Jack Lessenberry from Michigan Radio

Twenty years ago, journalists who covered national politics knew that they could usually go into an area and find one reporter who really understood his region.For many years, Chad Selweski, the politics writer and columnist at the Macomb Daily, was that guy in his county, and that’s more important than it might sound. For some years, largely blue-collar Macomb was seen as the national symbol of why Democrats were losing presidential elections.Once, it was the most Democratic suburban county in the nation. But in 1980, Macomb voters were among the millions who turned to embrace Ronald Reagan – hence, Reagan Democrats.For decades after that, presidential hopefuls of both parties came courting Macomb. And when the national media wanted to know what was happening there, they called Chad Selweski.I read him for years, both his straight reporting and his columns, and I found his work to be what his blog proclaims: “Politics from a pragmatic, centrist point of view – not far left or far right.” So it was jarring this month when I read that Selweski had abruptly quit working for the Macomb Daily after thirty years.He posted on Facebook, “I just couldn’t take it anymore.” I was sad, but not surprised. In recent years, the Macomb Daily, like its counterpart the Oakland Press, has been misused and stripped by a succession of greedy absentee owners.Yesterday, I talked to Selweski, who is now trying to make a living from his blog, Politically Speaking. What he told me was much the same as I have heard from other frustrated reporters.For one thing, they no longer feel what they do is very much valued by their bosses and their owners. What seems to matter most these days is not finding great stories and crucial information.What seems to matter more is the ability to constantly deliver a stream of drivel over as many new media fads or “platforms” as possible. That may be a great way to cover a dog show. But nobody can cover serious news that way.Just flash back to Watergate, and imagine Bob Woodward trying to video Deep Throat in the parking garage while trying to simultaneously tweet about it.Reporting news is hard, meticulous and stressful work, especially on deadline. Nor is it well rewarded. Reporters at the Macomb Daily make between $40 and $45 thousand a year.That’s fewer dollars than they were making in 2001. By the way, $45,000 back then, thanks to inflation, is less than $34,000 today.Nobody goes into journalism to get rich. But it used to be possible to make a living at it, and it is vitally necessary for democracy and society. News aggregators like Google discover no news themselves. They merely collect it from a dwindling stream of they call “legacy media,” primarily newspapers.Selewski may land on his feet. But journalism has lost tens of thousands like him. On the internet, we can get plenty of Barack Obama and Kim Kardashian news.But who is keeping an eye on the city councils, count y commissioners and school boards? Long ago, Plato asked the key question: Who will watch our guardians?Making sure the answer isn’t nobody is what journalism is for.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.

There’s only been one president from Michigan, and I’d guess you know his name: Gerald Ford. But can you name the only justice he appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court?That would be John Paul Stevens, who ended up being one of the longest-serving justices in American history.He stepped down from the court less than five years ago, after nearly thirty-five years on the job. Thought to be a conventional conservative when appointed, his views gradually evolved as he grappled with the complexities of the Constitution.Today, facing his ninety-fifth birthday, he is still mentally agile, and last year wrote a short and brilliant book called“Six Amendments: How and Why We Should Change the Constitution.”For many years I’ve thought that if I could have dinner and a long conversation with one person, Stevens would be the one.For one thing, he wrote some of the most important and brilliantly crafted decisions, concurring opinions and dissents in the court’s modern history.Plus, he’s had a fascinating life. He knew Amelia Earhart and Charles Lindbergh. He was in the stands at the World Series when Babe Ruth hit a home run exactly where he pointed and said he would, back in 1932.And Justice Stevens always kept an open mind, and always remained civil, even when he deeply disagreed. Justices are supposed to interpret laws based on the Constitution, not radically depart from it.Stevens, indeed, always tried to do that, but after years of grappling with our most sacred national document, came to realize that the framers, like all writers, sometimes could have benefitted from an editor.His six amendments would seek to do just that. They’ve been described by one reviewer as “terse, surgical fixes” that fit the Constitution’s style of saying a lot with a few words.Probably his most controversial suggestion would be to add five words to the Second Amendment, making it read this way:“the right of the people to keep and bear arms WHEN SERVING IN THE MILITIA shall not be infringed.”That’s actually what scholars and the Supreme Court itself – prior to 2010 — believe the framers meant.Were that amendment in place, there would be no barriers to reasonable gun control. Some of Justice Stevens’ other amendments would make the death penalty an unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment, outlaw today’s insane gerrymandering, and allow government to impose “reasonable limits” on campaign spending.He would also make it easier to sue governments for violating the law. By the way, judicial decisions in general are supposed to be based on past precedent, and Justice Stevens doesn’t depart from that here. He explains the background and reasoning behind each of his proposals.I found his arguments and amendments overwhelmingly persuasive, and designed to make this, indeed, a more perfect union. Nor does Justice Stevens see them as science fiction.He wrote,“as time passes, I am confident that the soundness of each of my proposals will become more and more evident, and ultimately each will be adopted.”Today, in most of these cases, that would seem politically impossible. As impossible, that is, as the court ending school desegregation once did, less than a decade before that occurred.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.

