Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: A Talk with Mayor Bing - 4.8.11

Detroit was hit last month with census numbers worse than anyone expected, which may worsen the city’s economic crisis. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry talked with the mayor about where his city now stands.

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I went to see Detroit Mayor Dave Bing yesterday afternoon to discuss the state of his city. It’s been a bruising few weeks for Detroit. The census showed a population loss considerably greater than expected -- which means a further loss of both federal and state dollars. The governor’s budget has yet to be approved, but it seems clear that it means more cuts in revenue sharing.

Nevertheless, I found the mayor upbeat, candid and energetic. He’s convinced the census missed people, and is going to do all he can to get the count adjusted. But for now, he has to plan as if the number is going to stay at seven hundred and thirteen thousand.

There’s no doubt in his mind what Detroit needs most. “Jobs are the key,” he said. There are some hopeful signs. General Motors, Blue Cross, Quicken Loans and some other firms have announced plans to add jobs recently. But the city has a long way to go.

When the recession was at its peak, Mayor Bing made headlines when he said that he thought the city’s true unemployment rate was as high as forty-five percent, when you counted workers who are so discouraged they aren‘t even taking part in the labor force. What does he think it is now? “Still about the same,” he said.

“There are some signs the country is coming out of the recession, but that hasn’t really translated into jobs in Detroit.”

I asked the mayor, himself a former successful businessman, about Governor Rick Snyder’s theory that lowering taxes will help bring a new flood of jobs. He smiled. “Well, it should help,” he said.

But he added that maximizing profits doesnn’t always mean adding jobs. The mayor, who took office after a special election following the resignation of Kwame Kilpatrick, has been in office almost two years now. What does he think is his greatest accomplishment?

He said, “reducing the deficit from more than $330 million dollars to $155 million. Given the economy, that was really a Herculean task.”

Unfortunately, he fears the deficit may now rise somewhat, “if everything in the governor’s budget becomes stark reality.”

I told him there was speculation that sooner or later, Detroit would need an Emergency Financial Manager. “Everything we do here day to day is to avoid that happening,” Bing said. But he knows he can‘t completely rule out the possibility. If that were to happen, would he take the job if it were offered? My impression was that he would. In fact, the mayor added that the new, tougher financial manager law would make it easier to do some of the things that need to be done.

Whether or not that happens, he intends to keep fighting. He’s already announced his intention to run for re-election in two years; saying turning things around will take more than one term.

If he is re-elected, Dave Bing would be seventy-four by the end of his second term. Does he expect to see a point where Detroit saw true prosperity again? The former basketball superstar smiled.

He believes in making progress, he said, a layup at a time, not in trying for grandstand, three-point plays. “Solvency. I think solvency is possible.” Prosperity is further away.

Essay: The Price of Civilization - 4.6.11

There are cities, unions, and teachers around the state that are outraged at Governor Snyder’s proposal to cut benefits. This has got Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry wondering why nobody’s talking about raising taxes…

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Last night a gentleman who appeared to be in his late sixties approached me after Michigan Radio’s Issues and Ale event in Royal Oak. He appeared frustrated. “My father always taught me that taxes were the price we pay for civilization,” he said.

“Why don’t people seem to realize that today?”

The answer is that taxes are, indeed, the price we pay for a civilized society.

Whether he realized it or not, his father was echoing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who said exactly those words back in 1904. That doesn’t mean all taxes are good. What it does mean is that without our tax money, we wouldn’t have any schools or roads or policemen or local and national parks.

However, about thirty years ago, politicians began telling us that we were the most overtaxed generation in history, and we came to believe it. The truth is that Americans pay a far smaller proportion of their incomes in taxes than people in most modern countries. We even pay far less than we used to.

Back in the Kennedy Administration, the top federal income tax rate was 91 percent. Nobody pays even a third of their income to Uncle Sam now. We do pay additional state and local taxes.

But thanks to the anti-tax fever, our politicians have cut taxes, and then cut again. However, they haven’t cut services very much.

That’s because voters don’t want to give up anything they are getting, they just don’t want to pay for them. Oh, they are willing to have other people’s benefits cut, just not theirs.

So local and state governments have used up their rainy day funds, shoved expenses off to future years and engaged in accounting tricks. But now that’s not working any more. Local governments are running out of cash, fast.

Governor Rick Snyder is proposing to slash revenue sharing payments, and make some of it dependent on cities doing more to further cut expenses, or as he puts it, adopt best practices.

