Tim Skubick’s column is sponsored by
May 29, 2009Just like the old-time snake oil salesman hawking his magical elixir to cure your every ache and pain, this next batch of candidates for governor will try to sell you on the notion they can fix Michigan’s ailing economy.
Buyer beware. They can’t.
Just as it was in 2006, the major theme in the next race for governor will be the economy. Dick DeVos and Jennifer Granholm both ran on a platform of turning the economy around.
“I’m a businessman. I know how to do this,” lectured Mr. DeVos at every turn. The incumbent countered, “We’ve started the job, now let me finish it.”
The economic turnaround issue is now three years older and there is no turnaround in sight, yet the 2010 candidates are in full bloom picking up where DeVos and Granholm left off.
Political neophyte Rick Snyder is traipsing around the state saying the economy is his top issue and he doesn’t want to talk about anything else. It’s wishful thinking.
He can’t avoid being drawn into a debate over stem cell research, abortion, guns and gay marriage. Those are the crack cocaine issues of the GOP far right, and the addiction means the Rickster can’t avoid them.
Likewise for Congressman Pete Hoekstra from West Michigan. He, too, is hitting on the economy, as are Mike Cox, Terri Lynn Land and others.
But when they come calling, ask them for specifics. “What can you do to turn the economy around?”
And when they launch into their “we will cut business taxes bla, bla, bla,” call for a time out.
If cutting taxes were the answer, how come former Gov. John Engler’s $2-billion in tax cuts did not insulate the state from an eight-year recession?
When they can’t answer that, they will launch into turning the economy around by eliminating all the bureaucratic red tape in Lansing.
Take this to the bank: even if there were not a stitch of red tape left, that would not work either. If no one wants to create jobs, red tape is a moot issue.
Next they will harp about knowing how to work with business, and those ties would send the jobless rate plummeting.
Right.
Here is the forthright answer you are not likely to hear from either party…
“I hate to tell you this, but if you elect me governor, I can’t turn the economy around. Sure, I can make some policy revisions and nibble around the edges, but when push comes to shove, government does not create jobs, businesses do. I promise to do everything I can to promote that, but be forewarned, and I repeat, a vote for me is not a vote for a 4-percent jobless rate.”
Political spinmeisters will make sure none of the candidates utters anything close to that, even though it’s the right thing to do.
Ask any of the last four governors. If they had the wherewithal to do it, they would have done it.
This being a free country and all, you can swallow the “I-can-solve-our-economic-woes” elixir if you dare. But don’t expect it to work.
Tim Skubick is Michigan’s senior Capitol correspondent and has anchored the weekly public TV series “Off the Record” since 1972.
Tim Skubick Extra Extra… (A weekly bonus for Dome readers)
Brewer: Here We Go Again
It made such a tremendous impact on everyone in the last contest for the state Supreme Court that no one has forgotten the “Sleeping Judge” TV commercial that sent former Chief Justice Cliff Taylor to the showers.Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer was taking another victory lap the other night as the Michigan Association for Justice, which is just a fancy-smancy name for the trial lawyers, gave him an award.
Brewer humbly accepted it “on behalf of everyone who believed we could defeat Cliff Taylor and the thousands who worked to make it happen.” Cue the applause.
But that was then and now is now, and Brewer is rallying the troops to reprise the Taylor upset. He’s plopped a bulls eye on the back of the next GOP justice, who is running next year — one Mr. Robert Young, who, according to the party chair, favors “corporations and insurance companies over and over again…”
Brewer is launching a contest asking party folks to “tell us their worst story about Bob Young and also guess how many times he has fallen asleep on the bench…”
Actually, this is how Brewer discovered the allegation that Taylor nodded off. Brewer was interviewing two plaintiffs who appeared before the judge. During the exchange, on videotape, they said they saw Taylor sleeping. The rest, as they say, is history.
Brewer is back hoping that somebody out there, somewhere, saw Young doing something that can be converted into another attack ad.
Maybe someone saw Young toss some paper on the ground, or saw him going 80 in a 25-mph zone, or smoking in a non-smoking section, or, or, or … the list of possibilities is endless.
Brewer did not indicate if any of this stuff had to be true — but then that never stopped him before, his critics would say.
Sneaky Engler
John Engler to the rescue. With the current Democratic governor facing a whopping billion-dollar-plus budget crunch, there was good ol’ Johnny Boy with a two-fer.First, he had a way for Jennifer Granholm to raise a billion smackers. Second, he was helping his new buddy, Barack Obama, deal with a challenge of his own, i.e. what to do with all those soon-to-be-former detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
Engler’s idea was to ship all those terrorist crooks to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where they could be housed forever.Whatta guy. Whatta guy.
Wait a gall-darn minute!
Conservative Republican John Engler doing something to help two Democrats in dire straits?
Having covered Big John for 27-some years, this was totally out of character. He never met a Democrat he didn’t want to abuse, and so for him to come waltzing in on his white horse to help the White House and the governor in the statehouse…well, that was just too much to swallow.
Knowing him, there must have been a hidden agenda.
No one can prove it, but slip this on for size…
Ever since Republicans lost the Upper Peninsula congressional seat, Engler and company have wanted to un-trench current entrenched Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak. Rs have failed miserably at ousting the popular Mr. S, and, short of getting him to do something illegal on the U.S. Capitol steps, they will continue to fail.
