Archive for the ‘Eric Baerren’ Category

Eric Baerren

The big news today coming out of Lansing is that the city government of the Capital City will ink a deal with a tribe from the Upper Peninsula to expand casino gambling. I’ll spare you the predictable joke about legalized gambling in the state’s capital city, at least until the next paragraph.

Monday morning, Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero lauded the agreement as a way to anchor downtown Lansing and stimulate economic activity. He even said it will be built with a union workforce, a feather tossed to construction workers who during the mayor’s tenure have had no love lost for him (rumblings from within held that during the 2010 gubernatorial race they preferred Bernero’s Democratic opponent, Andy Dillon, a milksop of a House Speaker who is now state treasurer).

If plans go forward, the casino will be a few short blocks from the Capitol, giving lawmakers on marathon sessions gambling the state’s future on ideas that have never held up when put into practice – we call this fiscal conservatism – an opportunity to legally wager away yet more taxpayer dollars at the poker tables.

At least it will keep them out of the downtown bars.

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Eric Baerren

Every year around this time, the governor delivers a gift to the commentariat with his State of the State address. The physical form of this is a chit that reads: The bearer of this is entitled to one week off of thinking in pursuit of his professional duties as long as he or she is willing to offer cheap advice on what I should say.

Most of us remember the mood during last year’s State of the State. Everyone was curious what newly-minted Gov. Rick Snyder might say or how he might start positioning the considerable political capital he possessed following his landslide victory and the tidal wave that swept his party into dominating majorities in the legislative and judicial branches. Snyder had run as a non-political, tough-minded, business-like nerd – a novelty item in Lansing like a pile of plastic dog droppings that comes with a realistic scent – and everyone was curious what sort of tone he’d set.

It turned into an exciting spectacle for those trapped inside the Lansing bubble, that four-block veil around the Capitol that is impenetrable by anything resembling the real world. The governor struck a civil, non-partisan tone. For a press corps who believe that all of the world turns on political rhetoric, it was a master stroke worthy of praise right up with Snyder’s purchase of ad time during the Super Bowl.

What did it mean? In the long run, not much. The governor promptly enraged everyone that the speech had pleased, which is to say that his policies divided instead of united. And his own party continued to suspect him of “statist” leanings, which is to say that beneath his cold, hard accountant’s exterior beat a heart of someone who might just be a communist.

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Eric Baerren

In the Year of our Lord 2011, elected state government of Michigan declared war on its most needy citizens. Welfare was capped, thousands were thrown off federal food assistance (of no savings to the state) and tax breaks aimed to help the working poor were reduced, with the remainder handed to wealthy people. At one point, they even went after a fund to help cremate dead indigents, and badly gashed a fund to help provide clothing for orphans.

Their campaign was successful. The state’s poor – its weakest and most vulnerable citizens – were easily vanquished. The message: When you’re down, you can expect that state government will add a kick for good measure.

While you might have expected elected state government to take time to relish their victory, our elected leadership knows better. Never relent, never give up. The latest? Drug testing for state aid recipients.

Drug testing – like the assets test for federal food assistance – is not a new thing. During the Engler years, all welfare recipients were tested, and it took federal courts to put a stop to the program on the grounds that it presumed guilt without probable cause.

The underlying belief is that there is a vast network of people who do nothing but lie around all day long and get high. When it comes time to pay the bills, they wait for government checks to roll in. While you slave away for dwindling wages, they get stoned while you get the honor of paying for it through taxation.

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Eric Baerren

It was almost four years ago that Michigan voters overwhelmingly adopted a ballot proposal that permitted the use of medical marijuana. That year, it was the most popular prominent question on the ballot, beating both stem cell research and the presidential ticket.

Since then, with such a clear public mandate behind the idea, state government has naturally attempted to undo what voters did. Michigan currently knows no greater Drug Warrior than its attorney general, Bill Schuette. As an appeals court judge in 2008, Schuette led the campaign against medical marijuana, warning darkly that passage would prompt California-style dispensaries to pop up all over the state and that the issue was really a stalking horse for the movement of people who wanted to legalize the drug. Voters across the state responded by voting in favor of medical marijuana by two-to-one.

Since becoming attorney general, Schuette has been undeterred, effectively writing his own laws outlawing the dispensaries he warned about in 2008 by arguing that no one expected that they’d be part of the package. And he is expected to be the primary foe if a ballot drive reportedly in its infancy takes off.

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Eric Baerren

One of the first acts by this year’s Michigan Legislature has also become one of its most toxic albatrosses, and the reek shows no signs of going away.

Among the things Gov. Rick Snyder inherited were a number of cities and school districts in severe financial distress. Part of this was due to declining revenues through years of neglect from Lansing and declining property values. Part of it, however, was due to corruption and incompetence. For instance, the Detroit Public Schools, under an emergency financial manager appointed by Snyder’s predecessor, had a school board whose president was not only functionally illiterate, but later bounced from office for lewd behavior.

The problem was that the old law authorizing the state to appoint emergency financial managers was weak. The emergency financial managers had few concrete powers, because the original authors understood that Michiganders traditionally love the idea of local control while hating state government.

Snyder pushed for and got a law authorizing sweeping new powers for emergency managers. They could fire local officials, tear up contracts with unions and usurp powers otherwise laid out in city charters. In doing so, however, he made three blunders.