For years, there’s been an absolutely stupid rumor that the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, birthplace of Henry Ford, is now under extreme Muslim Sharia law.Sharron Angle, a bizarrely ignorant Tea Party candidate, claimed this was so when she was running for the U.S. Senate in Nevada five years ago.Two weeks ago, Jerry Boykin, an anti-Muslim former U.S. army general, did it again. Boykin, now the executive vice president of something called the Family Research Council, went on a talk show to claim that radical Muslims were so firmly in control in Dearborn that Detroit police only enter the town in emergencies.Well, part of that is true. Detroit cops don’t go there because Dearborn is a separate city and has its own police. But Dearborn’s mayor is named Jack O’Reilly, and the city is no more under Sharia law than Roswell is under space alien law.I don’t know if Mayor O’Reilly gets sick of explaining all this. But I know that a delightful young man named Brian Stone came up with a great way to try to laugh this nonsense away.Stone, a 28-year-old Dearborn native, Navy veteran, and college student, has been posting pictures of himself holding a sign saying “Dearborn Sharia Law!” in front of some decidedly un-sharia landmarks in his city.They include a strip club, a Roman Catholic school, city hall and a Honeybaked Ham store.“We would have done more, but my friend Adam, who took the pictures, said we needed to have a beer. He’d be up for invading the moon if there was beer,”Brian said.Behind the theater-of-the-absurd humor, Stone has a serious message: “Muslims are Americans. They are just like everybody else,” he told me.“They don’t deserve to be treated differently.” Actually, he feels he has a personal stake in this. “I’m about as diverse as it gets for a white guy,” he told me. “I’m gay, I’m Buddhist and I’ve served in the military.”Stone had the guts to come out in high school. That meant a lot of severe harassment, including being beaten up. One day, it dawned on him that “even though school had been hell, I’d never heard a word against me from a Muslim.”In fact, a friend named Mohammed told him “somebody tries to mess with you, you tell me.”Gradually, Stone realized that his Muslim friends “were trying to defend their community of Americans from the same people that wanted to keep me from having equal rights.”Today, he said “Dearborn is the only place in the world where I feel like everybody is really welcomed home.”He feels that for both Muslims and gay Americans,“it is a place where people really value them for what they are.”Stone, who graduates from the U of M Dearborn this spring, wants to dedicate himself to making things better. “You can imagine how upsetting it is to hear people making generalizations about the Arabic community, Muslims, and my home town.”Someday, he may try to run for office. But for now, he feels that laughter is the best medicine. After all, it’s the one weapon with which fundamentalists of any kind are unable to cope.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.

It’s been almost three months since Democrats lost the race for governor, and you might think that by now, few would care why.But why they lost an election they thought they could win is still a hot topic, for this reason: The Michigan Democratic Party is holding its spring state convention on Valentine’s Day, and the delegates will decide whether or not to re-elect Lon Johnson party chair.Why anyone would want to spend Valentine’s Day with a bunch of politicians in a windowless auditorium is another question.But back to basics.Two years ago, Johnson ousted longtime chair Mark Brewer, and pledged a new approach to winning elections. Johnson is a proud numbers-crunching nerd who figured that most of all, elections are about turnout.He put the party’s energies and money toward trying to get Democrats who didn’t vote in 2010 to show up.But to his shock, even fewer voted last year.Democratic gubernatorial nominee Mark Schauer did much better than the last nominee had, but still fell short.After the votes were in, some said that strategy had been a complete flop. Johnson admitted he may have been overconfident, but cautioned against rushing to judgment before they’d had an opportunity to completely analyze the returns.Well, this weekend a source close to Johnson told me that a complete analysis of who voted was 91% complete. And, that source said, the numbers at least partly vindicate Lon Johnson.Well, this weekend a source close to Johnson told me that a complete analysis of who voted was 91% complete. And, that source said, the numbers at least partly vindicate Lon Johnson.While there were fewer ballots cast than expected, more Democrats than Republicans seem to have voted absentee.The source also said that 229,000 more Democrats voted than did in 2010. That's a figure that they claimed was higher than the party’s goal of turning out about 180,000.Yet if all this is true, then why did the Democrats lose?Actually, this analysis is a little self-serving; Lon Johnson told me they were expecting a statewide turnout of at least 3.4 million. It was more than 200,000 less than that.Numbers, however, don’t vote. People do. My theory, based on a lifetime of watching this stuff, is that Democrats did succeed in getting the word out about the things Snyder did that many, perhaps most people found “wrong.”But Schauer then failed to close the sale by telling people what he would do instead, say, on the roads. He also failed to persuade people that if they elected him, he could get the job done.The pattern of the returns also say to me that Snyder clearly benefited from the perception, especially in the Detroit suburbs, that he had done a masterful job handling the Motor City’s crisis.But the bottom line may just have been that it was a very Republican year. In fact, that was less true in Michigan than elsewhere. Snyder won by almost 19 points the first time, but only four points this time.Attorney General Bill Schuette’s numbers were also lower than before.But whatever the case, it looks as if Lon Johnson may have persuaded party leaders and the faithful to give him another chance. Despite rumors, so far, nobody has come forth to challenge him.Yet Valentine’s Day is still almost three weeks away.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.

