years ago, an Arkansas fish farmer decided to import and raise them. Then there was flooding, and the carp got into the Mississippi, and have been working their way north ever since.

According to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, there now appears to be nothing between the “ecosystem-ravaging fish” and the Great Lakes “other than the gates of two busy navigation locks.”

Attorney General Cox had no intention of losing the initiative on the carp issue, and his office intends to file suit in federal court to try and close those locks, saying, “Asian carp must be stopped now.”

Well, let’s hope we still can. It would have been easier to stop them years ago. But biologists who raised the issue were ignored. What we need is not partisan posturing but for all our leaders to come together and form a non-political task force to stop the carp, and then also tackle other invasive species.

Essay: Dillon's Dilemma - 12.4.09

The legislature will soon be finished for the year, but when they return in January, they will face another budget deficit. Michigan Radio’s political analyst Jack Lessenberry spoke with the Michigan Speaker of the House about what lies ahead…

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I talked to Speaker of the House Andy Dillon yesterday, in his ornate office in Michigan’s elegantly restored Capitol Building.

For Dillon, a long, lanky man who looks vaguely Lincolnesque, next year is critically important. For the state he was born into and loves, and his own career. His personal dilemma, which he says he will resolve next month, is whether to run for governor.

Thirteen months from now, he will no longer be speaker. In fact, he will be gone from the House, and, thanks to our bizarre system of term limits, barred from serving again for life.

Financially, that‘s not likely to be a problem. Dillon is an accountant and a lawyer, with multiple degrees from Notre Dame. He was managing director of Wynnchurch Capital before he decided, almost on a whim, to run for the legislature five years ago.

However, he wants to make a difference, and likes making things happen. And he’s willing to talk about the one subject most of Lansing is trying to avoid: The fact that the roof is going to fall in next year, destroying modern life as we know it.

That’s not too extreme. I asked what next year’s deficit is really going to be. He said $2.8 billion, as far as they could tell.

That’s about the same as this year, with one big difference. There’s no more stimulus money. How can you balance that budget without getting the state more money?

“I don’t think we can, responsibly,” he said. Let’s assume that the Republicans just dig their heels in and say no.

No new taxes, no matter what. How do you balance the budget then? “For starters, you eliminate all aid to higher education -- all of it,“ he said. The tuition increases that would cause would cripple research, damage building programs, prevent upkeep and throw college education out of reach of hundreds of thousands.

Even then, the savings would only close half the gap. So the lawmakers would also have to cancel all aid to community colleges and end revenue sharing. “And the budget would still not be balanced.” So you’d have to start cutting Medicaid.

How can we hope to attract new modern business to a place that does that? What complicates the problem further is that 2010 is an election year. The Speaker knows he has limited room to maneuver. What he plans is to offer a “grand bargain” in which the governor and the house and senate leadership would agree on a package of revenue increases and restructuring measures, early.

“The goal would be to have the budget done by March,” he said. The lawmakers could act responsibly, and then hit the campaign trail. Does he think they are likely to do that?

Sadly, no. The house was still in session, and a TV monitor in his office showed Dillon’s colleagues debating a bill with occasional flashes of emotion. Were they talking about the budget crisis? Not exactly. They were arguing over whether the National Resources Commission should still be setting the rules for feeding deer in 2016.

Andy Dillon, who grew up on a crowded street in Redford, in the district he now represents, wants his colleagues to face reality, and give his kids and theirs the chance they had.

What he doesn’t know is how best he can help get that done. And as this tough year winds down, that’s what he’s trying to decide.

Essay: Deja vu at GM - 12.3.09

This week’s sudden ouster of General Motors’ chairman sent shock waves through the auto industry. But Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry remembers something very similar that happened once before...

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For those with reasonably long memories, this week’s ouster of Fritz Henderson as General Motors CEO is an interesting and perhaps unsettling case of “déjà vu all over again.”

