Michigan's educational motto? Dumb it down

It wouldn't be a campaign stop without the requisite hard-luck story. And Stephanie Baker stepped up to the plate at Barack Obama's town hall meeting in Taylor last week.

She wanted to know what Obama would do to help her daughter maintain her financial aid even though her GPA had slipped.

What was his mealy-mouthed, bleeding-heart liberal response?

"There is no excuse. She's got to keep her grades up. She's got to work harder. I'm willing to bet she's probably watched some TV in the past couple of months, went to the movies, hung out with her girlfriends," the presumptive Democratic nominee said. "She's got to keep her grades up so she can keep her financial aid."

Amen to that.

Perhaps Stephanie's met Cindy Timmons, whose high school freshman son just flunked five classes. Cindy trekked down from Grayling to Lansing last week to plead with a House panel to spike tougher class requirements so her boy could graduate.

Nobody told her to hire a tutor. Nobody told her the cold, hard truth: That it really doesn't matter if her son drops out or graduates high school - he'll be looking at minimum-wage jobs and double-digit unemployment either way. Increasingly, the only road to a middle-class life is a college degree - or two or three.

Three years ago, a commission chaired by Lt. Gov. John Cherry issued a stellar report on the state of education in Michigan and what to do about it. Among the 19 recommendations was doubling the number of college graduates by 2015 and beefing up high school graduation requirements to prepare kids for the knowledge-based economy.

The world and its economy are changing. The Mitten State can change with it or our students can be left behind. I suggest that Stephanie and Cindy make the Cherry Commission report required reading for themselves and their children.

Fortunately for them, there are pandering politicians armed with quick fixes. God bless election years.

State Reps. Joel Sheltrown, D-West Branch, and Rick Jones, R-Grand Ledge, are on mission to muck up Michigan's education system even more, as though slashing higher education spending for years hasn't done enough.

Their motto for the state? Dumb it down.

The GOP-led Legislature admirably passed in 2006 some of the toughest high school graduation requirements in the country, which included two years of foreign language, four of English and three of math. Kids who take high-level math in high school, for instance, are much more likely to go to college.

Sheltrown says it's time to give up already and hand out consolation prizes to the non-college bound, an easier "general diploma curriculum." That and a couple bucks will buy you a cup of coffee (though not at Starbuck's).

He amusingly passed out a pop quiz on Algebra II to lawmakers last week, which most flunked.

Well, duh. Anyone who watched the budget debacle last year knows that math ain't legislators' strong suit. Let's set the bar a little higher for our children, folks.

While Sheltrown tries to hobble our high schools, Jones wants to stunt our world-class universities, especially the University of Michigan.

Jones, best known for holding nonstop press conferences and proposing legislation to "save Christmas," tells his own sob story about a rural teacher whose students just can't get into the UM.

I knew that as a personal responsibility kind of guy and former sheriff, Jones would dole out the tough medicine. Kids need to study harder. Parents have to get more involved. The school needs to change its teaching requirements and curriculum pronto.

Nope. "That's not fair!" cries Jones, an alleged conservative, who should probably chat with Obama.

Under his legislation, public universities would be required to accept the top 10 percent of all Michigan high school classes. In other words: Let's reward mediocrity.

You've got to be kidding me. When our college graduation rate is an abysmal 25 percent and college remedial classes are already crammed, this is the last thing we need. Our 15 universities are some of the only bright spots in our state, clouded by 8.5 percent unemployment and a decaying auto industry.

Universities compete on a global scale. If we dilute the talent pool in Michigan schools, those in California, Texas and India will inevitably gain.

Weakening his case further, Jones rails about the U-M accepting so many Red Chinese instead of red-blooded Michiganders. He's teamed up with a self-described "disgruntled employee," UM Professor Bill Kauffman, who ventures into conspiracy-theory land about Chinese students stealing national security secrets, citing YouTube videos as evidence.

Let's face it: Some high schools are better than others and do a superior job of preparing students for college success. The beauty of the Michigan Merit Curriculum that Sheltrown is trying to dismantle is it attempts to hoist all schools to a high standard, which in turn, increases students' odds of being accepted to U-M and other colleges.

Look, there are no easy answers to Michigan's educational quandaries. Anyone who tells you differently is trying to get elected.

Governor’s financial panel members look to ’09 budget

By Susan J. Demas
For the Enquirer

Gov. Jennifer Granholm on Tuesday trumpeted an ambitious education and economic development agenda during her State of the State address, but vowed not to raise taxes this year.

