Essay: A Natural at the Game - 2.28.11
Both Governor Rick Snyder's friends and enemies often refer to him as a "non-politician." Michigan Radio's Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about that.
Governor Rick Snyder is not a "politician." He would tell you that himself. I first heard he wasn't a politician from a bunch of political reporters more than a year ago, who felt he was wasting his money on what they felt was a catchy, but ultimately silly commercial.
This was, of course, the famous "tough nerd" commercial that first aired during last year's Superbowl. Tim Skubick, the dean of, Lansing political reporters, thought it was likely to backfire.
This is a tough, blue-collar state, he said. Not a place where people voted for guys who called themselves "nerds."
I didn't know what to make of all this myself, till I saw Snyder skillfully and with scalpel-like precision, separate himself from the rest of the pack during the primary campaign. Like a veteran racehorse he ran third much of the way, then shot ahead in the final stretch, winning by nine lengths and a hundred thousand votes.
The general election wasn't even a contest. But there was a lot of skepticism as to how the new governor would actually do with the hurly-burly of governing.
Jennifer Granholm had been a crashing failure, something she herself attributed to having never served in the legislature. But she had at least been attorney general, and one of many cogs in Wayne County boss Ed McNamara's political machine.
Snyder was a venture capitalist and former computer executive without a day's worth of practical politics in his past. When he revealed during the campaign that he had no idea who was the chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, some sneered.
But I felt otherwise. Being a political analyst is one of the few jobs for which age is an advantage. I remembered the scorn and disdain the experts felt when a washed-up movie actor ran for governor of California. Turned out he did a pretty fair job.
Republicans in places like Michigan, however, felt that their party would be committing suicide if they ever nominated him for president. "He'd be another Goldwater," one told me in the late 1970s. Too right-wing, too extreme, too generally ignorant of the world. When the man did run, I myself asked him a question that revealed he had no idea on which side of Pakistan Afghanistan was located.
Yet he won forty-four states the first time he ran, and all but one the next. The man people feared might start World War III wound up ending the Cold War. I've been talking about Ronald Reagan, of course, and today, some people talk about adding him to Mount Rushmore.
Now I am well aware Governor Snyder has yet to even get his first budget through the legislature, or prove he can compromise if need be. But this non-politician got a President of another party to agree to count Canadian dollars as our matching highway funds.
And this governor has wisely avoided plunging this state into turmoil by starting an ideological war, as his counterpart in Wisconsin has in trying to abolish collective bargaining.
We've got a way to go before we know how successful a governor Rick Snyder will be. But up to now, he's defied the experts -- and for a non-politician, has had one heck of a non-political year.
Posted on February 28, 2011 at 01:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
ESSAY: Divided We Stand - 11.04.10
By now everybody knows that Rick Snyder won a landslide victory on Tuesday. But Michigan Radio's Jack Lessenberry says the shape of the vote is a little different than you might have expected.
As everyone knows, Rick Snyder won a tremendous victory this week over Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero. But late yesterday I started looking at the numbers, and I noticed something interesting. The Snyder landslide was a little different than you might have been led to believe. Okay, go ahead and make fun of me. After all, what kind of guy analyzes election returns on a Wednesday night? Tell you what: Just think of me for now as one not-so-tough, and, unfortunately, not-so-rich nerd, and we'll do fine. But, bear with me a moment. Here's what really happened in the election. White independent voters, most of them middle-class or better, switched to Snyder. Republicans were also enthusiastic about his candidacy. Though some may have wished he were a little more conservative, virtually none preferred Bernero. And Republicans were enthusiastic, either because they wanted to send a message to Washington, or because they felt they were going to win. So they showed up and voted for Snyder. Those white independent voters did too. Most of them voted for Democrat Jocelyn Benson for secretary of state, and many of them voted for her fellow Democrat, David Leyton, for attorney general. However, there weren't nearly enough of these independents to elect either of those candidates. And that's because Democrats stayed home. This became clear on election night. Terri Lynn Land, Michigan's soon-to-be former secretary of state, has usually been right on the money with her predictions of voter turnout. This time, she estimated there would be 3.8 million voters statewide, about the same as four years ago. But half a million fewer turned out. Looking at the county-by-county vote, it was clear that some Dems sat out this election. And something else was starkly clear as well. Rick Snyder attempted to reach out to black voters. In recent years, some Republican candidates have virtually ignored the city. Snyder opened a headquarters in Detroit. He campaigned there. He sought the support or at least the understanding of influential black clergy. He had his election night party, not in Ann Arbor where he lives, but in a downtown Detroit hotel. Yet in return, he received almost no black votes. Some of his strategists thought they might get as much as a fifth of Detroit's vote. He modeled his campaign after that of former Republican Gov. William Milliken, who was popular in the city. But it didn't work at all. Four years ago, when he lost by a landslide, Dick DeVos got four percent of Detroit's vote. Rick Snyder got five percent. In Highland Park, which has essentially no white voters at all, Snyder got four percent. The people who switched were white independents. DeVos got only 24 percent in the affluent liberal community of Huntington Woods. Snyder almost doubled that, to forty-six percent. Statewide, Rick Snyder got almost three hundred thousand more votes than DeVos had. But the real difference was that Virg Bernero got nearly a million fewer than Jennifer Granholm. What's all this mean? Michigan voters have clearly lost confidence in the Democrats. But many are still reserving judgment on Snyder. And as far as African-Americans are concerned, he hasn't even begun to make the sale.