The impact of all this has many communities and many school districts teetering on the brink of insolvency. Democrats say they are outraged at the governor’s plans to slash services.

However, I don’t hear them saying, “look. Times are hard, but good schools and roads are a necessity. So those of us who are still working are going to have to pay a little more to maintain them, to keep things up till we have a better future.”

Last night I challenged State Senator Bert Johnson about this. A liberal Democrat whose district includes Highland Park and the Grosse Pointes, he represents some of the poorest people in the state -- and some of the wealthiest. He took exception to my charge that Democrats hadn’t been willing to support tax increases.

“That information is on a number of websites,” he said. Well, that isn’t the same thing as loudly calling for those who can afford it to pay. Communities and people all over the state are in the process of finding out that there really is no free lunch.

The question is whether we want our needs and those of our children neglected, or whether we are willing to pay the price of having a civilized society.

Essay: Cutting Benefits - 3.30.11

The governor signed a bill two days ago that extends unemployment benefits for those collecting them now -- but which provides for less benefits for jobless workers in the future. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry explains.

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Two days ago a friend of mine called me in a semi-panic. Her unemployment benefits were about to run out, and she had eighty-seven dollars to her name. She wasn’t going to be able to make the modest payment on her small house, and didn’t know what to do. Nor did she understand what was going on in the legislature. Someone had told her that the governor was signing a bill to extend unemployment benefits. Somebody else told her he was going to shorten them. Which, she wanted to know, was it?

Well, both, I said. The governor signed a bill Monday that extends eligibility for federal extended unemployment benefits for up to ninety-nine weeks. That’s only, however, for people like my friend Karen, who already is collecting unemployment.

Next year, however, things will change drastically. Any Michigander who loses his or her job after January 15, 2012 will only be eligible for state unemployment benefits for a maximum of twenty weeks. That’s less than five months.

For years, jobless workers in Michigan have been able to collect benefits for a maximum of twenty-six weeks, or six months. They can collect them for longer periods of time now because the federal government decided to temporarily provide benefits, because of the lingering effects of the recession. Those effects are still hanging on in Michigan, where unemployment is still more than ten percent. Economists expect that to come down a little by next year, but we’re likely to continue to be a long way from full employment. What that means is that for many people, twenty weeks is not going to be enough time to find a job.

So why is our government making it tough for jobless workers? Interestingly, nobody is really coming forward to defend this. Governor Snyder said he signed this bill because it was necessary to extend benefits for those who are jobless now. He said he would have been happy to leave eligibility at twenty-six weeks, and blamed the legislature for shortening the time period. Why did they do this? Well, nobody is rushing forward to claim credit.

My guess is that this was pushed primarily by businesses, who have been paying the cost of these extra benefits. Michigan’s unemployment insurance fund ran dry long ago, and the state has been borrowing from the federal government. So far, we’ve borrowed almost four Billion dollars, and businesses have to come up with the repayment money.

Not surprisingly, to protect themselves, they sought the cut in benefits. That seems simple enough. But politically, it could be very risky. The Republican party could end up looking like the guys in the sadistic orphanage who denied Oliver Twist more gruel.

Next year is a national election year, and it isn’t going to help the national or the state Republican parties if Michigan ends up with tens of thousands of jobless and desperate men.

Sixteen years ago, Democratic bungling gave Republicans control of both houses of Congress. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich then turned so many people off with his arrogance that President Clinton was reelected easily. Michigan Republicans might do well to remember that most famous axiom: Those who don’t remember the past are, more often than not, condemned to repeat it.

Essay: What’s Wrong With the Democrats - 3.29.11

Yesterday, the Democrats in the Michigan Senate called for a constitutional amendment to protect the School Aid Fund. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinks we should ask, “where’s the beef?”

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A lot of people are uneasy about Governor Rick Snyder’s proposal to cut aid to education at all levels in order to balance the budget and give business a huge tax break. Even some of those in favor of cutting business taxes have problems with this.

They reason that no matter what happens, there aren’t going to be any jobs in the future for unskilled, undereducated workers -- and certainly not any good-paying ones. Our young adults are undereducated as it is, and cutting education won’t help.

So yesterday, we were alerted that the Michigan Senate Democrats were going to offer an alternate proposal. I was very interested to see what it would be. And frankly, I was hoping it would be an alternative I could support.

