Translation: “If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.“ And it is a great — no, perfect — set-up for all the wonderful “Pure Michigan” TV

CFM Founder and President Phil Power

commercials extolling the beauties of our state.

Naturally, it seems only right that Sleeping Bear Dunes, near Traverse City, has just been anointed by the “Good Morning America” TV show as the most beautiful spot in the nation.

My wife, Kathy, and I took our summer rest at our cabin on the south shore of Lake Superior earlier this month, and just finished the eight-hour drive back from the Upper Peninsula to our home near Ann Arbor. The state motto says “peninsula,“ not “peninsulas,” because it was adopted two years before Michigan became a state in 1837, at a time when we didn’t yet have the Upper Peninsula. And the northern half of our state still gets short shrift.

Sadly not as well-known as it should be to the “trolls” (folks below the Mackinac Bridge, in UP-speak), the Upper Peninsula this summer was hot and very, very dry. When you walked in the woods, you heard the parched pine needles crackle under foot and saw the bracken fern turning yellow. Dry weather like that terrifies local folks, for good reason. One lightning strike could set off a roaring forest fire that can consume thousands of acres in a fiery flash.

But, ah, the sights, sounds and smells of the UP!

The soft whish of the wind blowing gently through the pines, bringing the unforgettable scent of needle and bark. The deep, intense and cloudless blue sky. The stars burning bright on a dark night – seemingly as close as the tips of your fingers.

When you swim, eyes open, under water in Lake Superior, the cleanest body of fresh water on the planet, the distance is turquoise and the sand below golden in the sun. And if you are a fly fisherman, nothing quite beats the flash of a brook trout, all speckled in gold and red and blue, as it rises to your No. 12 Michigan Hopper.

Lake Superior, on the Keweenaw Peninsula, near Betsy. (CFM Michigan Photos)

Once, we paused on our walk to let three Sandhill Cranes – great birds five feet tall with a bright red top knot and a peculiar hesitant walk – pass silently, not 10 yards in front of us. And as we started our drive south early in the morning, the sun rose through a storm over Lake Superior in globs of red and orange and yellow, with shafts of light piercing the dark clouds, as though it were the hand of God made manifest here on Earth.

There is no place on Earth as wonderfully pure and fresh as Michigan‘s UP — and no place that can look so sad.

This always has been a hard land, a tough place to make a living winter or summer, sparsely populated to start, with far too many people now out of work. On our drive down, we passed five, 10, 20 abandoned houses, the fallen roofs each covering the graves of some family’s once modest hope for a clean, well-lighted dwelling.

There are many abandoned small motels along the way, too — paint peeling, the windows cracked and trees starting to grow in the parking lots. Our favorite – the “Generic Motel,” just outside the tiny village of McMillan — seemed to have disappeared.

The parking lots around the Indian casinos were jammed, although it was hard to say whether the folks inside were having fun …or merely desperate for a big score to try to beat the odds.

Then, when you come across over the Mackinac Bridge – itself a delicate triumph of steel and grace and soaring air – things suddenly change. The pine and hemlock vanish, to be replaced by hardwoods like oak and maple. The soft sand dunes and hard granite glacial erratic rocks give way to softer mounds of grassy farmland and rolling hills near Vanderbilt.

And a couple of hundred miles farther south, it’s, well, lush and green and settled and no longer savage. The air started to get humid as we stopped at a gas station just south of Grayling. As we drove on familiar roads near our home, we saw the vegetable gardens ripe with produce and the corn standing tall.

The late Judd Arnett, who wrote a column in the Detroit Free Press from 1959 until the early ’90s, used to refer to “Michigan, my Michigan.” Old Judd, who would have been a century old this year,  had it right. There is no place like Michigan, our Michigan. We all have a stake in preserving its natural splendors and restoring its economy to its former glory.

Editor’s note: Former newspaper publisher and University of Michigan Regent Phil Power is a longtime observer of Michigan politics and economics. He is also the founder and president of the Center for Michigan, a nonprofit, bipartisan centrist think-and-do tank, designed to cure Michigan’s dysfunctional political culture. The opinions expressed here are Power’s own and do not represent the official views of the Center. He welcomes your comments at ppower@thecenterformichigan.net.

And plenty of folks, both business-oriented (think DTE Energy, Business Leaders for Michigan) and philanthropic (think the Kresge, Skillman and Hudson-Webber Foundations) are committed to and heavily invested in the city’s success.

CFM Founder and President Phil Power

Then there is Steve Tobocman, a former state representative whose district included Southwest Detroit, who has been particularly imaginative and energetic in dreaming up good ideas based on immigration and land bank policies. Nor is he alone.

At last week’s New Michigan Media Conference on Immigration and Michigan’s Economic Future, Gov. Rick Snyder urged the state to embrace immigrants as job producers. Let’s welcome “the best and the brightest from around the world.” he said, calling tough-on-immigrant legislation passed by other states unconstructive and divisive. Snyder recited statistics that showed more than half of all newly formed high-tech companies in Silicon Valley were started by immigrants. He also pointed to Michigan companies started by immigrants: Dow Chemical, Meijer and Masco.

The track record of immigrants in powering Michigan’s economy is plain. According to Tobocman, Michigan ranks third in the country in the percentage of high-tech firms started by immigrants: 32.8 percent.

In fact, nearly one-sixth of all businesses started in Michigan between 1996 and 2007 were launched by immigrants; in all, these 2,276 businesses generated $1.5 billion in revenue in 2000 alone.

Additionally, Tobocman says the numbers show immigrants are nearly three times as likely to start a business as are native-born Americans.

