It’s like the “Young Lady, Old Woman” illusion for a new generation.

Admittedly, I don’t follow Facebook that closely. I know that, since the company “went public” a while ago, there’s been a huge push to monetize each and every element of their now ubiquitous platform, but I was totally caught off-guard this morning when, attempting to send a note to a woman who had left a comment on this blog, I was met with the above screen, asking me to please deposit $1. Is this something that people have encountered before?

And I know that maybe this makes me sound like an old man, ranting about how, back in his day, “Water was free… damn-it,” but this really does strike me as odd. I can see why they might want to keep people from sending messages to folks who aren’t in their “friend” network, but this is like saying, “Yeah, we’ll give anyone the ability to send you messages for a buck.” That’s like an operator saying, “Sorry, sir, that’s an unlisted number… but, if you really want it, I can give it to you for a dollar.”

As for the woman that I was attempting to write to, her name is Eldora M. Trimble, and she’s the daughter of Roland Maynard, the author of that book I was telling you about not too long ago about the history of my ancestors in Kentucky. Apparently she’s republished the formerly out-of-print book, and wants to sell me a copy… If all goes well, I hope to be able to tell you all about it shortly, as I know that many of you only come to this site for the super-popular Maynard genealogy updates.

…What I find more surprising, and disturbing, is the tendency of some folks on the left to embrace small business with some passion. This is particularly true in the unfortunately named anti-globalization movement—as if internationalization itself were the problem rather than the way it’s carried out. Their anti-globalism is connected to a desire to “relocalize” economies, and with them to reorient production on a much smaller scale. These aims seem more motivated by nostalgia—and, in many cases, by a nostalgia for something that never existed—than any serious analysis.

Larger firms are also far more productive than smaller ones. Small-is-beautiful advocates rarely tell us how tiny enterprises would produce locomotives, computers or telephones; maybe they’d prefer to do away with these things and revive a hunter–gatherer society. But if that’s what they intend to do they should tell us.

And people who presumably care about workers should also rethink their passion for tininess: the experience of actually existing small businesses show that they’re not great employers, with poor pay, cheesier benefits and more dangerous workplaces. Bigger firms are easier to regulate, more open to public scrutiny, friendlier to affirmative action programs and more vulnerable to union organizing.

A progressive case for bigness is rare and unpopular these days, but somebody has to make it.

First, let me start by saying that I agree that, just because a company is locally-owned, does not mean that it’s necessarily good. I haven’t said that in the past, as I thought that it was pretty obvious, but perhaps it’s something that I need to be more explicit about. I’m painfully aware that there are assholes who run local businesses, abuse employees and add little value to the communities in which they operate. (Like many of you, I’ve had the pleasure of working for some of these folks.) Second, if you scroll back through the archives, you’ll also find instances where, on several occasions, I’ve said positive things about large companies, like Costco – a company, which, by all accounts, treats its employees well, and strives to ensure that its suppliers do the same. (If I’m not mistaken, I’ve also expressed in the past that I’m torn on the subject of Starbucks, as I hate the homogeneity they bring to communities, but respect the fact that they provide insurance to part-time workers, champion gay rights, etc.)

So, let’s start by dropping the false notion, as KJC would suggest, that I believe that all big companies are evil, and all small ones are terrific. I may be idealistic, but I’m not naive. I can appreciate that we live in a complex world and that the issues that we’re facing are far from black and white. At the same time, though, I have no reason to think that Michael Shuman is lying when he says that he’s never seen an academic study that’s shown that a chain business, with out-of-state ownership, has contributed more wealth to a local community than a comparable business whose owners are rooted in the community. So, yes, I believe that, all things being equal, I’d rather do business with entrepreneurs who live in our community, and have to face us each and every day, than with their corporate counterparts, who just see Ypsilanti as a line on a spreadsheet, and don’t know the names of those people they employ in our community.