Last weekend I ran into the managing director of the road commission for one of our state’s mid-sized counties.She’s both an efficient manager and an intelligent observer of the pulse of her county, which is half urban, half rural. She knows better than most of us that our state's roads are falling apart.Last year, despite public outrage over all the potholes and broken axles, our legislators once again failed to fix this. All they would do is stick a sales tax increase on the May ballot, one that would provide some money for the roads, as well as a cornucopia of other things. I asked my friend if she thought the sales tax would pass.“No,” she said, looking somewhere between sad and grimly resigned. Her answer didn’t surprise me.What’s more, though I have been reporting on the need to fix the roads for years, I haven’t even decided how I will vote.But I do know this proposal is further proof of our lawmakers’ failure to do their jobs. The main culprit here is former House Speaker Jase Bolger, who refused to do what every responsible politician from Governor Snyder to former Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville knew was necessary:Raise our taxes to fix the roads. That’s what representative democracy is all about. It’s not clear why Bolger wouldn’t agree. He was term-limited, and his checkered legislative past means his political career is likely over.All he would do is pass the buck to the citizens. This was a bad idea for all sorts of reasons. Not only is this not the best or fairest way to get the money, it doesn’t raise enough for the roads.If passed, it won’t even really produce significant road revenue for a couple of years. The state will have to spend more than ten million to hold an election, and meanwhile, budget planning is on hold.Governor Snyder has admitted those forces supporting the road plan will need twelve to fifteen million to buy advertising to persuade voters if they are to have a chance to win.Yet as the Detroit News reports in a story today, the money doesn’t seem to be there. The Michigan Chamber of Commerce seems unlikely to help fund such a campaign. They were very much in favor of raising taxes on fuel.But some of its members would be hurt by the sales tax. The Michigan Manufacturers Association says it is broke and can’t help.Meanwhile, groups like the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity are gearing up to oppose the sales tax. Some Democrats and other groups who stand up for the working poor will back the proposal, but their clients are notoriously unlikely to vote in a spring election.If they were responsible stewards of our state’s best interests, the current legislature would immediately end our misery and the need for an election by raising the gas tax to fix the roads. With gas prices so low, this is the perfect time to do so.Sadly, that’s unlikely.The senate majority leader is busy instead trying to reduce construction workers’ pay. To paraphrase the old Russian comedian Yakov Smirnoff, “What a state.”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.

We live in an era of what seems to be one of increasing nastiness and pettiness, especially perhaps in politics.Last week, for example, Michigan’s Speaker of the House denied a routine request from the minority leader to name a particular member ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.Speaker Kevin Cotter refused to so designate Brandon Dillon, even though that wouldn’t have changed the balance of power one bit. This angered Democrats, and pretty much ensured that any chance of bipartisan cooperation ended before it began.Why did Cotter do that? Well, it is no secret that Dillon is outspoken and known for sharp-tongued attacks on Republican policies. He also was in charge of Democratic House campaign efforts last year, and organized a challenge that brought Cotter himself close to defeat. So this was payback time.But I noticed something else yesterday when Cotter’s press spokesman attempted to defend this, saying, “The Democrat committee members have chosen to stand together in abandoning their responsibilities to the people of Michigan.”Forget the issue. What is this “Democrat members” language?  Why not “Democratic?” Simple. In order to demean the opposition, Republicans are now often refusing to call them by their proper name. Instead of saying the “Democratic Party,” they prefer the insulting and harsher-sounding “Democrat Party.”Turning words into slogans is, of course, nothing new. George Orwell described the phenomenon in a famous brilliant essay, “Politics and the English Language,” nearly seventy years ago. There’s always been some of this.Conservatives were largely correct years ago when they complained that the press was too quick to use the term “right-wing Republican.”  These days, however, the right seems to have gotten the upper hand in the language battle.Probably the best example is the way in which virtually the entire media has adopted the anti-abortion side’s language in framing that debate.Those in favor of banning abortion call themselves “pro-life.” The implication is clear. Those who believe a woman has the right to make that difficult decision for herself are somehow “anti-life,” even though the official term is “pro-choice.”Actually, in the interest of fairness, we should call the anti-abortion activists what they are: Anti-abortion.But somehow, that hasn’t happened. If you don’t think this sort of grammatical warfare has an impact, consider this:Remember that the nasty Bolsheviks managed to triumph over the more moderate Mensheviks in their power struggle in Russia a century ago? There were a number of reasons for this, but the word Bolshevik in Russian means majority, Menshevik, minority.They were both factions of the same party, and these were nicknames given them after one side got more votes than the other in one obscure vote over the composition of an editorial board.Ironically, there were probably more members on the Menshevik side. But if you are saddled with the name “minority party,” I’d guess it doesn’t help your future prospects.Years ago, a young member of Congress was rebuked by his leader for referring to the other party as the enemy. “Son, they aren’t the enemy. They are the opposition,” his senior said.Whatever your politics, I think we would all be better off with a little more of that spirit today.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.

