Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Taxing Credibility - 3.8.11

Lansing is seeing waves of protestors who are angry about the governor’s proposed budget cuts. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry says they need to check their arithmetic.

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Two plus two equals four. Simple, right? That’s math even a journalist can understand. Unfortunately, the legislature and a large section of the general public doesn’t quite seem to get it.

State government is currently on course to run a huge deficit for the next fiscal year. State budget deficits are illegal, under Michigan’s Constitution. That budget has to be balanced by September 30.

Four months ago, we elected a ton of Republicans to the legislature who pledged they wouldn’t vote for any new taxes, no matter what. We elected a Republican governor who said he was going to deeply cut taxes on business, because he believed that was the only way to attract new jobs and industry to this state.

So we voted for no new taxes of any kind, less taxes on business, and we‘ve got a big budget deficit to start. And now we are shocked, shocked, that the governor is insisting on making huge cuts in state spending. Well, we shouldn‘t be.

We voted for this. And, we tolerated the last governor, and several different past legislatures, refusing to deal with our problems. We put things off till we couldn‘t do it any more.

And now, we have to fix it. What‘s worse, we have to do this when we are still mired in the effects of the worst recession since World War II. Yes, I know the recession is officially over.

The economists say so, anyway. But hard times are not even close to over in Michigan. The auto industry is never coming back the way it was, and we need a new economy.

That doesn‘t mean I approve of the governor‘s approach. But we voted for it, and now we are whining, Protestors are thronging the state capital every day protesting some cut or other.

They have a right to do that. But the first rule of Management 101 is that if you complain about a problem, you should have a proposed solution. Ask the people protesting the budget cuts what they would do instead, and you mainly get a blank stare.

That, or some other answer that betrays fundamental ignorance of fourth grade arithmetic. The governor’s most unpopular proposal is taxing pension income. The AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons, is fighting this tooth and nail. They don’t think a retired teacher who gets combined social security and pension income of $90,000 a year should pay taxes on what she makes. However, they don’t have any problem with the single mother who works part -time in my local dry cleaners paying state taxes on her eight dollar an hour job.

Does that sound fair? Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville noted yesterday that if the proposal to tax pensions is defeated, they’ve got to come up with another nine hundred million more in budget cuts.

I could say show me the money, but there isn’t any, and that’s the problem. For the last decade, we’ve pretended that there was such a thing as a free lunch, and we could make it last forever.

Except that the bill is now due, and the policeman is on the next stool. Two plus two is still four. If you have a better way to add up the numbers, I‘m all ears.

Essay: Unpopular Stands - 3.3.11

Yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that laws restricting offensive protests at military funerals are unconstitutional. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about politicians and public opinion.

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Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that effectively overturned a Michigan law -- and undoubtedly angered and outraged the vast majority of the nation’s citizens.

The nation’s highest court said that the obnoxious protests that members of the Westboro Baptist Church stage at military funerals are fully protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Chief Justice John Roberts decreed that our nation’s fundamental commitment to free speech requires full protection of, quote “even hurtful speech on public issues.”

Now if you need reminding, the Westboro Baptist Church is a small group from Topeka, Kansas that mainly consists of the members of one large extended family. They believe homosexuality is evil and America deserves divine punishment for tolerating it.

Accordingly, they’ve been traveling the country picketing at military funerals, waving signs that say things like “God Hates America,” “God Hates Fags,” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.”

Somehow, they believe our war casualties are fitting punishment for tolerance. Michigan passed a law five years ago that was squarely aimed at the Westboro group. It essentially prohibited any such conduct within five hundred feet of a funeral.

But the U.S. Supreme Court ruling essentially makes it all but certain that the Michigan law will be struck down as unconstitutional, if prosecutors attempt to use it. Now ever since the 1960s, conservatives have often complained that out-of-touch liberals on the nation‘s highest court were improperly distorting the Constitution.

They’ll have a hard time doing that here. The high court’s most conservative justices all signed on to protect free speech rights, including, in addition to the Chief Justice, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The so-called liberal justices agreed, including the three Jewish justices on the court.

That’s significant, because if there is a group the Westboro members hate more than gays, it is Jews, whom they believe killed Jesus and who they think also helped spread homosexuality.

The Chief Justice, in his majority opinion, noted that the outrageous comments of the Westboro group have inflicted great pain, and “fall short of refined social and political commentary.” But he added that “speech cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt.”