I know that some of the jobs that these small businesses create aren’t ideal. I know that, with regard to the food service industry in particular, it can be poorly-paying, grueling work, often without insurance. I can very well remember, for instance, busting my foot, and having to hop around the kitchen that I worked in for several weeks, in pain, as I was unable to see a doctor. Still, though, I think I was better off at the time working for Seva, than I would have been working for McDonalds… I could go on, but I think that Jean Henry, one of the founders of Small & Mighty, does a better job than I could. Here’s how she responded to KJC.

First I would say (as an employee of Zingerman’s) that, in comparison to WalMart and McDonald’s, at any level (other than maybe top) of the organization, staff at Zingerman’s are doing far better in terms of wage, benefits, engagement and employee satisfaction than the aternatives. There are national businesses (Costco for example) that do better than we do in terms of wage scale, but I can’t think of any totally situated in the food business like we are. And we are working on it very very actively. Industrial production in the food business has created a system in which consumers pay very little (relative to in the past and as a percentage of income) for food – and we waste an average of 30%+ of that – and no one in the supply chain is making a reasonable living (except the giants) and, yes, it’s all at risk. In food, the better the integrity of your product and service, the lower your profit margin — even at Zingerman’s prices.

Less established small businesses than Zingerman’s are in much the same economic position as their staff – they struggle to survive in an economic structure that is marshaled against their interests. (They can’t afford the rent, the bills or health insurance either in many cases.) There is plenty of evidence of this. There is also plenty of evidence, contrary to the posted article, that small businesses create more sustainable jobs than the big ‘C’ corporations. But, yes, they often do so at a lower wage base, and almost always with fewer benefits, because they are not as profitable.

The capital in this country does not flow towards its most efficient and productive engines – small businesses. Small businesses give back more generously to their local communities. Of $1 spent at a local independent business, 68 cents stays in the community vs. 43 cents at a national chain store. In independent retail and restaurants the differential is higher. (More info can be found at the BALLE website.) Small independent businesses should also offer better product, service and experience than a chain store. In the end, no one is asking anyone to support local business as a charity. They should provide value. But I would ask you to consider the fabric of your community without them.

The best small business owners risk everything and walk a financial tightrope daily in order to make their vision a reality, because they love what they do and where they do it. They struggle along with their staff in a shared boat in the rough seas of the current economic structure. It is no mistake that the Occupy movement identified with small business owners as part of the 99%… And as part of the solution. If you would like small businesses to be able to pay higher wages then you must be prepared to pay more for their services, or work to invert the current systemic bias toward big and bad.

I try to pay with cash at local businesses doing good work in order to give them more capital to invest in their business, staff and the local economy. Doing so saves them about 4% in credit/debit card fees on each transaction (likely doubling their profit margin) and doesn’t feed into the predatory national banking system. It also keeps me on budget. Do what you can. Think about the big picture. And ask staff at local businesses how they like working there and why they, in many cases, resist working elsewhere for more money. Their answers will often be very close to their bosses answer to “why were you so crazy as to go out on your own?” For many many happy, thriving but often broke people out there, it’s worth it.

So, where do you stand on all of this?

[note: The image at the top of the page is from You've Got Mail, the not-so-good 1998 remake of 1940's The Shop Around the Corner, in which Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan fall in love, despite the fact that Hanks runs an enormous bookstore chain which threatens to put Ryan's lovely little book shop out of business... Sorry, but I couldn't think of better image to illustrate this post.]

Why is it that we allow the Republicans to refer to themselves as the anti-tax party, when they keep demonstrating that they clearly aren’t? Sure, they’re all for the cutting of business taxes, inheritance taxes, and other taxes that would threaten to decrease the wealth of their party’s high-net-worth donors, but, invariably, those shifts in tax policy lead to higher taxes for everyone else. Elsewhere around the United States, the shift may not be as plainly visible, but, here, in Michigan, it’s painfully obvious to all but the most delusional among us. As business taxes are being eliminated, and corporate taxes on capital assets are being phased out, the burden of maintaining public services is falling disproportionately on the shoulders of the non-wealthy, and we’re all feeling the increased financial pressure.