Did you know that in Michigan it is against the law to try to get people to dance to the Star-Spangled Banner?Nor is that all. They can arrest you for arguing in favor of polygamy, or promoting a walkathon, or for making fun of somebody for not accepting a challenge to a duel.Well, the odds are that the polygamy police won’t bother you no matter what you say about it. But we have a vast number of other bad laws on the books that sometimes are enforced – even against people who have no idea that they are breaking the law.Take poor Lisa Snyder, who six years ago, was caught in the act of helping neighbor children board the school bus every day. For doing this, the state Department of Human Services claimed she was operating an illegal day care center.Lieutenant Governor Brian Calley was then her state representative. Fortunately, he got the legislature to fix this. But not everybody is so lucky. Twelve years ago, Ken Schumaker brought some scrap tires to a facility he thought was a legal depository.It wasn’t. And the prosecutors went after him – even though Schumaker had no idea that he was doing something illegal. He ended up with a nine month sentence and a ten thousand dollar fine.All this and more is in a Manhattan Institute study that came out in October, and which was brought to my attention by Phil Power, the founder and chair of the non-partisan Center for Michigan.You can easily find the short, very readable study, “Overcriminalizing the Wolverine State” online. Power, in fact, wrote his weekly column for his online magazine Bridge about what it means.The authors noted that Michigan’s penal code is eight times the length of that of neighboring states. We have more than thirty-one hundred crimes on the books, and our lawmakers are adding, on average, forty-five new ones every year. What really concerned the authors of the study is that a vast number of these crimes don’t require the state to show that the accused person intended to break the law.That was how poor Lisa the school bus helper and Ken the scrap tire man got in trouble.The Manhattan Institute noted that many Michiganders are unknowingly committing crimes every day. Maybe I shouldn’t mention this, but if an unmarried man seduces an unmarried woman, that too is against Michigan law.The study calls on the legislature to either set up a bipartisan task force or a special commission to review Michigan’s criminal statutes and suggest cleaning up the books.Laws and penalties should be made consistent, silly or outdated laws should be done away with, and people should not face prosecution for minor crimes they had no intention of committing.Not only does that make sense, Power notes that this is a perfect time. A lot of budget and other decisions can’t be made until voters decide in May whether to increase the sales tax. The lawmakers may now have some time on their hands.Otherwise, we’ll go on living in a state where you could become a convicted criminal for entering a horse in a race under a false name.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.

