Tim Passages

I'm still stunned at the passing of Tim Russert. I'm as big of fan of Tim's as you'll find. So I hope I don't have to turn in my fan club card when I say that I think Tim would be dismayed by the coverage of his death.
One of the things I always loved about Tim was his journalistic approach which was decidedly "old school." Tim always believed that the story was bigger than the storyteller. So what would he make of the fact that the entire broadcast of NBC Nightly News on the day of his death was devoted to him? Was Tim's death newsworthy? Absolutely. But watching his life and times become the stuff of the 24 hour news cycle (the lifeblood of the cable news networks) would have profoundly pained him, I believe. And the self-reverential habits the news business has developed are a big part of why traditional journalism is on life support in our society.
Tim, thinking about it all makes me miss you even more.
-Devin

Hot Wings

As usual, the turnout of the ever-faithful Detroit sports fans was jawdropping. But at this year's Red Wings Stanley Cup parade, I was most struck by the players who seemed completely (and so very sincerely) overwhelmed by the crowds that greeted them. Almost to a man, the Wings became a little emotional as I asked them one by one what they thought when they turned the corner at the Hockeytown Cafe and looked down Woodward Avenue. Kris Draper told me he couldn't believe it but that it seemed to him an even larger gathering than the one in 2002. Nick Kronwall told me that the veteran Cup players had told him what to expect but that it was so much better than he could've imagined. And Chris Osgood, who came into the playoffs with a good chance at not seeing one minute of playing time, became glassy-eyed while talking about it. And, as if to return the favor, stood in the hot sun for more than an hour after the rally had ended signing autographs for a steady line of fans.
Hockeytown is well intact.
(PS - Hats off to Dominik Hasek. One of the greatest goalies of his generation proved he could be as classy out of the net as in it. He retires after graciously urging Osgood on as his replacement during the cup run.)
-Devin

Finally, a light (and camera and action!)

Finding good news on Mackinac Island has been like looking for a car dealership. But one bright spot has to be the sudden and shocking reaction to the state's push to create a film industry in Michigan. Since the incentive package was launched in April, some $225 million dollars in film projects have taken shape. That's nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in six weeks. Movie makers are falling all over themselves to get in on a deal that can put 40% of the production costs back in the filmmakers' pockets. There are some big questions that linger about whether the math is upside down --- I spoke with Senator Nancy Cassis and she fears that the outflow might be more than the income due to the way that the various production cost credits are calculated. It's going to take some time to see whether it's a positive net gain. BUT, in almost no time at all, Michigan has accomplished two important things. First, it's shown some new economy agility. (6 weeks!) And second, it fits nicely into the "cool cities" campaign to attract and retain our young, bright, creative minds. (There's not much cooler than the movie industry.) So as we leave Mackinac, there's some light ahead... and it looks like a spotlight.

The Mackinac Clouds

It's raining and quite dreary on Mackinac Island today, and that matches the mood of many of Michigan's businessmen and women who've gathered here looking for any morsel of sunshine. The Mackinac gathering has always been a place to find some optimism, and at the moment, Governor Granholm is doing her level best in her eternally cheery role as the state's morale officer. But, and I wish it were otherwise, the gloom of those attending is oppressive. Auto announcements this week have poured more despair into our economic whirlpool. We find that about half of our college graduates are leaving the state. And many businesses have found that the cure for the Single Business Tax has been worse than the disease. And I'm asked time and again, "Where is the revolution? Where is the courage to change things in a dynamic way?"
Here's a telling little moment. I'm moderating a panel today on the push to attract the film industry to Michigan. Last evening, we had a dry-run of the panel and I asked a production manager what about Michigan brought his production of a television pilot to the state. He said, "Well, first, it really helps that you're a 'right to work' state..."
Um... well, actually...
-Devin

Big Mac, please...

So again, the movers and shakers move and shake their way north to Mackinac Island for the annual policy conference hosted by the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce. There are always workshops and sessions that are the planned portions of the agenda, but the real story of Mackinac often boils down to the conversations on the massive porch of the Grand Hotel between the sessions.
The big topics this year will no doubt include Mayor Kilpatrick's troubles and whether the Governor (who will hear no end to mayor-related questions during her appearances here) should intercede and act on the city council's request to remove the mayor from office. There will also be plenty of discussion about the mess that is the Michigan delegate tally in the presidential primary. (That may finally be settled on Saturday as the Rules Committee of the DNC meets to try and hammer out a deal on the Michigan and Florida delegates.) And lastly, I'm curious to see what kind of discussions break out over mass transit. It's almost a running joke that every year, Mackinac is the setting for a lot of talk on transit which is followed up by absolutely no action back at home. But this year, with gas rocketing higher and higher, John Hertel (who leads the transit effort in southeast Michigan) is finally feeling some traction. He's told me we're getting very close to a big announcement on progress, but given the "you first" mentality that often defines progress in our region, the announcement has to wait until everyone is on board. So tomorrow, we're off to Big Mac --- watch for updates from there.
-Devin

It's Over... Isn't it?