Sometimes, life in America is about taking unpopular stands -- and defending the right of others to take them. Today, a new poll shows that a majority of Michiganders oppose nearly every one of the major initiatives in Governor Snyder’s budget.

That’s to be expected; they call for sacrifice. The poll, which is being touted as significant by the newspaper and the TV station that commissioned it, shows Snyder is also losing popularity.

That’s no surprise either; he is taking stands and making hard choices. That’s a lot easier to do on the Supreme Court, where the justices have jobs guaranteed for life. Politicians have to run for office again, which can be both good and bad.

Indications are, however, that this governor, like the Supreme Court justices, believes in doing what he thinks is right, regardless of the polls. Whether we agree with them or not, that is exactly the kind of attitude we should want our public servants to have.

Essay: Emergency Financial Managers - 2.24.11

The Michigan House of Representatives passed legislation making it easier to appoint emergency financial managers yesterday, and the senate is expected to follow. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about this.

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If you had any doubts about difficult the situation is for local governments these days, consider this. Even before they tackle the budget, our lawmakers in Lansing have been working hard on new emergency financial manager legislation.

Yesterday, the Michigan House of Representatives passed a package of bills designed to make it easier to appoint emergency financial managers to run troubled cities and school districts. The legislation also gives those managers broad new powers. The Senate is expected to easily approve this as well.

There was a lot of heated debate, but what was left mostly unspoken was the real reason they want this done quickly. They believe the state will have to appoint more emergency financial managers before long. Last month, state treasurer Andy Dillon said five communities may not be able to pay their employees by the end of March. And that may be only the tip of the iceberg.

The state has been appointing emergency financial managers for some time, and in some cases, with good results. There is general agreement that an EFM helped Hamtramck get back on its feet a decade ago, though the city is in trouble again now.

There are a number of them currently in place in cities that include Benton Harbor and Pontiac, and the Detroit Public Schools. But how far should their powers extend?

Robert Bobb, the EFM over Detroit’s schools, have expressed frustration that the courts have ruled his powers don’t extend to academic matters. Other people are worried, however, that the new emergency financial manager legislation will give the state too much power. Specifically, residents of troubled older cities, which tend to be heavily Democratic, fear Lansing Republicans will use this to seize power in places where they could never win it on their own.

There’s a racial element to this too. State Representative Maureen Stapleton of Detroit yesterday complained that the emergency manager law was most likely to be used in “communities of color.” Unions are, if possible, even more upset. The new legislation would allow an emergency financial manager to void labor contracts, require competitive bidding and strip local officials of virtually all their power.

All this passed the house on an essentially party-line vote yesterday. The bill’s supporters say color and politics don’t have anything to do with it. They say this is about nipping crises in the bud.

In fact, the legislation’s main sponsor, Republican Al Pscholka of Stevensville, said we should see this as “tough love” designed to encourage communities to make the difficult choices necessary to avoid a state takeover.

However, this could have the opposite effect. Rather than take the heat for tough decisions, local authorities may throw up their hands and ask for a financial manager to do the dirty work.

That’s already happened in Pontiac. Sadly, these bills are probably largely necessary. That doesn’t mean this legislation is perfect. A Democratic lawmaker from Oakland County named Lisa Brown had some legitimate criticism. She noted that some communities have been driven to the brink partly because they’ve been denied adequate revenue sharing and school aid.

The lawmakers, she said, “need to take responsibility for what you do in this room.” That’s good advice for all of us in these times.

Essay: Budget Alternatives - 2.21.11

Governor Rick Snyder’s budget proposal has a lot of critics… but few have offered alternatives. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry talked to an expert who does have some different ideas.

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Well, it’s been four days since Gov. Rick Snyder presented his so-called “atomic bomb” budget, and opposition has started to harden. There are those who are concerned about the poor, largely because of the repeal of the Earned Income Tax Credit.

For example, Detroit Free Press editorial page editor Stephen Henderson said yesterday that this amounts to a “government-sponsored shift of capital away from the most needy citizens to those who are already more comfortable.”

Senior citizens’ groups are upset because the governor wants their constituents to have to begin paying Michigan income tax on their income, just like everybody else does on theirs.

The film industry is screaming about the potential loss of the film credits. The education community isn’t happy with the cuts they’d have to take, though they seem to be bearing them with more grace.

