Jack Lessenberry

People sometimes ask me why I don’t write novels, or a screenplay. “You must have seen and heard a lot of strange things over your career,” they say. Well, yes, I have, which is why I probably have been ruined for fiction.

The fact of the matter is this: Real life is far more strange, weird and surprising than anything you could make up.

Think about most of the major stories of our time. Had you written dramatic adaptations of them before they happened, you would have gotten rejection letters or been thrown out of the studio.

Regardless of your politics, it may not have escaped your notice that Governor Rick Snyder is not universally popular.

He angered many voters by first taxing their pensions, then agreeing to throw thousands of children off welfare. Business taxes were lowered; spending for education at first slashed.

But the reaction to all that was mild compared to what happened last December, when the governor reversed his course and supported ramming right to work through the legislature in a day, without the courtesy of a single committee hearing.

Since then, his popularity has plummeted. His job performance ratings show more negatives than positives, and some polls show he would lose to just about any Democratic challenger.

What’s most curious about this is that you might think that with a track record like that, Democrats would be swarming all over themselves to run for governor. But here’s the reality: They don’t have a candidate.

This week in Michigan politics, Christina Shockley and Jack Lessenberry discuss the possibility of improving Michigan’s public defense system, and lawsuits challenging the state’s emergency manager law and right to work law for violating Michigan’s open meetings act. They also talk about the potential for a rapid transit system in southeast Michigan.

Two weeks ago, as the U.S. Supreme Court was hearing arguments about the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, Republican National Committeeman Dave Agema posted a shocking and scurrilous article on Facebook titled “Everyone Should Know These Statistics on Homosexuals.”

The piece was a collection of hate-filled, untrue smears, such as that gays commit half the murders in large cities, are riddled with diseases, die young and have a secret agenda to recruit children.

This prompted a sudden outcry. Some young and moderate Republicans called for Agema’s resignation. But he refused, and instead asked people to sign an online petition supporting him.

The petition got hundreds of signatures, which Agema boasted about till a reporter scrutinized them. Among the signers were the names, Osama bin Laden, Adolf Hitler, Goat Killer and “I spit upon thee.” Plus someone claiming to be North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, who wrote “From one dictator to another.”

But while there was a considerable outcry, Governor Rick Snyder has remained noticeably silent. Finally, he was cornered by a reporter Monday and asked his opinion. He refused. “I‘m not going to get in the middle of all that,” he said.

Last year was a major milestone in the epic battle to get a new and badly needed bridge across the Detroit River. Frustrated by the Michigan Legislature’s unwillingness to even vote on the issue, Governor Rick Snyder found a legal way to bypass the lawmakers.

Snyder found a clause in the Michigan Constitution that allowed him to conclude an “interlocal” agreement with the government of Canada. This didn’t make Matty Moroun, the 85 year-old owner of the 84 year old Ambassador Bridge, happy.

Moroun then spent close to $40 million attempting to get Michigan voters to ratify a proposed state constitutional amendment that would have essentially given him monopoly control of our nation’s most important border crossing for all time.

If you were looking for a quintessential solidly middle-class Michigan suburb, Royal Oak, Michigan might be it. Its 57,000 people are mainly white and solidly middle-class.

The downtown became somewhat of a magnet for the young, and trendy a decade or so ago, and hip twenty-somethings still mingle there with motorcycle bikers and teenage skateboarders on warm summer evenings. But by and large, Royal Oak is average middle-sized suburban homes, built around the baby boom era.

The night before last, I drove to Suttons Bay in Leelanau County, just a few miles north of the Sleeping Bear Dunes.

I went there to get inspired, and I was. Not by the magnificent scenery along Grand Traverse Bay, though it is still lovely country even in this season of competing rain, snow and mud.

I went there because the League of Women Voters just formed their own Leelanau County chapter – the twenty-first chapter in Michigan – and had invited me to speak.

What I’ve found out over the last few weeks is that even in our information overload society, a dismayingly large number of people have no idea what the league is or what it does. Some think they are the little old ladies who check your name off the voter list at the polls. In fact, the League of Women voter s is, more than any group I can think of, everything good about Democracy in action.

One thing was clear from the moment right to work was rammed through the legislature in a single day. Lawsuits were inevitable. Not just because of the controversial nature of the law, but the way in which it happened. And yesterday, opponents won their first small, but potentially significant victory.

The ACLU, joined by a number of Democratic legislators and others, sued the state, saying the right to work law should be declared null and void because the way in which the law was passed violated the state Open Meetings Act.

