Jocelyn Benson

Many people disagree over the expanded use of Michigan’s Emergency Financial manager law under the Snyder-Dillon administration.  According to a recent Detroit Free Press poll, 42 percent support it and 45 percent want to see the law repealed.

Those in support of the law allowing a state appointed manager to assume the major oversight responsibilities for a city or school district, including the expanded power to terminate collective bargaining agreements, generally argue that state oversight is the only way to ensure localities on the verge of bankruptcy implement difficult fiscal decisions, cuts and layoffs that are necessary to ensure solvency.  Opponents counter that the state-appointed managers, which assume the power and authority of local elected officials, are a direct affront to the democratic voice and power of citizens.

But nearly everyone agrees that something must be done to aid our failing cities and public educational institutions. From Flint to Benton Harbor and most recently in Detroit, there is widespread consensus that agrees that a municipality in fiscal crisis hurts everyone.

That’s why those opposing the Emergency Financial Manager law must not only collect signatures in support of an initiative to overturn the law.   They must also propose an alternative solution to ensure that our localities are financially strong.

And supporters of the law must acknowledge that there is little evidence to suggest an Emergency Manager will have any better success at avoiding bankruptcy than local elected officials, or any success at all.

What middle ground is there between these two opposing perspectives?  One that recognizes that there is a both a benefit to having an external expert assist in solving local problems that seem intractable, and that at the same time, preserving self-governance is as critical to the health of a city or school district as is fiscal prosperity.

One solution is for the state to agree to restore the terrible cuts made to revenue sharing that have hurt our cities – Detroit in particular, as well as Flint and Benton Harbor.  The state should also commit to train local elected officials and equip local leaders with the same resources they are giving to the Emergency Managers.  And appointed Emergency Managers should, as they do now, serve in their capacity as consultants – not dictators.  They should still be empowered to review a city or district’s finances and overall infrastructure, but should not be granted unilateral, unaccountable authority in making permanent changes.

The managers should instead be permitted to only implement temporary changes, and to make recommendations for any long-term or permanent changes that can best address the crisis.  Citizens should then be given the opportunity at the next possible election date to review and vote on enacting aspects of those recommended changes – thereby empowering voters to direct their state and city on the solutions they would like to see implemented.

This solution, of course, would take a lot more time than simply appointing someone to take over the management of a locality.  But it would promote the development of new and creative approaches to problem-solving and override potential political log jams that may be preventing progress, while also preserving important aspects of citizen authority.

Herman Cain

In a sea of negativity and distractions in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, I decided to throw my support behind former Speaker Newt Gingrich because I can now see much clearer distinctions between President Obama and Newt than I do between Governor Mitt Romney and the president.

These distinctions are between Obama’s hodgepodge of foggy small ideas, which he talked about in his State of the Union address, and Speaker Gingrich’s clear and bold solutions for solving the crises we face as a nation. And yes, my bold 9-9-9 tax reform plan is a serious consideration for Speaker Gingrich, which is why I accepted his invitation to co-chair his Economic Growth and Tax Reform Advisory Council.

The polls do not agree with my assessment of Speaker Gingrich, and it appears that the so-called political establishment does not agree. But remember, I’m Mr. Unconventional, and the ability of the Republican nominee to highlight distinctions clearly in the general election campaign will be critical to achieving the ultimate mission of defeating President Obama.

My decision was not based on the political pundits’ attempted labeling of the candidates as conservative, most conservative,moderate, liberal Republican, not a true conservative, not a real conservative or any other of the concocted labels by which they try to pigeonhole candidates.

My decision to support Speaker Gingrich was also not influenced by all of the attacks and dirt dug up from Newt’s personal and political past, which all of the campaigns are guilty of doing – including Newt’s. As a reminder, Newt specifically tried to stay out of the negative attack mode but was forced into it after being bombarded with attacks in Iowa, and some early attacks in South Carolina, where he not only survived but won the primary.

The bombardment of attacks on Newt is being launched again in Florida. I believe he will survive as the clarity of his solutions rises above the rhetoric.

And now, some of the former Members of Congress who served with Newt when he was Speaker of the House are trashing Newt, even though many former members thought highly of his leadership as Speaker. Their trash and attempts to say Newt was not a “Reagan conservative” (here we go again with the labels) are certainly adding credence to the emerging perception that the so-called Republican establishment is pushing hard for Mitt Romney to be the nominee.

