Published: 11/18/2009
For weeks, we've been waiting for President Obama to decide whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, and, if so, how many. This ought to give Americans a worried feeling in the deepest levels of their guts. Afghanistan has been wearing down, chewing up and defeating invading armies for centuries...[MORE]
Published: 11/11/2009
Suddenly, there's a chance to do something to prevent many of our state's school districts from being utterly ruined this year. Last week, I wrote an open letter to the governor, criticizing her for, among other things, making massive cuts to the schools. Her cuts mean that every Michigan school d...[MORE]
Published: 11/4/2009
Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed off on the last of this year's state budgets last week, avoiding, for now, a government shutdown. Unfortunately, in the process, she sold out our future, doomed vast numbers of schoolchildren, and betrayed the people who elected her. Then, naturally, in classic fashion...[MORE]
Published: 10/28/2009
Types: News, Government
Everybody's sick of the state budget crisis, and for good reason. The idiots in Lansing have not only screwed us over, they have bored us to death. We've had pretty much all we can take of droning Andy Dillon, the caveman-like Mike Bishop and our governor. Probably the nicest thing you can say abou...[MORE]
Published: 10/21/2009
Film crews were swarming around the Wayne and Oakland county courthouses last week, shooting a few final scenes for the forthcoming HBO movie, You Don't Know Jack, about our once-nationally famous zero-population-growth activist, Dr. Kevorkian. Well, I do know Jack. Did, anyway. I covered all the m...[MORE]
Published: 10/14/2009
Michigan's political system no longer works, and is rapidly sending our state careening toward a future of poverty and hopelessness. That's not wild-eyed leftist talk. That's just a sad, inescapable clinical diagnosis that can be confirmed by anyone who takes the time to collect the information and...[MORE]
Published: 10/7/2009
Well, the national economy is still terrible, and the situation in Michigan far worse. The deal under which Roger "Superman" Penske would have saved the auto manufacturer Saturn fell apart, which probably means thousands more jobs down the drain. And in Lansing, the dysfunctional set of w...[MORE]
Published: 9/30/2009
Types: News, Government
At the moment I am writing this column, the collection of largely pathetic political creatures known as the Michigan Legislature is fighting over how to damage our futures. Basically, one of two things seems certain to happen. They may pass a budget that is guaranteed to weaken the quality of educa...[MORE]
Published: 9/23/2009
There was once a major league baseball player named Rube Waddell, who may well have been the best pitcher there ever was. He set major league records for shutouts, strikeouts, you name it. Unfortunately, he had one little problem. He was easily distracted. As in, attention-deficit disorder to the m...[MORE]
Published: 9/16/2009
You have to feel sorry for Joe Wilson, that nonentity of a congressman from South Carolina who yelled, "You lie!" at the president as he spoke to a joint session of Congress last week. Wilson has had to cope with a lot of trauma in his own life. Not Vietnam; he managed to dodge that by go...[MORE]
Published: 9/9/2009
Don't look now, but Michigan government has, literally, suffered a nervous breakdown and is in a semi-paralyzed, near-catatonic state. That might not be so bad if things otherwise were humming along perfectly, but they aren't. We are headed for the edge of a cliff, and we know exactly when we will ...[MORE]
Published: 9/2/2009
They come from the hellholes of the earth, from the torture cells of the former Yugoslavia, the military prisons of South America and the killing fields of sub-Saharan Africa. Usually tortured, with family members murdered, they show up on the doorstep of the century-old former convent they call Fre...[MORE]
Published: 8/26/2009
Manuel J. "Matty" Moroun is an 82-year-old billionaire, one of the richest people in the world, according to Forbes Magazine's annual ranking. He lives in Grosse Pointe, and owns, among other things, the Ambassador Bridge, the hulking ruin of Michigan Central Station, and vast trucking ope...[MORE]
Published: 8/19/2009
Types: News, Government
Everybody hates government, right? We bitch, moan and complain about it constantly. Nationally, the right wing is cleverly whipping up the yahoos, getting them to noisily protest against a health care plan that would drastically help this nation and greatly improve most of their lives. Here in Mic...[MORE]
Published: 8/12/2009