The Democrat will fill in some of the fine print when she unveils her fiscal 2009 budget next week. The House Fiscal Agency forecasts the state is on track to be $275 million in the black.

But missing from her 53-minute address were many recommendations made by her own Emergency Financial Advisory Panel on solving the state’s short- and long-term budget problems.

In January 2007, Granholm appointed the bipartisan, 12-member panel chaired by former governors William Milliken, a Republican, and Jim Blanchard, a Democrat. The group (nicknamed the 12 Apostles) penned a 19-page report on Feb. 2 as the state was facing a $3 billion shortfall for fiscal 2007 and 2008.

"I honestly don't know how many people read our report," Blanchard said.

That sentiment was echoed by several members of the panel -- former state Senate Majority Leader Dan DeGrow, former state Rep. Don Gilmer and former U.S. Rep. Joe Schwarz.

"The report is applicable today as it was when it was written," said Schwarz, I-Battle Creek. "I would make a strong suggestion for all men and women in the Legislature to reread it. Some of them never read it in the first place. This should be their top priority. The bell rings as soon as the governor's State of the State and it's not going to be any easier in fiscal 2009."

The report’s general theme of solving the state's structural deficit with “cuts, reforms and revenues,” popped up frequently in speeches by Granholm and other Democrats. Last year, she and lawmakers struck an 11th hour deal to increase business and income taxes by more than $1 billion and allow competitive bidding for school employee health insurance, which Republicans have tried to get through for years.

Schwarz called last year’s cuts and reforms “nip and tuck.”

“The fact remains, you can clearly point out structural problems. The structural deficit is still there," Schwarz said. "Taxes and spending and the structure of state government still have significant problems."

"My advice would have been to solve it all at once so you don't have to do it again," said DeGrow, R-Port Huron. "(Former Gov.) John Engler always said, 'If you have to take a hit, take it early, so you get it over with and don't have to take the hit again.'”

Several of the report’s recommendations, like the Internet tax, were left on the cutting room floor. The report notes the growing service sector is not taxed, but the Legislature made little headway, passing and quickly repealing last fall a tax on a hodgepodge of services.

But in spite of last year’s messy budget wars, Blanchard says he “remains optimistic about Michigan’s future.

“It’s too great of a state to be kept down,” he said.

Making the cuts

On Tuesday, Granholm made scant mention of cuts and reforms, besides promising to slash red tape for businesses by making Michigan a regulatory “one-stop shop.”

Though Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, said the governor had “borrowed a page from the Republican playbook” with her promise not to raise taxes, his caucus wants action to reduce spending and make government leaner.

"It's time to focus on reforms and making investments to lead Michigan into the future," agreed Gilmer, R-Augusta. "We're still providing more government than we have the resources to pay for it."

The Emergency Financial Advisory Panel made several recommendations, including cuts to the $2 billion Corrections budget. Michigan incarcerates more than 50,000 at a cost of $31,000 per prisoner. The nonpartisan, Lansing-based Citizens Research Council reports Michigan could save $500 million if its incarceration levels matched other Midwest states.

Gilmer urges a bicameral, bipartisan committee meetings taking 30 to 40 hours worth of testimony on sentence reform, rehabilitation and recidivism.
The report also said skyrocketing state employee and retiree benefit costs need reform and schools and local governments must consolidate services.

DeGrow said the state could restructure revenue sharing with local governments. The time might be right to let local taxpayers decide what priorities they want to fund instead of getting a blanket amount of state revenues, he said."In an era where state government is so strapped, do we fund something that's optional?" DeGrow said.Consolidation needs to happen on both the local and state levels, Schwarz said.

"There are 19 state departments and I'm not sure they're all necessary," he said. "There can be a consolidation of functions — I'll leave it at that."

Strategic investments

In her State of the State, Granholm did address some of the panel’s findings.

She pushed spending on infrastructure to create 28,000 jobs. She also proposed several education initiatives, such as incentivizing colleges and universities to turn research into businesses. Her Michigan First Health Care Plan providing access to the uninsured popped up, although the state has been in a holding pattern, waiting on a federal waiver for several years.

Panel members want the state to prioritize infrastructure and education, strategically investing in areas research shows will attract businesses and skilled workers.

"You still hear voices that we should cut taxes by $1 billion," Gilmer said. "That would completely destroy any opportunities to invest in our infrastructure, things for people to take notice of Michigan."The gas tax — which hasn't been raised since 1995 — should be on the table to fund road projects, Schwarz said.