In Michigan, income taxes on the poor and middle class are rising, the pensions of our retirees are being taxed, tax credits for the working poor, like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), are being slashed, and, with state assistance for higher education drying up, families are going into unprecedented debt in the hopes of securing stable futures for their children. The Republicans may not see all of these as tax increases, but they are. The increased insurance payments that many of us are forced to pay, because our local fire departments are being downsized, is essentially a tax. The same goes for the private school tuition that several of us are paying, rather than suffer through the constrictions of a public school system which is being systematically dismantled. And these few examples are just the tip of the iceberg. The truth is, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for regular working people in Michigan to merely sustain life. Fortunately for those in power, houses aren’t selling. If they were, I suspect that most of us would be gone.

And, as those of us in Ypsilanti can attest, it’s the folks who are living in Michigan’s aging cities that are feeling the brunt of this radical redistribution of wealth. With state revenue sharing for cities dropping precipitously, one-by-one communities are being asked to make the choice — either institute a personal income tax, and pay for our own city services, or submit to the rule of an unelected Emergency Financial Manager, who will be empowered to sell off our community assets at fire sale prices, dismiss our democratically elected officials, privatize city services, and break contracts with city employee unions, essentially stripping our carcass of what little meat there is left, and sealing our fate. As long as we don’t ask the wealthy in Michigan’s upscale gated communities to contribute toward the greater good, it’s all the same to the folks in Lansing. They’re allowing us to make the choice…

And this is apparently the tax season when we’re really going to start to feel it. Here’s the news from the Free Press.

In the height of tax season, don’t be surprised if you owe more to the taxman in Lansing.

Some major income tax changes approved 21 months ago by Gov. Rick Snyder and lawmakers are just now starting to hit Michigan taxpayers filing their state tax returns.

One of the most significant adjustments: Homeowners and renters used to qualify for a credit if their household income was no more than $82,650 a year. Now they don’t get it unless their total household resources are $50,000 or less and their home’s taxable value (roughly half the market value) is no more than $135,000.

That will affect about 400,000 returns.

The child deduction is gone. So are special exemptions for seniors and those getting at least half their income from unemployment checks.

A refundable credit for low-income workers was reduced, impacting about 783,000 returns. Eliminated are state credits for city income taxes, college tuition, adoptions and donations to universities, public radio and TV stations, food banks and homeless shelters.

Add it up and about half of all Michigan filers are seeing a considerable tax increase ahead of the April 15 deadline, said Terry Conley, a tax partner at Grant Thornton in Southfield…

For those of you who still aren’t grasping what’s happening, you might want to take a few minutes and check out this animated short produced by the California Federation of Teachers, featuring narration by Ed Asner. It does a pretty good job of getting right to the heart of the matter in a way that even the most uninformed Tea Partier could comprehend.

[Tonight's post is brought to you by Amazon.com's Pitchfork and Torch division.]

An unintended loser in all of this, I’m sorry to say, is Michigan’s hospitality industry. The incredibly popular Pure Michigan campaign is one of the few things that our struggling state has going for it, and, by running this ad, I think the Snyder administration has put it in jeopardy. Who in their right mind would take a campaign which, for several years, has endeavored to make the world aware of Michigan’s pristine environmental assets, and decide not only to politicize it in this fashion, but to actually incorporate the fact that we’ve begun down the path of environmental deregulation? Who does that? And, more importantly, who uses the phrase “perfect storm” in an ad campaign that’s trying to convey a sense of confidence about a region? I’ve actually read The Perfect Storm. It’s a book about a desperate fishing boat Captain, who, in hopes of making a big financial score, heads his ship into a colossal storm front in search of an elusive school of swordfish, putting the lives of his crew on the line. And, guess what? There were no survivors! The irony of the Snyder administration referencing it, given what they’ve done to jeopardize the future of our state over the course of the past several months, I think, is hilarious.

