Michigan Radio’s Senior Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about the recent decision by The State Officers Compensation Commission to cut legislative pay by ten percent. Hear Audio Story    There is something to be said for a spirit of shared sacrifice during hard times...

I still think of Michigan’s constitution as our “new constitution.� I suppose this is because I was still in elementary school when it was written and adopted, and there was a lot of hoopla surrounding it. Teachers told us that we should be proud that our state finally had a progressive new co...

The early 1960s version of today’s TV’s reality shows were shows about doctors and lawyers. One of the best of these was The Defenders, which starred the brilliant E.G. Marshall. I was a big fan of this show, which I watched when I was about ten years old. I remember little about it today, excep...

If you’ve been listening to my commentaries for awhile, you may have noticed that I am not shy about sharing my opinions. So here’s what I think about the situation in Flint. I don’t know whether the mayor should be recalled or not. I don’t live there, I don’t know enough about what’s ha...

I don’t know James Epolito personally, though people who do tell me he’s done a tremendous job as head of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. Phil Power, who is on the MEDC board, knows Epolito well, and credits him with using $1.5 billion in public funding to lure $7.7 billion in pri...

Everything we know now suggests that when it comes to the economy, this is going to be a rough, batten-down-the-hatches kind of year. It may be even worse for state government. There is one big difference between the state and federal governments, by the way. Washington doesn’t have to live within...

This morning, President Bush announced that he's offering $17.4 billion in loans to the domestic auto industry. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry would have liked to be at the studio today to share his thoughts. However, he’s snowed in. Nevertheless, we were able to get Jack over the phone… He...

There seems to be a great deal of resentment of the United Auto Workers union, and it is not limited to management. A few months ago, I read a letter from an independent house painter named Ken to the editor of a newspaper in Pontiac. He was bitterly complaining about the union’s cushy benefits an...

The political winds seemed to shift on Capitol Hill yesterday, and the news they were blowing doesn’t sound good for Detroit. “Right now, I don’t think there are the votes,“ said Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, chairman of the banking committee. He personally favors the bailout, but doesnâ€...

I suppose the auto industry could have picked a worse time to have a financial meltdown, but this one is bad enough. To some extent, General Motors is caught in a political squeeze not of the automaker’s own doing. Barack Obama was elected president last week by a wide margin. Obama is in favor of...