Higher education has taken the hardest hit by the budget crisis, he said. Funding has been slashed by 11 percent from 2002 to 2007, the Presidents' Council, State Universities of Michigan reports. Tuition has soared, with most of the state’s 15 public universities last year passing double-digit tuition hikes.

"We've already damaged that a lot," DeGrow said. "Say what you will about Gov. Engler, but he valued higher education. We never cut higher ed."

If Schwarz could pass on one piece of advice to leaders during this year’s budget negotiations, it would be: "Have the courage to do what's right, not what's expedient."This isn't going to be easy to try to run a state of 10 million people with a rapidly changing economy with a government structured for the 1960s. Be bold and courageous."

The ‘09 budget: Let them eat cake

Nobody can feel your pain like Jennifer Granholm and she was in fine form Tuesday night.

After last year’s rancor and recriminations over the budget crisis, the governor reemerged at the State of the State as the great healer, a pro-business prophet looking to lure development and lead us back to the promised land of no new taxes.

“People are angry,” Granholm said at the start of her speech. “…Let’s be honest, that anger is aimed at us.”

Though Michigan continues to careen down the road of recession, Granholm offered up her can-do oratory, promising tax breaks for businesses in fast-growing industries, help for those trapped in foreclosure agony and a slew of new programs.

Using her honeyed tone – part cheerleader, part Mother Earth – to full effect, the governor swayed some of her conservative critics (though not state Rep. Jack Hoogendyk, R-Kalamazoo, who in a flash of class, scrawled snarky blog posts during her speech).

Granholm imbibed the new designer drug of bipartisanship – something just about everyone in Lansing says they’re on, but they don’t get an hour to testify about it on tee-vee. You can’t beat that kind of PR.

But the real stroke of genius was that the governor cannily cut the legs from under the GOP’ election strategy – with a smile.

She beat the anti-tax drum hard – something a beaming Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop called “borrowing the Republican playbook.”

But that effectively stole the thunder from House Minority Leader Craig DeRoche, who’s vowed to take back the majority by (what else?) hitting the Dems on taxes. He looked particularly sour Tuesday, but denied the guv had outfoxed him.

“It’s not an election line (for us),” the former Speaker sniffed. “It’s what we believe in.”

Granholm’s strategy started with a carefully placed Associated Press interview in December that grabbed headlines across the state.

“The most important thing I learned is I’m not ever going to raise taxes again. It’s too hard. It’s too impossible,” she declared.

She could say that with supreme confidence because budget estimates show Michigan will stay in the black this year (thanks to those evil tax hikes).

So it’s time to roll out the feel-good programs – high schools that work, alternative energy Centers of Excellence and more early childhood education.

You can have your cake and eat it, too. No higher taxes this year, just “creative financing.” (Something Republicans also found irresistible when they ran the show during the last two decades – beats cutting spending).

Granholm plans to scrounge up $550 million by refinancing debt, selling bonds and reinvesting part of the state pension fund.

Her economic stimulus plan – especially creating jobs through much-needed infrastructure projects – shows promise. But don’t expect a big boost to higher ed, the best long-range economic development tool Michigan has in its arsenal.

And there were key pieces missing from the puzzle, ostensibly to come in the far less glamorous budget unveiling next week.

Where are the cuts? Where are the reforms? You don’t need to be a rabid right-winger to know much more needs to be done.

Just take another read of the blue-ribbon, bipartisan Emergency Financial Panel report penned a year ago by 12 leaders with hundreds of years’ combined experience in budgets, business and government.

Or in the case of some esteemed lawmakers, try skimming over the scant 19 pages for the first time.

“I honestly don’t know how many people read it,” a glum former Gov. Jim Blanchard told me last week.

Well, it’s never too late to get religion or give a few of the 12 Apostles a jingle. I have it on good authority they’d love to hear from you.

The fact is, Michigan’s government is still engineered for the 1960s. We have a bloated Corrections budget growing far faster than revenues, as we incarcerate 50,000 people – and counting.

Health care costs for state employees and retirees are spiraling out of control. We have 1,242 townships, 553 school districts and millions of dollars in needlessly duplicated administrative costs.

That’s just a start. With the limited cash Michigan has, we need to spend it wisely.

Now the bad news. Don’t look now, but the Mitten State hasn’t licked its structural budget deficit.

We don’t tax services, the growing sector of our economy, thanks to a bizarre last-minute plan last fall that enraged the hypersensitive business community and poisoned the well. It remains to be seen what effect the Michigan Business Tax surcharge will have on attracting new capital. And our income tax is outmoded – a graduated rate with more exemptions is a better fit.