Want more evidence of how beneficial immigrants can be? A perfect example of their power to make a large difference to an economy is Vancouver, British Columbia, which experienced one of the largest movements of liquid capital in recent years.

Flash back to 1997, when China’s avowedly communist government took control of Hong Kong from the British. The Hong Kong business community, predominately Chinese, was terrified. Vancouver recognized a terrific opportunity. Vancouver offered to give all families immigrating from Hong Kong with at least $1 million in assets a work permit — and a clear path to citizenship.

Vancouver is today one of the most prosperous cities on the North American continent, in large part because of its massive inflow of rich, capable, experienced Chinese business families.

Could we do much the same thing to revitalize our distressed urban areas such as Detroit? Why not?

Legally, the framework already exists. Congress created  something called an EB-5 visa for immigrant investors as part of the  Immigration Act of 1990. This visa provides a way for immigrants to get a work permit (the so-called “green card”) — provided they invest at least $500,000 in a business that creates at least 10 jobs.

Tobocman, an attorney who is now head of the Global Detroit Initiative, has studied these matters. He says 10,000 places are offered under the EB-5 program each year, but that more than two-thirds of them go unfilled for want of applications.

That’s clear proof that all the tools are available for Detroit to set up a program to recruit and welcome immigrants who come with capital and willingness to start a business to employ local people. Nor is the opportunity limited to people currently abroad.

There are more than 20,000 foreign nationals currently studying at Michigan universities, many for advanced degrees in engineering and math. Why not reach out to them before they decide to take their degrees and knowledge back home?

Seriously, what’s not to like about a program like this? Anti-immigration forces argue that immigrants take jobs from local people. But exactly the opposite is the case f they come under the EB-5 program. They create jobs. That’s especially true when they are encouraged to start local businesses, employing local people.

Tobocman knows the numbers. In the June 23 Detroit News, Tobocman argued, “international immigration is the only significant population strategy of any scale that has worked across the Northeast and Midwest over the last 20 years. Southwest Detroit’s Hispanic community, east Dearborn’s Middle Eastern community and Hamtramck’s multiethnic community are the envy of every struggling neighborhood in the region.” He concluded, “Nothing is more powerful to remaking Detroit as a center of innovation, entrepreneurship and population growth than embracing and increasing immigrant populations and the entrepreneurial culture and global connections they bring.”

Tobocman, a Democrat, and Gov. Snyder, the top-ranking Republican in this state, are both right. Whether it’s a Global Michigan or a Global Detroit, our state stands to benefit big-time by putting out the welcome mat to resourceful, smart, ambitious people from around the world who want to make it big right here.

Editor’s note: Former newspaper publisher and University of Michigan Regent Phil Power is a longtime observer of Michigan politics and economics. He is also the founder and president of The Center for Michigan, a nonprofit, bipartisan centrist think-and-do tank, designed to cure Michigan’s dysfunctional political culture. The opinions expressed here are Power’s own and do not represent the official views of The Center. He welcomes your comments at ppower@thecenterformichigan.net

CFM Founder and President Phil Power

Those were days when Rep. Gerry Ford, R-Grand Rapids, was on his way up in a career that would ultimately take him first to the position of House minority leader, then, unexpectedly, to the presidency. Meanwhile, his Democratic colleague, Rep. John Dingell, D-Dearborn, was on his way to becoming first a powerful committee chair, then the longest-serving congressman in U.S. history.

Those were also the days when Ford and Dingell might fight like cats and dogs on the floor of the House, yet, when the day was done, they’d kick back over a drink. Ford used to call his favorite martini a “mart.” And those were days when Democrats and Republicans might disagree occasionally on what needed to be done and often disagree on how to do it. But they were united in feeling a deep responsibility to get things done to serve the national interest.

So I was touched at the news that Mrs. Ford had asked National Public Radio reporter Cokie Roberts to speak at her funeral of the days when politics “was a sport, not a blood sport.”

Roberts’ father was Rep. Hale Boggs, the House majority leader when Ford was minority leader. No matter how strongly they might disagree on the floor, they stayed friends off it.

That’s not saying they were selfless angels. Those who ran for office did so out of personal ambition, to be sure. But they also ran because they had an instinct to serve — a wish to get things done.

Most of them also knew that getting things done in a democratic system requires all participants to compromise. “If you want the whole loaf, you’re likely to wind up with no loaf,” was the catchphrase. Compromise might be arduous and aggravating, but they knew it was necessary to get the things done that needed doing.

Sadly, those days now seem to be gone. Dingell tells me the atmosphere in Washington is pretty close to partisan paralysis and the worst he’s ever seen. Nor do you have to possess his expertise to have a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach about our nation when you look at the astonishingly juvenile bickering going on in Washington.

Why has this happened? Much of it is due to fact the leaders of both major parties think their top priority must be stirring up their respective bases. That means constantly agitating each side’s highly motivated, bitterly partisan activists who are deemed so necessary to win elections.

My estimate is that each party has a base that is no more than 15 percent of the total population. That leaves something like 70 percent of us in the middle, rolling our eyes at all the partisanship and feeling increasingly divorced from the political scene.

This is potentially destructive to democracy. To many, it seems each party is interested in a sort of pointless and repellent ideological self-strangulation. Here’s a current example in Michigan:

Last week, the Republican caucus in the state Senate met with Gov. Rick Snyder to talk about its interest in “social issues,” such as partial-birth abortion and the disposition of fetal remains.

According to the MIRS news service, Sen. Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge, urged Snyder to support legislation that “would appeal to the base,” whipping up activist enthusiasm and loyalty. The governor reportedly responded: “My agenda is jobs.”