That’s because the establishment does not want bold changes in Washington, D.C.

The bottom line is that the voters will decide. That’s why the voters got my first endorsement as announced previously, because the people have to remain inspired or the establishment wins. Most of us just want the people to win, and win with a people’s president in November.

Here are nine of Speaker Gingrich’s positives:

• He successfully led the passage of nine out of ten provisions in the Contract with America when he was Speaker of the House.
• He was a key player in passing welfare reform in the 1990s, and got President Bill Clinton to sign the legislation.
• He left Congress and spent years studying and developing bold ideas and solutions to our problems, many of which he is using as a candidate. This hiatus as an elected official gave him time for his head to clear and identify how to fix a broken Washington, D.C.
• He will ruffle feathers in Washington in order to change Washington.
• He will be bold in boosting economic growth because he understands that less government is the key, not more government as Obama believes.
• He believes in removing regulatory barriers so this country can become energy-independent by maximizing all of our natural resources.
• He is an outstanding debater and his language connects with people.
• He fearlessly body-slammed the media in a recent debate, which showed strong conviction, character and leadership qualities.
• His motivation to be president is the same as our motivation for bold solutions in Washington, D.C. It’s not about us. It’s about the grandchildren.

Thomas Jefferson said, “When people have the right information, then they will make the right decisions.” It is way past time for the media and campaigns to focus on solutions so people can get the right information.

We must make the right decision in November 2012.

Dan Calabrese

Look out, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Raleigh. You could be next.

After touting the outcome of his decision (actually George W. Bush regrettably got the ball rolling) to bail out the Big Three, President Obama told the nation on Wednesday night that it doesn’t have to end there!

“What’s happening in Detroit can happen in other industries,” Obama beamed. “It can happen in Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Raleigh.”

Leaving aside for a second that he also declared “no bailouts, no handouts and no copouts” (we will leave that aside because he certainly did not mean it), let’s consider what is happening in Detroit – and whether this is really what we want to see on a widespread basis across the nation.

To wit:

• To this day, the federal government owns 33 percent of General Motors.
• Chrysler, which is still not profitable, just added 2,100 new employees anyway.
• GM, which fell far short of its goal of selling 10,000 Chevy Volts in 2011, is still proceeding with plans to boost production of the vehicle to 60,000 a year, and promising to add shifts to the plant in Hamtramck for that purpose.
• All of the Big Three have promised the UAW that they will fulfill commitments to massive new hiring, signing bonuses, inflation protection and investments in plant upgrades – in spite of the fact that they continue to face competition from foreign transplants with much lower labor costs.

These are not good business practices. These are political business practices. They are undertaken because politicians who bail out companies want to show, as quickly as possible, that they were wise in doing so. No method of showing this is more effective than touting new hiring and plant expansions, so we get lots of both.

The problem, of course, is that the Big Three came into their existential crisis precisely because their overhead and legacy costs got out of control. Between their wage levels, benefit packages, plant operation costs and retiree health care burdens, it became impossible for the Big Three to avoid losing money even if they sold every car in their inventory.

When Obama boasts that he got management and labor to “settle their differences,” well . . . yeah, but not every agreement reflects an understanding of fiscal reality such that the parties can move forward prosperously. The UAW made short-term concessions and let it be known that it would be looking for make-goods at the earliest opportunity. And it got them in the form of the signing bonuses and other attractions that made media and politicians cheer – more jobs! good-paying jobs! – but also reflected an institutional failure to understand that without cost control, you cannot long sustain the profitability that is only a very recent development in Detroit.

The larger problem, of course, is that Obama propped up this very way of thinking by bailing GM and Chrysler out. Rescued companies who truly understood what they had done to themselves would have downsized, dramatically cut their labor costs and focused on generating more revenue from less capacity. The last thing they would be doing is opening and/or expanding plants so soon after having their lives saved from the crushing weight of their old overhead costs.

If fundamental thinking in the domestic auto industry does not change, the Big Three will be back before the federal government the next time the economy tanks, credit tightens or people just figure out that their products aren’t really worth what they’re asking for them.

Had GM and Chrysler gone under, we are told, they would have taken suppliers down with them and 9 million jobs would have been lost. This is garbage. To the extent that a market existed for some of their brands, other companies would have purchased the plants, purchased the brand names and kept a portion of the operations running. Suppliers would still have had their customers. The industry would have been smaller – which it needed and still needs to be – but the predicted Armageddon would not have occurred.

