Jack Lessenberry

A young reporter once asked me how you could tell if a someone was really retiring of their own free will, or being fired. “Well,” I said, “When someone prominent retires, they often announce it well in advance, and they honor them with a dinner. When someone suddenly leaves at ten in the morning on Tuesday, allegedly to spend more time with their family, they’ve been fired.” 

Yesterday, we learned that Michigan Supreme Court Justice Diane Hathaway is “retiring” from the court, barely halfway through her first term. Her retirement was announced right after the Judicial Tenure Commission lodged a formal complaint against her.

That complaint is perhaps the most damning against a sitting judge I’ve ever seen. It claims she violated federal and state laws against fraud, federal money laundering and tax laws, and constitute “conduct that is contrary to justice, ethics, honesty, or good morals.”

None of this comes as much of a surprise. Last spring, WXYZ-TV in Detroit first reported irregularities in the sale of a house she and her husband owned in Grosse Pointe Park.

Two months ago, federal authorities then sued Hathaway and her husband, who is also a lawyer, and have attempted to seize a home they own in Florida for fraudulently hiding real estate they owned in order to get a bank to write off a large mortgage.

Benny Napoleon knows law enforcement. He joined the Detroit police force almost by accident when he was an 18-year-old shoe salesman looking for something to do with his life.

That was back in 1975. Twenty-three years later, he became police chief, and violent crime dropped by 30 percent over the next three years. He retired when Kwame Kilpatrick became mayor, and taught and practiced law.

Two years ago, he was elected Wayne County Sheriff. And now he is thinking seriously about running for mayor of Detroit. My guess is that he may well be the favorite, whether or not Dave Bing runs again.

Napoleon is a lifelong Detroiter with a charismatic personality and an infectious grin. But he’s deadly serious about saving Detroit. He knows there are astronomical budget problems, and billions of long term liabilities that the city is probably never going to be able to pay.

Nor does he claim to have the economic answers, certainly not yet.  But the city’s biggest problem, he believes, is violent crime, especially the soaring homicide rate. “The reason for that,” he told me this weekend is the “especially violent narcotics trade in Detroit, and the gang activity,” and an extremely aggressive young male culture.

Napoleon strongly believes there could be no better use of what limited resources the city has than to crack down on violent crime. He once headed the city’s gang squad. He’s never been shot, though bullets have whizzed past him; he’s never shot anyone, though several times, he’s had to come close.

Detroit’s population has fallen by 300,000 people since he was police chief. “If you ask people why they left, the overwhelming majority will tell you it’s because of violent crime,” he said.

This week in review Weekend Edition host Rina Miller and political analyst Jack Lessenberry discuss how the "fiscal cliff" deal will affect Michiganders, some changes going on at Chrysler and what will happen with former Governor Jennifer Granholm's TV show now that Current TV is being sold to Al Jazeera.

We got what looked like good news for the auto industry yesterday. Americans bought fourteen and a half million new vehicles last year -- nearly two million more than the year before.

True, that’s still considerably below total sales five years ago, before the Great Recession nearly put Chrysler and General Motors out of business forever. But still, it is progress. Except that those figures mask something troubling.

More cars were sold, but the Detroit three continue to lose market share. 50 years ago, in discussions about the auto industry nobody ever talked about foreign vs. domestic market share.

The North American International Auto Show will be starting at Detroit’s Cobo Center in a couple weeks, and anyone who cares about cars can go see virtually every new model in existence.

This has been an annual tradition for more than a century. But I’ve thought for a long time that we don’t do nearly enough to celebrate the amazing heritage of our signature industry.

Think about it. Motor vehicles, primarily cars, are what transformed Michigan from a farm state not all that different from Iowa into the industrial powerhouse that put the world on wheels.

That’s fascinating, and there are few of us whose lives are not connected to the auto industry in some way.  But where do you go to learn about and celebrate that heritage? Sadly, fewer and fewer places.

Well, we’ve gotten past the so-called fiscal cliff, at least for now, and averted what might have been a disaster for our economy.

Soon, once everyone is back to work, you can expect to see a whole lot of attention paid to the economic disaster that is Detroit.

The state is reviewing the city’s finances, and the governor may soon name an emergency financial manager.

You’ll be hearing a lot about that as things move along. But there is another horrendous crisis destroying Detroit that we don’t talk much about. Black people are killing black people at a horrendous rate, and nobody seems sufficiently concerned. 

Well, it’s Christmas Eve, and if you are like me you are thinking, “I really should start shopping pretty soon.“

I was just kidding. After all, some drug stores do stay open past midnight. But whether and however you celebrate the holidays, it has been a fascinating year with a lot of surprises.

In this "week in review" political analyst Jack Lessenberry chats with Weekend Edition host Rina Miller about  some of the big regional news stories of the week.

They discuss the gun legislation that would ease restriction on where guns could be carried in the state.

Governor Rick Snyder vetoed the bill. But Lessenberry says the governor didn't veto the bill as a reaction to the Connecticut school shootings.

“The sponsor of the bill was told before Connecticut that the governor would veto it unless it allowed schools to opt out and the sponsor wasn’t willing to do that," Lessenberry says.

This week the governor approved legislation that would phase out the tax on industrial and business equipment. Lessenberry says Snyder thought the bill would help expand business in the state.

Miller and Lessenberry also talked about the slew of bills Snyder signed in Detroit. The bills would establish a Regional Transit Authority to fund and operate southeast Michigan’s fragmented transit systems;  create an authority to run Detroit’s troubled public lighting system; continue a downtown development district for a new hockey arena; and help Detroit’s Eastern Market get additional funds.