But the interesting thing to me is that none of these groups seems to be offering any kind of alternative plan. They want what they want, but don’t have any kind of broader vision.

Yet something radical does have to be done. The state is running an enormous deficit that has to be gotten rid of, and our old automotive-based economy doesn’t work anymore, not the way it did.

So the question for the critics is, if you don’t like the governor’s plan, what are you going to offer instead?

Well, they may be out of ideas, but I talked last night to a man who has some. Michigan State University Economist Charles Ballard.

Ballard, in my opinion, understands Michigan’s economy better than anyone. He is thought of as a liberal, though like me, he tends to think of himself as a member of the common-sense party. And in fact, he finds a whole lot to like in Governor Snyder’s budget. He is in favor of taxing retirement income. It levels the playing field, he said.

He likes getting rid of the odious Michigan Business Tax, and of the special tax credits as well. Government, most economists believe, usually shouldn’t try to pick winners and losers in the marketplace. But Ballard thinks the governor ought to have extended the sales tax to services and entertainment. That would make sense in our now largely service economy, and could mean $3 billion dollars a year. In fact, we could drop the present sales tax rate to five percent and still collect more money.

There’s also what I call the “Utah solution.” Utah, one of the nation’s most conservative states, has a five percent income tax rate. If we raised our tax rate to match Utah’s, the state would collect a billion more a year, and workers would barely notice.

Summing up, Ballard said, “if we raise the income tax rate to the Utah rate, and we tax services and entertainments, we could carry through the rest of the Snyder plan without having to cur revenue sharing, schools, higher ed,” and could save the Earned Income Tax Credit as well. That makes sense to me.

But what’s baffling is that none of the governor’s critics in the legislature seems to be proposing anything like this. Two plus two somehow has to equal four. And right now Rick Snyder’s arithmetic is the only set of numbers on Michigan’s table.

Essay: Symphony Worth Saving? - 1.31.11

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra strike is about to enter its fifth month with no end in sight. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry wonders if we’ve considered what is really at stake.

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Paul Willington is a classical music lover and a professionally trained cellist who, tragically, can no longer listen to music. That’s because he’s suffered the loss of most of his hearing.

He lives vicariously these days through his daughter Hailey, who grew up in the Birmingham area and is now studying violin at the Royal College of Music in London.

Willington tells me that while losing his hearing is sad, his real anguish is the long and seemingly unsolvable Detroit Symphony Orchestra strike. Not because he misses the music. Nor does he have any business or professional relationship with the DSO.

But he thinks that if Michigan manages to destroy its world-class symphony, it will have a huge, negative long-term economic impact on our ability to prosper.

“When Detroit Medical Center or Henry Ford goes hunting for the best and brightest surgeons, what are those candidates looking for in their decision-making process?”

“When they try to sell their spouse and kids on moving to Detroit, how do they sell the relocation to themselves and their family,” he asks. “Could the existence and proximity of world-class attractions,” like the Symphony, be a factor in their decisions?

Well, of course it might. Unfortunately the problem isn’t easy to solve. The management of the DSO maintains the money just isn’t there. They’ve insisted the musicians have to take a staggering pay cut of thirty percent. That would reduce their base salary from a little over a hundred thousand dollars a year to the mid-seventies. The musicians said no, and walked out. Now, it’s hard to accuse the artists of being greedy. They say they are willing to take a twenty-five percent pay cut, which would be hard enough for most families.

But they won’t go any lower than that. Since the strike began, everyone from Senator Carl Levin to Jennifer Granholm has attempted to solve it, so far without success. The musicians have stuck together and have been playing concerts on their own.

The big fear, however, is that the best of them may soon drift off and be snared by job offers from other cities. Willington says he is frustrated that nobody seems to understand what a potential loss this would be for our state, or how hard a top-notch symphony would be to put together again if this one is destroyed. He argues that even those who couldn’t care less about music would suffer. Let’s say the area loses a top-notch heart surgeon because we lack cultural amenities.

The economics of the arts are not something this commentator is an expert on. But here’s something I do know. The Detroit baseball player Magglio Ordonez just took a massive pay cut.

He will now make only ten million dollars a year. That is equivalent to the salaries of a hundred DSO musicians before their pay cut took effect. True, most people might be more inclined to go to a ball game than a symphony.

But is one baseball player worth more than the entire orchestra? A man named Raymond Greene wrote a letter saying, “What I fail to comprehend is why a few of the multimillionaires who reside in the area are not coming forward to rescue this great institution.” That’s a question I’d like to ask, myself.