Because Barack Obama and almost every Michigan politician – regardless of party – did not understand that, we have a domestic auto industry that remains bloated and is making decisions to expand its cost structure so as to vindicate these same politicians.

And this can happen in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Raleigh too, can it? Friends in those cities: Run.

© 2012 North Star Writers Group

Gregory D. Lee

This week, the New York Times breathlessly reported in its New York Region section that the New York Police Department had committed a politically incorrect felony by using a film, The Third Jihad, to train its officers on the hidden agenda of many Muslims residing in the U.S. That hidden agenda is the destruction of the United States.

Apparently, the Times doesn’t realize that some Muslims in and out of this country want to harm New Yorkers and other Americans. The article says about the film: “Ominous music plays as images appear on the screen: Muslim terrorists shoot Christians in the head, car bombs explode, executed children lie covered by sheets and a doctored photograph shows an Islamic flag flying over the White House.

“This is the true agenda of much of Islam in America,” a narrator intones. “A strategy to infiltrate and dominate America. … This is the war you don’t know about.”

Apparently the reporter at the Times didn’t know about it either. What is apparent is that the NYPD felt it was important to educate its officers and to give them insight into the goals of some radical Muslims residing in this country. Obviously, the NYT lacks insight because it’s blinded by political correctness.

Never mind that the FBI and NYPD have uncovered plots by radical Muslims to kill soldiers at Ft. Hood, Texas, blow up Times Square, kill soldiers at a recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas, shoot up the Pentagon and Marine Corps museum in Virginia, attack soldiers at Ft. Dix, New Jersey, set off a bomb at Ft. Hood, blow up spectators at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon, and attack several sites in Tampa, Florida. These are examples of the scores of incidents perpetrated by immigrant and native-born Muslims living in this country.

The Times headline described the film as “a dark film on U.S. Muslims,” and reported that the film has been “shown to more than a thousand officers as part of training in the New York Police Department.” Can you imagine a big city police department training its officers about the perpetrators of actual and potential future terrorist attacks?

The Times reporter gleefully wrote that once “the news broke” last January that the NYPD had shown the film to its officers, a “top” police official originally denied it. However, the Times was on the case to uncover the extent of the training, and find out how many other politically incorrect conspirators it could identify. An NYPD officer said the department received the DVD documentary from the Department of Homeland Security. When the Times reporter interrogated an unnamed DHS spokesman, the official said a DHS “contractor” might have provided it because the documentary is not part of its curriculum.

Under New York’s Freedom of Information Law, the relentless Times reporter discovered to his horror that 1,489 officers had viewed the film, and not just a “couple of times” by mistake, as originally stated by a unnamed NYPD official. The reporter makes it seem that anyone who views the film will catch a fatal disease so it must be reported.

Never once in the article was the accuracy of the film questioned.

Instead of reporting what radical Muslims say or write about plotting to destroy American and Western culture, the newspaper chooses to attack the NYPD, which is doing its best to prevent terrorism within the city limits.

According to The New York Times, being politically incorrect is a far greater crime than any crime a Muslim has committed or is plotting to commit.

© 2012 North Star Writers Group

Reach Gregory D. Lee through his website: www.gregorydlee.com.

Robert Laurie

Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Detroit bore the stigma of being the most dangerous city in America.  Then, things seemed to get slightly better.  For a while, Washington D.C., New Orleans, Chicago and Los Angeles tossed the “most dangerous” title back and forth like a hot potato.  Not to be outdone, last year Motor City criminals reclaimed their crown.  In 2011 Detroit was once again the U.S. city in which you are most likely to be murdered.  So far, in 2012, things are getting worse.  Crimes like robbery, rape and non-lethal assault are down, slightly, but still far ahead of most cities.

So the city has taken the bold step of cracking down – on the victims.

Earlier this month, to combat auto theft, Detroit police banned parking on certain streets in the downtown entertainment district.  Violators who chose to park in normally legal spaces had their vehicles towed away, at their expense.  In short, the city banned parking in public parking spaces, because the vehicle owners might be the victim of grand theft auto.