It's hard to see how Hillary Clinton can possibly go on after the results from North Carolina and Indiana. She just cancelled any appearances on the morning news shows (perhaps regretting her premature victory lap speech in Indianapolis), and the money funnel is almost certainly going to run dry starting right about now. And if I'm right about this, something historic has happened this evening.
For the first time ever, the United States has an African American as the presumptive nominee for a major party in the election for President.
I have no idea if he'll win. (I'm remembering that last summer, I predicted that the candidates would be John Edwards and Mitt Romney. Good thing I ask the questions rather than answer them.) And I would not dare to endorse or deride his candidacy.
But right now, it's 20 minutes after midnight on May 7, 2008, and Barack Obama finally has the math working for him in just about every direction.
What a remarkable moment.
-Devin

The Big Night

So this was all supposed to be long over by now (remember Super Tuesday?), but the campaign goes on. And who would have believed that North Carolina and Indiana with their early May primaries would carry this much weight? In fact, could it all end for Hillary Clinton tonight?
Exit polls show her trailing badly in North Carolina. A double-digit loss there coupled with any kind of win in Indiana and Clinton likely lives to campaign another day (even though the long-term math is still problematic for her). But should Obama pull off a win in Indiana, Clinton will have a tough time making the case to go on. She survived a money drought earlier in the campaign, but this one just might be fatal.
-Devin

And now, Council...

The Detroit City Council has a natty problem on their hands. They've already made their disgust with Mayor Kilpatrick well known, and I'm not sure they needed attorney Bill Goodman's report to convince them that the Mayor had betrayed them in the settlement process from the Whistleblower lawsuit. But Goodman's report shows them the tricky footing ahead. The wording of the Detroit city charter is cryptic enough that trying to throw the Mayor out of office would put the council in pioneer territory and there's really no way to guess at how the process would unfold. If the council pursues his removal, it almost certainly would end up in a court fight and there's a chance the felony trial on the prosecutor's eight-count indictment would be over before the council's fight was heard (which would leave it all rather pointless). The council can try the Lansing route and implore the Governor to remove the Mayor, and while that's a clearer path, the Governor has given no indication that she has any willingness to go the Engler route and remove a Detroit-elected leader from power. The last option is for the council to formally censure the Mayor, but while that might be a blemish on his resume, it's largely toothless.
So, council, what now?
-Devin

Hillarys and Valleys

It's a Pennsylvania win for Hillary Clinton tonight, but perhaps piece of shrapnel in the Democratic party's chances in November. The superdelegates make the math all but impossible to figure, but Obama still appears to be poised to win the nomination. What will he look like when he gets to Denver? Clinton's relative success in Pennsylvania has come through taking shots at everything but Obama's dog, which means we can expect much more of the same as we head into the last stretch of primaries. (Flashpoint rule: Negative campaigning only works when you're behind, when you're ahead, and when you're even.) But it means while John McCain's white boots and cowboy hat stay pristine for the next few months, Obama (and likely Clinton, too) will look like the barn floor.
Ironic, isn't it? The wife of "America's First Black President" may keep America from having one just yet.
And that laughter you hear is from Republicans who were sure this election year was a lost cause.
- Devin

BIG Week

If you're a news or political junkie, this is a big and intriguing week. Tuesday, the Pennsylvania primary may (or may not) tell us a lot about how long the Obama/Clinton match will go on. Back in Detroit, the Geoffrey Fieger trial gets underway. And then this coming weekend, the controversial Revered Jeremiah Wright comes to town for the NAACP dinner at Cobo.
The primary and Jeremiah Wright will get the bigger headlines, but the Fieger trial may win the fascination race. Attorneys all over town (few of whom would be described as Fieger fans) will be watching a master at work. Gerry Spence is a legendary trial lawyer (the best in America according to more than a few court watchers). But his perfect record of the past five decades will be put on the line in a case that seems impossible to win. Of course, keep in mind, that's a specialty for both Spence and Fieger. It's going to be great stuff.
- Devin

Up In The Air

We've become conditioned to doubt that a merger is going to be all that beneficial. (Daimler Chrysler anyone?) But it's been fascinating to see how little fear or criticism has developed around the announcement that Northwest and Delta are going into a marriage that will create the world's biggest airline. Is the near universal embrace of this partnership a sign of the general optimism regarding its success, or are we so starved for an economic booster-shot in southeast Michigan that we're willing to skip right past critical examination for fear that we might find trouble with the treasure chest that's been delivered to our door?
Well, at the risk of spitting on the candle of hope, keep an eye on several areas of potential worry. The pilots, mechanics and flight attendants could all cause union worries. (A flight attendant tells me that not only are they concerned about marrying Delta's non-union flight attendants with the unionized group from Northwest, but they've been told it could take up to a year to train each other on the other airline's planes.) But with the price of jet fuel pushing ticket prices ever higher, there will be more than a little opposition on Capitol Hill for a merger that will take one more layer of competition out of the quickly depleting airline cake. So while dreams of the Detroit-Willow Run aerotropolis dance in your head, nothing is a done deal yet.
- Devin

It Ain't Over til it's Over...