Essay: Guns in Church - 1.27.11

State Senator Mike Green of Mayville has introduced a bill to allow concealed weapons to be taken into bars and churches. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry takes a look at the measure…

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Newly elected State Senator Mike Green, who comes from beet-growing country in Michigan’s thumb, seems to be a good and decent man. He was a tool and die maker for General Motors for thirty years, and operated a family farm most of that time.

He’s had the same wife for forty-three years; raised five kids and has more than enough grandchildren for two baseball teams.

The senator also owns a business that would make Abraham Lincoln proud -- Green’s Log Rails and Custom Log Furniture. Like Honest Abe, he is a Republican, and lacks college education. But he is very enthusiastic about guns.

So much so, that he has introduced legislation to allow people with concealed weapons permits to take guns everywhere -- churches, synagogues, bars, Joe Louis Arena. He thinks banning guns anywhere is outrageous. “Why do you need to give your Constitutional right away when you go to some places?“ he asks.

There are a number of ways to answer that, but the easiest and simplest is that there is no Constitutional right to take a weapon anywhere. That’s not a left-wing anti-gun point of view.

That’s how the solidly pro-Second Amendment majority on the U.S. Supreme Court sees it. Until a few years ago, by the way, many, if not most legal scholars thought that gun ownership really wasn’t a Constitutional right. They thought the Second Amendment had to do with the states’ need to establish national guard units.

But within the past three years, the current Supreme Court has ruled that there is indeed an individual right to keep and bear arms. However, as I said here several weeks ago, they’ve specifically indicated that right is not absolute.

Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority in the most important of these cases, District of Columbia v Heller, said “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places.”

That is clearly the opinion of every member of the nation‘s highest court. There is no right to carry a gun in church. Apart from the question of rights, allowing concealed weapons everywhere wouldn’t seem to make much common sense.

I suppose allowing people to pack heat at a bar might be good for the mortuary business, but other than that, it sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

Senator Green isn’t doing this on a whim. He’s been waiting more than a decade. He was in the state house ten years ago when, over his objections, lawmakers banned gun owners from taking their hand cannons into certain places.

Green told a reporter, “People feared a good, honest, law-abiding citizen would use it in a way that would hurt or harm other people. But the fact is, there’s not been hardly anything that happened like that.” Except, of course, that a man with a concealed shotgun went into a police station and shot four officers this week.

Green’s bill would have allowed the man who shot Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords to legally take his Glock to her Temple during services.

Mike Green has a long record as an agricultural and family farm expert. It might make more sense for him to craft legislation aimed at improving those areas instead.

Essay: Reforming Our Courts: Betty Weaver Speaks Out - 1.25.11

Former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Weaver voluntarily left the court last August after almost 16 years on the bench. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry says she thinks it needs major reform.

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Yesterday I talked about a conversation I had with former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Weaver.

Some of Justice Weaver’s views and actions have long been controversial. After she voluntarily left the court last summer, she made headlines when she revealed that she had secretly taped some of the court’s deliberations, and released transcripts of them.

That earned her a vote of censure from her former colleagues, but she said that didn’t bother her. Weaver says the state’s highest court is doing the people’s business, and so should be open to public scrutiny. That particular opinion may not be widely shared. But Betty Weaver is far from alone in thinking Michigan’s Supreme Court needs to be reformed. The University of Chicago law school ranked it as the worst state supreme court in the nation.

Last year, then-Chief Justice Marilyn Kelly told me she had real concerns about the politicization of the court. Now, she is co-chairing of a task force that plans to take a year-long look at possible reforms.

Betty Weaver says she welcomes the task force, because it will keep focus on the issue. But she also has her own six-point plan for how to fix the court, ideas which I think are worth hearing.

First of all, she’d do away with the current system where candidates for the court are placed on the ballot by the major political parties. She thinks they should earn a spot on the ballot by petition, which is what all other Michigan judges have to do.

She’d like to see justices elected by district, to allow some geographic diversity.

Currently, all seven justices live in only three counties, Wayne, Oakland and Ingham.

That’s why she was so keen on Judge Alton Davis of Gaylord being named to replace her. His defeat meant, she said, that two-thirds of us have no justice from our immediate geographical area.

