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by Tim Skubick
June 19, 2009

There is no Golden Rule in bankruptcy, which is why they invented it in the first place. It’s also why President Obama and his Auto Task Force guys were steering General Motors and Chrysler in that direction long before the companies wanted to go there.

After all, if you want to radicalize the industry, i.e. eliminate benefits and fire a ton of car dealers, you don’t head for the bargaining table where the process can drag on for months.

Nope, you head for the quick and dirty courts, where fairness, ala the Golden Rule, is not an issue; expediency rules the day and employee dignity is not even an afterthought.

All of this ugliness was on display the other day in front of Upper Peninsula Congressman Bart Stupak’s subcommittee. (Unable to stomach the Pittsburgh Penguins skating around with the Stanley Cup on Red Wings ice, this viewer turned to C-Span and found Fritz Henderson and Jim Press on the hot seat.)

GM’s Henderson and Chrysler’s Press were being grilled on how and why they jettisoned hundreds of auto dealers who had been loyal to both companies for decades.

Henderson quickly found shelter when he announced that GM had made some mistakes in picking one dealer over another and had installed an appeal process; the dealers could get their day in the GM “court” because they did not get their day in the bankruptcy court.

Press was another story altogether. He said Chrysler did not have an appeal process. Period.

Congressmen and congresswomen went after him with vengeance.

Recall that many of the dealers in congressional districts were long time supporters; they were the bedrock of those communities and now were being treated like numbers. So the committee members zoomed in on Press.

Press looked bad because Henderson, sitting next to him, was contrite and showed some sympathy for the dealers.

Press looked like the corporate know-it-all who was driven by the almighty data without an ounce of humanity figured into the equation.

“We are not the same car company as GM,” said Press as he tried in vain to fend off the repeated attacks about how Chrysler was being unfair.

He rattled on about how Chrysler would go under if it did not unload 800 or so dealers and this was all about saving the company.

Mind you, the Congress folks were not asking him to rescind the decision to eliminate this dealer or that. All they wanted was some sense of equity; to give the dealers a chance to make their case rather than being unceremoniously bounced out of business.

Press was unmoved in the testimony the viewer saw.

But he is not alone. In much of the corporate world these days it is all about the bottom line and saving the company and not about the employees, who in reality ARE the company.

Where’s the respect?

Where’s the human empathy?

Just like the old GM and the old Chrysler, those values are history…and all that stuff about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you is but a fond memory, too.

Tim Skubick is Michigan’s senior Capitol correspondent and has anchored the weekly public TV series “Off the Record” since 1972.

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Something’s Gotta Give

That combination of OMG and ouch you just heard was from all the educators around the state.

On one hand they are relieved that state aid per pupil next fall will not be cut, thanks to all those Obama stimulus dollars.

But a ton of other programs are on the verge of being chopped up into little pieces.

Item: Early childhood education. For years researchers have lectured lawmakers that if you start to teach little tots before they sign up for kindergarten, the chances of long-term education success go through the roof.

But the three Republicans on the K-12 education budget decided to eliminate all state support.

“Other programs have taken a 10-percent cut,” reports Sen. Mickey Switalski (D-Macomb County), “but they want to take 100 percent out of early childhood, which is out of line.”

Republican Senator Ron Jelinek, who runs the Senate budget committee, acknowledges that, but explains the legislature’s job is to fund K-12 grades — so pre-school money is out, gone, caput.

Switalski hopes to restore it before the budget is finalized.

Item: Smaller high schools. Top educators argue high schools with 1,500+ students are a prescription for failure. Smaller schools around 400 or so are the ticket for success. Jelinek and company nixed that, too.

And on and on it goes. Jelinek explains there is not enough money for all the great programs everyone wants, so tough choices have been made and no one will be happy, including him.

State budget director Bob Emerson warns this is only the beginning, with more bad news down the road, including more layoffs and more districts being “pushed more into the red.”

“This is an administrative nightmare,” Emerson laments.

Tell that to school officials who are going into their second consecutive year without a boost in state aid.

As the old song goes, “Something’s Gotta Give.” The fears in this town are that the “something” is the quality of your kid’s education.

Education Turf War

T-u-r-f. It’s such a simple little four-letter word, but in Lansing, turf battles are complex and never pretty to watch.

“Ladies and gentlemen. In this corner, Michigan’s community colleges. In that corner, Michigan’s four-year universities. Let the battle begin.”

Recently, the junior colleges, as the university folks like to call them, have wanted to offer four-year degrees — which is what the state’s 15 major universities do.

The big schools call it “mission creep,” and they don’t like it one iota.

The community colleges won’t back down in their efforts to offer university degrees in nursing, culinary arts and concrete technology.

They are emboldened, even though they lost this same battle last year, because President Obama has mentioned J.C.s by name in his effort to create new jobs for the unemployed, and Gov. Jennifer Granholm has given preferential treatment to the two-year schools in her budgets…much to the dismay of the big guys.

So the lines are drawn again.

“We will actively oppose it,” the lobbyist for the 15 university presidents tells The Detroit News.

But in these tough economic times, the community folks may have reason on their side.

First, a four-year sheepskin from a community college is cheaper — and many students can’t afford room and board and tuition, not to mention the beer costs, at a big school. They can stay at home, get a degree and get a job.

The universities counter they have satellite campuses all over the state and students can live at home and get that four-year degree at those facilities without going to East Lansing, A2 or elsewhere.

Here’s the irony. The two- and four-year institutions profess that students come first in the mission to pump more educated workers into the economy. But turns out for the four-year types, it’s a mission statement with an asterisk, i.e. as long as it does not infringe on our t-u-r-f.

The Week from …

Every once in awhile you have a week like this.

Michigan Corrections Director Patricia Caruso had the awful assignment of announcing prison closings in five Michigan cities. Having been around the track before, she knew the outrage would come from all corners.

The ultra-conservative, anti-crime crowd would wonder where all the crooks were going if the five prisons were mothballed. And the local officials who depended on the prisons to supply jobs to local town folks would not be happy either.

So on the day she had to spread the bad news, her number one P.R. guy called in. He and his wife were having a baby, so Caruso had to “give birth” to the closing announcement without him.

Around this same time, in an unrelated prison matter, Caruso got up in the middle of the night to go you know where and accidentally fell down, breaking her wrist. Ouch.

From there her week progressed downhill. In the wake of two parolees being held in a local jail after the death of a young girl in Monroe, a local prison union official testified in a Senate hearing that, “the sad case of Neveah Buchanan may just be the tip of the iceberg.”

Caruso went ballistic. “That is appalling and irresponsible,” she said angrily into the FOX2 TV news camera. The director said the death of the five-year-old Monroe girl had nothing to do with the parolees in jail.

“Shame on you,” she lectured the UAW Local 6000, which later recanted any notion of linking the death to the crooks behind bars.

And the week finally ended on an ironic note. Caruso was invited to Standish for a ceremony at the state prison in that town…a prison she helped to open early in her career. Now she was shutting it down.

She told the local officials that if they wanted to withdraw her invite, she would understand. They did not and she went, broken wrist and all, hoping maybe the next week would be better than the one she just finished.