Posted on November 04, 2010 at 01:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Essay: Aftermath - 11.3.10
The election's over, and Republicans are triumphant at all levels across our state. Michigan Radio's Jack Lessenberry says it is time to wish them good luck, and success.
What happened yesterday was the largest midterm political earthquake in this state and nation since 1946. Republicans made massive gains almost everywhere, especially perhaps in the Midwest. In Michigan, voters decisively indicated they've had enough and wanted something new. Now, they are going to get it. Republicans easily won every statewide race on the ballot. They have a solid majority in the Michigan House and a super-majority in the state senate. Most people thought this would be a big victory for Rick Snyder, and that some Republicans might be swept in on his coattails. In fact, while Snyder led the ticket, it was a top-to-bottom GOP triumph, or at least a vote against the Democrats. Turnout was somewhat lower than expected, though it is too early to say who the no-shows were. And Snyder in fact did slightly less well than John Engler did in his last two landslide elections. But his party performed better at every level than it had when former Governor Engler was running. Consequently, Republicans will have more of a free hand in running Michigan government than at any time since the Great Depression. That is, if they stay united. Thanks to the GOP's new super-majority in the state senate, Democrats won't even be able to prevent any bill from taking immediate effect. Republicans have complete power in Lansing. But with that power comes responsibility. Rick Snyder and the new legislature are going to face huge problems when they take office in January. They are looking at an enormous budget deficit for next year, with absolutely no chance of any more stimulus money to fill the gap. Hard choices are coming. Either the state has to raise new revenue or make what amounts to unimaginable cuts to education, services of all kinds, and the prison system. This time, on the state level at any rate, Republicans will be unable to blame Democrats if they make a mess of things or have difficulty balancing the budget or satisfying the voters. Yet the voters also indicated that this is also not the time for any more partisan finger-pointing games. Last night, former Gov. Jim Blanchard told me that as a practical matter, regardless of the size of his majority, Governor-elect Snyder will need help from some moderate Democrats. Joe Schwarz, a former GOP congressman and state senator told me the same thing earlier in the day. And in fact, every resident of Michigan should wish Rick Snyder all the success in the world. Our state is in poor shape. Unemployment is thirteen percent. We've lost nearly a million jobs over the last decade. Even if all the domestic auto companies survive long-term, they never again will provide high-paying jobs for hundreds of thousands of unskilled and uneducated workers. The state needs a new economic model. State government has been at least as dysfunctional, with a flawed budget process that is guaranteed to throw up a sizable deficit, every year. Those are things that our newly elected leaders need to address almost immediately. We just had an election, after years in which Michigan has been sailing through a terrible storm. We all need to hope that the crew we just elected can get us to calmer and happier seas.
ESSAY: Voting Day - 10.02.2010
Today is Election Day. Michigan Radio's Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about what it means to cast a vote.
They're voting now, in schools and churches and fire stations, all across Michigan. Standing in line, trying to stay warm, studying sample ballots or lists they've brought with them.
Perhaps three million Michiganders will vote today. Hundreds of thousands more have already voted, sending in or dropping off absentee ballots. A few voted from the front lines in Afghanistan or the deserts of Iraq, and sent their ballots through the mail.