The governor is where the voters are. Every poll I’ve seen shows a vast majority of Michigan citizens are far more interested in jobs than in partial-birth abortion policy. Too often, the knee-jerk reaction of many politicians is to focus attention on wedge issues that are of little interest to the silent majority — but of intense concern to a few activists.

A result of this behavior is the parties’ loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of citizens, who mostly want practical, common-sense solutions. And our democratic system is jeopardized by pushing out those who aren’t fierce partisans.

Sometimes party leaders act like this is what they want.

Republican National Committeeman Saul Anuzis argues, for example, that independent voters shouldn’t participate in the 2012 Republican presidential primary election. “I think Republicans should nominate Republicans and Democrats nominate Democrats. (Independents) don’t want to be part of a party, so they shouldn’t be part of the nomination process,” said Anuzis, again according to an article in MIRS.

So he seems to be saying that ordinary citizens (otherwise known as independent voters) should simply stand aside while the rabid partisans choose two candidates at either extremes. Then, maybe, the rest of us might be allowed to pick between the two.

That’s not my idea of democracy. What worked so well for years was the acceptance of the necessity of compromise.

But today, a current rigid ideological insistence on both sides threatens to lead to a wholesale, highly dangerous withering of public confidence in the way our democratic processes work.

Editor’s note: Former newspaper publisher and University of Michigan Regent Phil Power is a longtime observer of Michigan politics and economics. He is also the founder and president of The Center for Michigan, a nonprofit, bipartisan centrist think-and-do tank, designed to cure Michigan’s dysfunctional political culture. The opinions expressed here are Power’s own and do not represent the official views of The Center. He welcomes your comments at ppower@thecenterformichigan.net.

CFM Founder and President Phil Power

This may sound too good to be true, but it is true: Michigan could easily transform itself into a global freight gateway that could create more than 200,000 jobs and add billions in economic activity.

And this could all happen within the next decade.

If we play our cards right and this all works out, Michigan could suddenly acquire an entirely new economic dimension. The key involves creating a new manufacturing powerhouse and a “multi-modal logistical hub.” That‘s a fancy term for a place that brings together air, rail, water and road transportation systems; brings them together, that is, for a purpose:

To move freight to and from the Midwest faster and cheaper than it can be done from any other place — including Chicago.

Work to make this happen is going on behind the scenes right now and there are lots of moving parts, but here’s a summary:

* Aerotropolis – The idea is to link passenger traffic at Detroit Metro with the freight capability at Willow Run Airport, just a few miles to the west. In between, there are 27,000 acres of underdeveloped land. This land offers great possibilities for warehouses, offices, high-value light manufacturing and engineering. What’s more, they’d be right next to two major airports for shipping.

Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano has worked hard on this project for many months. As a result, the nonprofit Aerotropolis Development Corp. is a reality. What’s more, thanks to newly signed legislation, it is eligible to receive incentives from the Michigan Economic Development Corp.

Slowly, this seems to be coming together. A marketing campaign is being developed. A few companies already have started clustering around Metro Airport. General Electric recently announced plans to spend $100 million on a research and engineering facility, for example.

How big could this be? Best estimates are that the Aerotropolis could, over a 20-year period, generate 65,000 jobs, $3.7 billion in wages and $10 billion in new economic activity. Schiphol Airport, near Amsterdam, has done that well — and many experts say Southeast Michigan offers the best potential in the world.

* Great Lakes Global Freight Gateway — Promoted by Michael Belzer, a professor at Wayne State University and an expert on the economics of rail freight, the Gateway would link the Canadian deep-water port of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and river port of Montreal, Quebec, with the freight handling networks of Southeast Michigan via the Canadian National rail network terminating at Windsor.

The main recent development in international freight is “containerization.” That’s a system where big containers filled with stuff are loaded onto ships. Once they cross the ocean, they are unloaded directly onto 18-wheelers for distribution.

Halifax is a top deep-water port on the Atlantic seaboard, and the Canadian government is spending big bucks upgrading port facilities at both Halifax and Montreal. What does this have to do with us? Belzer calculates that the Gateway could shorten international shipping time by days. This could also reduce distribution costs by as much as 20 percent, thereby shortening supply chains for all Michigan manufacturing, agricultural and distribution businesses.

“It’s all about the cost per container,” Belzer told me. How big a deal is this? He believes a development like the Gateway could allow the auto industry to cut costs by as much as $800 per car.

Belzer predicts a rail-based, inland Gateway port in Southeast Michigan could produce nearly 75,000 direct jobs and another 150,000 indirect jobs.

* Bridges across the Detroit River — Ignore the squabble over whose bridge will get built. Regardless of the Moroun family’s opposition to a public-private joint venture among the United States, Michigan and Canada, there will be another bridge in the future. The Ambassador Bridge is old and inadequate, as well as disgracefully monopolistic.

The New International Trade Crossing, the public-private partnership promoted by the governor, will be needed, especially if the Aerotropolis and the Great Lakes Freight Gateway happen.

* Continental Rail Gateway — The current rail tunnel under the Detroit River is inadequate to handle the double-stacked containers and modern, multi-level rail cars used by shippers and the auto industry. And that spells potential economic disaster. Marge Byington, a political and business heavyweight from Grand Rapids who is the executive director for corporate affairs for the Rail Gateway, says 90 percent of the world’s goods travel by container.

“We’ve got to scale our infrastructure to adapt to reality,” she argues.

