Let’s make no mistake about it: We are letting our state, country and society fall apart, even as we sabotage our future.
Two new reports from two of the most respected independent research outfits in the state make that very clear:
- The Citizens Research Council of Michigan, one of the state’s oldest and perhaps most reliable think tanks, revealed that in recent years, Michigan has been dangerously under-spending on public health – that is, doing what we need to protect our citizens from polluted water, diseases, guaranteeing the safety and cleanliness of food from contamination, etc., etc.
Public health has, for at least a century, been seen as one of the core functions of government. But, the report says, “in recent years, the state has invested little more than needed to (qualify for) federal public health (matching) funding.”
This is more than poor spending priorities; this is downright dangerous: “This disinvestment has affected the ability of state and local health departments to provide essential services and leaves Michigan lagging the nation in both per-capita funding … and measures of population health.”
If this doesn’t change, and soon, watch for our average life expectancy to start shrinking and look for more, if different, Flint-type catastrophes — possibly including epidemics.
As always, their research is flawless; the Citizens’ Research Council’s slogan, coined by founder Lent Upson perhaps a century ago, is “The right to criticize government is also an obligation to know what you are talking about.”
Flawless and devastating; we can now add the ruin of public health as one more way in which, thanks to ignorance and the tyranny of the anti-tax troglodytes who control the legislature, we are becoming a third-world country.
- Now for more cheerful news: As if not safeguarding public health wasn’t enough, the lawmakers have also been stealing cash from our children and our future from all of us.
The Michigan League for Public Policy, which has been around even longer, published a devastating report: A Hard Habit to Break: The Raiding of K-12 Funds for Postsecondary Education, by Peter Ruark, their senior policy analyst.
The title is actually misleading, Ruark admitted when I talked to him. Yes, the money they are looting goes on papers to community colleges and state universities.
But that just means the legislature shortchanges higher education, presumably so they don’t have to raise taxes on the rich. This would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
Now, it has become a habit. Every year the legislators drain more and more out of the sales-tax generated school aid fund, and hope nobody notices. That money is only supposed to be available for elementary and secondary schools.
But in 2010, when Jennifer Granholm was still governor and the Great Recession was at its worst point, the politicians, desperate to balance the budget, took $208 million from the School Aid Fund and used it for Community Colleges.
“They called it a loan, and promised to pay it back,” Ruark told me when I interviewed him about this.”
Gilda Jacobs, who was then a state senator and is now, not coincidentally, the president of the Michigan League for Public Policy, reluctantly voted for it. Granholm said the money they were taking was a “loan” and would be paid back.
Jacobs, in an anguish-laden column in Bridge Magazine titled “When did stealing from Michigan kids become an easier political decision than raising taxes?” said:
“I remember us ultimately agreeing that it was and should only ever be a last resort.” That was wishful thinking at best.
Nobody had ever dared to do that before, but the precedent had been set. Few people go back to a life of celibacy after losing their virginity, or steal just once.
The next year, the lawmakers were good boys and girls, and left the school aid fund alone. But that was the last time.
Rick Snyder was soon elected governor, and brought with him a legislature that was all about cutting taxes for business, and taking a swipe at public education whenever they could.
Nobody ever again mentioned repaying the “loan.” Instead, they took more than twice as much out of the school aid fund in 2012, this time taking a chunk for the universities.
They’ve done the same every year since. This year, they are shortchanging the kids by nearly a billion dollars.
Since that first “loan” in 2010, the legislators have looted $4.5 billion out of the school aid fund. Then they want you to believe that the fact that teachers once got decent salaries and pensions are the reasons the children aren’t learning.
Think of the Detroit schools with inadequate heat and supplies, even toilet paper. They have to do without, so that we could give businesses enormous tax cuts to generate lots of new jobs. They are coming, any day now.
They are right there, past that pie in the sky.
Gilda Jacobs, who was in fact one of the most decent and principled of state senators, notes that when we take inflation into account, public schools are getting about $1,000 less per pupil now than they were before they started raiding the fund.
“State elected officials need to end their love affair with damaging tax cuts and instead raise new revenues and invest in our top priorities” especially the schools.
Works for me. So wouldn’t it be a good idea to ask Gretchen Whitmer, and every single candidate for the legislature, to pledge to do this? I suggest we all start.
Politics of Narcissism: Shri Thanedar, who spent a little more than $50 for each vote he got in the primary for governor, is now talking about possibly running for mayor of Detroit.
“I would certainly love to live in Detroit. I would do it,” he said last week on the public TV show Off the Record. He did narrowly carry the city Aug. 7, but finished a poor third statewide, behind Gretchen Whitmer and Abdul El-Sayed.
Thanedar’s candidacy was great for broadcast TV revenues, and he did line the pockets of all sorts of slimy hangers-on.
But think how much better it would have been for the state if he had spent the $10.6 million he blew on his hopeless race on, say, a fund to help provide supplies for Detroit Public School students.
He’s not the only hopeless political narcissist in the state. Sandy Pensler, a Republican from Grosse Pointe, spent more than $5 million to lose a race in which the winner (it was John James) is virtually certain to lose to Debbie Stabenow in November.
Wouldn’t it have been much better if he had spent that money to put 45 kids through the University of Michigan?
If Thanedar does delude himself into a mayoral run, someone needs to intervene and help him spend his money more wisely. We need some sort of a foundation that would help old men with too much money spend it in ways that actually help society.
In return, we could give each of them a tax break, a name change (to either governor or senator) and a statue of themselves.
I really think I’m on to something here.