"The end is not yet."

- Matthew 24: 6

There were no midnight watches required at the state capitol this time around. A string of deals came together without a government shutdown and without the kind of saber-rattling many feared was imminent. But the relative peace may have more to do with the spectre that both the lawmakers and the Governor have sensed on the doorstep. The strangely cobbled deal that extended the sales tax to a wild array of services has festered and corroded for the last four weeks and it now appears destined for, at the very least, a makeover. Big business, already in a foul humor, has blown a collective gasket over the nooks and crannies of the tax and are now proposing that the thing be scuttled and in its place they're inviting (!) an increase in the Michigan Business Tax. Governor Granholm says she's willing to take the thing back to the studs and start again but that it has to replace every cent of revenue it wipes out, and (here's the rub), cannot be temporary.

Ah, the good times.

Governor Granholm will be my guest this Sunday morning on Flashpoint to take about what a strange trip it's been. I'm hoping to include a segment of questions from the extended Flashpoint family --- that means YOU. If you'd like to send a question for consideration, send it to us at flashpoint@clickondetroit.com

See you Sunday.

- Devin

A Primary Concern

"I'm not a member of any organized political party; I'm a Democrat."
--- Will Rogers

In the high stakes chess game over the Presidential primary schedule, just as Michigan democrats felt they had maneuvered the candidates into checkmate, four of the candidates have swept their pieces off the board and are going home. Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson and Joe Biden have announced that they will not be participating in the Michigan primary on January 15th. They can certainly (and legitimately) argue that they prefer not to run afoul of the national party rules (which mandate a strict if largely illogical order of state primaries and caucuses), but cynics might suggest that it's easier to stand on principle when the poll numbers suggest that Hillary Clinton is going to take Michigan anyway. But where now, Michigan democrats? If you move the primary back to February, you do so with your tail between your legs, and if you keep it in mid-January, you're throwing a very lonely party.
I can hear Will Rogers laughing...
-Devin

Back to work...

"I watch the moonlit sails go by; I marvel how men toil and fare, The weary business that they play!"
- Andrew Lang

After a hiatus of far greater length than is explicable, the Flashpoint blog is back in business. And it comes after one of the stranger events I've ever covered. A capitol building can be dramatic at the shank of midnight; nothing new about that. But the bend and sway of events last Sunday night in Lansing were dark, mysterious, and precarious in an Edgar Allan Poe kind of way. (In fact, when I think back to the back-and-forth footwork required of reporters and legislators alike, it seems shrouded in that haze so characteristic of late 19th century literature.) But after a government shutdown that lasted about as long as the drive back from Lansing, it was fascinating to find the sun dawning on a Monday morning in which both parties felt they had what they had sought; Democrats had a package that was largely the one the Governor had offered at the beginning and Republicans were, with just a few exceptions, able to say the tax increases passed without GOP support.
So all's well? Not so fast. Business is fuming with the new service tax structure (and I don't just mean shoe shiners and fortune tellers --- the Governor has gotten herself sideways with the state's heavyweights with this deal), and we've got three weeks and counting to find more than $400 million dollars in cuts. This Sunday morning, I sense a donnybrook right about 10 AM on Local 4...
- Devin