The good news is, we probably could restructure without hiking taxes and stave off future $2 billion budget shortfalls.

But that would mean bringing up the dreaded t-word again. And with that bodacious bipartisan vibe we’ve got going, who wants to be a major buzzkill?

Helping children in a state left behind

You know my high school. Or you did, anyway, back in 2003 when grainy video traversed the globe of Glenbrook North girls covered in feces clobbering each other in a “powder-puff” football game.

It’s the scatological stuff YouTube dreams are made of.

What you couldn’t tell from the spectacle, of course, is that GBN is one of the top public schools in the nation, sporting a palatial campus that rivals many colleges. In fact, the state-of-the-art computer labs in our swanky suburban Chicago school put those of Big Ten universities to shame.

In my class, far more students took Advanced Placement English than the regular track and 99 percent of us headed to college.

Not a bad place to be stuck for four years – especially since I opted out of rolling around in crap with other chicks.

Naturally, any time anyone suggests that “throwing money” at education isn’t the solution, I snigger.

Does anyone think for a minute that I started on an even playing field with a poor African-American kid in Detroit, who studies history books that have Ronald Reagan as president in a classroom that often lacks heat?

We callously call those schools dropout factories, scarcely paying attention to the 60 percent who never graduate, or wondering if those who do ever make it to a college lecture hall.

The truth is, I didn’t deserve a world-class education any more than any other child on this earth. I didn’t earn it. I was lucky enough to be born to professional parents who could afford to move into a school district plump with property tax money.

Yes, I was a smart girl who made the most of a good situation. But how many smart kids are languishing in less flush schools right here in Michigan?

It is a travesty.

And we all pay the price.

Lagging well behind the national average, only 24 percent of Michiganders 24 and older have college degrees (A fact that so appalled my former English teacher, she demanded proof from the Census.) The difference between a high school education and a college degree is $1 million in lifetime income. For Michigan, that means less tax revenue, less consumer spending, higher unemployment and more state services.

Soon that will be moot. If you want to work, you’ll have to hit the books. Roughly 85 percent of new jobs require post-secondary education – even the few left in the auto industry, which used to keep the state afloat.

Investing in education is Michigan’s “single, sole securitization of economic betterment,” says former Assistant Secretary of Labor Roberts [CQ] T. Jones, underscoring decades of research.

Why do you suppose countries from China to Kuwait are lavishing money on schools? They’re the ticket out of the developing world into superpower status.

So what do we do in the Mitten State?

Let’s start with the excellent report by the Cherry Commission in 2005.

We now have tougher high school graduation standards to better prepare kids. But most of the group’s other initiatives – such as merit pay for teachers, universal preschool and doubling the number of college graduates – are rotting on the vine.

This is the time to be bold. We need to revitalize the state the way the Kalamazoo Promise has its city, with a scholarship program for up to four free years of college at a state institution.

The impact reverberated immediately throughout the community – increased K-12 enrollment and subsequently state aid, more parental involvement, fewer dropouts and more home sales.

A statewide Promise open to all would be completely unique – a way to make Michigan stand out from the competition, make skilled workers and businesses flock here and turn the economy around long-term.

Here’s the catch: Implementing the Promise statewide would cost $900 million annually. No politician wants to touch that after two recent tax increases, one of which is in the midst of a messy repeal.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm sang the virtues of a strong educational system from preschool to postgrad all the way to re-election last year – and I believe the Harvard grad gets it. But she won’t stick her neck out on this one, since she never has when it counts. Higher ed spending has been massacred by 25 percent under her watch.

House Speaker Andy Dillon was the biggest booster for an expanded Promise – but he’s so frustrated with legislative inertia that he’s said he may leave Lansing.

And unfortunately, Republican leadership on education croaked when lions like Joe Schwarz were term-limited out of the Senate.

So politicians will continue to think short-term and bleat that we can’t spend another dime on education.

In 20 years, when it’s not just Massachusetts, but Arkansas and Mississippi that have left us in the dust, maybe those fearless former leaders can tell our grandchildren why they decided to skimp on their future – and Michigan’s.

But my guess is they’ll have blown this popsicle stand long before then.

It's getting hot in here

Wise policy wonks often warn: Don't let the perfect become the enemy of the good.

But when the absolute best you can hope for is mediocrity, then you're pretty well screwed.

