Jack Lessenberry from Michigan Radio

Everyone knows that the city of Flint has seen better days. Its population is half what it was in 1970; the city has barely one-eighth the General Motors jobs that once existed. "I've been an eyewitness to the biggest change any community can imagine," Congressman Dan Kildee told me yesterday in his office in downtown Flint. Kildee is a famous name in Flint; his uncle Dale was congressman there for thirty-six years; his nephew won reelection to his seat when he retired five years ago. But while Dale Kildee was best known for education, Dan is a passionate advocate for cities – mainly, older manufacturing and industrial cities, and Flint in particular. That isn't a popular cause these days, but Kildee believes it is essential. Millions still live in cities like Flint and Saginaw, Muskegon and Bay City, not to mention Detroit. They are suffering from declining revenue and decaying infrastructure. Kildee, who turned 57 this week, has been in politics and government his entire adult life, since he was elected to Flint's school board when he was 18 years old. Most of his career has been in Flint and Genesee County, where he created an innovative land bank and successfully lobbied Lansing for legislation that enabled it to effectively fight blight. Kildee thinks that as a nation and a state, we have the wrong priorities. "Detroit gets all the attention, but small cities are hurting too," he told me, not long after he came back from helping paint a Habitat for Humanity House with his staff. "And the interesting thing is that every city that finds itself in this predicament thinks it's unique," he says, "when in fact, their problems are much alike – and rooted in causes that are largely beyond their control." Generally, Kildee noted, the focus is on things like bloated and under-financed pension funds, on mismanagement and corruption. "I'm not saying these can't be important factors; think Kwame Kilpatrick," he said. "But they are also largely symptoms." When cities were flush with revenue, such things didn't matter so much. But now not only do they suffer from declining tax receipts, the state has repeatedly cut revenue sharing. "Federal policy towards cities is based on two faulty assumptions," he said. "They are, that all cities are growing at some rate, and that all land appreciates in value." Obviously, that isn't true. Kildee thinks we need to reexamine how we fund cities and metropolitan areas, look harder at sharing resources, and, especially, invest in infrastructure. He says that despite being a low-seniority member in the minority party, he loves his job, loves being in Congress, where he works hard at finding ways and issues on which he can make common cause with his Republican colleagues. Kildee knows there's speculation that he may run for governor next time, and that it is something he admits he is considering. He flirted with running five years ago, but decided not to enter a contested Democratic primary in what turned out to be a very Republican year. Most of all, he seems to want to make a difference for our older cities and their inhabitants in an era when that, and they, are no longer seen as hip. I left thinking Congress could use a few dozen more members like him. Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

Nobody is thinking about frozen lakes this time of year, but we will be soon enough. We've just had two of the harshest and coldest winters in decades. Two years ago, at one point ninety-three percent of the Great Lakes' surface was covered with ice. Last year was almost as bad. The lakes are, as U.S. Senator Gary Peters reminded me this week, a major American commercial highway, with freighters carrying billions of dollars worth of iron ore and other materials moving across their many hundreds of miles. When winter is early and unexpectedly harsh, ships get caught in the ice. The U.S. Coast Guard has eight small ships that can be used as ice breakers in normal times, though most are old and need retrofitting. But there's only one heavy Coast Guard icebreaker that can deal with winters like the last two — the nine-year-old Mackinaw, which can break up ice that's as much as three and a half feet thick. But it can't be in two places at once. Last year, Great Lakes ice cost businesses more than three hundred million dollars, and that in turn cost nearly two thousand jobs. The year before, the losses were twice as bad. At least one new heavy icebreaker is needed. But Congress hasn't been willing to come up with the money. In fact, most of the region's delegation hasn't been vocal about this, except for the political odd couple of Representative Candice Miller, a conservative Republican, and newly elected U.S. Senator Gary Peters, a progressive Democrat. They've been fighting hard to get a second icebreaker, but so far, they've been frustrated. Miller did manage to get a clause approving it into the annual Coast Guard authorization bill – but her colleagues didn't appropriate money for it. Things then got worse in the Senate; they stripped the provision out entirely. Gary Peters then took up the fight. The Senate is now in recess till September, but he tells me he is still talking to his colleagues and trying to move the needle. Part of the problem seems to be that some see this as a sectional issue, when in fact the Great Lakes are an integral part of national and even international commerce. However, Peters said part of the delay is due to the Coast Guard itself. They want a new icebreaker for the Lakes – but their top priority is a new polar icebreaker for the Arctic. The senator is cautiously optimistic, but he said they could use some more help from representatives and senators from the Great Lakes region. Miller and Peters, after all, are each operating under a handicap. She is essentially a lame duck, having announced she won't run again next year. Peters is a brand-new freshman in the minority, and his clout is severely limited. You would think both business and labor would be pressuring Congress for another Great Lakes icebreaker, but again, this issue has gotten little notice. By the way, if Congress does come up with the $200 million needed, ordering an icebreaker isn't like ordering a Chevy. It would take at least two to three years to build. If you can stand the pun, this is one priority we really can't afford to put on ice. Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan

Last month the state approved petition language for three more ballot proposals – but the organizers of one isn't satisfied. Not with what the state did, but with the language her group submitted. They want to make sure they get it as close to right as possible. They've talked to lawyers, revised the wording, and plan to ask the state to allow them to substitute the new text. After that, they have to try and get 315,654 valid signatures. If they do that, and their proposed constitutional amendment gets on the ballot a year from November and passes, it will make it easier to vote, virtually guarantee that more people vote, and save the state millions every election. The group is called Let's Vote, Michigan, and their unpaid leader is one Jackie Pierce, who lives in Pellston, way up at the top of the Lower Peninsula. And what they want to do is change the way we vote to a system in which all elections are held by mail. They aren't getting a lot of attention from the media, because they don't have any special interests with deep pockets behind them. Nor do they have any slick political consultants. They just have a bunch of people like Pierce, a 51-year-old woman from Flint who used to manage a Jet's pizza outlet. They have the odd idea that regular people can make a difference, and that they ought to try to make democracy work better. Here's how vote by mail would work: The ballot would be mailed out two to three weeks before Election Day. We would have ample time to study it and make our choices. Then we could put a stamp on it and mail it, put it into one of a number of vote collections boxes across the state, or take it to our local city hall or a county elections center. What this would mean is that we'd all have time to find out information on the candidates, say, for community college boards, and to analyze and make sense of all those ballot proposals. Working mothers wouldn't have to try to stand in line to vote on Election Day. We know something about how this would work because three states do it already. Oregon switched to vote by mail seventeen years ago. Washington state and Colorado followed. One effect would be that far more people would vote. Barely 40 percent of registered voters turned out in Michigan last November. In Oregon, 70 percent voted – and that was considered low. Turnout in presidential elections has been higher than 80 percent. Voting by mail makes sense. The question is: does Let's Vote Michigan have a chance to get this on the ballot? Organizers will have six months to collect enough signatures. Since some are always invalid, their goal is half a million. That won't be easy to do without big financial backing, but Jackie Pierce says flatly, "we're going to do this." So, we'll see. But I can't help but thinking that instead of putting millions behind other proposals that are doomed to fail, unions and progressive groups might be better off funding vote by mail first. After all, the larger the turnout, the better their candidates and causes tend to do. Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

Hillsdale County is, in many ways, a flashback to the America that used to be, a place of rolling hills and pleasant little towns and farms and orchards along the Ohio border. It was settled by New Englanders, and to this day, most of its forty-six thousand people are of either English or German descent. People born there tend to spend their lives there. Hillsdale is famous mostly for Hillsdale College, a small liberal arts school which became internationally famous for rejecting any federal funding, and as a beacon for conservative ideology. Figures from Ronald Reagan to Margaret Thatcher to William F. Buckley Jr. have come to what may have seemed to them like the middle of nowhere to speak at the school. The county is a place without many minorities or any big cities, and it's overwhelmingly Republican. So when the Hillsdale Democrats asked me to come speak at their annual Harry S. Truman Day dinner Saturday, I was intrigued. What kind of folks are Democrats in Hillsdale? So I went, and found myself somewhat moved. They were not, by and large, very conservative or very liberal. Most of them seemed just like the warm and friendly folks you meet in towns all across Michigan. They hold their monthly meetings in the county senior center, and start with the Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of silence for those in our armed forces. They awarded scholarships to some local students, and ended their meeting with a raffle. They came from all walks of life. One man was a physics teacher at the college, another owned an orchard and a greenhouse. There were some librarians and retired teachers. Some were, indeed, dyed-in-the-wool Democrats. One retiree proudly told me he'd given fourteen thousand dollars to candidates in the last few years, but then said sadly, "Of course, that's just a drop in the ocean," referring to the cost of modern campaigns. Most of the people there were not rabid ideologues. They were deeply worried about the way things seem to be going in this state. They are bewildered and a little frightened by the fact that the legislature seems to be totally uninterested in what really matters to real people. "How can they cut our schools by a million dollars, take away benefits and expect better education and more accountability from teachers?" one asked. Pat Pastula, the party's chair, is a retired high school English teacher and track coach who told me he hadn't really paid much attention to politics untill five years ago, when he started feeling things were getting badly off track. He didn't say he resented the way some on the far right depicted Democrats these days; he was simply baffled by the craziness. "We're not against free enterprise," he told me. "That's what made America great. We aren't out to redistribute incomes, but create opportunities. We just think we need a little more balance, and we don't understand how they think they can build a future economy while crippling education." As I prepared to leave, a woman asked me if I thought Governor Snyder had any idea what the effects of his policies were, or if he didn't care? I said that was a very interesting question. Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

