Granholm considers four-day work weeks

The Detroit News is reporting today that Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm is considering four-day work weeks to help state workers save money in the era of $4/gallon gasoline. This follows Oakland County's recent approval of county executive Brooks Patterson's plan for county workers.

With all the fuss by governments over their employee's commuting expenses I'm forced to wonder what European workers are thinking of our tantrums. They've been paying the equivalent of $7+/gallon for much longer. Did their employers switch to four-day work weeks? No. Most employees in Europe use public transportation. Many of those that do drive drive more fuel efficient cars.

What will happen to American productivity advantages if more workers switch to four-day weeks? Will more jobs move out of the country? If workers complain too much about the cost of commuting (aggravated by urban sprawl, low-density housing, lack of mass transit, and historically cheap gas) will more of their jobs be outsourced?

Things that make you go, "Hmm."

Rights, entitlements and privileges--oh, my!

This past Sunday, Free Press editorial writer, Ron Dzwonkowski, wrote in Health care debate must go on:

"We have not in this country come to grips with the core question of whether health care is a right or a privilege — something to which every American is entitled or something to which your entitlement and the extent of your care depend on whether you are working and where."

Whatever health care may be, it is certainly not a right.

A "right" should be anything I can assert without the existence of a government to protect or provide them. Even without government assistance I will defend my life, my family's, and my property. I have a right to live freely and not as another man's property--not even the government's.

I do not have the right to force another to do something for me. In the case of health care, I do not have the right to force a doctor to treat me, nor force them to accept whatever I offer for payment--whether it be cash or chickens.

Nationalized medicine might force doctors to work for a single employer--the government. That comes treacherously close to being forced to work for another

It's unfortunate that humans are frail. It doesn't seem "fair" that some can afford better health care than others. But some can also afford better diets, better housing, better educations, better athletic equipment and club memberships, leisure time, vacations, swimming pools, air conditioners, humidifiers, purifiers, and live in areas with less pollution and lower crime rates.

As all these things can improve health. Are they rights as well and is the government prepared to provide them equally to all Americans?

An opportunity Ferndale should exploit

In 1986 I was able to quadruple my car's gas mileage. A single low-tech change and a tank of gas suddenly lasted four times longer than before. I moved from Grand Blanc to Troy and cut my daily Bingham Farms commute to 10 miles from 45.

In 1993 I was living in Pontiac and driving 26-miles to downtown Detroit. Sometimes that commute took over an hour. After moving to Ferndale in 1997 the trip was cut to 10 miles and a dependable 16 minutes.

My new office is less than two miles from my Ferndale home. In the winter my car is barely warm when I arrive at work and in the summer I sometimes ride my bike when weather permits.

I write this not to boast, but to demonstrate how great an impact where we live can have, and to introduce an newspaper article I read this morning.

In a June 13, Detroit Free Press article, Steve Duchane wrote:

Popping open the gas cap, swiping the credit card, and watching the numbers roll to previously unimaginable totals, it's hard to believe anything good could come from the gas prices we've seen lately. But in reality, our misery at the pump could be a blessing for many of Michigan's mature communities.

As driving becomes more expensive, Americans are considering not only more fuel-efficient vehicles, but also more fuel-efficient commutes. For many, that means rethinking not only where we work, but also where we live. And suddenly, first-ring suburban cities have new luster. Finally, 60 years after sprawl began driving home buyers farther and farther from population centers, Americans are turning around their SUVs in search of shorter commutes.

The sprawl reversal is already benefiting many smaller cities in Michigan.

It's a great article. It points out how your address, near where you work and play, can be an act of both environmentalism and conservation, makes financial sense, and can improve your quality of life while increasing the quantity of time you can spend with the people or activities you love.

This is an opportunity Ferndale should move swiftly to exploit. Our housing values have been hurt, our foreclosure rates are high, but we have something Clarkston, Oakland Twp., Brighton, and the Grosee Pointes don't have-- our location.

In the summer of 2007 for my mayoral campaign's website I wrote:

The degree to which Ferndale is green is a measure of how green our residents and business are. Rather than indulge symbolism I would prefer a council that promoted “green-ness” by virtue of Ferndale's unique location and proximity to major highways and everything that is metro Detroit. Simply living, working, or visiting Ferndale is an act of environmentalism because living, working, and playing in a city that's nearer than one that is not conserves energy.