I was fascinated last night by the contrast between Governor Snyder’s State of the State Speech and President Obama’s State of the Union Speech. Think about this.Two middle-aged guys, one fifty-six; the other fifty-three, both wearing dark suits and blue ties, speaking two hours apart. One black, one white; one Republican, one Democrat.A majority of us in Michigan voted for both of them twice, even though polls show most of us don’t think either is doing an especially good job.The speeches couldn’t have been more different. Obama’s was an inspiring rhetorical delight, designed to make us feel good about ourselves and our country and challenge us to do better.Governor Snyder’s speech, which was assembled from talking points, was largely about administrative reforms.It is hard to imagine someone running home, throwing open the door and saying breathlessly:“You won’t believe it. The governor is merging the departments of Community Health and Human Services ... And if that wasn’t enough, he is going to combine a bunch of other commissions into a new state energy agency.”Well, this may not be the stuff that sends the heart racing, but unlike the reforms President Obama wants, the governor does have the power to make his happen.Over the years, some governors have combined agencies; others have taken them apart. Republicans usually say they are in favor of smaller government. Here, however, the governor is creating two mammoth agencies, one of which, the new Department of Health and Human Services, will account for nearly half of the entire state budget.The governor is clearly hoping to streamline services and save money through economies of scale here. Democratic leaders seem open-minded about all this.They were, in fact, cautiously supportive, but a little rightly worried some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens could be lost in the creation of a new enormous bureaucracy.That’s a legitimate concern. But there seemed last night to be far more willingness to try to find areas of bipartisan cooperation. Far more, certainly, in Lansing than in Washington, where the Republican majority largely sat stone-faced while the president spoke.In Lansing, there was near universal praise when the governor called for more investment in early childhood development. There also seems to be a consensus developing to steer clear, at least for now, of more divisive debates on gender identity.While the governor said there should be “more discussion” on expanding the Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act, presumably to include gay Americans, the new Speaker of the House said no thanks. In other words, this is going nowhere. Not for the next two years.On the other hand, it is interesting that new Senate Majority Leader Arlen Meekhof doesn’t seem eager to take up divisive “Religious Freedom Restoration Act “ legislation again.My guess is that everyone is waiting for the Supreme Court to rule on same-sex marriage.The bottom line is that Obama gave a far better speech last night, but Snyder’s is certain to produce far more concrete results.But ask yourself this: How many lines do you remember from any State of the Union or State of the State speech?I thought so. Well, the political year is now truly under way. Be prepared for a bumpy, if interesting, ride.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

As you probably know, Governor Snyder gives his State of the State speech tonight, two hours before President Obama gives his annual State of the Union address. We also know that America will get a new president exactly two years from today.And there are those who have been speculating that maybe, just maybe, the State of the Union speech two years from now might be given by a President named Rick Snyder.Long shot? Sure. But you might say — hey. Who thought in January 2007 that the next President would be a black freshman senator whose father was a Muslim from Kenya?True. Amazing upsets do happen. But I have been watching politics all my life, and I am here to tell you that there’s no way Rick Snyder is going to be the next President, barring some epic cataclysm out of a Tom Clancy novel. It isn’t happening.And here’s why. If Snyder had been bitten by the presidential; bug, he needed to not run for reelection last year.Why? Simple. You can’t run for president these days and carry out the responsibilities of being governor of a major industrial state. True, Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, but that was then an essentially part-time job in a small state.Ronald Reagan and Mitt Romney ran only after each had left the governor’s chair. George W. Bush was governor of Texas when he was elected, but in that state, the lieutenant governor does most of the heavy lifting.I’m aware of only one governor who was nominated and tried to campaign while trying to run an important state. That would be Michael Dukakis.And we know how well that turned out.These days, campaigns for President start years in advance. If you want to run, you need to raise huge sums of money. You also have to have something that makes you stand out from the crowd, a unique selling proposition, as they say in advertising.Rick Snyder managed to distinguish himself from the pack in Michigan with his “one tough nerd” strategy.But that would be far harder on a national scale. Snyder is not ruggedly handsome like Romney, nor does he have the golden voice and charisma of a Reagan.No particular faction identifies with him.He also lacks any kind of Washington, military, or foreign policy experience. He is not widely recognized nationally, nor does he have any one huge accomplishment to display.If he had a slogan, it might well be “competence, not ideology.” Except … that was Mike Dukakis’ 1988 slogan. The two men are alike in many ways; both were technocrats who appealed to the mind, not the heart.Dukakis, who was a much better speaker than Snyder, started far ahead in the polls, and ended up losing forty states.That doesn’t mean Snyder doesn’t have a national future if he wants one. Were a Republican to win the White House, Snyder would be a prime candidate for cabinet positions like Commerce or Management and Budget, maybe Transportation.But not President. Sorry about that, but that’s the way it is. And now it’s time for Lansing to get back to work.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

