Phil Power: Look at this year to see next

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Phil Power

December 22, 2011

By PHIL POWER Syndicated Columnist The Record Eagle Wed Feb 08, 2012, 02:29 PM EST

“Oh it’s a long, long while

from May to December

But the days grow short

when you reach September…

And the days dwindle

down to a precious few … ”

— September Song, composed

by Kurt Weill, lyrics

by Maxwell Anderson

Frank Sinatra

may not have

been thinking

of Michigan when he

famously sang those lines,

but that’s where we are at

this point in the year.

But though the darkness

now closes in way too

early, starting Friday the

days will be getting longer

again. And it’s time

to take stock of the year

that’s about to end.

Happily, as the daylight

starts slowly to increase,

there is at long last a

glimmer of good news on

the horizon. We’re adding

jobs again in this state

that lost 857,000 of them

over nine grim years.

After years of leading

the nation in unemployment,

we are no longer

the worst-off any more. A

new University of Michigan

forecast shows that

Michigan will probably

finish 2011 with around

65,000 new jobs, with the

prospect of 75,000 more

over the next two years.

Nearly a third of those

new jobs will come from

manufacturing, especially

from the resurgent domestic

auto industry.

So Michigan, which

flirted with another Great

Depression when the auto

industry flirted with extinction

in 2008, is likely

to ride our dominant

industry back to semiprosperity

next year and

in some years thereafter.

Sure, we still need to

diversify our economy.

But for now, it certainly

helps to be on the right

side of increased auto

sales. That has to be what

Gov. Rick Snyder is thinking.

His poll numbers are

way down, in part thanks

to Manuel (Matty) Moroun,

who this year spent

something like $5 million

in TV ads berating the

governor and defending

his Ambassador Bridge

monopoly.

Moroun also achieved

dubious notoriety as a

deep-pocketed, unelected

power broker by scattering

amongst our lawmakers

enormous numbers

of uncounted dollars

— thanks to Michigan’s

miserably ineffective

campaign finance reporting

laws.

Most people in Lansing

think Team Snyder, which

was so successful at nearly

everything else it tried,

badly botched the campaign

to take $500 million

from the Canadians to

build the New International

Trade Crossing

across the Detroit River.

And I’m still trying to

figure out why, in a case

where the new bridge is

nearly unanimously supported

by the business

community, Moroun got

away with his misleading

TV ad campaign entirely

unanswered by the folks

who stood to benefit from

it.

In the aftermath of this

distressing episode is a

civics lesson: Our political

system can, in actual

fact, be bought. In this

case, it was done by a

very determined, very

rich guy who wants very

much to protect his very

profitable monopoly and

was prepared to pay heavily

to influence legislators

and lie to the overall

public.

Michigan’s other big

negative story of 2011 —

Detroit’s financial crisis

— exploded late this year,

when somebody actually

read the accounting

report concluding the city

could run out of cash by

next spring … and leaked

it to the newspapers.

Naturally, that was followed

quickly by Detroit

politicians and labor

leaders huddling together

at a press conference, all

asserting the city didn’t

need a financial manager,

could manage its problems

by itself, etc, etc.

I’ve talked to a lot of

folks, both financial experts

and politicians, and

nobody is willing to say

on the record what virtually

everybody quietly

agrees is the case:

1) Even if the city cuts a

deal with its unions, that

won’t do anything about

the structural deficit of

uncounted billions in

unfunded pension and

health care liabilities;

2) A “consent agreement”

with the state that

allows the city to make

some structural changes

probably won’t get far

enough, either;

3) A takeover by an

Emergency Financial

Manager, although it

sounds good in theory,

could provoke outrage —

maybe even violence.

Many felt that Detroit

is most likely to end up

going through a Chapter

9 bankruptcy, in the hope

that some judge sees

this as an opportunity

to restructure the entire

financial basis of the city,

giving it a clean slate

much as bankruptcy did

for General Motors.

The only problem with

this is that the current

law says the city would

have to have an emergency

financial manager

first.

How Michigan’s various

constituencies will

manage to tiptoe next

year around the financial

— and racial — realities

of this terrible and

complicated situation is

still shrouded in mystery

to me.

There you have it. In his

play “The Tempest,” William

Shakespeare wrote

“the past is prologue,”

suggesting that history

has a way of determining

much of the future.

What happened in

2011 — from the improving

economy, the ongoing

struggles to build a

new bridge and the dire

financial situation of our

largest city — suggest that

the first chapter of next

year’s story already has

been written.

Next year, we’ll see how

the plot unfolds.