I am not talking, by the way, about President Obama’s decision to fire his predecessor, Rick Wagoner, in March. That was a once-in-history sort of thing. If nothing else, somebody had to take the fall in return for an emergency transfusion of $50 billion taxpayer dollars to a mismanaged and soon-to-be bankrupt corporation.

Sports fans will tell you that the odds are that if the Detroit Tigers once again blow the chance to get into the playoffs next year, manager Jim Leyland is likely to be gone.

But Fritz Henderson‘s sudden departure is something else entirely. By the way, though nobody is talking on the record, it is reasonable to assume this was not a voluntary resignation.

Voluntary resignations are not announced at hastily called press conferences a day before the person quitting is supposed to give a major speech. No. Henderson was made to walk the plank. But think about this: General Motors was in financial crisis and needed to do big things - quickly and dramatically.

The CEO was new at the top job, but had spent his entire career at GM. He was having trouble making changes fast enough.

General Motors was like a family. The CEO was surrounded by men who had been hired at around the same time he was. They had come up through the ranks together.

It was tough for him to fire or demote men - and they were virtually all men - with whom he had worked for decades.

Eventually, he was painfully ousted by a board chairman who was an outsider who knew a lot about business but nothing about cars. You may think I have just described what happened to Fritz Henderson, and it fits. But I was actually thinking of another situation almost eighteen years ago. Then, the chairman was Bob Stempel.

The board chairman who ousted him was John Smale, of Procter and Gamble. And those events were even more sensational in Detroit than what happened this week.

Back when I was growing up, being CEO of General Motors was sort of like being Pope. The College of Cardinals doesn’t call Popes in and fire them when things look shaky.

Popes leave office when they die. The men who led the world’s biggest car corporation eventually retired, but they did so on their own timetable. GM chairmen left when they felt like it.

That is, until Bob Stempel. This year, Rick Wagoner and Fritz Henderson shared his fate. But there is one big difference.

When Stempel was forced out, John Smale didn’t try to run the company himself. The board elevated Jack Smith, another GM lifer, a man similar to Fritz Henderson in many ways.

That’s not likely this time. Board chairman Edward Whitacre, a tough-as-nails phone company executive, is going to run GM himself for a while, and then look for someone in his own image to change the nature of the insular and failed culture at General Motors.

America’s taxpayers need to hope he succeeds. Michigan’s economy partly depends on it, for one thing. For another, the taxpayers have bet fifty billion that GM can make it.

This is one gamble we really can’t afford to lose.

Essay: Order On the Court - 12.2.09

The Michigan Supreme Court adopted a new rule last week that is designed to give people more confidence in the integrity of their decision-making. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry explains…

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Michigan’s highest court hasn’t been the worst state supreme court in the country, but in recent years, it has too seldom presented the model of reasoned, judicial thinking that it should.

The reason for that is simple. Grotesquely excessive partisanship. This has its roots in the fact that the two major political parties nominate candidates for the supreme court seats.

Thirty years ago, that didn’t matter very much, except that the supreme court was often used by both parties as a dumping ground or a rest home for politicians whose careers were on the wane.

We had a fair number of justices who had been governors and senators but who had little or no previous experience on the bench.

Today, however, the situation is far worse. Divisions between the parties have become far more sharply ideological, and the political parties have been spending millions to try and defend, capture, or recapture high court seats. That’s a development nobody saw coming when the current state constitution was adopted in 1963.

A nasty politically charged atmosphere has crackled through court decisions over the last few years, as case after case was decided on narrowly partisan lines. But that’s now started to change.

Last year, the Democrats unexpectedly gained a seat, and another Republican justice, Elizabeth Weaver, began voting more like an independent. These developments enabled the Michigan Supreme Court last week to formally adopt a change that should give Michiganders much more confidence in the system’s integrity.