Last week, Governor Snyder turned some heads by vetoing three things the lame-duck legislature sent him, and by taking on Senate Majority Leader Allan Meekhof over prevailing wage.The very conservative Meekhof wants to repeal the state’s half-century old prevailing wage law, under which construction workers on state jobs have to be paid union scale wages.Governor Snyder thinks prevailing wage works just fine, and doesn’t want it repealed. And that made me realize something.My guess is that even though every branch of government is dominated by the Republicans, neither this governor nor this legislature are very fond of each other or feel they owe each other very much.And that could make a big difference over the next couple of years. Let’s look at it first from the perspective of the legislators. Very few, if any, owe their elections to the governor.That wasn’t true four years ago. Then, he won by a landslide and carried a number of them to victory with him. This time, Snyder ran behind most of them and behind other Republicans running statewide. Plus, he is a lame duck who can’t run for another term.As they see it, there’s little he can do to hurt them or help them. Other governors might threaten to recruit someone to run against them in a primary, but that’s not Rick Snyder’s style.Now look at it from the governor’s perspective.  During his first term, he went along with much of the agenda of his party’s right wing. He reversed course on right to work.He signed a bill that ended the requirement that motorcycle riders wear helmets.That was a bill, by the way, that both the medical profession and the insurance industry opposed. And he signed a law pushed by Arlen Meekhof that allows so-called “dark money” donors to political campaigns to keep the source of their loans secret.But when push came to shove, the lawmakers weren’t willing to do much the governor wanted.He barely got Medicaid expansion through, and even then, the state lost six hundred million dollars, thanks to spiteful lawmakers who wouldn’t give it immediate effect. Nor would they agree to pass legislation increasing funding for what was both his and the citizens’ number one priority: The roads.The most Snyder could get them to do was slap a sales tax increase on the May ballot.That wasn’t his, or most economists’ preferred way to fund the roads. Plus, it leaves state budget planners in limbo. They can’t do much until they know if that money will be there. What’s more, the governor will have to spend time, money and energy campaigning to get voters to pass it.And there is no guarantee they will. So I wasn’t surprised last week when Mr. Snyder pretty bluntly told Mr. Meekhof to take a hike when the senate leader brought up repealing prevailing wage.Actions have consequences, as does inaction.Even lame ducks don’t roll over and play dead. Governor Snyder has learned a lot about politics over the last four years. Now, it may be the legislators turn to learn. My guess is that we may be in for some very interesting times.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

It’s no exaggeration to say that Governor Rick Snyder’s first term was largely a disappointment to many environmental organizations. The League of Conservation Voters, which had endorsed Snyder in 2010, did not do so last year.Yet the governor did please environmentalists yesterday when he vetoed an absolutely horrible bill that would have prevented the Department of Natural Resources from considering biodiversity when deciding how to manage and protecting our woods and waters.This didn’t please the Michigan Forest Products Council, which tends to see trees as exactly that: Products to be harvested. Nor did it please State Senator Tom Casperson of Escanaba, the bill’s main sponsor, who complained that the governor was spending too much time listening to environmental groups.However, for once the League of Conservation Voters is pleased with the governor. Lisa Wozniak, the state executive director, praised him for striking down a bill that “rejected science-based land management principles, and for “denying another attempt to roll back protections for the parks and forests that warrant them the most.”So far, so good.But there are seldom final victories in politics. Casperson is vowing to try again. And while the governor vetoed this bill, he signed another to weaken environmental cleanup standards.But while the legislature is gearing up for another year of budget and other partisan battles, there is another golden opportunity to do something else for the environment. For the last few years, we’ve been bitterly fighting over whether to allow wolf hunting.Senator Casperson is a leader of those who believe that the six hundred and fifty or so wolves in the Upper Peninsula are too many. Environmentalists disagree. But what everybody does agree on is that there are too few wolves on Isle Royale.According to wildlife experts, there are only about nine wolves left on the two hundred-square mile island in Lake Superior.That wolf pack is too small and too inbred to survive long-term. As the wolves have dwindled, the moose population has dramatically increased. Wildlife experts fear that all these moose will do major damage to the island’s vegetation before eventually starving in a great die-off.Well, there’s an obvious easy and probably not very expensive solution: Capture several wolf packs in the UP and transport the animals to Isle Royale.You need ideally to move entire packs, which tend to have ten to twelve individuals, because the function as family groups Last month, Ron Kagan, the Detroit zoo director, told me this idea made a lot of sense.Kagan, who is in the process of building a new wolf habitat at the zoo, offered the zoo’s help in catching and moving the wolves if the state was interested.However, nobody seems to be floating this idea at all, so I am. It sounds like a no-brainer. For a modest cost, we could protect and help the environment in two places in Michigan.The environment, and the wolves. Nor would this directly address the hunting issue.There would be plenty enough animals left in the UP to soon replace whatever wolves would be moved. Meanwhile, the ecology of Isle Royale would be saved.So, why not do something?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.

