Trouble in the back of the bus

Vignettes

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• When the media weren't looking, Michigan’s Senate voted, in one day, to dismantle the monetary protections of no-fault insurance. It’s a compassionless move that overwhelmingly favors the insurance companies while hurting the average person.

What it means: For example, if your child comes out of a car accident as a paraplegic, an insurance adjuster, not a doctor, will decide his course of care. Does that sound right to you?

It also hurts your chances of staying alive once you’re taken to a hospital for care. The bill calls for a reduction in the amount of money a hospital will be reimbursed, which means trauma units will lose jobs and lack of staffing means less care.

The no-fault bill is scheduled to be voted on by the full House this week. Google your state House rep today, call him or her and emphatically leave instructions to vote no on this bill. It’s OK if you get your rep’s assistant – they keep track of which way the calls go.

·         I’m thinking about the case of the 13-year-old African-American Bloomfield Hills student who was harassed and repeatedly called the n-word on a school bus during an outing.

The school administration, the students, parents and the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office have made much of this. Their message is zero tolerance of such behavior. The two kids who led the harassment have been suspended; the Oakland prosecutor is deciding whether to charge them and if so, with what.

It’s nice to have that kind of firepower in your corner. It’s actually quite overwhelming. One question bothers me, though: How is this student going to learn to successfully fend for himself?

Unfortunately, I doubt this is the last time the student will be faced with such an ugly situation. Hating has become a national sport. 

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

Let’s not forget Malcolm X: “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.”

Punishing the students who harassed the 13-year-old is one way to handle this. Another way would be to educate all students at the school about diversity and why what those two students did was wrong.

It’s education, not the prosecutor’s office, which will bring peace to this situation.

Pinocchio tries to pull a fast one

No one likes to be lied to.

If Governor Rick Snyder had come forward and said Proposal 1 contains 10 other pieces of legislation

The Detroit News

he’d like to pass, then I might not have liked it but at least he would have been honest.

Taken individually, the 10 other pieces of legislation could have merit, but we’re well past the point of debating them as a package.

That’s because the governor’s television commercials to get out the vote in favor of Proposal 1 are not truthful. The commercials say, in plain English, that the sales tax increase would be allocated to one thing: fixing Michigan’s roads.

There’s no mention of anything else.

But the proposal actually triggers changes that include more tax credits for low-income families and seniors, higher registration costs for new cars and trucks and, incongruously, greater transparency on public school spending. And while it is billed as new money for road repair, half of the first two years of the new money will pay off bonds for roads that have already been built.

Worse – the governor has been seen in clips shown on newscasts saying there is no Plan B. If Proposal 1 fails, that’s it. We live with the rotten roads.

Not having a Plan B is very poor stewardship on Gov. Snyder’s part. I believe the governor is lying about that, too. He probably does have a Plan B that’s more palatable than Proposal 1, but he wants everyone to vote on the Prop 1 package as though that’s the only thing available to them.

 Then there’s the cost.

During the first year, if the proposal passes, it will cost every household in Michigan slightly more than $500 a year, according to a story carried in Monday’s Crain’s Detroit Business. The story, written by The Associated Press, says after the first year that figure will drop slightly, to about $450 per household annually.

That’s a lot of money to pile on in an economy that’s not very good. Michigan still lags behind about 20 other states in recovering from the recession.

For all those reasons, I can’t see supporting Proposal 1. If you’re still undecided, get on
Google and search Proposal 1 Michigan. If the governor wanted Proposal 1 to pass, he should have offered up a clean bill that addressed the roads, period.

Veterinarians: what happened to reasonable rates?

Pets have lived with us all our married lives and before that, too. I can’t imagine a life without them.

But veterinarians today are not making it easy to be a good person and take proper care of our friends. Yet they insist that you do so, and wag their collective index fingers at you if you don’t do everything they say to do. And pay the associated fees, of course.

Vets are getting greedy regarding fees. There’s no longer anything altruistic about the veterinarian industry. On one hand, they want everyone to adopt an animal. On the other hand, you’ve just handed over a hefty adoption fee and saved a little friend from foul circumstances. That matters not. The vets of American are insisting numerous tests are necessary for your new friend. Expensive tests.

Can’t have it both ways, people.

A friend of mine just recounted on Facebook the passing of her beloved dog. For a diagnosis and then, for a burial fee, it cost her $1,000 to say goodbye to her dog.

Bella, the land manatee 

She’s a good person and would have done anything for her dog. Apparently, her vet was petting the dog with one hand and tallying up the damage on a calculator with the other hand.

I very much emphasize with her.

Shortly after we rescued Bella, my wife noticed a lump in her throat, and Bella hadn’t been watching anything traumatic on television. It was off to the vet for us.

After a little hmmmmmming and probing of the lump, first with fingers, then with a needle for a biopsy, we were told by our vet, whose bedside manners had vanished, that the lump had to be surgically removed. Only then would we know if the lump was malignant or benign.

So, of course, we had it removed. Then came the biopsy. Another expensive item, yet we had to be sure the lump wasn’t malignant. Turns out, it wasn't.

