Auchtoon!

Most workday mornings, my alarm goes off at 5:00, and I pop on the TV to get the local weather report. In the 10 to 15 minutes that the TV is on, I’ll invariably see multiple commercials for online gambling and casinos.

This mystifies me. Early morning risers cannot possibly be the target demographic for, say, sports betting. And yet, the ads and sponsorships are quite literally everywhere — they are rolling in so much money that they can afford to saturate the market. With A-list celebrities, no less! (C’mon, Jon Hamm — do you really need that money?)

Look, so-called sin taxes are the path of least resistance whenever politicians are strapped for tax revenue. So it’s not surprising last year when the state government compromised on a 24% wholesale tax on marijuana to close the gap on roads funding. But they had to know that the recreational cannabis industry in Michigan was already teetering on viability — liberal licensing of dispensaries (especially in border state communities) had created signficant overgrowth ripe for contraction. The wholesale tax is pushing many off the cliff, and with it, tax revenue for local communities.

Meanwhile, the FanDuels and DraftKings of the world are obviously swimming in cash. Of course, this is also why they can afford the best lobbyists.

The current Secretary of State (SOS) in Michigan, Jocelyn Benson, is also a candidate for governor in the upcoming election here in Michigan. Of course, one of the duties of the SOS is managing elections, and this raises some questions.

To get ahead of those questions, Benson has outlined an “election oversight conflict of interest policy” or the catchier “firewall policy.” It specifies that Michigan elections are administered by local clerks, and state-level functions are carried out by nonpartisan civil servants in the Bureau of Elections. Benson’s conflict of interest policy largely involves the bureau keeping its work private from Benson until decisions have been finalized.

Still, all voters are right to ask questions. Benson is a Democrat, and some Republican gubernatorial candidates have voiced their concerns. But understand, in 2019 then-SOS Ruth Johnson ran as a candidate and won a race for state Senate. Was there a problem with that?

And if the concern is untoward political bias, suggesting that the U.S. Department of Justice should run Michigan elections (as candidate Aric Nesbitt has) may not be the high horse you want to be riding.

Michigan received a fair bit of national attention this week as everyday citizens, political pundits, and our billionaire overlords all attempted to read the tea leaves of our special election to fill a Michigan Senate seat. As it turns out, a Democrat retained the seat, so that means… the Straight of Hormuz will open next Tuesday. (Place your Kalshi bets now and cut me in if you win.)

In reality, the result is that Democrats retain a slim majority in the Michigan Senate while Republicans remain in the slim majority in the House. And we’ll see what happens in November.

The general lament about this situation is that the Legislature is likely to accomplish very little (at least without compromise. So, like I said, very little.)

It could be worse, though. With the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision to eviscerate the Voting Rights Act, several southern states with GOP majorities are looking to redistrict before the midterms to eliminate the few districts that now elect Black Democrat representatives.

They defend these actions with: “We are doing this to eliminate racism.” Uh-huh. Clearly their goal is to gerrymander a GOP majority for the U.S. House. As Westley said to Count Rugen in The Princess Bride, “We are men of action. Lies do not become us.”

I realize that Michigan Speaker of the House, Matt Hall, is a Republican, that the President of the United States is a Republican, and that the Republican Party has succumbed to a complete mind meld with President Trump. So it’s no surprise that Hall has been leading efforts to kneecap renewable energy here in Michigan just as Trump has been actively doing the same at a national level.

And yet, I’m still exasperated. With gas currently heading toward $5/gallon, it seems particularly ill-timed to be looking for ways to limit our energy options. Especially because renewables (and especially wind and solar) are viable, low-cost sources of electricity now with great potential for technology and scaling to lower costs in the future. So even if you don’t believe in climate change (or science in general), the economics are enough to win the argument.

Michigan has a lot of challenges that need our attention — stagnant wages, poor quality healthcare, dismal education performance, the Pistons teetering on the edge of playoff elimination. Limiting our energy options should hardly be considered a priority.

A brief backstory from a Michigan Public story earlier this week:

Last week, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon sent a letter to Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett demanding election materials from 2024, including ballots, receipts, and envelopes. The letter said due to an alleged history of voter fraud in the county, the DOJ needed to ensure no election laws were violated in the last presidential election.

The letter highlighted a 2020 lawsuit against Wayne County and the city of Detroit alleging voter fraud. The lawsuit was dismissed by a Wayne County judge. The letter also highlighted previous allegations of election fraud in the county, which state officials say did not occur during the 2024 election.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel replied with: “Once again, President Trump is weaponizing the Justice Department in an attempt to sabotage our democratic process and turn it into his own personal agency to interfere in state elections.”

In other words, the President is doing the sort of thing (weaponizing the Justice Department) that he specifically campaigned against.