For years, hard-right Republicans have been denouncing moderates by calling them RINOs – Republicans In Name Only.They’ve used this insult for distinguished people like former Governor William Milliken. I’ve even heard it applied to possible presidential contender Jeb Bush.Yet in the last few days, it has dawned on both state and national Republicans that they have the mother of all RINOs in their midst, and that he is a cancer threatening to destroy their national prospects next year. He is certainly no moderate.His name, of course, is Dave Agema, and he is Michigan’s Republican National Committeeman.He is also a hater and a bigot, who has posted racist rants against gays and Muslims, and now blacks and Hispanics, on his Facebook page.Michigan Republicans have known for years, but kept hoping he’d quiet down or quit.But Agema won’t. That’s because he clearly couldn’t care less about the Republican Party or its ability to win elections. He cares only about what he wants to do at the moment.Actually, we’ve always known this. Soon after Agema was elected to the first of three terms in the legislature, there was a huge budget crisis which resulted in a brief shutdown of state government.However, when the crucial votes were taken, Agema, a former airline pilot, wasn’t there. He had gone off to Siberia, to hunt mountain sheep. Though he was on the state payroll, he didn’t think he needed to bother to show up to do his job.Later, a survey of Lansing insiders voted him the least effective member of the Michigan legislature. Despite all this, his party’s state convention made him this state’s representative to the Republican National Committee.Now, they are getting their reward.There are plenty of bad actors in both parties, of course. One need think only of Kwame Kilpatrick.But not since the days of Theodore Bilbo in Mississippi have we seen anyone like Agema, who posts wildly inaccurate hate-filled rants. Occasionally, he has responded to criticism by claiming that he didn’t write these things, he just thought they were interesting.What was almost as bad was that state Republicans mostly ran and hid. Governor Snyder refused to call for his ouster. Some were afraid to try to remove him for fear of offending his Tea Party supporters. Others said they wished Agema would quit, but claimed they were powerless to remove him unless he committed a felony.Well, now both state and national leaders realize Agema is engaging in the attempted murder of his party’s election prospects. Yesterday, the Republican National Committee’s executive committee voted to censure Agema, but left it up to the Michigan party to find a way to remove him from office. We’ll soon see if they do.If they don’t, Republicans will go into a national campaign with a national committeeman who has posted that African-Americans are homicidal subhumans, Muslims are parasitical losers, and that most gay people are filled with intestinal parasites and are dying of AIDS.The GOP has a huge problem on their hands. But to paraphrase the old Johnny Rivers song, they should have known he was a snake before they took him in.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.

 As everybody who isn’t in solitary confinement knows, gasoline prices are now unbelievably low. So is inflation, and as a result there is less interest in energy conservation these days.Sales of electric vehicles and even hybrids are down, and there doesn’t seem to be as much interest in them from reporters gearing up for the annual auto show in Detroit.Nor do I hear as much concern for the heating problems of the poor and homeless as we move into this harsh winter. Yet any rational person knows these low energy prices won’t last, any more than today’s snow and ice will be around in August.Georgetown University believes long-term energy solutions will take a community effort – and they are offering a $5 million dollar prize as incentive to small and medium size towns, counties and cities willing to rethink their energy use. The school will award that money to the community that best demonstrates success in lowering energy consumption over the next two years. Georgetown’s Energy Prize competition hasn’t gotten a lot of national notice, but fifty-two communities across the nation have signed up to try to win. Three are in Michigan – the city of Holland, HoughtonCounty, in the far west Upper Peninsula, and a combined entry from Farmington, Farmington Hills and their public schools. The Farmington folks seem especially gung-ho, and have invited me to speak to a community celebration tonight at their Costick Activities Center. I’m not exactly the event’s glamour; they have a former American Idol runner-up who will sing.Nate Geinzer, an assistant to the city manager, is the point man for the competition. He told me the Farmingtons are determined to make a ten-community final round, and sent me the city’s fairly massive detailed plan to get there.I found the plan impressive. They aren’t calling for a series of short-term gimmicks, like getting people to wear more sweaters and turn the thermostat down. They are trying to make energy conservation a fairly painless, multi-pronged, permanent way of life. They have enlisted two key partners from the non-profit sector, the Clean Energy Coalition, and a group called Michigan Saves, which helps make energy improvements possible for consumers via affordable financing.The Farmingtons have a multi-year and multi-faceted approach that is as impressively comprehensive and detailed as a military operation. They have plans for everything from teaching people what light bulbs to buy to landscaping in a way that saves energy. This is a long-term community effort aimed both at the public and private sectors, and even would put the arts to work to save energy. Reading their plan, I realized something. Whether or not they win the Georgetown Energy Prize, if they accomplish the goals set forth in their plan, they will already have won.They will have made more rational energy use a normal way of life, and these cities and their residents will therefore be in a far better position when energy prices again lurch upwards. Over the long haul, my guess is that any community that really tries for this prize will save more than five million dollars, whether they win or not.Which is, I suspect, what Georgetown had in mind all along.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.