That’s because I am convinced that better education and training, more than anything else, is the key to Michigan’s future.

Well, I couldn’t have been more disappointed in the Democrats -- or in Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer, a charismatic and intelligent figure who may be their best hope for the future.

The minority leader called for a state constitutional amendment that would prevent the governor from taking money out of the school aid fund in the future. In practical terms, this is the equivalent of my calling for an amendment requiring it to be seventy degrees so I don’t freeze when I walk the dog in the morning.

First of all, this does nothing to address this year’s problems. Even if the legislature thought this was a good idea, they’d have to agree to put it on a statewide ballot so people could vote on it.

That wouldn’t happen until long after this budget has been passed. But the legislature isn’t going to do any such thing. Republicans control both chambers. Democrats are especially weak in the Senate, where Gretchen Whitmer’s party has less than a third of the seats, and by themselves are powerless to do anything.

That’s not the worst part of her proposal, however. When she presented it to the media yesterday, she was asked this sensible question: If her proposal became law, how would Democrats then propose to fill the resulting deficit hole in the general fund?

The Senate minority leader refused to offer an answer -- other than to say the tax code should be “re-examined.“

This is precisely what has been wrong with Michigan government for the past decade, and what got the Democrats tossed out of office last fall. This is also why Governor Snyder’s plan is likely to be enacted. The governor has made a comprehensive proposal for changing the way things are done.

His numbers add up.

His critics are whining about many parts of his proposal. But they have yet to propose an alternative. That’s not because there aren’t any. It’s because any alternative involves raising taxes.

And they don’t have the guts to do that. Incredible as it might seem, nobody in a leadership position in the Democratic Party seems willing to argue that the well-off should pay more, so the have-nots won’t have to suffer. That’s why Governor Snyder is winning.

You can’t fight something with nothing. And so far, the alternative the minority party is offering is precisely that.

Essay: Why Business Supports the Budget - 3.28.11

Governor Snyder’s budget is intended to bring new jobs and business to the state of Michigan. But will it work? Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry talked to some business leaders.

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The changes Governor Rick Snyder wants to make with his proposed budget are hugely controversial. But everyone agrees on this: They are designed to bring new business to Michigan.

The governor believes there is no other way to revitalize our state’s economy. But what does business really think of the governor’s budget? People in business aren’t monolithic. General Motors doesn’t have a lot in common with the mom-and-pop restaurant in my neighborhood with five employees.

So last week, I talked to two business leaders who each represent a broad cross-section of somewhat dissimilar interests. Doug Rothwell is president and CEO of Business Leaders for Michigan, a group of seventy-six of the state’s largest employers. Rob Fowler has the same title with the Small Business Association of Michigan, sometimes known as SBAM.

SBAM has more than ten thousand members, many of whom have fewer than a hundred employees. Fowler and Rothwell don’t always see eye to eye -- but they do on the governor’s budget.

They support it, right down the line. “I think the governor’s tax plan is the right thing to do, even though some of our members are going to pay more,” said Rothwell, who ran Detroit Renaissance before it evolved into Business Leaders two years ago.

Rob Fowler, who has also had small business leadership positions in Indiana and Ohio, put it this way: “You have to understand the moment in time we are in.”

“Sure, there are things in the governor’s plan I am sure, standing by themselves, our members would not support.”

But both men said it was vitally important to pass the plan as a whole, that if lawmakers started picking off pieces, it would fall apart.

I talked to each man separately, and discovered that what both liked most about the plan was that it offers a coherent, comprehensive strategy for Michigan’s long-term economic recovery. Rothwell noted that this was not a budget of quick fixes and one-time solutions, but one with vision.

Critics have said that the governor is just betting an hunch, gambling that slashing taxes will bring new business into the state.

But both business leaders say there’s some hard data indicating that Snyder may be right. Fowler said a survey of his small business members found seventy-two percent said they expect they’d add workers with the governor’s plan and sixty-three percent said they’d expect to pay their current workers more.

Two thirds of the small businessmen said they would be likely to invest in new equipment. Both Fowler and Rothwell oppose the Republican legislators’ proposal to set the corporate income tax higher and exempt those currently getting pensions from tax.

Rothwell said that change would take Michigan from the fifteenth most business-friendly state to the thirtieth. “They are trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.” Fowler added.

That doesn’t mean both men love the entire plan. Fowler’s defense of eliminating the Earned Income Tax Credit for the poor was unconvincing. Rothwell doesn’t like seeing cuts to education.