The secretary of state estimates that a little more than half the state's registered voters will vote today, which means almost half won't, on top of the many who never bothered to register.
I always vote myself, even when I am not especially excited by any of the candidates. I vote because I've been to too many countries where people got killed for trying to cast a vote.
I vote because when I was twelve, three college kids not much older than me were tortured and murdered for trying to get frightened Americans to register to vote, in the state of Mississippi.
When they died there was a three-year-old little boy elsewhere in this country whose parents' lives would have been in danger had they been living in Mississippi when he was born.
They might have been murdered because his daddy was black and his momma was white. Today, that little boy is the President of the United States. The people who look like him finally got the right to vote partly because a white lady from Detroit went to Alabama to help them, and was brutally murdered by the Ku Klux Klan.
So I vote. I think if you haven't voted yet today, you owe it to yourself and your nation to do so. Maybe not for every office. But you surely know something about the candidates for governor, or have an idea whether we should have a constitutional convention.
You ought to have some opinion about your representative in Congress. I know that if you've been listening to the smug commentators on television, you've heard that most of these elections are no longer in doubt. Well, guess what.
They are in doubt, till we've all voted. Ask Jim Blanchard, who the same talking heads said was certain to win twenty years ago.
There wasn't a doubt in the world about his re-election, till the votes were counted. Sometimes, it is important and honorable to vote for the loser. I remember coming out of a voting booth once, voting against a candidate whom I knew would win, but whom I couldn't stand. "Well, that's one he didn't get," I thought.
And I liked that feeling.
But as much as I enjoy the tradition of standing in line, there's a problem nowadays. The ballot is too complex. There are too many candidates and proposals. Sample ballots are available on the internet, but I think we should all automatically be sent one in the mail, so we can study it, mark it up and take it with us to the polls.
But for now, do the best you can, and if you haven't done so yet, go cast your vote.
People died to get you the right to do that. I think we owe it to ourselves to pay them back.
Essay: Give Them Hope 11.1.10
Tomorrow is Election Day, and the candidates are making a last final push. Michigan Radio's Jack Lessenberry thinks there was something missing from this year's campaign.
Traditionally, this would have been the last day of the campaign season. It used to be considered bad form to continue hustling for votes on Election Day. That was when the people were supposed to be left to the sanctity of the voting booth to decide.
Richard Nixon once even went to Mexico on Election Day, to have a relaxed lunch away from the cameras before the returns.
Of course, it also used to be an axiom that nobody paid serious attention to any campaign until after the World Series, which used to end in early October. Nowadays, they play major league baseball from March till November, and this year's series may not be over till after the election.
And you can bet that Rick Snyder, Virg Bernero, and everybody else running for anything else will be on the phones, at the polls and in front of the cameras tomorrow hustling for every last vote.
Sometimes, that may make sense. Ask Dan Benishek, who this year won the GOP nomination for Congress from northern Michigan by a mere fifteen votes. The length of today's campaigns doesn't bother me, at least not as much as the thought of playing the World Series in the snow. But something else has been bothering me about this year's campaign, something I couldn't figure out at first.
Then the other night I was watching a movie called Enemy at the Gates, about the battle for Stalingrad. Worried Soviet generals were trying to figure out how to make their men fight better.
They had tried shooting cowards and threatening the men's families. Finally, a junior officer says, "What about giving them hope?"
His superiors are stunned. What an amazing idea! Give the men hope in a better future! They try that, and it works.
That was the problem with this year's campaign. Nobody, as far as I could tell, has been offering Michigan much hope.
That wasn't the main message they conveyed, anyway. Bernero flirted with a theme of bringing back our old-time prosperity, though he didn't exactly say how. But he was soon working overtime trying to scare the voters, telling them that Snyder would send our last remaining jobs to China, and threaten women's reproductive rights. Snyder said he had a ten-point plan and the business know-how to bring Michigan back. But his campaign was mainly focused on bashing the Democrats. This was repeated all across the state and, so far as I could tell, across the nation.
There seemed to be a universal slogan: Vote For Me: My Opponent is Even Worse.
That doesn't do much to inspire.
I have this fantasy that I'll turn the TV on tonight, and see one of the candidates saying: "Look, we're facing tough times ahead. We're going to have to pay more taxes and maybe get fewer services on top of that. We're going to have some pain, but when all is said and done, I think we can build a better Michigan.