School's Been in Session The Whole Time

A Fine Example. School is back in session in Detroit but I've been thinking a lot about what the students of this city were learning while they watched the Detroit Teachers Strike play out. It was a parade of adults behaving badly. And last week, after an all-nighter in the Mayor's office, the euphoric news conference was, ahem, bizarre.
It was called "a great day for the city of Detroit". Are you kidding me? It was merely a day that wasn't as awful as the two weeks prior. And who needs to take sides? All three of the key parties need the paddle that used to symbolize justice in some of the elementary schools I attended.
The teachers certainly had fair complaints; they had given up plenty in the implied promise that they would get theirs this time around. But they work for a different district than the one that first hired them. It's smaller and it's underfunded. And while their complaints about the district's poor spending habits have resonance, you can't drive your district deeper into the red with a strike that moves more students (and their accompanying $7500) to the suburbs.
The school district gets an "F" in strike strategy. For William Coleman to promise that Detroit would open school on time strike or not was a breathtaking miscalculation. It nearly guaranteed a strike, a kind of irrestistable dare for the teachers' union. It also threw respect out the window which was already in short supply in the negotiations.
The third laurel of dishonor is reserved for her honor, Judge Susan Borman. The resolve with which she continually steered the parties back into negotiations might have been admirable had it not been so lacking in courage. She kept delaying a ruling on whether the strike was legal because, she said, she felt the two sides were getting so close to an agreement. I'm not an attorney, but what in the world does the negotiating process have to do with the question of the strike's legality? Absolutely none.
So the kids are back in school. Kudos to the Mayor for force-feeding them some common sense (albeit too late). But unless you're a student, the first semester report cards are pretty ugly. And glad-handing at a news conference won't cover the city's latest bloody nose.

Family Feud

"The blood of Abraham, God's father of the chosen, still flows in the veins of Arab, Jew, and Christian, and too much of it has been spilled..."
- Jimmy Carter

On and On. The calls for a cease-fire in the Mideast are understandable, and yet I also understand President Bush suggesting that we've been there, done that --- that it's time for something lasting, something concrete. I'm not sure it's possible to find anything lasting other than the hatred that has seeped into the rocks and hillsides that have presided over centuries of turmoil. Congressman John Dingell shocked me in the interview for this week's program saying that he isn't against Hezbollah. He reasons that the U.S. cannot take sides in this dispute if the U.S. is going to act as an honest peace broker. I'm not sure many will be able to see it his way (he was one of eight that voted against a U.S. House resolution voicing support for Israel (410 voted in favor). But then again, taking sides hasn't gotten anyone very far in this ancient dispute. I fear that the tide of history is stronger than any weaponry in our current arsenals. I remember several years ago being on assignment aboard a U.S. Navy cruiser in the Red Sea, staring at the Sinai peninsula, and realizing that the turbulence in the region even predated Moses' receiving the Ten Commandments on that peninsula thousands of years ago. And it depresses me to no end to think that so much of it is built around our disagreements over the way we serve our God. Christianity, Islam and Judaism all trace their roots back to Abraham --- but of course, there's no fight like a family fight.

The World is Watching

"My cup runneth over."
-- 23rd Psalm

World Book. Okay, so in the interest of full disclosure (which I try to demand on Flashpoint), I have been a soccer fan for a long, long time going back to my playing days in middle school and high school, right through to my coaching days as a father of four. I would rather meet Pele than Michael Jordan, and I can probably trace my lifelong fascination with Argentina back to its 1978 World Cup, held aloft by captain Daniel Passarella, my favorite player. So I am probably not the average American that FIFA and the World Cup need to recruit. I'm already there, continually dismayed by the ambivalence with which so many Americans greet the pageant of World Cup soccer. I mean, even if you don't like soccer, aren't you the least bit interested in an event that the entire globe sees as a matter of life and death?
My theory on soccer's popularity problem in the U.S. boils down to provincialism. Even though millions and millions of American boys and girls play the sport in front of enthusiastic parents (and have been doing so for a couple of decades now), we just can't push soccer into that pantheon reserved for our athletic passions of football, basketball, baseball and NASCAR.
Notice anything about those four sports? All home grown, all decked out in red, white and blue. (As for Canada's passion, Hockeytown aside, the NHL was already on life support in the U.S. before it stupidly cancelled a season.) As Americans, we don't really care to have anyone advising us on our tastes, habits and predilections. The more we're told that the rest of the world loves its futbol, the deeper we retreat. ("I'm supposed to sit here and watch a 1-0 game that ends not when the clock expires but when the referee says he figures time is up? No thanks.")
Small wonder the rest of the world sees us as arrogant and self-absorbed.
So herewith, the Flashpoint guide to appreciating the next few weeks of World Cup.
1) Don't approach soccer like a game. It's more like a novel. You can't just skip to the last two pages. You only appreciate the excruciating last few minutes if you've been through the to and fro of the first 90.
2) Look for the symbolism. Germany versus England is far more than a soccer game if you'll give just a fleeting thought to history. (A few years ago, England played Argentina in a surrogate Falklands War that was riveting.)
3) Learn a cheer or two. Soccer chants are far more inventive and five times funnier than anything you've heard at an American arena. A personal favorite -- the Brits who yell, "We'll be right nasty bastards if we lose!"
4) Everyone is allowed to root for Brazil. They're the world's best fans and unlike fans of the Yankees and Red Sox, they allow you to jump on the bandwagon anytime you like. Every game, especially every victory, is like Fat Tuesday. Good thing, because they're a good bet to win it all.

C'mon. It won't hurt.