But they are both standing behind the plan, in part, perhaps, for one other reason. Despite all the critics, nobody’s proposed a comprehensive alternative. Michigan’s economy is seriously sick. And as of now, the Snyder plan is the only doctor in the house.

Essay: The UAW’s Dilemma - 3.24.11

The United Auto Workers union is holding its bargaining convention in Detroit this week. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry says the labor movement is facing big challenges.

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You may not have noticed, but the United Auto Workers union has been holding its bargaining convention in Detroit this week.

Every four years, union leaders get together to plan and map out their strategy for negotiating a new contract with the automakers. Once, this convention was an enormous deal, intensely covered by both local and national labor media. The big question every time was -- which company would be the strike target?

Years ago, the union came up with the concept of “pattern bargaining.” One company -- Ford, General Motors, or Chrysler, would be selected as the target. Union officials would then try and hammer out a contact with that automaker first.

Sometimes they’d have to go on strike to achieve that; sometimes not. Meanwhile, the workers at the other companies would keep working under the old labor agreements.

Once the new contract was finally hammered out, the unions would then go to the other two automakers and say -- “okay; this is what we negotiated with them; this is what you need to agree to as well. No fooling around; take it or leave it; sign or we walk.”

That’s how it’s been done for many, many years. In the past, there were sometimes historic strikes which led to historic settlements that gradually won the workers everything from paid vacations to profit sharing to dental care, on top of high wages.

But as all the world knows, excesses and globalization caught up with the auto companies. General Motors and Chrysler nearly went out of business less than two years ago. They survived in part because the union was willing to make major concessions.

New hires, for example, now make half of what a longtime autoworker does -- $14 an hour, or #29,000 a year. The union decided that and other sacrifices were necessary to keep their employers alive.

Well, the world is different now. Ford and General Motors are now making profits in the billions. Chrysler is believed close to profitability, and at any rate, has a new owner with deep pockets.

Many in the UAW believe it is their turn to be rewarded and compensated for the sacrifices they’ve made. The companies, however, talk as if the concessions need to be permanent. They know the day when they dominated the national and even world auto markets are gone.

Some of the union’s clout is gone, too. Thirty-odd years ago, the UAW had one point six million members nationwide. Today, that’s down to three hundred and fifty thousand. A third of those aren’t even in auto-related occupations. Put another way, ninety percent of the blue-collar, General Motors jobs in the state in 1979 are gone.

When the bargaining talks begin in earnest later this year, the UAW isn’t just out to get a better contract. Union President Bob King knows the union is in a struggle to stay relevant, and survive.

He knows the union’s future depends on whether it can begin organizing workers at the “transplants” -- those factories built by foreign automakers in America. So far, they’ve had no success.

The union’s future depends on changing that. For those interested in the labor movement, we’re likely to be in for a few very interesting years.

Essay: Mergers and Acquisitions - 3.22.11

In Grand Rapids yesterday, Governor Snyder proposed a controversial set of new local government reforms. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinks the ones that got less attention could end up being more significant.

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There’s been a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth statewide over the new proposals the governor outlined in Grand Rapids yesterday, the ones especially that will affect local governments.

He proposes to hold back one-third of the revenue sharing money communities get from the state, and release it only if cities, villages and townships adopt certain reforms. Those would include putting all new hires on a pension plan based on what they and their employer put in, a so-called “defined contribution plan.”

Experts feel that too many places now offer what are known as defined benefits plans, which are costlier, and which governments are obligated to honor regardless of their ability to pay.

Under the Snyder plan, new local government hires would also have to pay at least twenty percent of the cost of their health care. There would be certain other rules governing things how much money governments contribute and how fast pensions could rise.

These reforms are, in short, all things public employee unions have strenuously opposed. Predictably, Democrats mostly denounced these proposals yesterday. Republicans and business groups praised them .. but so did alliances of local governments.

As the head of the Michigan Municipal League said yesterday, local governments are desperate today for any tools that will help them get a handle on their spiraling costs.

My guess is that these reforms are likely to become law, given the large Republican majorities in the legislature. However, I am not sure the carrot the governor is offering is going to be large enough to give local governments the incentives to get this done.

Consider this: To start with, the governor is already slashing the total amount spent on revenue sharing by a third. That will cut what Detroit is getting, for example, from a maximum of $178 million dollars to $119 million. They can get two thirds of the new amount basically by just promising to try and do better at consolidating services.