Bella spent the night at the vet’s and I could hear the tote board running for lodging fees. When we picked Bella up the next day, and this is important, she had a drain sticking out of the side of her throat. We were told to leave the drain in for a couple days.

Bella had other ideas. The next day when I came home from work, Bella proudly presented me with the drain, which she had pulled out of her neck. She was fine. I called the vet and said this case is history – we don’t need to come in and have the drain removed.

Oh, but you do, Mr. Sherman, the receptionist cooed. We have to make sure all of the drain was removed. Please bring Bella back as soon as possible.

I did so, reluctantly, as Bella had done an excellent job. All they did was say yup yup yup, your dog got all of the drain.

The cost of all this? Just shy of $1,600, American money. The vet tried to charge for removing the drain, too, and I learned that for a medium-sized overnight cage with no HBO or Internet, we got dinged $80.

I asked our vet about all this. He told me that– ta da – there is now pet insurance, all the while agreeing with me that veterinary care was becoming very expensive.

It must be difficult to talk out of both sides of your face simultaneously. Veterinarians don’t do it very well. I guess it’s one of those talents best left to the professional liars – our politicians.

Curiosity brings out best in party-goer

I was at a party last Saturday night.

Parties make me uncomfortable these days. I don’t follow or care about sports, so that’s an automatic conversation killer. I only knew about three people at the party, so I took my drink and retreated to the dining room, as most of the action was in the kitchen.

Another fellow was already at the table. He introduced himself as an engineer who worked for one of the auto companies. He looked to be about 15 years younger than me, so I wasn’t expecting much in the way of conversation.

Was I wrong.

He’d listened as I was introduced around and wanted to know what life was like as a journalist. I told him a couple stories, but he wasn't satisfied. His real question was bigger than my answers.

He said he was outright upset about the declining state of newspapers here and across America. “Who’s watching the politicians these days? The police? The school boards? They’re all getting away with murder!”

He continued and I lit right up. I told him he was not only correct, but the situation was likely to worsen as newspapers are forced out of business. I hadn't heard such rhetoric coming from a non-journalist in years.

We entered into a discussion that lasted about an hour. Turns out he’s very well-read—something I don’t expect of most people anymore. He uses his local library frequently. He listens to National Public Radio and watches a couple of current event programs on public television.

I was happily stunned.

I agreed with what he was saying. We agreed things aren’t the way they used to be just a few years ago, when newspapers still had some money, guts and could get things done. These days time and budget constraints keep reporters from digging too deep into corruption. One online news source, Propublica.org, is kicking that trend because it has private funding and a pretty nice mission statement:

“To expose abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business, and other institutions, using the moral force of investigative journalism to spur reform through the sustained spotlighting of wrongdoing.”

The private funding I mentioned is important. I was once told by someone who works at Propublica.org that their staff can dig with impunity because no one can threaten to apply political pressure to shut them down.

I was thinking of The Detroit News when I wrote that last paragraph. Owned by a passionless and sterile investment company, I’ve heard from former News journalists who said they couldn’t expect much in the way of support for their investigative work.

I had all but given up hope of finding someone like this engineer, who would have made a good reporter himself. I can only hope there are more out there like him, who see through the shame of Fox 2 Entertainment (I can’t call what they do news because it just isn’t) and demand accountability. 

Ignorance reigns supreme in Lansing

The two headlines read:

“State chamber is neutral on sales tax hike to mend roads,” and

“House panel votes to end Michigan film incentives”

It’s hard to decide which to take on first, so we’ll go with the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, which the Associated Press out of Lansing has said will remain neutral on the May 5 vote that would increase the state sales tax as part of a road funding plan.

It’s not the chamber’s job to remain neutral. Their job is to show leadership and offer an opinion and back it up, popular or not. It follows that if the chamber isn’t doing its job, particularly on the tough issues, then it should disband.

The chamber cannot pick and choose which issue it wants to weigh-in on. This is an important vote; everyone in Michigan will be affected by the outcome. This line from the AP story kills me: “If the chamber hadn’t stayed neutral, it might have spent millions advocating the proposal’s passage or defeat.”

That’s the way it goes. If you do or don’t believe in something these days, you embark on a costly path to support your decision. The chamber is an institution that is supposed to lead, not abdicate the throne when things get difficult. Remember this the next time the chamber asks you to support this or that issue.

As for the film incentives, Michigan’s House Panel, clearly a no-fun, rabidly ignorant bunch, voted this past week to end them as of Oct. 1.

The numbers speak for themselves on this one.

The tax committee says film incentive dollars blew a $325 million hole in Michigan’s budget. Actually, according to the Free Press, Michigan spent closer to $425 million on the incentives, which were introduced here in 2008.

What the tax committee is ignoring is this: the incentives generated $1.3 billion in Hollywood spending, in Michigan, on things like wages, sound and lighting technicians, lumber yards to build sets, carpenters and electricians and food and lodging.

So, let’s do the math. Michigan spent $425 to get a return of $1.3 billion. My father used to be a stockbroker – he’d take those figures any day of the week.