Republicans around this state woke up this morning to a double-barreled nightmare. The biggest is national. Last night, Donald Trump stood on a stage in Cleveland and essentially threatened to run a third-party campaign if he doesn't get the presidential nomination. If he does that, whomever the Democrats nominate is almost certain to win. The first George Bush would have been reelected in 1992 if it wasn't for Ross Perot splitting the Republican Party, just as Al Gore would have won eight years later without Ralph Nader. A Trump candidacy could be far worse, so much so that you might well have the official Republican candidate finishing third. But that isn't all. For the first time, some are beginning to face the possibility that the Trump candidacy for the nomination might not collapse. For thirty years, first conservative Republicans, then the more virulent Tea Party strain have attacked conventional politicians, often in the nastiest terms. Their establishment colleagues egged them on, as long as their main targets were the Clintons and President Obama. But what many didn't see was that this weakened the entire fabric of American civic life. Twenty-three years ago, journalist Carl Bernstein wrote about the cheapening and dumbing down of America in his seminal essay, The Idiot Culture. Ironically, to illustrate how bad things had gotten, he wrote: "And last month, Ivana Trump, perhaps the single greatest creation of the Idiot Culture, a tabloid artifact if ever there was one, appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair." That was a more genteel age, when Vanity Fair was still intellectually respectable. For the young, by the way, Ivana was a couple of Trump wives ago. Today that artifact is the Donald himself, now the authentic front-running candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination. Incidentally, CNN took a poll matching Trump against the Democrats' Bernie Sanders, who some see as a left-wing fringe candidate. Sanders led by more than twenty points. In fact, Sanders was dead even with Jeb Bush. There are increasing signs, by the way, that the establishment also greatly underestimated the appeal of the plucky little tell-it-like it is senator from Vermont. But smart Republicans are waking up to the horror that if Trump is on the ballot next year, Democrats may be able to nominate a potato and a stone and win. In Michigan, there is another big headache. For months, there have been rumors that the legislative Tea Party duo Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat were having an affair, though both profess to be devout Christians and are married to other people. Today, the Detroit News broke a huge story. According to the newspaper, the pair is not only romantically involved; they sought to cover it up with a bizarre email claiming Courser paid a man for sex behind a nightclub. Now, I can tell you that there are plenty of Republicans in the leadership who would be ecstatic if these two bomb-throwers were gone tomorrow, even if they were replaced by Democrats. But this explosive mess will hurt the entire party. State Republicans who have been claiming their party is morally superior better find a new argument, fast. Democrats may well have their own troubles before this is over. But for Michigan Republicans, today is a daytime, double-barreled nightmare. Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

I was intrigued to learn that a Traverse City bookstore was offering refunds to people who had ordered "Go Set a Watchman," the long-awaited publishing sensation of the summer. The critics are in near-universal agreement that the book, by the author of the American classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, isn't very good. Well, there have been a lot eagerly awaited books that weren't very good, but in this case, the bookstore's owner said he felt people were deceived into thinking this was a sequel to Mockingbird.. Well, I have read and reviewed a lot of books in my time, fiction as well as non-fiction, though I wouldn't set myself up as a literary critic. And like millions of other Americans, I both read Mockingbird and saw the movie. For a time I even wanted to marry Scout, once I realized that Laura Ingalls Wilder was dead. You can see why I became a bitter cynic. However, I've also learned that a lot of people talk about books without having actually read all of them. I decided to read Watchman, or actually, hear it as an audio book superbly performed by Reese Witherspoon, though I also have a hardcover copy. And I am here to tell you that yes, as a novel, it is annoyingly bad. But what the reviewers seem to be missing is that Atticus – who we can't help seeing as Gregory Peck — is not a hater, but a man of his place and time. The main unpleasant literary surprise isn't Atticus, but his daughter Scout, now the 26-year-old Jean Louise Finch. She is, as her Uncle Jack says, a bigot herself, and more to the point, thoroughly unlikable, so much so that, to my horror, I found myself wishing someone would slap her face hard – which indeed eventually does happen. There are two lovely scenes that could have been in the book Harper Lee eventually wrote, flashbacks to Scout's childhood. Clearly whoever first read this manuscript suggested she write a book about the characters as children, the book which became Mockingbird. Yet Watchman is valuable in a way that I don't think anyone has suggested. It provides a fascinating glimpse into the minds of what were thought of as decent white Southerners in the mid-to-late 1950s. This is expressed in a series of dialogues between Atticus and his daughter. Turns out they both were angered by the U.S. Supreme Court decision to end school desegregation. They both thought Brown vs. Board violated the Constitution's Tenth Amendment, the one that says that powers not specifically delegated to the federal government are reserved for the states. But Atticus also feels that, "our Negro population is backward," and "the vast majority of them are unable (yet) to share fully in the responsibilities of citizenship." What reviewers mainly have missed is that his 26-year-old daughter agrees – she just thinks Southern whites should have done more to help them along. And both of them hate and loathe the NAACP. If anyone wants to know why the civil rights struggles were so hard and lasted so long, they could do worse than read the last chapters of this book. And not make the mistake of assuming that attitudes are entirely different in Michigan today. Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