The Canadians are working hard on that: A joint venture among the Windsor Port Authority, Borealis Infrastructure and Canadian Pacific railway, the Rail Gateway intends to build a new, wider rail tunnel. The existing tunnel was last enlarged in 1994, and can’t be further expanded. And it is heavily used already, handling 25 trains per day and 350,000-plus rail cars a year.

Byington is enthusiastic about the area’s potential: “We’ve got a system nearly built sitting in waiting: I don’t think there is any place in the world with this potential, especially since the United States and Canada are already the world’s largest trading partners.”

But she is also frustrated: “The potential here is for thousands and thousands of jobs. I simply cannot understand why we’re not making this our No. 1 priority.”

Wayne County’s Ficano agrees. “We’ve got to change the paradigm of freight shipping in this area. The traditional route is through Chicago, but Chicago is out of capacity. Far better to do what’s necessary with all the potential here: Rail, road, water, air. That’s going to make Michigan businesses far more competitive and it’s going to make logistics a complete game-changer for Michigan,” he said.

They are right. How can we turn our backs on a potential 200,000 jobs within a decade? This is by far the biggest economic development project on the horizon, and it’s within our grasp. So why isn’t it happening?

The project needs an enforcer.

Whenever you have a development with this many moving parts, you must have a ramrod authorized to bang heads together, push differing jurisdictions and keep an eye on the big picture. “We’ve got to have a champion — not just an engineer, but somebody who has a political compass to … avoid the land mines,” Ficano said.

Regrettably, the Granholm administration never did anything to make any of this happen. But  there are indications the Snyder administration is far more receptive. Mike Finney, the head of MEDC, says he’s ready to move.  Practical Democrats such as Ficano say they’re ready to work with anybody to get things done.

My suggestion to the governor is simple: Appoint somebody to be the state’s “big dawg” for the future — somebody with political smarts, lots of guts, an impatient character and a passion for big-picture change. My candidate: Joe Schwarz

Schwarz has served in the Navy, the CIA, the Congress and the Michigan Legislature. He’s now practicing medicine in Battle Creek and anxious for something he can get his teeth into. Joe told me last Friday he wouldn’t turn it down.

Gov. Rick Snyder, are you reading this?

Editor’s note: Former newspaper publisher and University of Michigan Regent Phil Power is a longtime observer of Michigan politics and economics. He is also the founder and president of The Center for Michigan, a nonprofit, bipartisan centrist think-and-do tank, designed to cure Michigan’s dysfunctional political culture. The opinions expressed here are Power’s own and do not represent the official views of The Center. He welcomes your comments at ppower@thecenterformichigan.net

The cycle’s process is about at its end, with maps for both Congress and Michigan’s Senate and House districts now being rushed through the Legislature before its summer break.

Phil Power, CFM founder and president

But if you think this is good government at work, think again. Both the process and this year’s result are, well, simply disgusting.

This is nothing very new. Time after time, the major parties have controlled reapportionment, cutting deals in secret, carving out weirdly-shaped, gerrymandered districts designed to protect incumbents and secure partisan advantage.

This time is different only in that Republicans control everything — both houses of the Legislature, the governorship and the Michigan Supreme Court. That means they don’t need to make any compromises. This time, they are in a position to jam their maps down the throats of Democrats … and, more important, the public.

What that means, among other things, is that a large number of voters are out of luck. A study of redistricting by the Center for Michigan this February concluded that, over the past decade, “Republicans living in safe Democratic districts and Democrats living in safe Republican districts were essentially disenfranchised – and accounted for almost 1.5 million votes in the 2010 statewide elections. Add to them the significant proportion of statewide voters who label themselves independents, and it’s easy to see that in many places voters’ realistic choices at the polls are severely limited.”

Limited, that is, because most of these districts have been drawn to ensure the same party will always win them, no matter what. Thanks to population shifts, Michigan once again will lose a seat in Congress next year. Since the Republicans are in control, you knew before the process started they’d eliminate a Democratic seat.

And that’s precisely what happened. Two current Democratic congressmen – Gary Peters of Bloomfield Township and Sandy Levin of Royal Oak – have been reapportioned into the same district.

Other districts are ridiculously configured, with one (the 14th, now held by John Conyers) beginning in Grosse Pointe, proceeding through Hamtramck and parts of Detroit and slithering into Oakland County all the way to Sylvan Lake.

The process of redrawing legislative districts was less blatantly partisan, according to Public Sector Consultants expert Jeff Williams: “There were clearly choices that benefit sitting Republican members, but there were other choices that left alone … Democratic seats.” The people left without choices were the voters.

A key figure in charge of this year’s process was State Rep. Pete Lund, R-Shelby Township. The work was carried out in secret, with no real input whatsoever from the public. True, Lund’s committee held a few public hearings, designed for window dressing. But the real work was done in the back room, with Republican experts pouring over maps, using fancy computer programs that can finely slice and dice voter choices. Nobody knows what trade-offs were made, what deals were cut, who did what to whom and why. In effect, the political class sends us the same message about redistricting decade after decade: “It’s ours; don’t interfere, you pushy citizens.”

People are clearly disgusted by this. A whopping 82 percent of attendees at recent community gatherings said they have “no trust” in politicians drawing their own district boundaries. Another 55 percent felt results in Michigan legislative races are largely decided before they even vote. The gatherings were sponsored by the Center for Michigan and held this spring in five representative communities across the state.

The obviously unfair and secret process we follow contributes to citizen alienation about the democratic process itself. Study after study concludes that citizens who feel themselves shut out of the process are less likely to vote or participate in the political process.

What they are likely to do is engage in baseless and dangers conspiracy thinking, most vividly recently illustrated by “birthers” who believe President Barack Obama was not born a U.S. citizen, despite clear and indisputable evidence that he was born in Hawaii.