"And I want you to give me your vote."
That's the candidate I wish we could vote for tomorrow. Sadly, I'm afraid we'll have to make do instead with the ones we have.
Essay: Does Anyone Believe?
We're four days from what's being called one of the most important elections in state history. Yet Michigan Radio's Jack Lessenberry thinks the public is curiously disengaged.
We're four days from an election in which we will pick a new governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general and secretary of state. We'll also choose a mostly new legislature, and determine which party controls the Michigan Supreme Court.
We'll decide whether to have a constitutional convention, whether felons should be presented from holding office after they complete their terms, and decide a whole range of other offices. We'll do all that Tuesday -- which is to say, a minority of us will. Unless Michigan defies a long-standing historical trend, fewer than half the eligible voters will vote in this election.
Looked at one way, that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. We are facing a crisis of historic magnitude. The new governor and legislature will face a deficit approaching two billion dollars with no more stimulus money and absolutely no fat left in the state budget.
They can either raise taxes, which for today's Republican Party pretty much amounts to a sacrilege, or they can slash funding to essential services, including higher education.
Everyone in either party who is well-informed knows that Michigan's only hope is vastly increasing the education level of our workforce. Nobody can make decent living anymore with just a high school degree, and having a bachelor's degree without a particular skill set isn't worth much today either.
We've lost nearly a million jobs in this state, and kids are emerging into the bleakest job market since the Great Depression.
So, you'd think there would be great interest in this election, and in what competing solutions the candidates for governor were proposing to make life better for us all.
But the candidates, especially front-runner Rick Snyder, have gotten away with really not saying very much. We know that Snyder would replace the Michigan Business Tax with another tax that would add to the state's deficit, at least in the short run.
We know that Virg Bernero is against outsourcing jobs to China, and that he'd start some form of state bank. But I haven't much of a clue how either man would deal with the deficit.
They've been ducking questions, and the press has let them get away with it. Political coverage this year has been reduced to analyzing the campaign commercials, which range between totally false and largely irrelevant, and something even worse:
Obsession with the polls. Who is going to win? Is it too late for to close the gap? Whose negatives are up? Journalists who should be offering intelligent policy analysis instead sound like a bunch of characters around the betting window at a race track.
And what may be most disturbing is that the public doesn't seem engaged either. To some extent, that's surely because of the intellectual emptiness of this campaign.
But I'm afraid it is also because people have lost faith in the ability of politics and government to make a real difference in our lives. The men and women in Ann Arbor who half a century ago urged John F. Kennedy to start the Peace Corps were different.
They believed Kennedy when he said "one person can make a difference, and every person should try." I'd feel a whole lot better if any of this year's candidates made us feel that way too.
Posted on October 29, 2010 at 01:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Essay: What do you think? - 10.28.10
The candidates for governor have been asked questions by reporters -- but Michigan Radio's Jack Lessenberry has been looking at what ordinary people might want to know.
From time to time, I've watched televised political debates with regular people -- regular in the sense that they don't eat, sleep and breathe politics. Much of the time, I've found the viewers weren't satisfied with the questions the candidates were asked.
They felt that many of the things that they wanted to know weren't being addressed. That may be truer than ever in this year's Michigan gubernatorial race, for two reasons.
First of all, we don't know either Virg Bernero or Rick Snyder very well. Most of us hadn't heard of either a year ago, and have only a fuzzy image of them now. Second, they had only one debate.
A number of Michigan Radio's listeners have been posting things that they'd like the candidates to answer, and for a change, instead of telling you what I think, let me tell you what some of the voters want to know.
If the candidates happen to hear their questions, I'd be thrilled if they'd give me some real answers, If they do, I'll happily share them with everybody. So, first of all, a man named Nathaniel would like both candidates to tell him this: "What will you do to LOWER costs for higher education? What will you do to get more people in Michigan into college? What can we do to stop the brain drain," that has so many college graduates leaving the state?
Excellent questions, Nathaniel. He also asked this of both men: "Would you pay an extra penny in sales tax to save Michigan's economy?" By that he meant a one percent regional sales tax to be collected in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, and used for a tri-county mass transit system. This, he argues, would bring in federal matching funds and result in five billion dollars in economic growth.
Peinck Muslimah wants both candidates to commit to a graduated income tax, which would require a state constitutional amendment. Shannon Jones wants to see if our current flat rate tax system can be made to work better instead.