When the news broke yesterday that Detroit Tigers General Manager Dave Dombrowski had been fired, I was sitting in a TV studio with Amy Peterson, one of the baseball team's lawyers. I didn't know about Dombrowski, and I wasn't talking to her about baseball, but about a unique business she's started that is using art to give disadvantaged women new lives. It's called Rebel Nell, and it is about as urban a business as you can imagine. The workers take pieces of graffiti that have fallen off buildings or concrete overpasses, shape them, polish them, and mount them on silver to wear as jewelry. The resulting pieces are extremely beautiful and uniquely Detroit – so is the way this whole business got started. Amy Peterson isn't even a native Detroiter, though she came from a working-class background in upstate New York. She earned a law degree and an MBA and came her seven years ago because she wanted to be a sports attorney. She chose not to live in the suburbs, but in the heart of downtown. She lived next to a homeless shelter, where she walked her dog past daily and became friends with some of the women. To relieve stress, she jogged along the old Dequindre cut, where she noticed layers of graffiti, flaking off the walls. Intrigued, she took some of it home. Peterson knew something about art; she'd helped fund her education by making jewelry. She had business credentials, and wanted to make a difference in the struggling city she'd adopted. She got an idea. She found a like-minded woman, Diana Russell, and the two decided to start a jewelry-making business with a social motive. They named it "Rebel Nell" after a woman they both deeply admired – Eleanor Roosevelt. They put in some money, ran an Indiegogo internet fund-raising campaign, found a space and started just over two years ago. They worked with people who ran the shelter to find women who were emotionally and mentally ready to get back on their feet and take charge of their lives. They trained them, not only to make jewelry but to gain essential life skills. And it worked. Last year, Rebel Nell made a tiny profit. They are on course to do even better. Peterson sees the irony of her professional life; she negotiates contracts with young men who are paid millions of dollars every year for playing ball, and in her spare time, desperately tries to create more $12 an hour jobs for poor women. But that's America. Amy Peterson isn't a martyr; she's a normal young professional woman who is married and expecting her first baby in January. And my guess is if Detroit is in fact reborn, it will happen in large part because of efforts like Rebel Nell. Eleanor Roosevelt may be Peterson's personal hero. But her work reminds me more of something Robert Kennedy once said, that every time someone "acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression." Let's hope that for Detroit, the ripples keep coming. Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