There’s got to be a better way. Sixty-three percent of people attending the Center for Michigan meetings felt redistricting would be better done by “a nonpartisan redistricting commission independent of the Legislature.” That’s why an experiment being carried out this year in California is so important. There, an independent panel of citizens was charged to draw the lines for compact, contiguous districts in ways that preserve natural “communities of interest,” such as ethnic groups — and to ignore political considerations altogether. The commission consists of 14 members picked in a complex process, partly by lottery.

How revolutionary!

As The Economist magazine aptly put it, “Instead of politicians choosing their own voters, voters should choose their own representatives.”

Hopefully, Michigan will find a better way by 2021. It’s not too early for sensible people in both political parties to get together and start looking at how a decade hence to avoid the embarrassing and disgusting redistricting process we’ve been using this time around.

If we’re truly interested in trying to make Michigan a better and more fairly governed state, this would be a great place to start.

Editor’s note: Former newspaper publisher and University of Michigan Regent Phil Power is a longtime observer of Michigan politics and economics. He is also the founder and president of The Center for Michigan, a nonprofit, bipartisan centrist think-and-do tank, designed to cure Michigan’s dysfunctional political culture. The opinions expressed here are Power’s own and do not represent the official views of The Center. He welcomes your comments at ppower@thecenterformichigan.net.

I have developed what I call the “single sandbox theory.” Simply put, it suggests that a fragmented news media have spawned countless single sandboxes, each occupied by a partisan personality. Here’s how this happened:

The main development in the media world over the past 20 years has been the deterioration of what Sarah Palin calls “lamestream (mainstream) media.” That’s largely because, during that time, much newspaper advertising revenue migrated to the Internet, while the Great Recession nearly killed what ad revenue remained.

Phil Power, CFM founder and president

Network TV news shows have taken a huge economic hit, as has network television generally. Cable is now eating networks for lunch; my Comcast package now has more than 500 channels, each specifically tailored to some individual interest.

It’s hard now to believe, but the World Wide Web didn’t even exist until the early 1990s.
Media habits have changed. Whether it’s individual-based tweeting, texting or blogging, most younger people would much rather “surf the web” than watch a network evening news show, or God forbid, sit down and open a newspaper.

The net result has been a vast fragmentation of the media world — and a simultaneous reduction of the actual hard reporting that is the lifeblood of a democracy. Twenty years ago, there were a couple of busloads of reporters covering state government in Lansing. The Detroit News alone had 13 Lansing-based reporters in the mid-1980s. Today, there aren’t that many from all media outlets in the state capital.

Thirty-five years ago, Walter Cronkite could say, with some justification, “That’s the way it is,“ when his nightly news program on CBS attracted the eyes of more than 10 million households every night.

Brian Dickerson, the Detroit Free Press columnist, had a piece last weekend that quoted a new Federal Communications Commission study which concluded, “In many communities, there are now more outlets but less local accountability reporting.” Dickerson observed, “Now, a media market can simultaneously have a diversity of voices and yet a scarcity of journalism.”

That is certainly true in Michigan, where newspapers have shriveled or disappeared entirely, and many broadcast outlets have given up reporting news. But if there is a shortage of real news, there is no shortage of opinion — responsible or otherwise. In today’s fragmented  mass media, it’s possible to find a channel or a blog for every conceivable political taste.

Amid that cacophony on cable, it’s become possible for blowhards such as Rachel Maddow (harsh liberal), Glenn Beck (loony conservative) and Rush Limbaugh (loud, combative conservative) to engage in “politicotainment,” spouting views largely uncontaminated by fact, but drawing a wide enough audience to ensure that they make a pretty good living for themselves. The consequence of a fragmented media environment has been the multiplication of single sandboxes, each with an individual occupant trying his or her level best to out-shout the others.

In the old days, a mainstream news guy like Cronkite at CBS, or his competitors on NBC, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, could offer a big enough sandbox to accommodate millions and millions of nightly viewers, none of whom got a news report pandering to individual ideological preferences. Instead, they all received information about the world that could be shared and rationally discussed.

We have no common sandbox anymore. People don’t have to learn how to get along, or how to share a limited number of toys or how to work together to build a fort. That means the informational basis of our public life, and our politics, has been reduced to a series of single sandboxes. And one consequence has been an increasingly partisan fragmentation in our politics — something that, if we continue to fail to communicate with each other, poses a real threat to democracy itself.

Editor’s note: Former newspaper publisher and University of Michigan Regent Phil Power is a longtime observer of Michigan politics and economics. He is also the founder and president of The Center for Michigan, a nonprofit, bipartisan centrist think-and-do tank, designed to cure Michigan’s dysfunctional political culture. The opinions expressed here are Power’s own and do not represent the official views of The Center. He welcomes your comments at ppower@thecenterformichigan.net

True, the crowd on the wonderfully long, pale green and white porch of the Grand Hotel, punctuated by blazing red geraniums, was as aggressive as ever around the bars at cocktail time.

But the mood was markedly different than in recent years. “This is the first conference in a decade that didn’t consist of wall-to-wall whining,” one grandee told me as he twirled his gin and tonic.

Even a prominent Democrat remarked: “There’s a lot of momentum this time. You can quibble about some of the details (of Gov. Rick Snyder’s various proposals), but overall, it’s a welcome change from previous years.”

Perhaps the biggest contrast was between Snyder (who was ubiquitous, turning up at all hours and most events) and his predecessor, Jennifer Granholm, governor for the eight sessions past. Both have now addressed big crowds in the Grand’s theater for nearly an hour without using notes. There, any similarity ends.