Governor Rick Snyder has signed so many momentous bills in the last week that some which normally might have gotten headlines have been almost overlooked. One was yesterday.

This is a new law that makes it harder to recall state officials, meaning to remove them from office by a special election before their term is over. There’s bound to be a lot of grumbling that this is anti-democratic, that the lawmakers did this to protect themselves from being removed by outraged citizens. 

Well, I am sure that may have been a motivation for some. But in fact, making recalls harder is a good thing. Good for democracy and our state, and will make it easier for lawmakers to do their jobs.

Here’s why. We already have a system of recalls -- it’s called elections. Officials serve short terms. House members have to run every two years. State senators and most other state officials, including the governor, every four years. Only judges serve longer.

In order for representative democracy to work, elected officials sometimes must make unpopular decisions. Washington did, Lincoln did, the Roosevelt’s and Reagan did. State legislators, ditto.

But in recent years, any time Michigan lawmakers have done something some faction doesn’t like, it’s been common to start hollering “recall.”

Whether or not you are from the Detroit area, you may well have wondered about the ongoing issue of the street lights.

There’s been constant discussion about the fact that at least half the lights never come on. This is not a great selling point for a city with a major crime problem.

So, why doesn’t Detroit just replace the lights? How expensive can new bulbs be? Well, it turns out that isn’t the real problem.

A few weeks ago, I talked to Glenda Price, a member of the city’s financial advisory board. She had just had a tour of the lighting department. She told me “the wonder is that any of the lights come on at all.” Some of the equipment is a century old.

Not only is it worn out, there is no way to get spare parts. So technicians jury-rig things, and cannibalize some machinery to keep other parts going.

But there’s only so much they can do. There’s hope now, however. Yesterday, Governor Rick Snyder came to Detroit to sign legislation allowing the city to appoint an authority that will be able to issue bonds, raise money, and fix the lighting system.

That was one of the less controversial results of the legislature’s now-famous lame duck session. Additionally, the governor signed a law making it easier for the Downtown Development Authority to help Mike Ilitch build the new hockey arena and entertainment complex he wants in the city.

By now, you’ve probably heard that Governor Rick Snyder yesterday vetoed the bill that would have allowed anybody to carry a concealed weapon into elementary schools, or other places, like churches and day care centers, where they are now banned.

This is being hailed as a great victory for gun control. The bill’s sponsor, State Senator Mike Green of Mayville, was very disappointed that the governor wouldn’t sign it.

The fact is, however, that this really isn’t a victory for gun control at all. There are a lot of myths about what happened here. So allow me to try to puncture them.

First of all, it would have been politically impossible for any governor in a major state to have signed this bill four days after the Newtown massacre. But it is important to note that all indications are that Governor Snyder would have vetoed this bill even if 20 first-graders hadn’t been murdered in their classrooms last Friday.

The day before the shooting, Snyder’s director of legislative affairs told Senator Green that the governor would veto it unless schools were given the option to “opt out,” to say, that sorry, we are not allowing concealed weapons here.

This Week in Michigan Politics, Morning Edition host Christina Shockley and Michigan Radio’s political analyst Jack Lessenberry talk about the end of the lame duck session.

Lessenberry says “this probably has been the most productive and momentous and game changing lame duck session doing back to the 1960s.”

Lessenberry says making Michigan a right to work state was probably the biggest moment in Michigan politics this year.

Yesterday, in an ancient ritual, members of the Electoral College gathered in state capitols all over the nation, including Lansing.

State Senator Steve Bieda, a big history buff, was there to witness the event, which is technically the real presidential election.

But he told me that when Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer’s office looked at the official certificate sent over by Secretary of State Ruth Johnson’s office, something was wrong.

The Secretary of State had misspelled President Obama’s first name. The electors had to send it back and get another certificate before they could formally register their votes.

Well, you’d think after four years everybody would be able to spell the president’s name correctly, or at least would take pains to do so on an important official document. Yet anyone can make mistakes. But when I told this story to an African-American colleague, she didn’t think it was a mistake at all.

She thought it was one more deliberate slight aimed at an African-American from the Republican Secretary of State. Now, my guess is that this was just a sloppy clerical error. 

The headline in one of the Detroit papers today says that in the aftermath of the Connecticut tragedy, schools are struggling to reassure children that they are safe.  Well, I hate to be a downer, but they aren’t.

True -- the odds are heavily against any particular school being attacked by a gunman. But it could happen, and, as we all know, almost certainly will happen again.

We’ve seen this, over and over. What is a little different this time is that, as of this morning, legislation was sitting on Governor Snyder’s desk that would allow those with concealed weapons permits to bring guns into schools.

And not just schools -- churches, synagogues and hospitals, day-care centers and sports stadiums. Friday, after we knew that 20 first graders had been murdered in their classrooms, the governor said he all that gave him “serious pause,” and said he was wondering if, in view of all this, signing it was “appropriate.”

This week Weekend Edition host Rina Miller and Michigan Radio’s political analyst Jack Lessenberry discuss the lame duck session in Lansing.

While right to work was passed despite massive protests, Lessenberry says there is only one way it can be repealed.

“People could petition with the legislature to repeal the law and if they don’t then it goes on the ballot,” he says.

The question is, is if anyone will actually do it.

And a package of abortion bills were sent to Governor Snyder’s desk.

“The package passed is mainly regulating abortion clinics, putting them under more scrutiny, making sure that people coming in for a procedure weren’t coerced,” Lessenberry says.

And finally, a new emergency manager law also moved forward.

“This gives emergency managers more power than the old emergency financial managers have. But it also sort of gives cities a choice--whether they want an emergency manger, whether they want to move to bankruptcy or have a consent agreement,” Lessenberry says.