The latest film shot here, as we all should know, is “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice.” It brought press from around the world to Michigan. When they got tired of reporting about the movie, they wrote flattering articles for their home papers on how Detroit’s comeback seemed to be real.

Remember? You can’t purchase that kind of press.

So rather than almost tripling our money, our wise House team shut the moneymaker down. That’s what passes for wisdom in Lansing these days. 

Vignettes

Is it just me, or:

• Are you, too, losing your resistance to the cold? I have no memory of winters this cold and unforgiving. I work for a hospital group and it seems our emergency rooms are all reporting increased incidents of patients with COPD, the same thing that killed Leonard Nimoy. I used to walk outside for exercise; not any longer. It’s all I can do to stay warm.

• ·         Is this a great idea? My wife and I take different freeways to work, but it seems there are enough people who dart in and out of traffic and text while driving to cover both freeways. My wife’s idea is to invent a screen that would fit over your front windshield and print what you say, in reverse type, so the person in front of you could read it in their rear view mirror. “Quit texting and drive, jerk” immediately comes to mind. I can see me getting into a ton of trouble with this, but having a good time all the while.

• ·         Are you going to vote NO on May 5 to increase the sales tax to fix roads? A gas tax won’t work either – the last time I read about a possible gas tax, Gov. Rick Snyder said it would be around 14 cents extra per gallon. A lot of people grumble about what they see as big government, but I think it’s time to send Gov. Rick to Washington to get some cash. Michigan, with economically inspiring news here and there, is still way behind other states in recovering from The Great Recession. We just can’t pay any more than we are and continue the recovery.

• ·         Did you snicker, too, when the Republican-led Congress in Washington failed to pass a bill funding Homeland Security? We all thought Speaker John Boehner had his troops moving in lockstep – what an embarrassment for him to find that he was presiding over a bunch of splinter groups.

• ·         Do you think the local media should have better things to do than report on Geoffrey Fieger being snubbed for membership in the Detroit Athletic Club?

• ·         Are you looking forward to the release of Harper Lee’s new/old book? I know I am, but since most people don’t read books anymore, I don’t know what kind of reception Lee’s book will get. As for me, I’m rereading “To Kill a Mockingbird” right now and finding that it has withstood the test of time. The last time I read it was in high school.

• ·         Would you, too, like to know who’s really behind these seemingly benign tests that pop on Facebook? Everyone complains about their online privacy, yet it seems the complainers are the first ones to provide answers to “Which State Are You?” or “What’s Your Real Age?” and then happily publish the results. My God. Go read a book if you still can.

Handcuffs, nudity and shades of wanna-be Greys

So you think you know bondage, eh? Not bondage as in “Of Human Bondage,” but bondage along the lines of “I’m naked and I can’t get untied, honey. Honey?”

Woo-woo.

I find it amazing how many bondage and discipline (B&D) experts have popped up in the media just in time to review “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

Movie reviewers in general don’t hold any sway with me. It’s easy to go to film school and then, without making a movie, tilt a beret and jump right into critiquing someone else’s work. Unless a movie is reviewed by a person who has made a movie and knows the difficulties and challenges involved, I don’t pay him or her any mind, and neither should you. You just encourage them.

I read five or six reviews of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” the movie that fell all over itself making money at the box office this weekend. The reviews were consistent and went something like this:

“The bondage was laughable. Nobody behaves like that in the bondage and discipline world. If they did, they’d be laughed out of the dungeon and into the street.

Really?

Such reviews imply, thickly, that the writer knows what he or she is writing about. It’s not unreasonable to expect a writer to know his or her subject matter. So did a coven (I’m fairly certain they travel in covens) of B&D experts conspire to put out reviews with the same faux-leather flavor?

Doubtful.

More likely than not, the movie hit too close to home for several reviewers who get the giggles just thinking about this stuff,  not to mention writing about it with one hand on their mouse and one hand on their mouse, as the late Robin Williams once said. That’s what happens when most of the nation would agree on a survey that, “I am a prude.”

I, personally, think the reviewers are all jealous of the protagonist and antagonist in the movie. They want to have a little fun, have a go, try it out, take it for a spin, run it up the flagpole (as it were), but their own prudish senses of behavior won’t let them.

What a shame, particularly as the rest of the world marches on into the 21^st century.

Tying up your significant other as a way to spice things up is old news in places like England and France. I read a brief Associated Press (AP) story yesterday about the London Fire Brigade issuing warnings about the movie. The story said the brigade had rescued 9 people so far in various stages of handcuffery and nudity.

And in France, the topic is so blasé that 12-year-olds are being allowed into theaters to watch the film, again according to the AP. Parents apparently aren’t worried about their children being irreparably harmed.

Before you get up on your high horse, consider this. “Fifty Shades of Grey” got a hard R rating. Movies like “Excalibur,” where a knight in King Arthur’s time is graphically impaled on a spear shortly after the movie begins, is rated PG.

Also, you might want to take a look at the video games children are playing. Grand Theft Auto, for instance, is all about raping women. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Watch a kid turn red when you ask to play the game all the way through with him.

What sort of society would you be most proud of: one that can tie a square knot or one that is numb to the violence of the streets, brought to you on the big screen by Hollywood?