There are many books about the decline of Detroit from a thriving industrial powerhouse to a city that lost close to two-thirds its population before entering bankruptcy. I have read several, along with many more newspaper and magazine articles about Detroit. I could give you a reasonably accurate lecture about what happened. Prefer to listen?…

There’s a myth in many cities that there was once some golden past, and that everything would all be all right if only this could be restored.   The best answer to that was given by the late Ed Koch, when he was running for mayor of New York City in 1977. Prefer to listen? Click…

“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”  I wonder how many people today recognize that quote.  If not, who would you guess said those words?  Bernie Sanders? Someone even further left? Prefer to listen? Click play. Well, no.  That was from John F. …

Here’s a secret about journalism that journalists don’t like to admit:  Much of the time, we are sort of stenographers for the institutions of society – we write about people who get mixed up with the cops, the courts and government, or those who crave publicity. Prefer to listen? Click play. But there are other…

The constitutional amendment establishing term limits in Michigan was passed overwhelmingly in November, 1992, on the same day Bill Clinton beat incumbent President George H.W. Bush, the last sitting president not to be re-elected. Prefer to listen? Click play. But here’s something most people don’t remember about what really happened with term limits.  The amendment…

During the last years of apartheid, the brutally racist “old world order” in South Africa, many young people protesting the regime used as their anthem the music of a mysterious American folk singer whose they knew only as Rodriguez. Prefer to listen? Click play. After the fall of the hated regime, and the birth of…

Here’s why “third parties,” that is, any parties other than Republicans and Democrats, find it almost impossible to win elections, or establish themselves as a political force. There will be voters who are impressed with Jennifer Kurland, and what the Green Party stands for. Others will be drawn to Bill Gelineau’s common sense, and some…

It’s certainly true that everybody doesn’t need a four year college degree.  You could probably make a pretty strong argument that my plumber is at least as valuable to society as I am. Governor Rick Snyder likes to say a welder can find a good job anywhere in Michigan within twenty minutes. Prefer to listen?…

Detroit is both a relatively ancient town, and a relatively young city, whose glory days came and went in a stunning flash that wasn’t even the length of one long lifetime. Prefer to listen? Click play. This was, after all, once a frontier outpost, a fort founded by the French in 1701. Even a century…