Ferndale citizens have decided it's better to drive fewer miles to work than more. It's better to walk to restaurants and clubs than drive. It's better to live nearer existing infrastructure than accelerate the loss of farmland, forests, fields, and other green spaces.

What Ferndale and other urban communities must do is enable more citizens and businesses to locate to our cities. This is why property taxes and broadening our tax base is important to lower the cost of owning property here. This is how public policy promotes environmentalism. It recognizes it, promotes it, and celebrates it. It doesn't serve it with symbolism...

I won't beat the symbolism point to death here. Suffice it to say that living closer to where you work and walking to your entertainment is an act of conservation. It may get less press than free parking for hybrids, but the former actual does something about the environment every day while the latter only says something about it.

Whether you goal is to save money on gas, lower America's dependence on foreign oil, influence foreign policy, or promote environmentalism and conservation, where you live can have a greater impact than how you live.

Now is a great opportunity for Ferndale, Hazel Park, Oak Park, Royal Oak, Berkley and other inner-ring cities to promote themselves. They're all at the right place at the right time.

It's easier to change yourself than vote for change

Psychologists tell their patients, and any feel-good daytime talk-show host that will listen, that it's easier to change ourselves than to change others. Relationship problems are more often caused by our trying to change others when it's much easier to change ourselves or our reactions to them.

Candidates often claim to be the agents of change, as Obama does, but the real agents of change are the voters.

There's nothing in either candidate's proposals different from any previous year. In fact, both senators John McCain and Barak Obama offer more of the same. More programs, more spending, more giveaways, more favors from the treasury in exchange for votes. All their proposals for increased services will require more taxes or more borrowing, or both.

Nationalized health care isn't something new, it's more welfare. It's an entitlement program designed to make more Americans dependent on government than the millions already unable or demotivated to kick the habit.

Mortgage bailouts are a lottery for both lenders and borrowers who assumed more debt and risk than they could afford.

Persecution of oil companies provides great theater for the electorate, giving congressman and senators top billing and spot lights for hand wringing and arm waving, but is merely a distraction from our government's unwillingness to exploit our nation's own natural resources.

Do voters really want change or do they merely want credit for the emperor's new priorities? Is increased government spending OK when it's money spent on you or only when spent on others? Are increased taxes OK as long as they aren't yours? Are your votes for locally-elected politicians consistent with a desire for change or are they for more of the same?

Our politicians--both Republican and Democrat--are exactly as we want them to be. Detroit's mayor and city council are exactly as Detroit voters want them to be. In short, our politicians give us exactly what we vote for because it's easier to blame politicians, spouses and relatives than it is to blame ourselves.

No single candidate can bring change. No single party can bring change. Change requires more than one vote every four years. It requires votes for change in the spring for schools, votes for change in the summer primaries, and votes for change every November for national, state, county, and local leadership.

Change what you want from your representatives, change what you vote for, vote that way at every election, and your government will change--eventually. It can't all happen in November, and anyone that tells you otherwise is, well, a candidate-as-usual.

Michigan gets more national attention - for the wrong reason

Michigan is getting more national attention--for the wrong reason.

Most Michigan residents are familiar with the recall petition drive against House Speaker Andy Dillon (D). The more savvy among them may even be familiar with how petition gatherers were harassed by police, township supervisors, and (naturally) Dillon and Democratic supporters.

Despite these obstacles petition gatherers collected 15,000+ signatures and filed them with the state--only to have them rejected by Michigan Secretary of State, Terri Lynn Land (R).

When I said national attention in the title I meant the attention of nationally syndicated columnist and radio host Paul Jacob. His recent article, The Rule of Law v. The Rule of Land, points out again how Michigan is again seems to be coming up on the short-end of the stick.

Having recently participated in gathering signatures for Ferndale's No PSD initiative and seeing first-hand how some parties directly affected by bad legislation aren't able to collect petition signatures against those same laws.

In the case of the PSD, the business owners that had to pay the Principal Shopping District tax (PSD) aren't allowed, by Ms. Land's rules, to collect petition signatures against it. Business owners had to rely on residents to do much of the work for them. Despite business owners' not-insignificant investment in our community they can not collect signatures because many aren't registered Ferndale electors.

That's not right. It's glad to know the Supreme Court agrees with me. It's disappointing to discover our secretary of state either disagrees or is ignorant of the issue. I suspect that after the appeal of her ruling she'll become more familiar with Buckley v ACLF.