Years ago, a professor who had contempt for politics asked me if I knew what the difference was between Pavlov's dogs and most politicians. His answer was: Sometimes when the great Russian behaviorist rang his bell, the dogs failed to salivate. I thought of that yesterday, when President Obama announced his Clean Power Plan covering carbon emissions in all the states. Every Republican in sight immediately denounced the plan, most before they could have had a chance to read and study it. Michigan State Senator Mike Nofs, who chairs the Energy and Technology Committee, was typical. He said, "I think all that's going to do is cost American businesses money and we won't be able to compete globally because we'll be paying so much for energy." He wants, "to stick with our plan for a Michigan solution to a Michigan problem," he said. Evidently he isn't aware that the air and winds and waterways don't respect our state boundaries, but hey; who cares about logic? Democrats, in an equally predictable fashion, leapt to the President's defense. House Minority Leader Tim Greimel said, "The Clean Power Plan creates opportunities for Michigan to become a healthier, cleaner state powered by energy sources that do not harm our communities and natural resources," et cetera. Well, both men would have reacted in much the same way if Obama had announced a plan to trade with North Korea or cut business taxes. The bell rings, and they salivate. So how do you decide what's real? Well, as scholars will tell you, it often makes sense to consult the primary source: In this case, President Obama's actual speech when he announced the Clean Power Plan yesterday afternoon. Here's part of it: The President noted that, "One year does not make a trend, but 14 of the last 15 warmest years on record have fallen within the first 15 years of our century." He noted also that "over the last three decades nationwide asthma rates have more than doubled, and climate change puts those Americans at greater risk of landing in the hospital." When I read that, what popped into my head was folk singer Joni Mitchell's famous line: "Don't it always seem to go/that you don't know what you've got till it's gone." If we screw up the environment beyond repair, nobody will proudly say that we gave American businesses a tax break instead. We are no longer at a point where we can afford to waste time on those who contend that the earth is flat, or that there's any doubt about man-made climate change. Yesterday, the head of the Natural Resources Defense Council noted that while Michigan has made strides in terms of clean and efficient renewable energy, "doing more of this as part of a national effort will also mean that our kids won't inherit a planet that is beyond saving." Our parents' generation understood this better than we do. That's why they banned above-ground nuclear testing and established the Environmental Protection Agency. President Obama gets it too. After listing a series of alarming environmental developments, he said, "It's not as if there's nothing we can do about it. We can take action." Not doing so would clearly be the most irresponsible course of all. Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

Being a journalist was in many ways harder when I was working for newspapers in the 1970s and 80s. There was no Google, no World Wide Web, no search engines of any kind. We relied on land-line telephones, books, and old newspaper clippings kept in what we called the "morgue." But one thing was easier: We didn't have to worry so much about what the public thought, unless we committed a huge, verifiable error, or ticked off the publisher's best friend. If people didn't like something we wrote or said, essentially all they could do is try to call us or write a letter and complain. By the time we got the letter, the story was often old. Well, we live in a different world these days, one that holds us far more accountable. Anyone can comment on virtually anything I write in a newspaper or say on the radio by just appending a comment at the end of the commentary or story. They can also broadcast their thoughts to millions via social media. This isn't always comfortable, but keeps us more honest. I have, on hopefully rare occasions, been caught in an error by alert and knowledgeable readers and listeners. While this is highly embarrassing, I'm glad they can do that. In many other cases, I've had my mind opened to different points of view, or different dimensions of a particular story or issue. Sometimes, I've even changed my mind entirely. And I appreciate people taking the time to intelligently write to me, even when I still end up disagreeing with them. We journalists often deserve criticism. However, I also need to turn the tables on our readers and listeners. Much of the time, when I scroll down the comment lists on these broadcasts or various things I write in other media, what I see is people parroting talking points from Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or MSNBC, or some other ideological factory. Doing that is a waste of everyone's time. In some cases, those commenting don't seem to have even read, much less thought about, what I actually said. Last week, for example, I delivered an essay that noted that ninety-five percent of Planned Parenthood's work does not involve abortion. In any event, I noted the federal government does not pay for any abortion related expenses, and abortion itself is a legal medical option. In response, I got a lot of gruesome emails about abortion, and was told on Facebook that I was a, "murderous baby-killing Nazi monster." That's not likely to accomplish rational persuasion. Another commentary about a trade dispute with our fellow NAFTA partner Canada over the right to label beef and pork products with their country of origin provoked several readers to tell me we needed such labeling because they didn't trust meat from China. Well, I don't either, but that has nothing to do with the United States and Canada. In his classic essay "The Idiot Culture," Carl Bernstein accused the American media of "squandering their power and ignoring their obligations," to relevance and truth. These days, dear listeners, we are all part of the media, thanks to modern technology. How about if we all try to keep open minds ... and be as honest as we can? Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

