Songs of Freedom

It was not so long ago that Detroit was a beacon to the nation. Capitalizing on the ingenuity and the perseverance of entrepreneurs, the city housed some of the best and the brightest. Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records, was just such an entrepreneur. In such troubling times as these, it would be worthwhile to revisit where his success stemmed from, and what we might glean from his ideas.
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Presidential Pardon

There is precious little to praise in the legislative world these days. So it's my particular delight to publicly commend one lawmaker for mustering the backbone to admit a mistake, pledge to correct it and model a genuine apology.
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Tear Down This Wall

"Am I optimistic that they can avoid it . . . ? I am not." That's what retired judge Ray Graves said this week when asked whether Detroit Public Schools, which he is advising, would be forced into bankruptcy. Facing violence, a shrinking student body, and graduating just one out of every four students who enter the ninth grade on time, the city's schools have been stumbling for years. Now they face a seemingly insurmountable deficit and are expected to file for bankruptcy protection at about the time that students should be settling down in a new school year.
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Pool Party

On the left, it has self-interested Michigan Education Association leaders fulminating and issuing fatwas, while Gov. Jennifer Granholm shakes her head gloomily and avers that she'll have to "see the details." On the right, they're looking for a snake in the grass, and muttering suspiciously that it's part of a larger Democratic scheme to engineer a major tax increase.
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Departmentalize

It appears that the long awaited "bold reform" in Michigan government is merely combining state departments. The proposed recombining of the Departments of Natural Resources and Environmental Quality would save little money — a few hundred thousand dollars at most in the face of a state overspending crisis that could top $2 billion. More important, however, it would not remedy the two major structural problems at the root of state environmental and natural resource programs' poor performance: the obstructionist state regulatory bureaucracy.
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Driven to Tears

New unemployment statistics are the latest in a seemingly endless series of reminders of Michigan's economic woes and policy miscalculations. The state's unemployment rate leapt to 15.2 percent in June, the 40th consecutive month Michigan has had the highest unemployment rate in the nation. To put things in even greater perspective, consider that Puerto Rico's unemployment rate — 14.5 percent — is lower than Michigan's, the first time it has been lower than any state in the union since 1976, save for one month after Louisiana was blasted by hurricane Katrina.
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Bargaining Power

Budget problems are the norm for Michigan school districts these days. Detroit Public Schools is considering declaring bankruptcy, and school boards around the state need serious fiscal reform. At the same time, there is little doubt that many necessary reforms will be met with strong opposition from the state's largest teachers union — the Michigan Education Association. As school boards make difficult budgetary decisions and prepare to negotiate with unions, it is important for them to remember the true mission of teachers unions.
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Art Attack

A July 8 Detroit News article reads like a Monty Python sketch: "Detroit council trashes art created for Paradise Valley." After commissioning three artists to create pieces commemorating the once artistically vibrant area of downtown Detroit — now the site of Comerica Park and Ford Field — council members deemed the works "too abstract" and pulled the plug on their installation.
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Too Big to Succeed?

In 1890, Americans were outraged that their House of Representatives in Washington spent a record $1 billion dollars in just two years. They punished the "Billion Dollar Congress" in the elections that year by making the majority party the minority party, cutting its roster in the House by more than 90 seats.
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When We Should Break a Promise

The Michigan Senate recently voted to cut the $140 million Michigan Promise Scholarship. Created in 2006, this tuition assistance program awards $4,000 to each student who achieves a proficient score on the Michigan Merit Exam. It also hands out another $4,000 to each student who fails to meet the MME proficiency level but maintains a 2.5 GPA in their first two years at a Michigan college.
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