Chief Justice Marilyn Kelly proposed the justices adopt a new rule designed to avoid conflicts of interest. Judges are always supposed to announce that they won’t take part in any case in which they may have any conflict of interest. That’s always been the case.

Most judges I’ve known have been very good about avoiding such conflicts. But until now, there has been no way to stop a judge who chooses to ignore a conflict, short of trying to impeach him or her after the fact. The worst example of this I know came in West Virginia. There, the chief justice of that state, one Brent Benjamin, refused to recuse himself from a case two years ago, even though the defendant, the A.T. Massey Coal Company, had spent three million dollars to get him elected to the bench.

Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court said Benjamin’s refusal to remove himself was clearly wrong and unconstitutional.

That led to the Michigan Supreme Court’s current decision that in the future, if justices with apparent conflicts in any cases refuse to remove themselves, the other judges will decide whether to let them take part in the case or not. The vote was close, four to three.

Three hardline conservatives insisted it was improper to let anyone else decide whether an individual they had a conflict or not.

But they were outvoted, a result which the majority felt was a victory for fairness. With this, Chief Justice Kelly said, the court now has a way to remove a judge who “is unable to render an unbiased decision and is unable or unwilling to acknowledge that fact.”

And, she added, “the justice system and this court can only be stronger for it.” It is hard for me to see how anyone could disagree.

Essay: Saving Education - 12.1.09

The Michigan Legislature returns today, and turns its attention to a package of education reforms that could mean $400 million dollars in federal funding. Michigan Radio's Jack Lessenberry thinks they need to move fast.

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In the last few months, the politicians in Lansing have screwed up in many ways, most of all perhaps by damaging education in this state. They've severely and unequally slashed funding for elementary and high school education, and betrayed both parents and children's trust over the Michigan Promise college tuition grant.

This will have a terrible effect on our children's future, as well as our state's ability to compete. What is most striking is that when you ask individual legislators about this, they whine about the economy, but otherwise mostly don't even try to defend what they've done. Republicans blame Democrats, and vice versa.

The legislature blames the governor, and she blames Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop in public, and behind the scenes, attacks House Speaker Andy Dillon as well.

None of them matter, however; our kids and our future do. That's why it is so important that this time we get something right.

The lawmakers return today from their latest vacations -- Thanksgiving and deer hunting -- and before they take off again for their Christmas break, it is absolutely essential that they act.

They need to swiftly pass a package of reforms so that Michigan can qualify for more than $400 million dollars in federal school funds from Washington's "Race to the Top" program.

This would be a good idea, since over the past few years, it has too often seemed like Michigan was trying to win a race to the bottom. To get that funding, the state has to pass reforms that would permit new charter schools, change teacher accreditation rules and make state intervention easier in academically failing districts.

The good news is that so far, the signs are good. Leaders in both the House, which is controlled by the Democrats, and the Republican Senate are making noises indicating they intend to cooperate for a change. They should be able to reach a rare bipartisan consensus to allow Michigan to get that money.

I'm not sure we're home free yet. The Michigan Education Association, or MEA, the powerful teachers' union lobby, won't like the idea of more charter schools. And they really won't like the provision in the current bills that would allow the suspension of union work rules in any so-called academically failing school district.

Still, the Senate seems likely to quickly pass a set of bills that would get the job done and which are very similar to a package of bills the House passed this summer. The governor, too, seems to be ready to sign them. Theoretically, Lansing has until January 19 to get the job done in time to get the money.

But that doesn't take into account Michigan legislative time; they are due to go on vacation again in two weeks and not return till late January. So they need to hurry up. It would be nice, of course, if they managed to restore the tuition promise grant while they are at it. I wouldn't hold my breath on that one, but there is something else the legislature can and should do. Raise the legal dropout age to 18, and make kindergarten mandatory in Michigan.

Kids need a head start, and nobody without a high school diploma stands any chance of making it today. This is a perfect opportunity for Lansing to astonish us all by doing the right thing.