During the week before the measure was enacted, 44 cars were broken into.  After the plan went into effect, there were no incidents whatsoever.  Of course, if police found vehicles occupying the spaces in question, they simply hauled them away and charged owners a ransom for their return.  Approximately 20 vehicles met this fate.

According to Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee, the scheme was a great success.

“For the short term it was a successful outcome,” he said. “But the feedback I got was not positive.”

Negative feedback?  Really?  Perhaps Detroiters would rather the police stop the break-ins the old fashioned way by, let’s say, actually catching the criminals. Maybe they’re not comfortable with the police-state mentality that suggests there’d be no crime, if only we could rid our city of these troublesome law-abiding citizens.  Whatever their objection, the public got their way and the endeavor came to a screeching halt.

Sadly, however, the city hasn’t learned its lesson.

During a Tuesday afternoon City Council meeting, President Pro Tem Gary Brown suggested that businesses could be forced to close at night, in order to deprive criminals of temptation.

“If we didn’t have gas stations and Coney Islands open after 11 o’clock,” Brown said, “if we had an ordinance that required people to get their gas between 5 o’clock in the morning and 11 o’clock – I don’t know if you have a constitutional right to go get gas at 2 a.m. . . .  You can get it between 5 in the morning and 11 at night.  If, in fact, we save lives, we harden the target and we reduce crime.”

To sum up the ramblings of our former police chief, if residents weren’t allowed to be in the city – making a living at night – they’d be far less likely to entice violent offenders. Pay no attention to the late-night worker whose house payments depend on his overnight diner. Ignore the couple who is about to run out of gas at 3 a.m. on the corner of Gratiot and Conner.  Whether you sell burgers or gas, if you’re making money in Detroit after dark, you’re the problem, not the criminals who’d like to harm you.

In short, Brown believes that you wouldn’t have gotten raped if you weren’t dressed like such a slut.

It’s the kind of backwards thinking that has always been used when law enforcement has given up on what’s right in favor of what’s easy. Since the City Council can’t figure out how to stem the tidal wave of crime facing Detroit, they’ve taken to removing what Brown refers to as “the targets” – namely, the taxpayers who generate their salaries.

How sad that, in a city that has made such strides, we’re still saddled with impotent politicians seeking the easiest way out of the mess their policies have created.

© 2012 North Star Writers Group

David Karki

Thank you, South Carolina! On Saturday, you administered a most-needed beatdown to Mitt Romney and put the lie, once and for all, to the twin myths of his “inevitability” and “electability.” The sheer scale of the wipeout clearly showed just how much Romney is disliked by and will never win over the conservative base, notwithstanding denial-driven emotional protestations by the media and GOP beltway establishment.

So, with the battle now fully joined and what looks to be a long Romney vs. Gingrich primary battle serving as a proxy in the war for the soul of the GOP between the Tea Party and the establishment, we move on to Florida on January 31^st. And while this was a most satisfying victory for both Gingrich and the heretofore quiet conservative base which finally found its voice and deafeningly roared, neither should read more into it than is there or rest on their laurels.

Romney still has a big money and organization advantage, which is no small thing in an expensive state like Florida. He’s been running ads for two weeks and many early votes have already been cast, prior to the big turnaround in South Carolina. So he has a bit of a head start. Rick Santorum will bleed votes away, especially as the establishment uses him as a stalking horse, propping him up as long as they can.

And most of all, the entire “mainstream” media and GOP beltway establishment will now throw everything it has and all the dirt it can muster at Gingrich. The scorched-earth destruction machine is aimed squarely at his white-haired head; all those “Vichy” Republicans content with having sold out the Tea Partiers who got them the House back in 2010 are not about to have their comfortable existence ended by him and all us rabble that have accepted his faults and, with some reluctance, decided that his voice is our best representation among the otherwise uninspiring options available this election. After all, if nothing else Gingrich does seem to have all the right enemies.

That over-the-top reaction – best exemplified by Brit Hume’s unhinged rant to close FOX News’ coverage Saturday night – should be instructive for those of us wanting to see an electoral fight against Obama and not Romney losing even more meekly than McCain did in 2008. (Or, as Gingrich himself put it so succinctly, you’re going to run the guy who lost to the guy who lost to Obama the last time around?) It tells us about both the identity and the nature of the enemies, plural, we face in the Democrats and GOP establishment.