Imagine that you foolishly are in the habit of leaving your back door unlocked. One night, a burglar comes in and steals all your money. You flip out, call the cops, and they catch him. A lengthy legal process follows, but eventually he is convicted and sent to the slam. Most of your money is gone,...[MORE]
Published: 8/5/2009
Last month The Ann Arbor News closed for good. But not to worry, we were told by the publisher, a chipper corporate creature with the improbable name of Laurel Champion. Yes, we were losing a newspaper, and 272 employees would join the vast reserve army of the unemployed. But we were gaining Ann Ar...[MORE]
Published: 7/29/2009
Speaker of the House Andy Dillon, a Democrat from Redford, hasn't made much of a mark leading his party in the Michigan Legislature. That is, until now. Earlier this month, he came out with a plan that would amount to a vast change in health care for state employees. He wants the Legislature to ena...[MORE]
Published: 7/22/2009
My guess is that if you are in your 30s, or younger, you have a hard time understanding why everybody made such a big deal over Walter Cronkite dying last week. He hadn't anchored a news program since 1981. You probably don't remember him, except as a sort of ghostly, grandfatherly figure in some o...[MORE]
Published: 7/15/2009
So they celebrated the birth of the "new" General Motors last week, which emerged from bankruptcy in a mere 40 days, precisely as long as Jesus is said to have spent stomping around in the wilderness. According to the Bible, that experience purified the young man from Nazareth, who showed...[MORE]
Published: 7/8/2009
Years ago, back during the Vietnam War, I talked to a spokesman for the New Left who came to my campus. "You are going to see the United States and the Soviet Union becoming more and more like each other," he said. "They are going to get color television. We are going to get secret p...[MORE]
Published: 7/1/2009
Types: News, Politics, Election
There's a great temptation to say that, hey, the system works after all! Monica Conyers has pleaded guilty and is presumably on her way to the slam. Kwame Kilpatrick was found out, thrown out, convicted, jailed and run out of town. What more proof do you need? But if you think that, you are wrong. ...[MORE]
Published: 6/24/2009
Everyone who has been paying attention knows that the recession has meant a rapidly growing crisis for state government. Every month, Lansing finds that it takes in less revenue than the experts estimated. Down, down goes the spiral. But what few of us realize is that the very real pain many of us ...[MORE]
Published: 6/17/2009
Types: News, Government
Miriam Braunstein was one of the funniest, sassiest and most brilliant students I've ever taught at Wayne State University. Actually, she could have gone to Brown, or probably any Ivy League school. Delightfully irreverent, she was always happy to lampoon the too-politically-correct on either the l...[MORE]
Published: 6/10/2009
What do you think about ... moving all the prisoners at Guantanamo to a prison somewhere in the Upper Peninsula? Actually, this is one of those ideas that seems screamingly crazy at first blush, and then makes more and more sense when you think about it. We've got the space and capacity for them &...[MORE]
Published: 6/3/2009
Last week I went to the Emory, a popular bar and eatery just south of Nine Mile Road in Ferndale. Reliable sources told me the hamburgers were supposed to be great, and my last remaining major career goal is to eat at every local restaurant on Woodward Avenue before they embalm me. Well, my sources...[MORE]
Published: 5/27/2009
Usually, this column, in my sweet and gentle way, screams at you to pay attention to one or more of the many messes in our city, state and nation. But not all is gloom and doom, and there are a few glimmers of hope to keep in mind, even as the evictors carry your mattress out to the pavement. ...[MORE]
Published: 5/20/2009
Paul Palazollo was just a kid from the east side of Detroit when the draft caught up with him. After basic, they put him on a commercial flight and sent him to 'Nam. When the plane finally landed, after the shelling stopped at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, he saw one of the flight attendants pull dow...[MORE]
Published: 5/13/2009
Here's what was most unusual about last week's election for mayor of Detroit. Not the mildly surprising result. Not the tiny turnout. Not the fact that someone with no political experience was elected to the city's top job for the first time since 1890. No, the amazing thing was that this was...[MORE]
Published: 5/6/2009
Based on what I saw on cable TV last week, you, dear reader, are probably not reading this at all, because you are dead of swine flu.Fortunately, I am not. Dead, that is; I don't mean to be any more existential than necessary. Originally I thought I'd be room temperature too by now, but then I...[MORE]
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