Granholm, whose sheer speaking and dramatic capability are unmatched in modern Michigan politics, captivated her audiences by the sheer force of her personality and presentation.

But in governing against a backdrop of a “single state depression” that she didn’t cause — and could do relatively little about — she had no choice but to emphasize the rhetorical over the factual.

Snyder, riding on a wave of breathtaking legislative accomplishment, was cool, confident, in control.

John Bebow, the executive director of the Center for Michigan, sat beside me for Snyder’s speech. At the end, he remarked, “His unscripted honesty and directness are just stunning.”

The new governor’s comments centered on our state’s history and culture. We have experienced two great periods of remarkable prosperity over the centuries, he said. The first centered around the exploitation of Michigan’s remarkable natural resources, whether the beaver (whose pelts led to our first multi-millionaire, John Jacob Astor, who used Mackinac Island as the headquarters for his fur business in the 1820s) or the copper and iron ore of the Upper Peninsula and the white pine of the north woods.

Our second great boom was driven by the great entrepreneurs of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the men who created Dow Chemical, Upjohn, Kellogg, Ford and a score of others. “There was no place in America that matched the scale and scope of Michigan’s economic miracle at that time … We were the Silicon Valley” of that era, Snyder explained.
And, he added, there’s no reason Michigan can’t do that again — if we have the guts, imagination and staying power.

Unfortunately, as the auto industry grew and prospered in the 20th century, “we got too successful,” he said. Successful, fat, and lazy. We forgot costs, lost sight of entrepreneurialism and allowed ourselves to be deluded that our prosperity would last for ever. The periodic downturns of the latter part of the 20th century indicated something wasn’t right; the Great Recession of the 21st century nearly did us in.

The bottom line, Snyder argued, is that now is the opportunity for us to build a new Michigan. “We tend to look at the past, in the rearview mirror. We spend too much time thinking about how we keep that good thing going,” Snyder said. “It’s time to look towards the future.”

The big issue, according to the governor, is our culture, that fragile and hard-to-pin-down set of attitudes and habits that define people’s thinking and, thus, doing.

“The biggest change we need to have in Michigan is not in law or regulations or taxes, but in our culture,” he argued. Snyder pointed to the state’s response to what so far has been a shrinking economy:

“There’s this divisive attitude about win-lose,” he said, describing our belief  that for somebody to get ahead, somebody else had to fall behind. “It shows up in politics too much. It shows up in East-West too much. Every Michigander loses (from that) – even the people who are winning, because we’re just sinking more.”

He described what this culture looks like from his perspective as governor. He has too many meetings that start off with a request or demand for money. “That’s not the key for a good conversation,” he said wryly. Next, when presented with a new idea, too often he hears the objection that “we’ve always done it this way.”

Snyder’s right. Culture trumps a whole lot of things, whether tax policy or reapportionment or emergency financial management. Trouble is, culture is tougher to change than to define.

But changing it is absolutely at the core of where our state needs to go.

Correction: In his June 2 column, Phil Power asserted that implementing right to work policy in Michigan would require a constitutional amendment.  This is not so; it can be done by statute alone.  Mr. Power regrets the error.

Editor’s note: Former newspaper publisher and University of Michigan Regent Phil Power is a longtime observer of Michigan politics and economics. He is also the founder and president of The Center for Michigan, a nonprofit, bipartisan centrist think-and-do tank, designed to cure Michigan’s dysfunctional political culture. The opinions expressed here are Power’s own and do not represent the official views of The Center. He welcomes your comments at ppower@thecenterformichigan.net

Both of the governor’s main initiatives – a complete restructuring of Michigan’s business tax system and a radically reorganized state government budget  – have been adopted by the overwhelmingly Republican Legislature. Things have been wrapped up far earlier than just about anyone thought possible.

The newly elected governor campaigned on a promise to repeal the much-disrespected Michigan Business Tax. He vowed to get a final budget adopted by May 31. Everybody scoffed.

No wonder, in recent years, the Legislature has often frantically scrambled to get the budget done by Sept. 30, to avoid a government shutdown.

But amazingly, he got it done. Getting the spending plan approved by his deadline marks the earliest budget approval in 30 years, since the relatively bipartisan and long-vanished Milliken era. Getting a major overhaul of the tax system accomplished at the same time may be seen as close to miraculous.

Having accomplished both, the governor may well be entitled to a happy jog or two around the island. However, he better enjoy it while it lasts.  We are sailing into the political “silly season.” That is, the days when all the mandatory deadline stuff has been done.

Without much pressing hard on Lansing’s immediate agenda, the lawmakers are now free — to a degree — of  the seriousness that constrained bizarre legislative behavior over the past five months.

Not there aren’t still tough issues ahead. First on the agenda: Getting approval for the new bridge across the Detroit River to Canada. That’s a task that so far has eluded the governor and his main vote-counter, Lt. Gov. Brian Calley.

Though virtually every business interest in the state wants a new bridge, it has one powerful opponent: Manuel Moroun, the monopoly billionaire owner of the Ambassador Bridge.

Moroun has been spreading campaign contributions thick and fast around Lansing. As a result, a bunch of legislators – primarily Republicans – oppose the public-private project the governor favors. They say they’ll only approve an all-private bridge — meaning one built by Moroun himself.

The governor’s troops have spent a fair amount of face time and engaged in considerable arm-twisting trying to round up the votes, but so far it’s been a hard sell. It’s pretty clear the only way the governor is going to do it is with an alliance with legislative Democrats.