Last night I spoke to about a hundred thoughtful citizens, mostly of retirement age, at a forum sponsored by the National Council of Jewish Women. They were mostly great fans of Michigan Radio.Several asked why I hadn’t said anything about the deaths of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri, or Eric Garner, who died after being placed in a police chokehold last summer in New York.I explained that I hadn’t for two reasons. One, I knew nothing directly about either case and two, these commentaries are focused on Michigan, whose problems and 10 million people I do know something about.These weren’t Michigan cases, I said, to which one woman said, softly, “Oh yes, they are.”And I realized that she was, in a sense, right. Yes, they do involve all of us, and they involve what Gunnar Myrdal so aptly called “The American Dilemma,” years before I was born.They are about race, the dynamic that completely permeates the fabric of our society. I’ve been covering news for a long time, and I have learned that racism in America is something like former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s classic definition of obscenity.“I know it when I see it,” he said.There are two other inconvenient truths about these cases that every fair-minded person should keep in mind.First, none of us really knows what happened, because we weren’t there. None of us knows what really happened in either grand jury proceeding, because we weren’t there. But these cases are now so completely politicized that the actual facts have become largely irrelevant.Some of those outraged wouldn’t be swayed if video footage emerged showing the dead men threatening the cops with machine guns.Millions of whites see nothing wrong with police shooting an unarmed man multiple times and leaving his body in the street for hours, or choking a black guy to death because they suspected he was selling loose cigarettes.There’s something deeply wrong here.And if there’s a silver lining, it is that all this has us talking about our two giant elephants in the room, racism and police brutality. I am somewhat optimistic that something can be done about out of control police.Too many cops are bullies; too many of them treat black people differently. There’s no doubt about that. However, race is a far harder problem. One of my jobs is to handle reader complaints for the daily newspaper in Toledo, Ohio.Almost every day, I get comments about the president that are clearly motivated by racism. No, they aren’t usually in Ku Klux Klan language, but as Potter Stewart said, I know it when I see it.I also know something else I can prove. White people in America are unwilling to live with black people. Yes, there are exceptions. But not many. The Detroit suburb of Southfield was less than one percent black in 1970. It was 30% black 20 years later, and is 75% black now.I don’t know how we solve this, or if we can, but I do know we need to face it. If we do, then maybe those two men, and lots more whose names you haven’t heard, won’t have died for nothing.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.

There’s a time-honored political technique you might call the “big lie” theory. Basically, it works this way: If you tell the same outrageous lie over and over, no matter how big it is, eventually people will believe that at least some part of it is true.The latest and best example of this was uttered by one Ari Alder, the mouthpiece for Jase Bolger, the lame-duck speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives. Yesterday, his boss admitted what everybody should already have known: that efforts to expand the state’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act are going nowhere.There won’t even be a vote in the Legislature on this. After Bolger admitted this, Adler launched his lie, saying “The extremists on the left were successful in preventing civil rights protections for gays and lesbians in Michigan.”What they want you to think is that Republicans were all set to protect those folks, but were dragged down by the far left’s insistence on extending civil rights to those scary transsexuals.That’s not at all true – though it is interesting that Republicans today at least don’t want to appear bigoted against gays.A few years ago, they wouldn’t have worried about that. But here’s what’s really going on here: Prior to the lame duck session, Bolger indicated he might be willing to expand Elliott-Larsen to include “sexual orientation” – in other words, gay and lesbian people.But the catch was that the speaker said he’d be willing to do so only if it could be coupled with a poison bill, his so-called “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” which would have essentially permitted people to discriminate against anyone whose lifestyle they disapproved.Civil rights supporters would, they knew, never go along with this. Even if they had, I doubt many Republicans would have supported even a meaningless expansion of Elliott-Larsen.That the game was over was clear last week, when the man who takes over as House speaker next year, Kevin Cotter, said he was in favor of passing the bogus “religious freedom restoration act,” without expanding Elliott-Larsen at all.However, the cold fact is that supporters of civil rights for gay Americans didn’t lose this battle then.They lost it Aug. 5, when State Rep. Frank Foster of Petoskey, the only Republican to endorse expanding Elliott Larsen, was beaten in his primary over this very issue.After that, and after the GOP not only held on to their legislative majorities but increased them, it was clear there was no way there would be any expansion of civil rights for non-heterosexuals.If there is any silver lining, it is that Republicans now feel compelled to at least pretend they favor civil rights for gays, if not transgendered human beings. This also may have been the making of a new career for Frank Foster, who emerged as somewhat of a civil rights hero.Had he won his primary, he would have probably served out his term as a little-known, back-bench representative.But for those of different sexual orientation or gender identity, it should be clear that Michigan government will do nothing for you. Not in the next few years, in any event.For now, their hopes must lie in the federal courts.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.