No way to cut a budget

Apparently, only the Associated Press (AP) was looking earlier this week when Lansing lawmakers on Tuesday approved a $55 billion plan for roads and colleges. The story was published Tuesday by Crain’s Detroit Business.

With the Mackinaw conference coverage taking top priority this week, this plan slipped through with little examination by anyone.

The plan, put together in a span of hours according to AP (amazing what our legislators can do when their summer vacation is at risk), has already passed out of House/Senate conference panels and is set for a vote in the House this coming week.

There’s one specific part of the multibillion dollar plan that is just wrong. There may be others, but this one caught my eye.

To save money and use it to fix roads, the Lansing legislators will close the W.J. Maxey Boys Training School in Whitmore Lake, which is just north of Ann Arbor. Closing the school will save $7.5 million.

The Maxey Boys Training School is where boys 12-21 year olds are sent, instead of prison. It’s a 60-bed facility with about 50 boys housed there right now. The boys sent to Maxey require specialized, intensive rehabilitation treatment and a high level of security to provide personal and community safety.

Maxey’s staff is made up of clinical professionals such as psychiatrists, psychologists and certified social workers. Individual, group and family approaches are used to stabilize behavior in areas such as sex offender treatment, substance abuse, criminal behavior and behavioral health (mental health).

I’ve been to Maxey. Once. A kind-hearted guy I used to work with, Lou, used to make a monthly run to Maxey to donate blankets and other supplies. I went with him one month.

Maxey is better than prison, but it’s difficult to go there and see what’s going on. The thing to remember is that it isn’t prison. Yes, it’s a lockdown facility and should be. No, there are no hardened adult inmates there who can move these boys further along a criminal path.

Maxey is there for a reason. As bad as it may be in the eyes of some, Maxey offers a better chance at some level of rehabilitation than prison. Health and Human services spokesman Bob Wheaton was quoted in the AP story as saying his agency will give judges viable alternatives on where to send those housed at Maxey once it closes.

The last time I heard something like that was from Gov. John Engler, known for closing 11 clinics for the mentally ill, including the Lafayette Clinic in downtown Detroit. The ill were just turned out into the street when the closing bell rang. Most of them ended up in prison.

If we’re talking an overall $55 BILLION here, then $7.5 million is next to nothing to keep the Maxey boys out of Jackson Prison and others like it. Think about it – where are the judges going to send these boys?

You know as well as I do.

Tall fences make great neighbors

If good fences make good neighbors, then these builders need to erect a fence high enough to blot out the sun.

Royal Oak has an ordinance stating when construction work on a house can commence. The ordinance says work can start at 7 a.m. weekdays, 8 a.m. Saturdays and 10 a.m. Sundays.

On Mother’s Day, work started on this oversize house, which is two doors west of our home, at 7:10 a.m. That was the time the electric saw cranked up and it stayed that way until 8:35 a.m.  After that, the workers took off in a car and didn't return for the rest of the day

Which leads me to the whodunit part of the program. I’m not going to go ask the construction workers about this because I don’t want a drill bit up my nose. (This is where women have it all over men. If I go tell them to quiet down, it’s open season on me. If, as Suzy did, goes and tells them to quiet down, they aren't

 going to lay a glove on her).

Anyway, take a good look at the picture. You don’t see a generator. This picture was taken while the workers were still there. You can see them on the roof.

 So what was the electric saw connected to?

Our neighbors immediately west of us had the answer. They came home one day and found that, without their permission “someone” had plugged into the utility outlet on their garage. After unplugging the cord, they taped the outlet to register their displeasure.

Then, Monday morning, the landlord of the house came over at the behest of his tenants who thought their troubles were over after taping the outlet. It seems they had called the landlord because the air conditioning wasn't working.

On closer examination of the outside air conditioning unit, the landlord found that “someone” had plugged into the air unit and when they were through, had failed to reassemble the unit correctly.

Nice, eh? After another round of complaining, a generator finally appeared on the site.

From time to time, a few of our neighbors, including us, gather on the sidewalk and grumble about this new construction. We think it’s way too big for the lot and isn't going to fit in with the rest of our homes, design wise. Oh – I think it’s safe to assume that our house and our neighbors’ houses were purchased for under $200,000.

The new house is going to be put on the market for more than $500,000.

I hope the eventual owners of this new house have a $200,000 attitude, to match the neighborhood. No one is looking forward to the potential of having someone move in with a $500,000 attitude.

Then again, that’s what fences are for. 

Trouble in the back of the bus

Vignettes

·         

• 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.