[Special thanks to Brandon Zwagerman for responding to my late night bat signal with a scan of the Wall Street Journal, and to MM.com reader Curt Waugh for contributing the Perfect Storm photo.]

update: It gets even more hilarious. While strutting on the national stage and broadcasting to the world that we’re now a right-to-work state, the Republicans in Lansing are simultaneously saying that we need to put all of this behind us and move on. “I want to see the Legislature turn the page,” Speaker of the Michigan House Jase Bolger told The Detroit News. “I want to see us go forward and focus on the people we serve instead of focusing on party politics.”

update: This meme apparently has legs. Since writing about it here, the story has now appeared on Eclectablog, The Huffington Post, Deadline Detroit, and MLive.

FLORIDA: Let’s start with the basics: Why are cities becoming more walkable? What forces are pushing them toward greater walkability? Can you please explain, in a nutshell, your General Theory of Walkability? Why is this important?

SPECK: Some — and only some — cities are becoming more walkable because they understand that their sustainability (economic, health, and environmental) depends on it; or because they want to attract and retain young, educated adults; or because they are simply listening to the young or young-thinking adults in their administration; or some combination of the above. You yourself have written powerfully about huge declines in car worship among the millennials [see my Atlantic article here]. Another force is the empty nesters, who want to eventually “retire in place,” in a place where the car is not a mandatory prosthetic device. The NORC (Naturally Occurring Retirement Community) is an urban environment where doddering gets you to the store just fine.

The General Theory of Walkability explains how, to attract pedestrians, a place has to provide a walk that is simultaneously useful, safe, comfortable, and interesting. This is extraordinarily difficult in most of our (driving) cities, and can only be accomplished when resources are concentrated where they can do the most good, rather than dispersed more evenhandedly across the city, which is the tendency. Many cities, to the degree that they spend money on walkability, do so in a way that accomplishes little, because nobody has identified those few places where a useful, comfortable, and interesting private realm can give life to an improved (less speedy) public realm. A “complete street” means nothing alongside a surface parking lot.

FLORIDA: Tell us about the group you dun the Walking Generation? Who are they? What exactly do they want?

SPECK: Like I need to tell you what millennials want? They are the recent college graduates who moved to Portland during the nineties at a rate five times the national average. 64 percent of them decide first where they want to live, and only then do they look for a job. Fully 77 percent of them say they want to live in America’s urban cores. The economist Chris Leinberger reminds us that, unlike my generation (raised on the suburban idyll of The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family), they grew up watching Friends, Seinfeld, and Sex and the City. They care less about cars and mortgages, and don’t yet have need for a big yard or a good school. Instead, they want urban amenities with ready access to nature, bike lanes, good transit, and street life.

FLORIDA: You discuss the “Walkability Dividend.” I’m sure our readers would like to know how that applies to them and their cities.

SPECK: The Walkability Dividend is a concept advanced by the economist Joe Cortright and the non-profit CEOs for Cities, a group that has brought me into a small handful of downtowns with the understanding that all the events and amenities in the world won’t make a difference in the absence of pedestrian culture. In his 2007 white paper “Portland’s Green Dividend” [PDF], Cortright showed how that city’s urban growth boundary, coupled with its investments in bike lanes and transit, resulted in a remarkable phenomenon: Portland’s per-capita vehicle miles traveled peaked in 1996. Now Portlanders drive 20 percent less than the national average. This 20 percent results in financial savings and time savings that total almost four percent of GDP, ignoring all the wonderful externalities such as cleaner air and slimmer waistlines. Unlike driving dollars, 85 percent of which are sent out of town, much of those savings are spent locally, on housing and recreation. Portlanders are said to have the most roof racks, independent bookstores, and strip clubs per capita — all exaggerations, but only slight ones.

That’s the fun version of the story. Unfortunately, there is a sadder version, much more common. The typical American “working” family now pays more for transportation than for housing, thanks to the phenomenon of “drive ’til you qualify.” The working-class distant-fringe subdivisions were the ones hit hardest by the burst housing bubble, where so many families found themselves not only underwater on their mortgages but also unable to afford the thirteen car trips per day generated by the average exurban homestead. Our urban downtowns, where housing costs more per square foot, but transportation costs so much less, will figure heavily in our recovery from that debacle…

I should probably add that, despite my bitching about Michigan, I know that some progress is being made along these lines locally, and I appreciate the heroic work that many of you are doing, either through the Washtenaw Biking and Walking Coalition, as part of the task force that drafted Ypsilanti’s most recent Non-Motorized Transportation Plan, or relating to the build-out of the Border-to-Border Trail. I just don’t get the sense that we’re moving fast enough, or taking it as seriously as other communities, that, at least from an outsider’s perspective, really seem to understand that the future belongs to urban centers that invest in mass transit and plan for walkability, and not those that fight against it… And, yes, I’m still pissed that the Ypsi-Ann Interurban was decommissioned in 1929.