That just might have been one of the things discussed at an unusual informal, (um … maybe even bridge-building?) meeting Snyder had with leaders of the House Democratic Caucus last week.

Yet beyond the bridge and other serious stuff like roads and bridges and other infrastructure, that funny noise you hear in the distance is the shuffling of feet from various folks. They, too, have an agenda: All are pushing for various projects that may, or may not, square with the mainstream of state policy.

And there are the angry nay-sayers. Recall petitions are being shopped around aimed at various Republican lawmakers who have supported Snyder’s plans. This movement is being pushed mainly by liberal allies of public sector unions who are unhappy at what the Legislature accomplished this spring. Getting the number of signatures required to get a recall on the ballot is a difficult process, however.

Recall attempts usually fall short. But venting loudly seems to be an important part of our political culture these days.

Now, the Snyder administration increasingly may find itself having to put out fires. Last week, a Tea Party group renewed a call to make Michigan a “right to work” state. To do that would require amending the Michigan Constitution to outlaw making union membership a requirement to holding a job. (CORRECTION: A constitutional amendment is not required for a right to work policy in Michigan; it can be done by statute alone.  Mr. Power regrets the error.)

Some Republicans, especially from the west side of the state, like that idea a lot. Others warn it could lead to “civil war” in Michigan, traditionally a pro-union state, and backfire against the Republicans. Those wanting to make that fight are getting no encouragement from the governor. He says “right-to-work” isn’t on his agenda.

But that’s not the only opposition the governor is facing. There also is increasing concern from educators, parents and even some business groups that the cuts imposed on schools, colleges and universities took in the budget are just too much.

Michigan has now cut higher education by hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade. The state, which has a work force less educated than the average, now leads the nation in reducing public support for colleges and universities.

So far, the university community has been sad, but largely silent about the hacks – accomplished by both political parties, it must be said – at the sources of human capital in the state. But a lot of people are getting worried about the cuts, how long they are going and what their cumulative effect will be.

Meanwhile, State Rep. Bob Genetski, R-Saugatuck and chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Higher Education, asked state university presidents and chancellors a series of questions last February during the budget hearings process — questions that may be more embarrassing than the answers. Some examples:

“Is your credit transfer policy posted online? Where?”

“Is whether (or) not a credit with a grade of a C or C- (or better) clearly articulated in that policy?”

“EXACTLY and SPECIFICALLY, how does your online credit policy compare with that of Indiana University South Bend’s?”

“What provisions will you be making this year, and long-term, to protect Christian students from being harassment (sic) and being dismissed from your programs of study for their religious beliefs?”

I hope Gov. Snyder doesn’t work up much of a sweat taking his laps on the Island. He has more than three and a half years to go in his current term, and is likely to need all the stamina he can muster.

Editor’s note: Former newspaper publisher and University of Michigan Regent Phil Power is a longtime observer of Michigan politics and economics. He is also the founder and president of The Center for Michigan, a nonprofit, bipartisan centrist think-and-do tank, designed to cure Michigan’s dysfunctional political culture. The opinions expressed here are Power’s own and do not represent the official views of The Center. He welcomes your comments at ppower@thecenterformichigan.net

It’s now clear that Michigan’s economy has turned the corner. Things aren’t perfect yet, but seasonally adjusted unemployment figures put our jobless rate for April at 10.2 percent, according to the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget.

That’s impressive, when you realize that since last year, unemployment has dropped 2.9 percentage points, the nation’s biggest decline. Most encouragingly, there are 57,000 more payroll jobs in Michigan than a year ago.

Much of the increase has been led by our three domestic auto companies, each now making money by selling redesigned, high-mileage cars. They are becoming profitable even with high gas prices and relatively weak demand. According to CNN, Detroit experienced an 82 percent increase in new engineering jobs in the past year.

Dan Gilbert, founder and chairman of Quicken Loans, told CNN’s “Your Money” that “We hope within a couple of years (in) the Midwest, Detroit is really the central core of the Midwest for technology.” Michigan media jumped on the numbers, running hopeful stories about our state becoming the next Silicon Valley.

That may be premature wishful thinking, but those who know their Michigan history can point to a time in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when our state was, in fact, widely regarded as the cutting-edge technology center of the nation.

Sip your lemonade and consider these stories:

* The Upjohn Pill and Granule Co., the predecessor to the Upjohn pharmaceutical giant, was founded in 1885 in Kalamazoo by Dr. William Upjohn and his brother, Henry. Physicians in those days had a hard time making sure the correct dosage was contained in liquid and powder medicines, and the new company prospered by standardizing formulations.

Herbert Henry Dow

* The Dow Chemical Company was founded in 1897 by Herbert Henry Dow, a Canadian chemist who figured out a way to extract bromine from the salt deposits near Midland.

* Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Co. in 1903, capitalizing on the radical innovation of standardized, interchangeable parts for automobiles, which made the assembly-line method of manufacturing possible.

* The Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Co. was founded in 1906 by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his brother, Keith. Dr. Kellogg’s sanitarium followed his Seventh Day Adventist dietary regimen of toasted corn, while the railroad line that ran through Battle Creek made nationwide distribution possible.

John Harvey Kellogg

Consider then that over the course of a mere two decades, Michigan entrepreneurs founded companies that grew to be international giants. Clearly, smart freebooting businessmen capitalizing on new technology is woven into our state’s DNA.

That’s the thinking behind Gov. Rick Snyder’s emphasis on lowering tax rates for small, start-up companies without the government trying to pick winners and losers. He clearly believes that if you get enough entrepreneurs and enough technology coming out of research labs, sooner or later, you’re likely to catch lightning in a bottle.