The group that oversees what goes on our ballots approved language for three more potential ballot proposals for next year. There's no guarantee that any or all of these will get enough signatures to be certified for the ballot, of course. Some could also be headed off by potential legislative action. But when you consider that these come in addition to possibly as many as three marijuana proposals, and who knows what else in the works, we could be looking at a potential ballot the size of a bed sheet. An election which, as Michigan Radio's Zoe Clark likes to say, would be a real "ballotpalooza." Over the years I've had the chance to chat with a number of delegates to Michigan's last constitutional convention, which convened 54 years ago. Sadly, most are now dead. But one thing on which they agreed was that nobody foresaw how often the ballot would be clogged up with various proposals. They thought there might be one or two every few years on matters of intense citizen concern. What they didn't see coming was a culture in which special interests of all sorts would open their wallets to pay for signatures to get proposals on the ballot. Having the people vote on proposal after proposal may sound like a wonderful exercise in democracy. But it's really not. It is surgery by sledgehammer. I am fairly well educated and my job is to pay attention to civic affairs. And yet I sometimes don't have enough knowledge to cast a vote on some of the proposals that have been showing up on Michigan ballots. Neither does almost anyone else. There's also an interesting psychological dynamic that seems to kick in here: Put more than three proposals on the ballot, and voters are pretty much guaranteed to vote no on all of them. I think this is a form of subconscious self-preservation: When in doubt, just say no. And virtually everyone is bound to have serious doubts, especially if they walk into a voting booth and see a forest of complex questions in often arcane language. However, there is one proposal I hope does get on the ballot, and which I would enthusiastically support. That is the petition by a group called Let's Vote Michigan, which would convert us to voting mainly by mail. Now the organizers of this drive haven't yet worked out exactly how this would work, which was painfully apparent yesterday. What they should have done is merely copied what they do in Oregon or Washington State, which have had this method for years. It is, in fact, the only system that makes sense nowadays. If we are going to be asked to vote for more than a dozen candidates and decide a large group of ballot proposals, we need to be sitting at our kitchen tables to do it. Otherwise, we are going to keep making uninformed decisions and electing people with familiar names to offices they may not be suited to fill. Frankly, I'd rather not decide tax rates or paid sick leave. That's what we pay our elected representatives to do. But if we're going to have to do that, we need the time and space to do it as intelligently as possible. Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

State Senator Virgil Smith, a Detroit Democrat, wants Michigan to enact the death penalty for anyone who kills a police officer in the line of duty.To quote the senator:“If you kill a cop … if you’re willing to go that far, ain’t no telling what you’re willing to do.”He doesn’t think such a person deserves to live. He’s not alone in this: Two powerful Republican allies, Senate Majority leader Arlan Meekhof and Majority Floor Leader Mike Kowall are cosponsoring his resolution.But it’s already clear this isn’t going anywhere. The Roman Catholic Church, which is otherwise stoutly conservative on social issues, is strongly against the death penalty.Rick Jones, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, is opposed to it, and he is nobody’s kale salad-eating liberal. He is a tough conservative, a career law enforcement officer, and a former sheriff. Senator Jones said he was opposed to capital punishment because, after all, mistakes are made.But law enforcement officers and criminologists, also know two things about the death penalty. First, states that have the death penalty have significantly higher murder rates than those that don’t have it. Second, there’s no evidence that the death penalty deters crime. Nobody who kills somebody in a fit of passion sits down first with a legal pad and evaluates pros and cons.Studies show that most other murders are committed either under the influence of drugs and alcohol, or by those who are mentally ill. Having the death penalty for cop killers could in fact lead to more murdered cops. Police are all too familiar with the concept of “suicide by cop,” in which someone attempts to provoke a policeman into killing them in a bizarre form of suicide.Specifying the death penalty only for those who kill police could, in other words, have unintended and tragic consequences. Actually, if someone was rational about all this, they might well be more inclined to kill if they thought they would be put to sleep rather than spend life in prison, without hope of parole.If you wonder why, watch the movie The Shawshank Redemption for a mild taste of what life behind bars is like.There’s one final reason the death penalty is a bad idea, one you might not suspect: Inflicting it is terribly expensive. The cost isn’t in the execution itself. It is in the extra legal work and appeals surrounding any death penalty case.An Urban Institute study found that in Maryland, where the death penalty was reinstated in 1978, the extra cost to the taxpayers was $186 million in the first thirty years.That’s for five executions. In Washington State, each case where prosecutors have sought the death penalty has cost the state more than one million extra dollars.Other states have similar stories.James Abbott, a respected New Jersey police chief, said recently that we should forget about the death penalty, and instead give law enforcement officers the money we’ve been wasting on it to fight crime. He knows what he’s talking about.It may feel good to think about killing those we are most mad at. But like many fantasies, it doesn’t make much sense.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