So here’s my question of the day, if a “Shirley Temple” is two parts ginger ale, and a splash of grenadine, garnished with a maraschino cherry, what’s a “Shirley Hemphill”? I’m going to spend my evening watching back episodes of What’s Happening, and her guest spots on shows like the Love Boat, in search of inspiration, but, if you have thoughts, let me know. (I’m hoping that maybe she tells Isaac what her favorite liquor is, while attempting to give him a physical on the way to Puerto Vallarta.)

How can it be that no one has done this yet?

And, with that, here’s the Doobie Brothers episode of What’s Happening.

One last thing, I don’t know why it shocks me, but apparently Haywood Nelson, who played Dwayne on What’s Happening, is a Scientologist. I noticed that he quoted L. Ron Hubbard on a special “What’s Happening Reunion” episode of the Jenny Jones Show, and started to do some digging. It would seem that he’s been in the church for some time. One more thing… Speaking of black Scientologists, did you happen to catch the article in The New Republic on the convergence of the Nation of Islam and Scientology? Here’s a clip.

…The first large-scale introduction of Scientology to Nation members took place in August 2010, when hundreds of believers from around the country traveled to Rosemont, Illinois, near the Nation’s headquarters, for a seminar in Dianetics, a foundational belief system of Scientology. There, they were guided through auditing sessions—a kind of hybrid between hypnosis and confession—in which a Scientologist purges painful experiences from his subconscious in the presence of an “auditor.” At the end of the seminar, Farrakhan told the group he wanted everyone in attendance to become a certified auditor.

Jesse Muhammad, a 34-year-old writer and community organizer who joined the Nation of Islam as a teenager at the urging of an older brother, had driven overnight from Houston for the event. He took this goal seriously. “Those who follow Farrakhan, we trust his guidance, so we jump to it,” he told me. After three weeks of intensive training with Scientologists in Houston, he became certified. The Nation refused to comment for this story, but according to its newspaper, Final Call, as of this spring, more than 1,000 members have become certified auditors and another 4,000 were studying “some aspect of Scientology.”

Ishmael Bey, a former assistant Nation minister, told me that years ago he’d heard from a top official that headquarters was flirting with “a white church in L.A.” Initially, Farrakhan never mentioned Scientology in public. Instead, he cryptically alluded to the “study” of “a technology” that would help his people. His caution made sense: after all, the Nation was explicitly conceived as a black separatist organization and a repudiation of Christianity, which Nation leader and prophet Elijah Muhammad derided as “the slave master’s religion.” Farrakhan himself has called white people “a race of devils” and the Nation teaches that the apocalypse will involve a UFO, or “mother plane,” that will eradicate all Caucasians.

However, there are some striking theological overlaps that might help explain how Farrakhan came to adopt a religion invented by a white man. There is, of course, the attachment to science fiction: Scientologists believe in an alien dictator, Xenu; the Nation holds that the white race was created by a mad scientist named Yakub. More significantly, though, at the core of both religions is a never-ending pursuit of a better self. In the case of Scientology, that best self is “clear” of residual traumas buried in the subconscious. In the Nation, that self is free of the hang-ups of white culture that black people have internalized to their detriment. Scientology, Farrakhan seems to believe, provides a new path toward black empowerment. “I’ve found something in the teaching of Dianetics, of Mr. L. Ron Hubbard, that I saw could bring up from the depth of our subconscious mind things that we would prefer to lie dormant,” he said to his Chicago congregation in early summer. “How could I see something that valuable and know the hurt and sickness of my people and not offer it to them?”…

[note: I was in Detroit at Sugar House earlier this evening, and it occurred to me to ask them how they'd adultify the Shirley Temple, but I got scared, thinking that maybe they'd rip off my idea. The good ideas, you see, don't come to me as rapidly as they once did, and I need to be protective of them.]