Will the city then find it worthwhile to adopt some terribly controversial measures to get another less than $40 million dollars? Well, maybe. But the Macomb County city of Utica might not. Their revenue sharing incentive will be something like twenty thousand dollars, not enough, perhaps to take on the unions.

But the governor proposed some other reforms in Grand Rapids yesterday which got less attention -- but which, in the long run, could be much more significant. For example, he wants to make it much more easy for governments to merge.

Governor Snyder also wants to clear the way for combined city and county governments, as they’ve done in Indianapolis, Miami and Louisville. In the long run, this may be the only solution for Detroit.

He also wants to streamline the process for consolidating services, as when a city and a township decide to share a fire department. We’re bound to see a lot of this happening soon.

Many of the governor’s reforms are controversial, and probably no one is on board with all of them. But nobody can deny that he is proposing a comprehensive set of solutions to our state’s economic problems, something we haven’t seen in a long time. And if anyone is offering any serious alternatives, I haven’t seen them yet.

Essay: Shortchanging the Future - 3.21.11

A Macomb County Commissioner is leading a petition drive against the governor’s proposal to tax pensions. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry says there is a little more to the story.

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Macomb County Commissioner Phil DiMaria is angry about Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposal to tax pension income, and he’s doing something about it. He’s launched a statewide petition drive to oppose the tax, which is key to the governor’s proposed budget.

DiMaria, who has been on the county commission for twenty years, thinks the governor is badly out of touch. “He’s rich. He’s never going to be an old person who has to pinch pennies to try and get by, try and buy milk and bread,” he told me yesterday.

“This isn’t any shared sacrifice. This is one more assault on the middle class so he can give business a big tax break.”

The response so far has been overwhelming, DiMaria said. He’s gotten requests for petitions from as far away as Petoskey and Chelsea. His goal is not to put anything on the ballot. He just wants to collect as many signatures as possible and then use them to try and sway the governor and the legislators.

DiMaria, who is a sixty-year-old Democrat, knows the odds are against his being able to change the governor’s mind, but he may have an easier time with some of the freshmen Republicans in the legislature who would have to face angry voters next year.

I asked DiMaria if he realized that the governor’s proposal would exempt the first $41,000 from taxes. He did, but he doesn’t think any pension income should be taxed.

But what DiMaria doesn’t usually tell people is that he is not exactly a disinterested party. He already collects one pension from the Oakland County city of Troy, where he was a police officer for thirty years. When he leaves the county commission, he will be eligible for a second government pension, on top of the first.

In other words, whatever other motives he may have, he doesn’t want to pay taxes on his income. I asked DiMaria how he felt about the governor’s proposal to drastically cut education funding, and he said he was against that too. “How’s he going to get new business without people properly educated to run these jobs?“ he said. But you don’t see DiMaria, or anyone else I know about, trying to get people to sign petitions to save education.

And that disturbs me. DiMaria and I grew up in a Michigan where our parents had survived the Great Depression and World War II, and in many cases were struggling to get by. Yet they voted to tax themselves to build new schools so their kids could get a proper education. They wanted us to have more chances than they had. Today, adults seem more selfish. It’s as if our slogan was, “we’ve got ours, and we’re hanging on to it. If you are trying to get through school today, that’s tough, kid.”

I suppose I should be on Phil DiMaria’s team, since I am getting steadily closer to pension age myself. But I don’t understand why pension income should be treated differently from any other income. And I am pretty sure that if we think our comfort more important than the next generation’s future, Michigan isn’t going to have much of a future, no matter what sacrifices any governor’s budget should happen to bring.

Essay: Unpopular Votes - 3.18.11

A group called National Popular Vote is lobbying the legislature to change the way we elect presidents. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry has been considering this.

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For the last two months, Michigan has been consumed with debate over Governor Snyder’s proposed new budget -- and with a number of his other deal-changing priorities as well, such as the just passed tough new Emergency Financial Manager law.

But there are other issues, and a lobbyist for one showed up in Lansing yesterday to urge the legislature to vote to change the way we elect presidents. Tom Golisano, a millionaire businessman and philanthropist, is the spokesperson for a group called National Popular Vote, which is beginning to have some success.

They want to change the laws to make sure that the candidate who gets the most popular votes for president nationwide gets elected, and they think they’ve found a way to do this without amending the constitution.