That's the scenario with Michigan's budget that's currently $1.8 billion in the hole. Whatever plan Lansing throws together with chewing gum and Silly String by the Oct. 1 deadline — or after, if lawmakers commit grosser negligence than they have already — it will be a train wreck.

Just like previous budgets dating back to the '90s were a shell game of transferred funds and one-time fixes.

After hemorrhaging about 250,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000, what anemic Michigan needs is a transfusion of new blood. The best way to do that is by making this a state people want to stay in, play in and raise their kids in. That means spending — not cutting — millions more for economic development, environmental protection and most of all, education from preschool to post-grad.

Confused? You should be. That's because no one is talking about what the Wolverine State really needs.In fact, if you've seen anything on the budget, it's probably a sound bite of pretty people sneering at each other at the Capitol.

That's almost criminal. Anyone who tells you there's a more-important story in Michigan right now is either an idiot or selling something.

It's not just the poor and infirm feeling the pain of this crisis.

You do, when your sewage bill doubles because your township is going bankrupt after receiving squat from the state.

You do, when you have to shell out $1,000 just for the privilege for Billy to play football at public school because the state has disinvested from education for years.

You do, when your speeding ticket is the price of a luxury hotel room because the cops have to cover costs the state used to pick up.

You do, when sending Sally to a state university costs as much as buying a second home.

Think about that the next time snake-oil salesman/Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop tries to sweet talk you into another $1.1 billion worth of cuts. Think about why Republicans won't even tell you from where the cuts are going to come.

As for the Dems, they evidently never read Dante, who warned, "The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who in time of moral crisis preserve their neutrality."

Last week, 10 House Democrats in swing districts flaunted their neutrality, refusing to vote for a nudge in the income tax from 3.9 percent to 4.6 percent.

Putting that in perspective, it's about an extra five bucks a week for the median Michigan household.

That measure died, as have reasonable proposals to enact a services tax, cut prison spending and reform employee health care costs.

Because if there's a lesson to be learned from the budget battle, it's don't bother thinking for yourself.

Legislators, just sit at your exquisitely crafted desks and vote the way your leadership, the state Chamber of Commerce, the Democratic Party, the Republican Party, the AFL-CIO, the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance or God commands you.

Go ahead and yield to the recently issued edict of do-nothing Michigan congressmen to "stand firm" against godless tax hikes. Why not defer to the wisdom of Republican U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, who has to ask the Club for Growth lobby for permission to go potty?

Leadership is overrated. Just ask the governor.

Though Jennifer Granholm finally showed the guts Tuesday to threaten to veto any plan without a modest tax increase, she blew this budget big time starting with a sales tax gambit in February she didn't even bother running past the Democratic leadership.

I don't care if the guv is under the spell of an overbearing first gentleman, sycophantic staff or the voices in her head. A brilliant orator, she of all people should have been able to make the case for Michigan's future.

Which is simple: Do we want to return to the days when our state was known for superlative education, high-tech health care and world-class recreation? Or do we want to cut our services as fast as our taxes to become the backwater of the Great Lakes states?

It's time to put our money where our mouth is.

No, it ain't as sexy as gay marriage, but make no doubt about it: The state budget does constitute the kind of moral crisis defined by Dante.

Our leaders have 11 days to pound out a plan that doesn't have to be perfect, but it should be good for most Michiganders. Better than the slapshot scheme they're bickering over today.

Otherwise we'll all feel the heat — not just on Oct. 1, but in years to come.

Time for Granholm to get it done

It's been a rough week of mortgaging Michigan's future.

To console themselves, patrician politicians are partying with the powerful up on Mackinac Island for the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce's annual shindig.

One thing is clear. In the grand, face-saving façade known as the 2007 budget deal, Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm whiffed.

She knew it was crammed full of one-time fixes and accounting tricks — the very shenanigans she fingered her predecessor, John Engler, for using in the '90s that got us into this mess.

She knew borrowing against future investments would cost the Mitten State millions.She knew they were just shunting the problem to next year.

What's worse, she could have spared higher education and economic development by inking a deal with the GOP months ago — before the deficit blew up to $800 million.

She knew better. Period.

Yes, legislative Republicans knew all this, too. But they've already shown more loyalty to rabid, out-of-state anti-tax groups than to their constituents or sensible fiscal policy.

And unlike neophyte Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, Granholm has been to the bargaining table before. After her landslide re-election last fall, she vowed she would lead.

We're waiting.