So, which do the candidates prefer?
Another listener notes that there is a vast disparity in the size of of school districts in our state. He, like many education experts think that with more that 500 districts, Michigan has too many.
So he wants to ask the candidates: "Do you plan to consolidate municipal services and small school districts to save money and reduce corruption? If so, how and when?
Another listener doesn't want to ask the candidates, he wants to tell them something: "Metro Detroit, Flint, Saginaw, Grand Rapdis and Kalamazoo need to come together as regions."
That he thinks, would create new and larger government entities focused on solving economic and other problems.
Tom Williams thinks whoever gets elected should establish a new, user-friendly one-stop online shop for all economy-boosting services, and push for "an aggressive outreach campaign designed to encourage business to increase the state's profile further."
He also thinks if "jobs are indeed the number one issue, in the state" they should be the singular focus in state government."
My guess is that there are several hundred thousand unemployed Michiganders who might very much agree.
Essay: Real Losers - 10.22.10
Attention has been so focused on the elections that few have noticed that many workers will lose their unemployment benefits by the end of next month. Michigan Radio's Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about them.
We're less than two weeks away from statewide elections, and much of the media has been intently focused on who is going to win and lose on election night. What few are talking about, however, is a much larger group of people who are losing big-time, right now.
What economists call "The Great Recession" hit Michigan earlier and harder than anywhere else.
And now hundreds of thousands of Michiganders are coming to the end of their unemployment benefits. In normal times, people who lose their jobs are eligible to collect benefits for a maximum of twenty-six weeks, or six months. The most they can get is $362 dollars a week, out of which they have to pay federal taxes.
That amounts, by the way, to a gross income of just under nineteen thousand dollars a year. That's considerably less, by the way, than it costs to keep somebody in prison.
Since times have been so bad, Congress has extended the eligibility period in hard-hit states like Michigan to a maximum of ninety-nine weeks for some workers, or just less than two years. But even that has proven not to be enough, in a world where there are eight and a half job seekers for every available job.
Now, a huge number of former workers are running out of time. According to the Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency, 142,733 workers will lose their last benefits by November 30.
That's pretty grim news, with the first chill of winter in the air. Things get worse from there. By the end of April, that number is expected to more than double, to more than 324,000.
The number of people affected by this is, of course, larger, since some of these folks are supporting families. The ripple effect on the already battered Michigan economy will be further devastating.
Those losing their final benefits, by the way, aren't overwhelmingly in any one region of the state. Nearly half are in the tri-county Metropolitan Detroit area, but that's close to that region's share of the state's population.
Eleven thousand workers in the county including Grand Rapids lose benefits; ten thousand in the Flint area. Senator Debbie Stabenow has introduced legislation further extending unemployment benefits. But its future is, at best, uncertain.
Whatever happens in the elections, the new Congress is expected to be more conservative than the old. While military spending remains high, there is growing concern about the ballooning federal deficit, now by far the largest in history.
But nobody seems to have devoted much thought to what is going to become of our state's hundreds of thousands of hopelessly long-term unemployed. Congressman Gary Peters has introduced a sensible bill that would allow them to withdraw funds from their IRA retirement accounts without paying the usual penalty.
Unfortunately, it has been languishing in committee, as the wife of an unemployed former Chrysler worker told me yesterday.
Passing both bills would seem to be common sense -- especially from the standpoint of those who still have jobs.
Large deficits may make us uneasy. But I would think that the prospect of hundreds of thousands of desperate folks who lack money, jobs or hope ought to make us uneasier still.
Essay: Poll Obsession - 10.21.10
The opinion polls have consistently shown Rick Snyder is ahead in the race for governor. Michigan Radio's Jack Lessenberry has been wondering whether polls themselves are a good idea at all.
The one thing everybody seems sure about in the current race for governor is that Rick Snyder is ahead in the polls. We don't have any clear idea what he would do to balance the budget.
We're not sure what he would do to give our universities the money they need to adequately educate the workforce Michigan needs. Actually, we're not too sure how he stands on a broad range of issues, from privatization of the state's workforce to the proposed internationally owned bridge across the Detroit River.
Nor is the state's press corps working especially hard to find out. There are also many questions about Virg Bernero, his opponent, and what sort of policies he would adopt.