Legislature votes for ban--except in casinos, tracks, and bingo halls

A couple days ago I read an editorial that pointed out how poor our understanding of civics is because if we understood the sanctity our constitution, democracy, and capitalism holds for private property rights we wouldn't even be having the conversation about smoking bans.

But to save everyone from having to think about representative and limited government, Lou Fleury from Royal Oak's letter to The Oakland Press gives us this simple example.

[Lou and his friend] think the Legislature should also look at another scourge that plays out all over the state — an assault to health and welfare, a problem to workers in certain establishments who are subjected to this without regard for human decency. Yes, we’re talking about karaoke — the right of people to sing off key and give us headaches! My doctor told me I may suffer permanent physical or psychological damage.

I was complaining about this the other day to anyone that would listen. Somebody said, “Shut up will ya. Just don’t go to those places anymore.”

Wow! Don’t go to bars and restaurants that have karaoke. What a concept.

Indeed. How far we must have wandered when individual liberty and responsibility are new concepts.

Ask not what your congressman can do for you

We've come a long way from John F. Kennedy's inauguration speech of January 20, 1961. It is from this great speech that President Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can do for your country." On a Townhall-like telephone conference with Congressman Sander Levin a few weeks ago this was the last thing on questioners' minds. All they most wanted to know was what the federal government will do for them.

According to the conference moderator, over 2000 people from the congressman's district were on the phone. It was the congressman's staff's job to screen questions. Maybe Kennedy's words were the last thing on the screeners' minds. The only questions I heard asked were basically:

• How can the government pay for my health insurance?
• How can the government pay for my child's education?
• How can the government lower gas prices?
• How can the government pay for my mortgage?

After answering a few of these, I could have easily taken the congressman's place because his answer to each was basically, "Democratic leaders in the house and senate are working to provide (fill in the blank) but we'd make better progress with a friend in the White House, instead of President Bush."

From the congressman's point-of-view, the only thing stopping Democrats from paying for everything was President Bush. If that's the case, I'm glad President Bush is there, and am not optimistic for either an Obama or Clinton presidency.

The high cost of health insurance, education, and the so-called mortgage crisis are likely the product of government interference in the first place. Many who get the joke chuckle when the hear,

patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this
doctor: Then stop doing that!

If government interference helped create the problem, why do so many expect more government interference will remedy it? I had a grandmother that used to over-cook meat. She thought the solution to any tough, unchewable roast was to put it back in the oven.

When someone else is paying our tab we tend to be less careful what we put on it. This is the case with corporate expense accounts as much as it with insurance. Healthy people are perfectly capable of fighting off infections without antibiotics, but since they're made less expensive with insurance we're seldom reluctant to have them prescribed for us. This is an unnecessary medical subsidy that inflates the prices of medicines and contributes to the antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.

Government subsidies also remove the pressure on colleges to yield to the economics of supply and demand. Administrative and staff salaries, building and maintenance expenses are all increasing faster than inflation, and both state and federal governments are racing to back-fill their budgets so the cost to families might remain affordable. Though universities teach supply & demand, as well as the basics of capitalism and free markets, apparently they prefer a more socialist funding mechanism.

Gas prices? Punish the oil companies. None of us are individually responsible for our nation's dependence on foreign oil. We have a right to live wherever we want, drive whatever we want, heat our homes and pools to whatever temperature we want, and exercise our recreational vehicles however we desire. The preferred mechanism to affording our wants is to have the government pay for it--which is to say taxpayers. And while income taxes are graduated--have "the rich" pay for it. In fact the less we pay in income tax the better the deal it is.

Congressman Levin also promised to rescue homeowners at risk of foreclosure or upside-down on their mortgages. Even before 2005 economists warned home prices couldn't keep going up. Everyone that lived through the Internet Bubble of 2000 or the savings & loan scandal knew the economists were right--but that didn't stop them from buying more home than they could afford or speculating that interest rates wouldn't rise.

So what else did President Kennedy say in that speech? Read it for yourself. You might notice he used words similar to what President Bush used in Israel that so upset Democrats. A good speech, like a good constitution, is as relevant today as it was when first composed. The only difference I see today from 47 years ago is that that speech seems more conservative than progressive, and more likely to come from Bush than either Clinton or Obama.

So I wonder to myself, have Republicans become more like Kennedy or have Democrats become less like him?