Enter Mr. E. with his Gitmo scheme. Engler reads the papers. He knows that every congressman and woman in Washington is deftly afraid that the president is going to ship some or all of the Gitmo gang into his/her state.
In fact, when the new president asked the Congress for the money to shut the prison down, even the Democrats balked, sending Mr. Obama his first real bipartisan rebuke.
Give us a plan on how to house the prisoners and then we will talk, was the message to the new guy on the block.
Engler has a plan. Ship ’em all to the U.P. and then let ol’ Bart Stupak try to get reelected next year.
Yeah, that’s the conniving, bomb-throwing, sneaky Engler we know so well.
Helping Granholm and Obama? My foot!
Political Back Scratching
Years ago, a special interest group could stage a fundraiser and it was under no obligation to provide any hats and horns to get folks to attend. Everyone dutifully showed up.
Those days are long gone, as Ernie would say. Now if you want citizens to write a check, they want some pop, and not the kind you drink.Take the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce. It charged $175 ($200 at the door) for business leaders to see the Great Debate for Governor last night on Mackinac Island.
It was the first chance to see Republican contenders Mike Cox, Terri Lynn Land, Pete Hoekstra and Tom George go at it. Democratic candidate Alma Wheeler Smith also planned to be there, but the odds-on favorite to win the Democratic nomination, Lt. Gov. John Cherry, found something else to do that night.
He saw little reason to attend an event designed to raise money for the chamber, which will likely turn around and spend the cash on Cherry’s opponents. No dummy, he.
Or take the “Friends of West Michigan Business,” which is hosting a Political Action Committee shindig featuring not one, not two, but 25 lawmakers who chair legislative committees that handle business issues.
It’s a first and probably not a last if it works.
Thirteen GOP leaders and 12 Democrats are slated to work the room if you cough up 40 smackers for the Main Event or $75 for the VIP Reception.
It’s likely that those legislators will see a return on their time investment next year when the West Michigan chamber writes them a reelection check in a beautiful example of political back scratching to the nth degree.
Creative thinking is alive and well on the fundraising circuit.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Jack McHugh // May 29, 2009 at 6:25 am
Tim, Tim, Tim . . .
You’re correct that there’s no economic silver bullet, and yet how to turn around MI’s economy isn’t all that complicated, either. Here’s the formula:
Make this a state that entrepreneurs and investors look to and think, “Hey, we can make money there – and the government won’t drive us nuts if we try.”
That’s it. That’s all they – we – have to do. Note that to make it happen will require things that you and most Dome readers will hate and declare to be “politically impossible,” including major reductions in taxes, government spending and regulatory burdens. Adult supervision at DEQ. Perhaps a Right-to-Work law.
Not more Jeff Daniels ads. Not more MEGA tax breaks or cash subsidies to the politically sexy industries du jour. Not more borrowing against cigarette lawsuit revenue to buy more Pure Michigan ads. All that stuff is eyewash for the ignorant masses (and/or payoffs to politically well connected “rent-seekers”), and everyone reading this publication knows it or should know it.
And don’t say that Michigan’s tax burden is “average” or “no worse than the rest,” either. Even if it were true, this state has dug itself such a deep hole in its overall economic environment that getting out will require nothing less than “fantastic” in taxes, labor and regulatory climates here.
Fortunately, you and other Dome readers have the Mackinac Center to point the way. (No “wink” – I’m serious!)
2 Lynn Ochberg // May 29, 2009 at 1:27 pm
To the first comment, If making Michigan more attractive to business were the answer to our economic woes, states like Delaware, who tried this ploy decades ago, with nice breaks for corporations, would not be suffering the same kind of economic woes we have here. We’d only be a ‘Johnny come lately’ and a reckless one at that.
3 Craig Ruff // Jun 1, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Accepting that no one public official (including a governor) can create jobs or miraculously turns around an economy, people are most concerned about what leaders will do to preserve and protect jobs and hold them accountable at the ballot box. I’m vexed by this conundrum. Can anyone help?
4 Lynn Ochberg // Jun 1, 2009 at 7:56 pm
Consider these ideas from our friend, Michael Moore!!
Goodbye, GM … Hello New Clean Technologies
by Michael Moore
June 1, 2009
I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.
As I sit here in GM’s birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?
It is with sad irony that the company which invented “planned obsolescence” — the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one — has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh — and that wouldn’t start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the “inferior” Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to “improve” the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.
So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company’s body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with — dare I say it — joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.
But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know — who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let’s be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we’ve allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?
Thus, as GM is “reorganized” by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made “Roger & Me,” I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:
1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.
We are now in a different kind of war — a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call “cars” may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.
The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn’t give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true — that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.
President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.
2. Don’t put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce — and most of those who have been laid off — employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.
3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades — and we don’t even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven’t used it, is criminal. Let’s hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.
4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.
5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.
6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we’re going to have automobiles, let’s have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories — that simply isn’t true).
7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.
8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.
9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.
Well, that’s a start. Please, please, please don’t save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don’t throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.
100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front — and the back — seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it’s over. It’s a new day and a new century. The President — and the UAW — must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.
Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years.
So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com
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