But we do know that Snyder is ahead by twenty percent in the polls. In fact, there is a new poll every few days that says much the same thing. This seems to be necessary so that Lansing pundits can pontificate on things like whether the Democrats should now put their money behind Secretary of State candidate Jocelyn Benson.
But is this what political reporting should be all about? True, reporting poll results is easier than trying to dig around to find out what the candidate would really do in office.
Or what his policies would really mean for our state. Since we've been telling voters over and over that this race is over, is there any wonder that people are apathetic about it?
More and more, I think the way we cover elections in this country is a disgrace. The only poll that counts occurs in voting booths on November. We've got an immense crisis in this state, and there are precisely two men who conceivably could be elected and face the task of trying to lead us out of this mess.
So, it would seem to me that we should concentrate more on who they are, what they would do, and what they are all about.
There are some people who do rise above this. I talked to one the other day. Jennifer is a 59-year-old woman who grew up in Ann Arbor, but never had the chance to go to college, because she had to help raise her siblings after her daddy died.
She's highly intelligent, politically independent, and works several jobs, including that of a textbook buyer. Been married for more than thirty years; raised three sons; lives in the house her parents built. Her big political moment came a long time ago, when she was a Catholic schoolgirl, and the nuns lined up her class to shake hands with a candidate named John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
She and some friends watched the debate between the candidates for governor, and decided they'd vote for Virg Bernero. "I don't know -- he just seemed more sincere. More like he had an idea what he wanted to do. The other one was sort of a corporate talker."
Perhaps she is a complete anomaly. But I thought it was interesting that she felt that way. Besides knowing what the candidates stand for, it would be nice to hear more in this campaign about some real people, and what they think about it.
Even if that means we skip an opinion poll now and again.
Essay: What We Should Ask - 10.20.10
Michigan gubernatorial candidates Rick Snyder and Virg Bernero are making a lot of promises, but Michigan Radio's Jack Lessenberry says there's one big question they haven't answered.
Last night I presided over a fascinating meeting in Grand Rapids, the second in Michigan Radio's "Issues and Ale" series designed to stimulate public discussion.
The main event was a look at this year's campaign advertising by two members of the "Michigan Truth Squad," John Bebow, director of the non-partisan Center for Michigan, and Susan Demas, perhaps the best columnist in Lansing.
They are doing their best to analyze as many spots as possible and rate them on their truthfulness. You may not be surprised to learn that most of today's ads bear only a passing relationship to reality.
In fact, Dr. Grins' Comedy Club was the perfectly appropriate place for this. But what I found even more interesting than the truth squad were the questions from our large and very aware audience.
The very first question was extremely perceptive. A gentleman noted that Michigan was facing a huge budget crisis next year, and that whomever takes over as governor will inherit a deficit of at least $1.6 billion dollars. So how are they going to balance the budget?
What's more, either Virg Bernero or Rick Snyder would immediately make that figure worse -- if they keep their promises. Bernero wants to get rid of the 22 percent surcharge on the Michigan Business Tax. That may be a good idea from the standpoint of attracting business, but would add to the state budget deficit.
Rick Snyder, the Republican, wants to abolish the Michigan Business tax entirely, and replace it with a six percent corporate income tax. That would make the deficit worse still.
The gentleman in Grand Rapids knew that the state budget has to be legally balanced by the end of next September. So, why isn't either candidate telling us how they would manage that?
That's the question we all should be asking them.
Both candidates are in fact fighting hard to avoid giving you an answer, and especially to avoid giving you an honest one.
That's because they fear the truth will lose them votes. What they are going to have to do is either raise taxes or cut services drastically and dramatically raise the cost of things like college tuition. Most likely, they'll have to do both.
The math is simple. There are no other choices, but they don't want to tell us that. Once upon a time, we had great leaders who called on us to sacrifice for the common good.
Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Working class Americans taxed themselves to better educate their children. Nowadays, politicians tell us any tax increase would be terrible. We tell them, "Keep cutting government, but don't you dare give me any less than I get now."
Something's got to give. Nearly half a century ago, my unreformed fifth grade teacher made us learn simple math. If I got my times tables wrong, I was whacked with a ruler.
I haven't the foggiest notion of what old Miss Hutson's politics were. But I am sure that on hearing their fuzzy math, she would have taken the ruler to both Snyder and Bernero.
And I think the rest of us just might deserve it as well.