One, they always indicate who they fear most by who they attack (Dems) and fail to defend (GOP) most. This has held true from Robert Bork to Clarence Thomas to Sarah Palin and now Gingrich. Far from backing off when the Democrats and beltway GOP scream, that’s when we should press all the more. That instinct is something completely lacking in the Romney/Boehner/McConnell axis, and why none of the three should be in a position of power come 2013.

Two, they haven’t learned a thing from their over-the-top attacks in the last 30 years. The only one of the four aforementioned targets of the destruction machine to actually be taken down by it was Bork. The others all survived, and Thomas and Palin have gone on to thrive, partly because the attacks against them were so ridiculous that they effectively became martyrs for a cause. Or, as Obi-Wan Kenobi said to Darth Vader in Star Wars: “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.”

I don’t harbor any illusions that many, maybe even the majority of those in South Carolina who voted for Gingrich love or even like him that much. They simply wanted to send a big upraised middle finger message to the establishment that would cram Romney down our throats, and saw the media’s blatantly hypocritical attempts to smear Gingrich with a decades-old tale for what it was. That the media actually managed to turn Newt, of all people, into a legitimate victim of sorts shows just how wildly overdone their attack was. Far from ruining Gingrich, it propelled him to victory. (And to Juan Williams and John King, thank you for that.)

Third, if we mean to have South Carolina leave a lasting impact, we must understand that this is a war for the soul of the country. And that those in power are not going to look at one lost primary and simply accept defeat. One somewhat lucky knockdown in the second round does not mean you immediately start wearing the title belt around your waist.  Now that the opponent has been angered and made to look bad, he will unload on you with every haymaker in his arsenal. Far from the end, this is just the beginning – and we had better be prepared to weather the assault.

Just as the Civil War began with shots fired at Fort Sumter in South Carolina, so too could this be the opening salvo in a  most bitter and vicious presidential election. We should indulge with caution the idea that we can rise up and “roar” without a backlash that will personally affect each of us. We must all be willing to get outside our comfort zone, and not expect a presidential candidate to suffer all the slings and arrows alone.

We have one last opportunity to turn back from the road to outright communism and total insolvency down which Obama (and, to be fair, with a start from Bush before him) has hurled us at warp speed. Two entities stand in our way – the GOP beltway establishment first, and then the Democrats. Gingrich winning South Carolina so overwhelmingly was the first shot taken, and it found its mark. Many more will be needed – and many fired by a very determined opponent will be have to be absorbed – if we are to be successful in this most vital endeavor.

Brett Noel

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James Melton

While it is fashionable these days to engage in vitriol and vilification of the political “other side,” I am having a hard time thinking of Willard Mitt Romney as truly evil. Really.

Sure, I cringe when I think about having a private equity guy in the White House. I know enough about that business to realize that it can be creative and helpful or deeply cold-blooded and destructive. Romney’s work at Bain Capital apparently included plenty of both kinds of deals. That makes me uncomfortable. But it’s a big jump from knowing that to believing that one can divine what’s in a man’s soul. People are complicated, Romney more so than most.

Along with his shortcomings, Romney has some very good qualities – as a candidate and as a person – that make him by far the best Republican in the presidential field. None of those qualities make me want to vote for him in the fall, for reasons I will explain shortly. But even so, it’s worth noting some of them:

• Romney is no ideologue: Like Ronald Reagan, Romney has a strong pragmatic streak. As governor of Massachusetts, he was willing to pair spending cuts with revenue increases by raising fees and closing loopholes in the state tax code. That does not endear him to Tea Party activists. But a “cuts only” approach to fixing the Massachusetts budget would have been a nonstarter. Mitt chose to get things done.
• He made health care a priority: “Romneycare,” seen as Romney’s biggest vulnerability in the primaries, was actually a ground-breaking achievement. It is not the approach I would have chosen to provide near-universal health care in Massachusetts. But, for the most part, it worked and provided a template for the national Affordable Care Act.
• He’s boring – in a good way: It’s commendable that Romney has been married to the same woman for 40-plus years, raised a family and lived a scandal-free personal life. I try my best to be a good family man and it’s a trait I admire in others.
• He’s sane: That might seem like a “damning with faint praise” comment, but it’s not. In a Republican field that once included Michele Bachmann and still includes Ron Paul, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, it’s good to have a remaining candidate whom I would easily trust with nuclear launch codes. Now that Tim Pawlenty and Jon Huntsman are out of the race, Mitt is the only GOP contender who, as president, would not make me want to sleep in a bunker.