Which leads to the second straw in the wind:

Sean Morrison (Courtesy photo/University of Michigan)

Dr. Sean Morrison, the director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology at the University of Michigan, is leaving the state to lead a new pediatric research center at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School.

“There are a small number of faith-based special interest groups that are attacking relentlessly. Relentlessly looking for ways to block these forms of medical research most people in the country feel should be supported,” Morrison said. “They’re well-enough organized and sophisticated to have deep-enough pockets. What that means is that we are constantly under attack.”

Morrison is referring to attempts by conservative Republicans in the Legislature to tack stem-cell research reporting requirements onto the higher education budget. Gov. Snyder’s legal counsel told GOP leaders last week that the requirements are unconstitutional, in part because the Michigan Constitution provides autonomy for universities against legislative intrusion and in part because Proposal 2, passed statewide two years ago, approves stem-cell research.

Morrison denies that his decision to go to Texas had anything to do with all this, but it’s hard not to connect the dots. (That is, until the Texas Legislature gets around to outlawing stem-cell research.) I can only imagine what the reaction would be if legislators of the late 19th century decided that extracting bromine from brine was against natural law or that Dr. Kellogg’s views on diet violated religious doctrine. Or that Dr. Upjohn was messing with morality by wanting to have standardized doses of medicine in his pills.

Technology requires freedom to think out of the box. That’s why universities – these days the source of many commercial innovations – are guaranteed the right to operate freely and independently by Michigan’s Constitution.  Once we start tacking individual ideological preferences by individual legislators onto appropriations bills, we are jeopardizing whatever chance we might have of, once again, being a great, innovative and prosperous state.

Editor’s mote: Former newspaper publisher and University of Michigan Regent Phil Power is a longtime observer of Michigan politics and economics. He is also the founder and president of The Center for Michigan, a nonprofit, bipartisan centrist think-and-do tank, designed to cure Michigan’s dysfunctional political culture. The opinions expressed here are Power’s own and do not represent the official views of The Center. He welcomes your comments at ppower@thecenterformichigan.net.

                                                             – Justice Louis D. Brandeis, 1932

Justice Brandeis made his celebrated remark about the states serving as the laboratories of democracy at the worst point of the Great Depression, but his observation is just as apt today.

Last week saw the most significant restructuring of Michigan’s tax system and budget structure since the passage of the Proposal A school finance reforms in 1994. Enabled by overwhelming Republican majorities in both houses of the Legislature, Gov. Rick Snyder got just about everything he talked about during last year’s campaign and asked for this year in messages to state lawmakers.

What’s more, he is on a path to meet his self-imposed May 31 deadline for adopting a state budget — this, in a state where budgetary gridlock has customarily resulted in spending plans not being final until the last moment in September — and well after the start of most other government and industry July through June fiscal years.

Taken together, these are truly remarkable achievements, certainly the most far-reaching changes in the workings of state government in a quarter century.

They come on the heels of our “lost decade,” during which Michigan’s economy experienced the largest collapse since the Great Depression, our unemployment rate topped the nation and our self-confidence as a state plummeted.

There’s no doubt that if Michiganders had been fat and happy  they never would have tolerated the passage of such a radical program. But they were desperately worried; their duly elected representatives did the deed — and now we shall see what happens.

Snyder’s program is predicated on a hunch: That a big-time tax cut for business will actually result in accelerated improvement in the economy and big gains in employment. 

This stands to reason … at least on the surface.  Companies left with more after-tax profits are likely to plow them into expansion, which usually means more jobs.  And the smaller companies that will disproportionately benefit from a changed business tax system are usually, these days, sources of the biggest gains in employment.

Moreover, it looks as though Snyder is lucky enough to have caught the turn in the economic cycle just right. Led by the re-emergence of the domestic auto industry — General Motors alone is talking about adding several thousand jobs in Michigan this year — our state looks as though it’s rapidly coming out of the Great Recession. Predicted state tax receipts — a good indicator of the health of the underlying economy — are running ahead of previous projections by nearly half a billion dollars.

Most governors try to claim their policies alone are responsible for changes in their states’ economies — which is, of course, mostly nonsense. But Snyder wants Michigan to be a laboratory for the notion that deep business tax cuts alone will result in big job gains.

That theory is open to question. State taxes, as a proportion of most companies’ total expenses, are relatively small beer. And although there are arguments about it, the states that have the lowest tax rates – such as Mississippi, South Carolina and Tennessee — are also high unemployment states with low per family incomes. 

By contrast, those states with high employment and income levels – Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and Maryland – are also relatively high-tax states.

Our economic future — not to mention Snyder’s own political career — will hinge on whether his gamble pays off over the next few years. Indeed, public support for key elements in the governor’s program is mixed at best, according to The Center for Michigan in a report released this week. Using community conversations and statewide polling, the Center offered a detailed and nuanced examination of the governor’s program that can be found on the Center’s site (www.thecenterformichigan.net) on Thursday morning.

It’s been a long time since any of our governors actually took seriously Justice Brandeis’ opinion about states as laboratories. But regardless of your own policy preferences, you’ve got to give Rick Snyder loads of credit for being bold. 

Editor’s note: Former newspaper publisher and University of Michigan Regent Phil Power is a longtime observer of Michigan politics and economics. He is also the founder and president of The Center for Michigan, a nonprofit, bipartisan centrist think-and-do tank, designed to cure Michigan’s dysfunctional political culture. The opinions expressed here are Power’s own and do not represent the official views of The Center. He welcomes your comments at ppower@thecenterformichigan.net.