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Steinman for Governor:
Part 003, Who is Responsible:
By William E. Steinman:
Last week, I asked for help in trying to understand the election laws in
I will get to the larger discussion of the five major issues soon, but I realized there are other issue that need discussion. I realized this when something happened to me recently which should not have happened to anyone. For sure, it has to do with bureaucracy and who is responsible. I believe there are many people in the state like me, who don't really know who is in charge of what. In this case, the perpetrator was the Secretary of State (SOS) and one of her assistants. Currently, in Michigan the SOS is Terri Lynn Land. The assistant is Mary Bonner.
My experience was so negative that I attempted to find out who Land's dumbocratic opponent was. My intention was to help him by supplying information about my experience. What I discovered instead was why the dumbocrats cannot win an election. I had trouble finding the dumbocrats of Michigan on the web. On the other hand the republicrumbs are all over the web. I never did find anyone running for SOS as a dumbocrat. I'm not sure there is someone. I will discuss more of the details of this debacle in my column "The Gaffer's Variety." I only mention it here to point out the question of responsibility and the disarray of the dumbocrats.
We must think carefully about what we hold the governor responsible for and what we should not lay on her doorstep. For one example, she has no control whatsoever over the office of Michigan's Secretary of State or the State's Attorney General. Unlike the federal level, in Michigan those are separate elective offices. They are, if you would, separate empires within the state. We cannot, in good conscience, hold the governor responsible for what goes on within these fiefdoms. We could hope a governor would communicate with and have some positive input with these people, but that is not always the case. It requires a great deal of good faith and integrity on both sides. We must always remember we are talking about politicians, not decent people.
As an example of true responsibility, the governor is directly responsible for the Department of Education in Michigan. There must be hundreds of people in that department who should be fired out-of-hand. I suspect there are many bureaucrats getting fat on taxpayer money over there, but nothing has been done yet. The bureaucracy blunders on. There is more about this problem in my book, "William in the Land of Giants."
In either cases, where the governor is directly responsible and where she is not, we could hope a good governor would bring to Lansing a healthy atmosphere of integrity and cooperation. We could hope a good governor would demand accountability in his or her own domain. However, these things have been sadly lacking in all of the departments of government within our state that I have had experience with.
Enough of that. Now I must bring up the first of the five issues we need to find solutions for. I said we must create a viable long term economic plan for Michigan and begin to implement it. I also said sucking up to big business is not a plan. The fashion now is to grovel and suck up to huge corporations and beg them to drop a few crumbs into Michigan. We could not help but notice recently a very expensive dumping of a single political ad, evening after evening, into our homes along with the evening news. The ad has to do with bringing jobs to Michigan. It also provide the classic example of the childlike idea that sucking up to big business will solve our economic problems. Our governor is faulted for allegedly not sucking up to one of the Japanese auto companies.
There are serious flaws in that kind of thinking. The most important of these is that the tax breaks given to these bloated goliaths is money lost. It is never recovered. Now the state is still going to need money to operate. If we do not tax the major players their fair share, who do you think will make up the shortfall. You don't have to be Doctor Einstein to get that. Every Joe and Jane who works for their sustenance will eventually have to make up the difference. It is time to stop thinking of these bloated giants as assets. They are no more assets to us than Goliath was to the Philistines. They just eat more than their share of everything.
As to jobs, think it through. These monster corporations have no jobs to give. They are part of a highly competitive static replacement market industry. They do not create jobs. Quite the contrary, if you notice what GM and Ford are both doing they are eliminating jobs. The CEO's of all these monster outfits see their jobs as increasing margin by cutting costs. The main way they cut costs is to eliminate workers and benefits. Ford's Fields, for example, has the philosophy, "Change or die." To him that means lay off workers and close plants. At best, all he can do is move jobs around. The only way he could bring jobs to Michigan would be to take them from somewhere else. The total umber of jobs in the auto industry is not going up and it never will. That job market will continue to decline as the industry bleeds out the last few ounces of efficiency.
This is not just true of the auto industry. It is true of corporate America across the board. Most of the free world’s industry is static or declining. They have no jobs to give. They are all in the mode of maximizing efficiency. Why is that? It is because America is coming up short in the field of innovation. Outside of PCs and the electronic type of devices, we have not had any truly new technology in a very long time. You may not have noticed, but that electronic industry is not based in America. Some of them still use American names, but they are, for the most part, foreign companies.
The only way to create new jobs for the long term is to create new products
that will meet a real consumer demand. The old saw, find a need and fill it,
still applies. To implement that, we need real entrepreneurs who will be
innovative. We do not need entrenched antediluvian mossbacked business as usual
bloated businesses with business as usual managers. Michigan does not have an
inviting environment for entrepreneurs. I will discuss how we can create that
environment next time, borrowing from some essays in the Gaffer's Philosophy.
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