And yet, it’s easy to see the motivation: distraction. From the Epstein files, from the Iran War, from high gas prices, from low poll ratings. And here I am drawing about it, so, alas, it might be working.

Parts of Michigan have experienced an extraordinary amount of rain this week. And this — on top of an already wet spring and high snowfall winter — is causing flooding and stressing infrastructure. As I’m writing this Thursday afternoon, officials are monitoring several dams, including one in Cheboygan that are in danger of overflowing. This is a real-life concern for many Michiganders.

Meanwhile, the President of the United States is presenting himself either as Jesus or his best friend, the Vice President is questioning the Pope’s theology credentials, and the Secretary of Defense is quoting made-up scripture from the movie Pulp Fiction. This is a freakin’ sideshow.

I just finished listening to a series on The Rest Is History podcast, “The Ku Klux Klan.” First, yes, this is not a normal thing healthy people do with their free time. But it was informative and, subject matter notwithstanding, entertaining.

The positive takeaway: The seeming uptick in various hatreds in our country (antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-immigration, racism, etc.)? We’ve been through this before. That’s not good, but it’s not unprecedented. After the Civil War, the first iteration of the KKK grew out of white southerners wanting to keep recently freed Blacks in submission. The second iteration that peaked in the 1920s was focused on oppressing immigrants, primarily Catholics and Jews. The third iteration post-World War II concentrated on vigilante violence against expanding civil rights.

Of course, the negative takeaway is exactly the same: We as a country cannot seem to stop these awful spasms that ruin real people and real people’s lives.

Our political parties don’t seem to help. In fact, they typically make things worse. In Michigan, for example, we have Republicans allowing, if not embracing, hatred toward our Muslim citizens. The Democrats seem to believe it can all be managed with a properly structured public relations plan. I’m not sure what can break the cycle, but I do know it’s not this.

Years ago I hurt a co-worker’s feeling when I loudly opined that I preferred the earlier music of the band Chicago because its later years were dominated by Peter Cetera and I found his power ballads to be whiny and annoying. Of course my exact wording was more colorful, involving many variations of “sucks” and allusions to ear bleeding.

But he was a big fan, so my unsolicited thoughts were unkind and unnecessary. And the fact is that there was (and is) lots of music that I enjoy which is hardly defensible as objectively good. So I’m not here to disparage Kid Rock‘s music. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t. Although, the line from his song “Cool, Daddy Cool” — Young ladies, young ladies, I like ’em underage see, Some say that’s statutory (But I say it’s mandatory) — is something I think we can all agree to openly dislike.

And it’s not Rock himself that I necessarily have issues with. I’ve never met him. But he is an artist and a celebrity and lives a very public life freely sharing his opinions. So we are all free to have reactions to those opinions, especially the cruel and entitled ones.

Rock was born and raised in Michigan, a credential he has often burnished (especially when selling concert tickets here). But as demonstrated in the video he posted this past week on social media with a U.S. military helicopter hovering near his hilltop home, he has chosen to live in Tennessee. So I’ll be very happy to have him be associated with Tennessee, not Michigan, from this point forward.

Every week, I try to settle on a topic specific to Michigan. There certainly never is a lack of topics — especially in an election year — worthy of debate and discussion. Others are more just observations. For example, could the camera possibly pull in any tighter on those Perry Johnson ads?

But as it turns out, there’s a war going on. Actually, multiple ones. And if you are listening to the rhetoric coming out the Trump administration, there are more coming.

So even though I couldn’t come up with an angle on the Iran War specific to our state, I felt an overwhelming need to comment on it. And in case my point isn’t obvious, I’ll spell it out: We as a country appear to be completely incapable of learning lessons from our history.

I believe we can all agree that the office of Vice President of the United States of America is uniquely terrible. Other than being a tiebreaker vote in the Senate (which is in reality the President’s decision to make), it’s basically a forever on-deck circle waiting for a “batter up” that likely will never come. Consequently, vice presidents are often kept intentionally out of the loop and/or given jobs that nobody else wants, such as defending unpopular policies they may not actually agree with.

And thus did JD Vance find himself in Michigan this week giving a speech in a manufacturing facility. It was awkward to say the least. Of course Vance is famously not just a flip-flopper, but a shape-shifter. That is, he has no problem not just changing his mind on policy but totally reinventing himself to suit his ambitions.

So I don’t feel sorry for him. But I was very uncomfortable watching him try to put a positive spin on high gas prices when it’s pretty clear that he was against going to war with Iran, the singular cause of those high gas prices, which are taking money out of the pockets of the American worker audience. It was like when the Michael Scott character on The Office starts talking himself into a corner and it just becomes too unbearable to watch. But not at all funny.