I could go on here, but I think you get the point. There are many good reasons to think Mitt is not the presidential candidate equivalent of Lex Luthor. In his own out-of-touch sort of way, Mitt really does seem to mean well. I see little indication, however, that Romney understands my interests or would do much to advance them. More importantly, I think a continuation of President Barack Obama’s policies would be better for me. So, I won’t be voting for Mitt.

The handling of the “managed bankruptcies” and federal rescue of General Motors and Chrysler is probably the best example of what troubles me about Romney. In November 2008, he famously called on the government to “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” and for the government to stand back and let it happen. In a stunning failure of imagination, Romney was unable to see that a “bailout” (I prefer to say “rescue”) was perfectly compatible with the bold restructuring of both car makers that he called for.

Given Romney’s background, I doubt it would have occurred to him to match Chrysler with Fiat. Nor does it seem likely that he would have worked with the United Auto Workers union to preserve U.S. jobs. And that makes perfect sense. From a traditional business perspective, the path of least resistance would have been to let GM and Chrysler go down in flames and take the UAW with them. Afterward, investors could have picked the meat from the carcass of the domestic auto industry and moved ahead into a radically outsourced, union-free, low-wage future. Or, maybe, everything could have just been sold for scrap – whichever was most profitable in the short run.

As I have written in the past, I am glad the Obama Administration pursued a riskier, bolder path. That is the kind of unorthodox resourcefulness that the United States needs right now. I see similar fresh thinking in Obama’s vision of rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, investing in education, boosting exports and encouraging the development of new energy sources.

By contrast, Romney’s main ideas come down to cutting taxes for corporations (again), a variation on “drill, baby, drill,” attacks on unions and more vague promises of “deregulation.” The only Romney idea that appeals to me very much is his proposal to stamp China as a currency manipulator. But, frankly, I wonder of Mitt really has the guts to do it. That assessment makes Romney’s evilness – or lack thereof –irrelevant.

So, sure, I think Romney owes the American people a full accounting about his offshore bank accounts, and his involvement in legal-but-distasteful business practices like dividend recapitalizations while at Bain. I also really look forward to seeing what is in his tax returns. But I honestly doubt that any of those things will prove that Mitt is secretly in league with Lord Voldemort, so I won’t bother to try.

The less-glamorous reality is that, instead of being evil, Romney is a guy who has very different values than me and who looks at business ethics through very different prism. His policy proposals reflect that. There certainly is room in my America for people like Mitt and I wish him the best. But I don’t want him to be my president – even if he is a first-rate husband and a really good dad.

© 2012 North Star Writers Group

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.

This is the same Bernero who over the years has made a national spectacle out of himself shouting on whatever television show would have him about the casino-like atmosphere of Wall Street and how it’s devastated the working families of Main Street. It was his chief pitch during his run in 2010. In fact, the sole piece of substantive policy to come from his wretched, still-born campaign was a state bank intended to loosen the purse strings of credit for small businesses because the casino-like mentality of Wall Street had frozen them. Now, he plans to build a temple honoring the spirit of Wall Street with the help of organized labor.

Irony. Sweet, delicious irony.

The announcement was made with the usual hoopla that accompanies these things – the twin spigots of roulette and blackjack will soon open, and cash will flow to everyone. Before a dime has rolled in or the plan has even received the approval of federal regulators, they’ve already spent much of the winnings on a scholarship program modeled on the Kalamazoo Promise. Five years hence, every child who graduates from the Lansing public schools will go to college for free. It will be a remarkable day, once they start collecting the money to make it happen.

No greater irony exists, however, in that the city of the state’s capitol for decades was chiefly known for making things, rather than being the center of state government.

Lansing’s long, storied manufacturing past gave Bernero’s ravings the hint of legitimacy. He did come from a car-making town with a rich tradition as one of America’s great middle-class cities.

Well, that would be gone if the plan goes through. Casinos aren’t places where things are made. They’re places where people from elsewhere come to stuff their hard-earned money into the pockets of the casino’s owners. What the town gets is a kickback for providing the venue where the transaction takes place.

That ought to make Wall Street happy. The bulldog of Main Street, at the end of the day, is really just one of them.

© 2012 North Star Writers Group