Here’s how that would work. First of all, chances are that you at least vaguely remember that while we act as if presidents are elected by a nationwide vote of the people, this only happens indirectly. That’s because of something called the electoral college. If you remember your twelfth grade civics class -- or the two thousand election between George Bush and Al Gore -- you know that presidential elections are really like a giant board game.

States have a certain number of electoral votes based roughly on their population. Most states have a winner-take-all rule by which whoever wins that state gets all its electoral votes. The name of the game is to win enough states to add up to two hundred and seventy.

Most of the time, whomever gets more popular votes wins the electoral votes. But that wasn’t the case eleven years ago. Half a million more people nationwide voted for Gore, but Bush won the electoral vote. Four years later, Bush won the popular vote easily, but would have lost the election if John Kerry had won Ohio.

The group called National Popular Vote wants to change that by getting states to pass laws that would require their electors to vote for whomever wins the national popular vote. This change would only take effect when National Popular Vote is adopted by states with enough electoral votes to elect a winner.

The group says that polls show that most people think this would be a good idea, and I don’t doubt those polls are right.

However, I don’t think it is necessarily a good idea, for a number of reasons. The winner of the popular vote does win the electoral vote almost all the time. Some, in fact, think that Al Gore should have won the electoral vote, if Florida had counted its votes properly. In most cases, the electoral vote magnifies the popular result. And if we changed the system to mean only popular votes counted, campaigning would change.

Sparsely populated states like Nevada would never see a presidential nominee in the flesh. Actually, I doubt we’d see much of them in Michigan, either. The candidates would probably just spend all their time on TV, or in heavily populated areas.

The United States is supposed to be a federal system, where the individual states have a distinct role to play. The current system isn’t really broken. We might want to be careful before trying to radically fix it.

Essay: Carping Criticism - 3.17.11

Remember the concern everyone had last year over the possibility that Asian carp might get into the Great Lakes? Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry has been wondering what the government has been doing about that.

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Remember the Asian carp, which migrated up the Mississippi, into the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal and which experts feared were about to get into Lake Michigan?

That’s where things stood when I first talked about this issue here more than fifteen months ago. Since then, traces of carp DNA has been found in Lake Michigan, though there is no evidence that a permanent breeding population has been established there.

But if that ever happens, it will be an environmental disaster of unimaginable proportions. The carp are huge awful ugly fish. One variety tends to jump and have broken water skiers’ jaws.

Worse, they suck up virtually all the available food supply, which means they starve out other more desirable fish. Once they get firmly established, they are virtually impossible to eradicate, which would mean farewell to the sport and commercial fishing industries.

Plus, that would play havoc with the ecology of the lakes and could cost the economy, depending on whose estimates you believe, between one and seven billion dollars a year.

I wondered what the government has been doing about this, and last week talked to a highly respected environmental journalist about this. The Toledo Blade’s Tom Henry has been following the carp story for years. He has won numerous awards for his reporting, and is on the Society of Environmental Journalists board.

When I asked him what our government was doing to try to protect our lakes, his answer was “dithering.” Canada, he told me, was at least trying. This month alone, their government has levied two huge fines against two firms caught trying to smuggle live Asian carp into Canada, in one case, apparently to raise and breed.

That’s how all the trouble is thought to have started in the first place, when a flood in Arkansas washed some carp from a fish farm into the Mississippi River almost twenty years ago. Since then, they’ve been migrating north, and the federal response, Tom Henry said, has been seventeen years of indefensible inaction. Last year, the governors of most of the Great Lakes states attempted to get Illinois to close the canal.

But Illinois refused, saying it would be too devastating to Chicago’s economy, and the President and the Supreme Court refused to overturn that decision.

What’s happening now? Well, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has given itself another four years to do an “interbasin study,” of the problem and come up with a plan.

By then, the carp may be all the way to Vermont. The key danger zone, Henry tells me, is Western Lake Erie, the area from Toledo stretching on out past Port Clinton and Sandusky.

That is the anchor spot of the fishing industry and, sadly, also the area in which the carp might find it easiest to establish themselves. But when the Corps came to take public comment recently, where did they go? Ann Arbor.

Which, if they didn’t notice, isn’t on the lakes at all. Senator Debbie Stabenow has introduced a bill to get thing moving faster. “We’re anxious to light a fire under the Army Corps of Engineers,” she said. It would be nice if that happened before muddy-tasting Asian carp are the only things we have left to cook.