The governor was off to a good start in January, appointing the blue-ribbon, bipartisan Emergency Financial Panel to make hard-nosed recommendations for the state's long-term problems. Well, she gave the report a cursory look, kind of like President Bush did to that of the Iraq Study Group.It's tough to say whose approach has failed more spectacularly.

Displaying a vexing blend of bluster and timidity, Granholm talks loudly while carrying a small stick. After her 2-cent tax on services proposal went down in flames, she seemed content to let House Speaker Andy Dillon come up with a better idea.

And rather than battle for health care, public safety and schools, the governor figured she could live to fight another day. Maybe she can save them by squeezing a modest tax increase out of Bishop for 2008.Maybe not.

A brilliant orator, Granholm will continue to paint the other side as evil-doers bent on shuttering schools and tossing the sick on the street, because of Republicans' medically untreatable compulsion to cut taxes.

That's an easy fight to win. Michiganders are increasingly horrified by budget cuts, with 70 percent willing to swallow tax hikes even in a dismal economy.

But the most important question is: What do you stand for, governor?

You say you support middle-class Michiganders. Will you restructure the state tax code so the clerk at Meijer doesn't pay the same income tax rate as Dick DeVos?

You say a college education is essential. Will you actually increase funding to state universities?

You say you support business innovation. Will you promise not to lay a hand on any more of the 21st Century Jobs Fund money?

You say health-care coverage is critical for citizens and saves us all money. Will you finally get a universal access plan passed?

Take some time on paradise island to answer these questions and craft a new plan.

Then do us a favor. Stop blaming the GOP and get it done.

Not all tax pain is created equal

Pop quiz: If you're married, have two kids and make $57,000 per year, you're:

A. At the federal poverty level.

B. At the median household income for Michigan.

C. Now spending 92 percent of your salary on gasoline.

If you said C, you're off by several percentage points — but not as many as you'd hope.

If you answered B, you're right on the money. The poverty level for four actually is about three times less — $20,650 per year.

If you said A, you're probably a politician whose handlers forgot to feed you the correct answer on that and how much a gallon of milk costs.

Most of us know $57,000 ain't bad. We don't have to pick up staples at the food bank and sleep at the homeless shelter. But our hard-earned dollars don't stretch as far as they used to. We worry about losing our homes, filling our tanks at $3.65 per gallon and having our kids get priced out of college.

We know Michigan's in trouble just by looking at our drained bank accounts and nonexistent retirement plans.

Nonsense, argues Charles Ballard, a Michigan State University economist. The Great Lakes State is on a roll.

The past 30 years have been good ones for folks who probably flunked the means test above — those 100,000 or so households out of 3 million in Michigan. If you're looking for signs of recession, don't meander through the pristine enclaves of Okemos, East Grand Rapids and Bloomfield Hills.

Households making $166,000 per year or more — to put that obtuse richest 5 percent in real dollars — have been able to build McMansions and buy Mercedes, even as the Big Three implode and state budget deficits balloon.

Actually, the well-to-do are doing even better, thanks to tax cut after tax cut over the past 12 years. But money to keep kids vaccinated and police on patrol has to come from somewhere.

And it has — from you and me. Each cut has shifted the burden to those who work on the assembly line, teach young minds or are retired on a fixed income.

Ballard sums up Michigan's tax system, which is one of the most regressive in the nation, like this:

"What you have is the top 5 percent doing fabulously well, the top 20 percent ($92,000 household income) doing quite well and the other 75 percent struggling."It's a massive widening of inequality ... and nobody is talking about it."

A lot of leaders in Lansing don't get it. It's not just that they make a minimum of $79,650 per year. It's that many of them don't send their kids to public schools, don't ride the bus to work and don't worry about medical bills because they have the best plan money can buy.

When Gov. Jennifer Granholm blasts the pain of budget cuts, it's a pain she doesn't directly feel.

When House Minority Leader Craig DeRoche complains he can't sell his second house in tony Novi as proof that Michiganders can't afford a tax hike, he's out of touch.

What they need is more input from the majority — the struggling 75 percent — so they can pound out a budget with fairer taxes and better services.

But since hamstrung policymakers don't seem eager to invest in their constituents, we would do well to invest in ourselves.

Not just by voting for local millages to keep fire stations and schools up and running. But by socking away as much as we can, so our kids can go to Harvard like the governor, or study at the Sorbonne like Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop.

Yes, even tuition at our world-class state universities has spiraled out of control, but they remain the best boot camp for the next generation of leaders.

And with the rate of progress in Michigan, they'll likely get stuck with plenty of problems to solve.