Weaver also thinks we need to move to a system of public fiunding for judicial campaigns, and until we are fully there, she would require transparency and accountability in campaign finance reporting. That means knowing who is giving which candidate how much money, and being able to find out within two days. “We should allow absolutely no secret or unnamed contributors,” she said.

She’d also like term limits for justices -- perhaps a single term of fourteen years. I’m not sure why she thinks that’s a good idea.

But her last idea, involving what happens when a justice dies or resigns while in office, is hard to fault. Currently, the governor can name anyone he or she likes to the post. Former Justice Weaver would establish a broad-based Qualifications Commission.

They would provide the governor with two recommendations, and the governor would be free to pick one -- or pick someone else if they explained why. But in any event, the appointment would be subject to a public hearing, and then confirmation by the Senate.

You don’t have to always agree with former Justice Weaver, or even admire her style, to admit these are ideas worth considering. She told me she intends to continue to campaign for court reform, and may write a book about the subject.

I hope she does both.

Essay: Betty Weaver Speaks Out - 1.24.11

Former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Betty Weaver was censured by her colleagues for revealing what went on during the court’s deliberations. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry talked to her about why.

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Former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Elizabeth Weaver was, it seems fair to say, controversial.

Though elected as a Republican in 1994, she became increasingly critical of her fellow Republicans on the state’s highest court. Within the last few years she was openly feuding with them. Late last summer, Weaver abruptly resigned from the court, under an arrangement where the governor appointed Judge Alton Davis to replace her. Davis, however lost the November election.

That wasn’t the end of the controversy, however. Last fall, former Justice Weaver then released transcripts of court deliberations she secretly recorded, saying the public had every right to know how the court went about making its decisions. That horrified most of her former colleagues, who resented being taped without their knowledge. Five voted to censure Weaver. But in a long conversation yesterday, she told me she couldn’t care less.

“We need openness in government,” she said.

“That’s what this is all about. We need reforms, yes. Reforms in the way justices are selected and elected.”

But she said any reforms “will have little effect unless we can open the inner workings of our Supreme Court to public scrutiny.” She called what we have now a politicized disgrace.

“We need transparency. Not a secret club of seven justices from the Detroit-Lansing beltway, joining together to promote agendas of partisan or special interests,” and deciding cases in ways that fit their own personal agendas, or biases and prejudices.

Now, as a journalist, I am in favor of as much openness in government as possible. But I asked former Justice Weaver, aren’t there times when the business of the court has to be done behind closed doors? Of course, she said.

“Employee issues, for one thing. But there are far fewer things that need to be done in secret than those currently in charge would like. Look,” she told me. “The Michigan Supreme Court does not deal with treason or sedition or national defense. Its docket covers people issues from A to Z -- adoption to zoning, crime, contracts, et cetera. This is the people’s business.

“The public‘s business should be conducted in public. Needless secrecy on the court not only allows, but encourages the abuse of judicial powers.”

None of this will come as a big surprise to those who have followed the Michigan Supreme Court in recent years. In fact, Betty Weaver has been so outspoken that four of her fellow justices tried to clamp a gag order on her four years ago. She ignored it.

“But my position has been misconstrued,” she told me. “I never talked about a case that was pending. But the public needs to know how and why justices make their decisions.

“The business of the court,” she told me, “is to be just and fair, objective, impartial, dignified and dedicated to the rule of law and common sense. The only way that will happen,“ she argued. “is with direct and unhindered public oversight.“

But while openness is her big cause, there are a lot of other things about the Michigan Supreme Court that former Justice Weaver doesn’t like. And she has some interesting ideas about the way to change that. Later this week, I’ll tell you more about our conversation, and share those ideas with you.

Essay: Living the Dream - 1.17.11

Today is the federal holiday honoring the birth of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry wonders how much we really know about the man behind the day.

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Last week I talked to a woman in an accounting office about an issue involving an electronic tax payment. “I’ll take care of that Monday,” she told me. I don’t think you can, I said.

Monday’s the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.

“What?“ she said. “Oh that. I don’t celebrate that,” she said with a tone of annoyance. It wasn’t her holiday, she wanted me to know, and she thought it was highly inappropriate for anybody to get a day off, and for government offices and banks to be closed.

You won’t be surprised to learn that she wasn’t African-American. Nor that she didn’t know much, really, about Dr. Martin Luther King. However, I’m not sure that a lot of the people who do enthusiastically celebrate it know much about him either.