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Eric Baerren

The scorn for the legislation sitting on the desk of Gov. Rick Snyder that bans domestic partner benefits among public employees can now be described as universal. Everyone, it seems, from economic development folks to the universities to the Detroit News now believes the governor ought to veto that rotten pig of a bill.

But the question of whether Snyder will veto the bill is less important than how we got to this point.

It is evident in the split opinion within the Legislature whether the law applies to university employees. In other words, the Legislature produced a bill the ramifications of which it doesn’t actually understand. For that reason alone, it is veto worthy. But why would the Legislature produce something it didn’t understand?

Simple. The Legislature is incompetent – perhaps the most incompetent Legislature this state has ever seen, and certainly within living memory. To understand the meaning of that, you have to remember that within the last five years state government has gone into short, symbolic shutdowns because the Legislature couldn’t pass a budget on time.

There is incompetence in being able to do your basic job, and there is incompetence in doing your job without having the first idea of what you’re doing. This Legislature fits into that second description.

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Eric Baerren

The governor, bless his heart, campaigned for the job of telling everyone that he wasn’t interested in social issues. His focus was on fixing Michigan’s budget process and making changes so that the state could prosper. He projected an image of excellence, that a state long mired in recession and sadness would not just once again thrive but be a shining example. Rick Snyder’s Michigan would once again be a place envied by people who don’t live here.

His economic message is predicated on talent. That would be people, for those uninitiated with economic development buzzwords. The key to economic vitality in today’s economy is making the state attractive to talented, creative people. In one of his special messages to the Legislature, he very pointedly said so. People who do economic development for a living found his remarks about talent to be refreshing, and said no other governor in the republic sounds so attuned to what really drives today’s economy.

Attracting talent is all about inclusion, making outsiders feel welcome. You let them know that if they bring their skills and creative abilities here, they will be rewarded with a place that lets them live according to their customs and identity in comfort. To this, Snyder has talked about the need to make Michigan welcoming for immigrants, especially those with entrepreneurial aptitudes and a desire to work hard.

And so strikes a tone of discordance on the issue of inclusion. He likes to talk about it in roundabout ways, but the issue comes with a lot of baggage – baggage he’s ignored since becoming governor. Turns out that there are a lot of people who aren’t so hot on inclusion, and many of them are in his own party. In fact, the Legislature he was handed is practically the biggest enemy to inclusion in the state.

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Eric Baerren

Allstate wants you to know that the auto insurance market is a difficult place. In a grocery store, you purchase toothpaste based on which brand has the flashier packaging, but when you get down to cases Allstate offers substance over style. Auto insurance is so important, their ad campaign wants you to understand, that you need to make a careful, informed decision.

Michigan’s Legislature is currently moving legislation that would treat your child’s education in that same way, like a box on a shelf containing a tube of toothpaste. The underlying belief is that choice in the marketplace will create competition in education, which will by an act of miracle improve schools. Hallelujah!

It’s a bold approach to education, made even more so because it’s done without a hint of evidence to suggest that it will work. In fact, Allstate knows that’s not how things work. What Allstate understands and what the Legislature doesn’t is that consumers don’t always make terribly well informed decisions, and instead usually just grab the tube of toothpaste that first catches their eye. Allstate wants you to slow down and choose your auto insurance more wisely. The Legislature makes a tremendous leap of faith in assuming that parents will.

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Eric Baerren

I have a confession, and it’s difficult to say. Given recent events, however, I feel the need to come clean. Here goes:

Back when I was in college, working for the student newspaper, I met my current Congressman, Dave Camp. I worked on several stories that put me in contact with his office, and I interviewed him a couple of times, including once when he came to campus. Later that day, in fact, he tried to maximize his media exposure in a store selling CMU clothing. It was that afternoon that we had sex.

I won’t go into details, but will add that coming clean leaves me feeling finally relieved.

I was encouraged to come forward by recent events. The public learned the lurid details of what happened at Penn State, and then last week allegations were made public that another Michigan Congressman, Flint Democrat Dale Kildee, molested a distant family member several decades ago. If you can think of a more appropriate time, I’m happy to hear it.

There is one small difference. I made it up. OK, I didn’t make up the part about interviewing Dave Camp, or the bit about him and the CMU clothing. It was a big football game, and Camp really tried to double his media exposure by posing with CMU shirts.

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Eric Baerren

Tucked away in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 was an exemption to the Safe Drinking Water Act for fracking. Fracking, nearly as dirty as it sounds, involves shooting jets of chemical-laden water underground to produce fissures, which release trapped natural gas. The gas is then piped to the surface and used to produce energy.

Oil and gas companies have fracked for decades, in Michigan and elsewhere, and it’s been mostly pursued safely. What changed over the last decade was that oil and gas companies were on the verge of another great energy rush, with fracking as the method of choice. In 2005, they were merely getting out ahead of the game by getting it exempted from federal drinking water laws.

The industry has long maintained that fracking poses no danger to drinking wells. Now, you might ask why something that poses no danger to drinking water has to be exempted from laws intended to protect drinking water. It’s a good question. It would have been a better question in 2005. Today, we can mostly dream about what might have been.

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