Archive for December, 2012

Rick Snyder Christmas Wish

Rick Snyder Christmas Wish

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
December 23, 2012

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Snyder’s Trauma to the Groin…

Synder's Trauma to the Groin

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
December 16, 2012

I may have had more words to add to the right-to-work fiasco, but I think the Grand Rapids Press editorial is an excellent summary — it was embarrassing for Michigan as a whole. Plus the tragedy at Sandy Hook pretty much has consumed any thought (editorial or otherwise) since Friday; the importance of our embarrassing state politics pales in comparison. It’s probably how most of us feel. So you know what? Now, now finally would be the time to address and create a sensible policy toward mental health and firearms. Let’s concentrate on that.

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Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City by Gordon Young

Fellow Flint Powers grad and current San Francisco Bay area journalist Gordon Young has written a new book about Flint, “Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City.” It’s available for pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Indigo. Click here for a post with details on Gordy’s site, FlintExpats. If you haven’t ever been to the site, do yourself a favor and have a look around — it’s wonderfully well done. It helps if you have some sort of ties to Flint, but there are insights and oddities there that don’t make it necessary. All the more reason to make me look forward to the book!

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Right-to-Work Not-So-Secret Motivations

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
December 9, 2012

I grew up in Flint. And one of the benefits of growing up in Flint (and stop snickering — there were many. If you aren’t from Flint, you just don’t know) is having a special insight on these right-to-work shenanigans. I’ve seen unions from the inside. I’ve experienced the good and the bad. I grew up in stable neighborhoods where hard-working folks earned a good wage and passed it forward to their children. I supervised in a foundry where a hopelessly bored worker made a cat and mouse game out of hiding from me at every opportunity — sometimes successfully for entire shifts for which he was paid. I heard my Dad tell stories about how it struck him that there were so many less missing eyes and fingers in Michigan factories than there were in the South Carolina factories he had previously made sales calls in. Or my brother-in-law working at the City of Flint and how oblivious the Firefighter union was to the fact that the tax base had totally eroded and there would have to be concessions.

But you know what? These are just like the enormous positives and squandered opportunities of any human institution — government, Wall Street, churches, newspapers, Detroit Lions. When humans are involved, really incredible and really stupid things can happen.

So as the cartoon suggests, I think this right-to-work law is nothing more than a deeply cynical power grab by the GOP. But the Democrats would do well to acknowledge that this is 2012, not 1972, and it’s time to stop looking at unions and labor purely as a revenue source. What was the word they were using all year? Oh yeah, forward.

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Dangers of the Fiscal Cliff …to a Michigander…

Originally published in the Ann Arbor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
December 2, 2012

This was a fairly easy one to come up with. For as much change and contraction the American auto industry has gone through since the salad days (post-World War II to the 1970s), Michigan is still very much intertwined. I myself — after having gone most of my working career with only tangential work in the auto industry — am now employed by an auto supplier. My brother who lives in Michigan is an auto executive. And I have three Michigan brother-in-laws and a niece who are in the biz. It is generally a happy thing when folks are buying cars; it’s unnerving when they don’t. So if you’re still stuck for what to get that special someone this holiday season, remember that a new automobile always makes a thoughtful gift. Michigan would very much appreciate it!

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