I know another woman who is taking her kids skiing today. She was, and is, an enthusiastic Obama supporter.

But she is going to use her day off to hit the ski slopes, which is probably not what Dr. King was talking about when he spoke of leading his people to the promised land, the night before he died.

What we’ve managed to do in this country is make MLK, as the kids call him today, into some sort of sanitized plaster saint.

The official myth goes something like this: King was a young preacher with a fantastic voice who had a dream that everybody would have the same rights to vote and to eat at the same lunch counters in fast food restaurants.

Best of all, he was against violence, unlike that bad Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael and H. Rap Brown. He wanted everybody to get along, and led peaceful protest marches. And then, when he was helping some people in Memphis, Tennessee a bad man shot him.

And he died. But his dream inspired millions, and today we have an African-American President in the White House. The End.

Well, there is a little truth in that. But the real Martin Luther King Jr. was a far more complex man, who wasn’t regarded as safe at all by the establishment during his lifetime.

A year before he died, he denounced the Vietnam war in utterly blistering terms. He was turned off by materialism, conspicuous consumption, and the military-industrial complex. Historian James Washington concluded that MLK offered us “a blueprint for what America could become if it trusted its democratic legacy,” but that this dream proved too threatening. Not because it promised political equality.

But because it hinted at economic redistribution.

There are those who disagree. But it is very clear is that King is a man who deserves to be studied. They are doing just that in Grand Rapids this evening, with the filmmaker who made “Eyes on the Prize” giving the keynote speech.

They are doing similar things elsewhere around the state, and nation, as part of day of service programs established in his honor.

I know enough about King to suspect he’d like us to be doing one of two things today. Volunteering somewhere to make this world a better place. That, or learning what he was really all about.

I think that as long as enough of us do both things, his dream will indeed never die.

Essay: Rule of Law - 1.11.11

This is supposed to be a society where everybody lives under the rule of law. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry says that three people got that message yesterday, the hard way.

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It’s sometimes easy to be cynical about what we used to call “the system” back in the days when bell-bottom jeans were common.

Too often, it appears that society at all levels still functions under the golden rule, as in, he who has the gold, makes the rules.

Ideally, things are supposed to work according to the words engraved on the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington: Equal Justice Under Law.” But in practice, it too often seems that things are more like the famous New Yorker cartoon in which a judge peers down at a defendant, and asks:

“So, how much justice can you afford?“

However, three things happened yesterday that may restore a little faith in the rule of law. One was national; former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, a man who once took the word “arrogant,” to new heights, was sentenced to three years in prison.

But the other two took place in Michigan. As mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick too often acted as if the laws didn’t apply to him. He kept on behaving that way, even after he was convicted of two felonies.

He’s in prison now, but yesterday, he, his father and three cohorts were back in town again, in federal court this time, pleading not guilty to charges from bribery to extortion to tax evasion.

What was interesting this time, however, was that the media and public scarcely paid attention. Once, we clamored for every detail about the self-styled hip-hop mayor’s outrageous lifestyle.

Yesterday, however, there was far less interest than before. Ten years after he burst on the scene as one of the nation’s youngest mayors, the convict Kilpatrick’s appearances in court have become so commonplace they’ve lost all power to shock.

Three years ago a top political consultant told me that no matter what, Kwame would always manage to get away with it.

Nobody’s saying that any more. The third thing affirming the rule of law also happened in a Detroit courtroom yesterday.

This time, it was in state court. The Detroit International Bridge Company has long behaved as though it were a law unto itself as well. The company, owned by billionaire trucking magnate Matty Moroun, has declared that it intends to build a second bridge next to the Ambassador Bridge, which it owns.

The government of Canada has said, no way. Various governments in the United States have refused permission as well, but the bridge company paid no attention.

It seized portions of a city park, and constructed illegal toll booths, fuel pumps and other structures. For a year, courts have been ordering the company to remove these, and to live up to its contract with the Michigan Department of Transportation.

They steadily refused to do so. But yesterday, Dan Stamper, president of the bridge company, got a nasty shock. Wayne County Circuit Judge Prentis Edwards threw him in jail and fined him for contempt for refusing to obey a court order.

Later in the day, Stamper was released, and again ordered to comply. What happens next is unclear. But he was put on notice.

For democracy to really work, nobody can be above the law.

Yesterday, three men who sometimes acted as though the laws didn’t apply to them, got that message, the hard way.