Since the year began, there’s been a deluge of horror stories about the drinking water in Flint. Residents have complained it’s discolored and smells and tastes funny. Authorities say it is safe, but admit it contains a byproduct from the disinfectants used to treat water from the Flint River.     To add insult to outrage, Flint residents are paying some of the highest water bills in the nation. The city is in the process of switching to a different provider, which is building a new facility to supply water from Lake Huron. Eventually, this should mean cheaper and better water.But this isn’t the whole problem. The pipes are old, rusty and leaky. Earlier this week, Governor Rick Snyder awarded Flint a $2 million dollar grant to find leaks in the water lines and replace an old wastewater incinerator. Mayor Dayne Walling said he was grateful, but that this wasn’t nearly enough. He estimated his system needs at least $50 million in improvements.Flint, of course, doesn’t have the money. It is a largely impoverished industrial town that was hit very hard by the recession and the loss over decades of tens of thousands of General Motors jobs. The city needs federal and state help, but we aren’t living in a political climate where that tends to happen.The legislature hasn’t even been willing to act to do anything about the most visible part of our crumbling infrastructure, the roads.What’s happening in Flint is a wake-up call.What matters is not precisely how much money is needed to fix their water system. What matters is realizing that what is happening in Flint is happening all across this state and nation.We have a collection of cities and counties whose water and sewer systems are failing, aging and falling apart. More than a decade ago, the then-director of Detroit’s water and sewerage system told me some parts of it dated back almost to the civil war.Detroit, of course, has had a nationally publicized water crisis connected to the bankruptcy. Most of the news centered on people whose water was being cut off because they couldn’t pay.But water main breaks are also increasingly common there.Last August Bay City might have run out of water if a giant water main leak hadn’t been discovered and repaired.The week before, poisonous cyanobacteria in Lake Erie actually made the water in Toledo undrinkable for several days. More such crises are certainly coming. Politicians don’t like to spend money on infrastructure that isn’t visible. Mayors don’t like posing with brand-new sewer pipes. But either we get serious about this, or our entire civilization is threatened. For too long, we’ve allowed our politics to be poisoned by silly anti-tax ideologues.It is now time for grownups. Yes, we all need to pay more in taxes, maybe lots more, if we want to preserve the pathways of our civilization.We have a collective responsibility to prevent both ourselves and future generations from being poisoned by our own waste.Half a century ago, everybody understood that. Today, we seem to be a lot dumber. We need to make massive investments and fix our infrastructure. By any means necessary.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. You can read his essays online at michiganradio.org. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

  Liberals aren’t always as good at winning elections as conservatives, but they usually are more inclined to write about politics – and better at getting others to write about them. But there’s an interesting new memoir from the conservative side of the spectrum. The name Bob LaBrant is well known in politics and government here. For more than thirty years he headed political affairs for the Michigan Chamber of Commerce.He was their senior vice-president, general counsel and chief lobbyist. His book is called “PAC MAN: A Memoir,” subtitled “A personal political history of the Campaign Finance, Redistricting, Ballot Question, Recall and Judicial Election Battles in Michigan,” since 1977.The book is all that, and more. It is the story of his life, from his boyhood in Wisconsin through a stint in Vietnam till he arrived in Michigan soon after he turned thirty.His personal stuff is interwoven with the professional in a way that occasionally gets in the way of the narrative, but the book is still a highly worthwhile read. I talked to Bob LaBrant about what motivated him yesterday.He is undeniably Republican through and through. He is very conservative, though as he told me, he has no use for the likes of Dave Agema and the anti-vaccination crazies. He acknowledged that Michigan politics have become far more partisan and polarized since he arrived during the Milliken era.LaBrant told me that he too, originally sought bipartisan solutions, but as time went on, he realized that the Democratic Party was controlled by organized labor.So he felt it was only fair that business interests had the tools to compete. He was a pioneer in making the Michigan Chamber of Commerce a major political player in everything from campaign finance laws to legislative redistricting proposals.And he and his causes have been stunningly successful. One of the early cases he supported laid the foundation for the creation of today’s “super” political action committees and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that allows unlimited corporate campaign spending. Since Bob arrived, while Michigan Republicans have had an abysmal record of failure in U.S. Senate contests, they have gained a near-hammerlock on the legislature and have usually held the governorship, in no small part due to his efforts.He told me his proudest achievement was keeping Democratic chair Mark Brewer’s proposed constitutional amendment called Reform Michigan Government Now off the ballot seven years ago.Now semi-retired, LaBrant was a superb tactician who was present at most of the major strategic political battles of our time, and he offers a valuable perspective, regardless of what side you may have been on. I wonder, however, if he is fully aware of how much the spectrum has shifted since the seventies. Organized labor is far weaker than it once was.But today’s Republicans seem increasingly more driven by social issues and radical ideology than by business and chamber of commerce concerns.In any event, his career has been a fascinating ride. From 4:30 to 6 this afternoon, he will be talking about the book and signing copies at the Sterling Corporation Conference Center in Lansing, and if you are nearby and fascinated by politics, you might well want to go. 