There was some significant good news about Michigan yesterday, though most media outlets ignored it. Fitch, one of the three big Wall Street credit rating agencies, upgraded the state’s bond rating in a number of categories, including general obligation bonds and school loan bonds. This should make it easier and cheaper for Michigan to raise and borrow money, something states do all the time.

The internationally influential rating agency also boosted the credit score of both the State Building Authority and the Municipal Bond Authority. Why did Fitch do this? Partly because of the auto industry’s rebound from the Great Recession.

For as long as I can remember, the Republican Party has stood for local control. They don’t like Washington telling the states what to do. When Democrats have been in control in Lansing, they didn’t like the state meddling in local matters. Today, this continues to be true in one sense.

It’s clear that the Republicans running our legislature don’t like the federal government setting health care policy for the states. That’s why they’ve refused for two years to establish a state registry to help match Michiganders who will now need to buy health insurance with various private care providers.

Basically, those running our legislature want to pretend that the Affordable Care Act is going away soon. Never mind that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it was fully constitutional. Never mind that the last presidential election was fought largely on that issue, and President Obama was decisively reelected.

They so hate higher levels of government telling lower levels what to do, that they refused to create a health care registry, even though this means that Washington will create one for us anyway, and we will lose millions as a result.

Well, you might figure that if the Republicans believe this that strongly, they’d be against meddling with employment policies set by local units of government.  But you’d be wrong. At least, that is, when it comes to benefits for workers.

From the time he began running for office, Governor Rick Snyder has said that he was in favor of common sense solutions to improve life in our state -- and that he intended to use “relentless positive action” to make them happen.

He hasn’t been afraid to push for drastic changes. He got the legislature to change the business tax and enact a new tax on pensions. He signed right to work into law last December, and got lawmakers to approve a new Rapid Transit Authority.

Some people approve of some or all of this; others are bitterly opposed. But the fact is that we don’t know exactly what effect any of these moves will have. It is too soon to tell.

But the governor signed another bill into law last year, and we do now have solid evidence about its effects.  It has turned out to be a disaster that has cost human lives and suffering.

The governor’s decision is also costing money. In fact, the law he signed is going to cost us all, if not in blood, in cold, hard cash, added to the medical bills of everyone with health insurance.

We are talking about the bill repealing the motorcycle helmet law last April. The early numbers are in, and there were 20 more motorcycle fatalities last year than the year before, and not wearing helmets was clearly the reason.

Michigan Radio's Rina Miller spoke with our Political Analyst about the big news stories this week.

This was the week in  which Detroit got an emergency manager and the state got a right-to-work law.  That is to say, the law took effect this week. I’d say that makes for a pretty  newsworthy few days. Some things this week were entirely  predictable.  Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton showed up to protest the  Emergency Manager. Crowds of demonstrators appeared at Detroit’s city hall  crowds which swelled when TV cameras showed up.

The first major lawsuit  was filed against the emergency manager law, and the Detroit Tigers sent an  exciting new spring phenom, closer Bruce Rondon, down to the minor  leagues. That story is worth mentioning, by the way, because a  newspaper computer analysis shows that more people read it today than read any  of the stories about the state or city‘s drama.

Did you know there is actually still a Communist Party, USA? They even have a website, so that if, in the middle of the night, you are suddenly seized with a desire to join the party of Lenin and Stalin, why, you can get on line and whip out your credit card.

For $60 a year, you can be a Communist. Not only that, my guess is that if you do sign up, you won’t even lose your job or be visited by the FBI. That’s because the Communist Party today is no threat to anybody, and is, in fact, totally irrelevant.

That isn’t true of the Republican Party. Not yet, anyway. But increasingly, the GOP is beginning to behave like a wacky fringe party. They are offering positions way outside the mainstream. More and more, what one hears from Republican spokesmen is hatred and intolerance, and we got a good example yesterday.

Michigan Radio does an interesting occasional series called Issues and Ale, in which those who know something about a particular public policy get together with citizens in a relaxed setting to discuss things that really matter. Last night we held one on “The Future of Public Education” in an improv theatre in the city of Ferndale, which I thought was an excellent choice.

Ferndale is an older, working-class Detroit suburb which has been a distinct community since the 1920s. Times are not what were, and the city has shrunk over the years to about 20,000 people. Ferndale has become somewhat well-known over the last two decades for its welcoming of the gay and LGBT communities, who have done much to revitalize neighborhoods and the city’s downtown.

But Ferndale also has a dedicated group of parents very concerned with education, their kids’ futures, and want to make sure their children are getting what they need to succeed.