Fifteen years ago, I was lucky enough to spend a few February days in South Carolina.When I was there, one of the first things that struck me was how many government installations there were, many named either for Senator Strom Thurmond or Congressman Mendel Rivers, the long-dead chair of the House Armed Services Committee.Both men were notable racists. Rivers was also an alcoholic who urged President Johnson to use nuclear weapons during the Vietnam War. But they were enormously successful in bringing home the bacon to their small, rather poor state.That was a different era, and I am not suggesting that unrestrained pork barrel spending is good. But one of the things our representatives in Congress are supposed to do is to gain some clout and look after Michigan’s interests.For whatever reason, ours have largely failed to do that. If you look at President Obama’s proposed new budget, you might well conclude this was a deep red state whose representatives specialized in insulting him.In fact, Michigan gave the president a combined margin of nearly 1.3 million votes in his two elections. We haven’t sent a Republican to the U.S. Senate in more than twenty years.Yet his budget gives our state a dismissive slap. New Senator Gary Peters has begged the administration for years for funding for a customs plaza for the New International Trade Crossing bridge.This is a project vital to our economy, the region’s economy, and that of our closest ally, Canada.Yet once again, that money isn’t there. Carl Levin, who left the Senate last month, had more seniority and power than Mendel Rivers ever did. But he apparently didn’t have enough, or care enough, to make this entirely appropriate thing happen.President Obama is also from one of the Great Lakes states, and you would think their welfare would be important. But the President’s budget – for the second year in a row – would cut funds for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.Last year, Congress wouldn’t let him do that. This year, he wants to cut funding from $300 to $250 million.This didn’t please friends of the world’s greatest fresh water supply. The list goes on; Mr. Obama budgeted $1.3 billion for General Services Administration building projects across the country. Detroit gets nothing, so far as I can tell, though the GSA has asked for a pittance to fix the plumbing and heating systems in the federal courthouse.If I understood why we get so little I’d explain it, but I don’t. You’d think the President would want to help boost new Senator Peters, an ardent supporter of his and the only Democrat in the nation to win an open seat last year. You’d also think Debbie Staben0w, who has now been in the senate fourteen years, would have some clout.As it is, we have to hope that the Republicans who control Congress will at least not cut the few Michigan projects the President did fund, such as the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at MSU. We seem to have become sort of the Rodney Dangerfield of major industrial states.There are times when you have to think that a little pork just might be good.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. You can read his essays online at michiganradio.org. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

ell, it’s Groundhog Day, and whether or not your local woodchuck sees his shadow, this much is clear:The May 5th ballot proposal to raise the sales tax to fix the roads is in trouble. Last week was a horrible one for Governor Rick Snyder, the public face behind the push for this proposal. That, he said, is because it would accidentally change Michigan vehicle registration fees, to a non-deductible excise tax.First, economist Patrick Anderson, head of the Anderson Economic Group, said passing this would cost citizens a major tax deduction.Governor Snyder said he thought Anderson was wrong, but this certainly didn’t help his cause. The Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which was strongly in favor of raising gas taxes to fix the roads, is also refusing to endorse the sales tax increase.And if that wasn't enough, Truscott Rossman and an associated team of campaign specialists essentially fired the governor and withdrew from the team promoting the proposal.Those backing the "yes" campaign promptly hired Martin Waymire and WWP Strategies, two well-regarded firms, but we were left with a picture of a campaign in disarray.All this could make it hard to raise the millions the governor’s side is going to need to run a campaign to persuade voters to show up and vote yes. Now here’s why this matters so much: Suppose Proposal A IS defeated at the polls. If the voters turn this down, that would make it all but politically impossible to raise any taxes.This would mean the roads would continue to get worse, which would be bad for this state’s economy and all of us. But here’s a solution. The legislature should pass a law now saying that if the sales tax proposal is turned down, then the state would get the billions needed to fix our roads from a combination of increases in vehicle registration fees and the gas tax.That was, by the way, how the governor wanted to get the money in the first place – and is still probably the best, fairest and most practical way to go.Now before you say “They can’t do that,” guess what: They can, and they have. Remember Proposal A, the 1994 ballot measure that revolutionized how we fund elementary and high school education?Well, that’s how the lawmakers got the voters to pass it. In March of 1994, seventy percent of the voters approved Proposal A, which raised the state sales tax from four to six percent.But if they had voted Proposal A down, a law passed by the legislature would have instead raised the state income tax to six percent. Voters didn’t have a yes or no option; they had either/or.The roads in Michigan are falling apart. They will be in worse shape after this winter. The actual amount needed to get them up to decent shape is probably more like two billion a year, for at least the next decade.Anyone who tells you they can find the money to do this without raising taxes is ignorant or lying.We have to fix the roads. This is a perfect chance for lawmakers to put aside petty partisanship and do the right thing for my axles, your tires, and the next generation.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. You can read his essays online at michiganradio.org. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.