MARK: Your work came to the attention of a number of us here in Michigan a few days ago, when you penned an article for Salon entitled “Welcome to Michissippi.” The title of the article, if I’m not mistaken, after being online for a day or so, was then changed to, “Right-to-work bill: Michigan just gives up.” I realize that authors rarely choose their own headlines, and that you might be bit out of the loop as to why the change was made, but, before we get into the content of the article, and your thoughts on the future of Michigan, I thought that I’d ask if you knew what motivated the change. Was it seen as too inflammatory? Did people complain? Or did they just decide to focus on the right-to-work angle as it was the hot topic of the day, having just passed?

TED: I was the one who suggested the “Welcome to Michissippi” headline. It was used as a cover on the main website, and, then, when you clicked through, the “Michigan gives up” headline appeared. I was worried that it wouldn’t be understood by people outside of Michigan, but it seems to have attracted a lot of attention from Michiganders.

MARK: This isn’t really a question, but I’d like to thank you for lighting a fire beneath our collective ass by saying in the national press what a lot of us have been saying here in Michigan for years… that instead of positioning ourselves to be successful in the future, we’re positioning ourselves to be a third-tier state.

TED: I’ve been writing about this for 20 years. I wrote an essay called “Living the Lansing Dream” for Gen X anthology called “Next: Young American Writers on the New Generation” in 1994. The Lansing dream was moving away from Lansing. The right-to-work bill showed me the consequences of the outmigration I’ve been part of. As Michigan becomes older and less educated, it becomes more reactionary.

MARK: Do you think the passage of that bill that had more to do with the outmigration of young, educated Michiganders, or the fact that labor union membership and activity has been waning in recent years?

TED: I think it’s the fact that labor union activity has been waning for decades in Michigan. For a long time it wasn’t certain whether the United Auto Workers was a special interest in the Michigan Democratic Party or the Michigan Democratic Party was special-interest of the United Auto Workers. As the UAW got weaker the Democrats got weaker, and the Republicans saw a chance to weaken them both even further.

MARK: Your article in Salon, for those folks in the audience who haven’t read it, has at it’s core the vastly uneven rivalry between Chicago and Michigan over young, talented, college-educated workers. From my own perspective, as a Michigander who has seen a number of bright friends migrate to Chicago (and elsewhere), my sense is that it’s a huge and growing problem, but I’ve never seen hard data from the State of Michigan, the University of Michigan, or Michigan State, for instance, to confirm that suspicion. Do we know definitively how many of our college graduates each year make their way to Chicago? And do we know for certain that it’s getting worse?

TED: There was a Detroit News series in 2010 that said half the recent Michigan State college graduates left the state immediately, and the city with the most recent graduates is Chicago. In Chicago, there’s a bar for every Big Ten school, but Michigan State has 14. That’s more than the University of Illinois. I interviewed an engineering grad from Michigan who’d grown up in Detroit, and I asked him whether he’d have an easier time finding his classmates there, or in Chicago. He looked at me like I was an idiot. “Oh, Chicago, of course,” he said.

MARK: I think that most of us have that same impression, but I don’t know that there are definitive numbers. And, in absence of them, it’s hard to know whether we’re moving in the right direction. At any rate, the State at least says that reversing the brain drain is a priority. For the past few years, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation has been pursuing a campaign called “MichAGAIN,” with the intention of luring some of these folks back. I suspect they’ve done a significant amount of polling, but I don’t know, however, if they’ve ever shared their findings. Would you happen to know whether or not the campaign has been successful?

TED: I’ve not heard of that campaign. Nobody contacted me and asked me to come back.

MARK: Here, in case you’re interested, is a quote from Michigan Economic Development Corporation President and CEO Michael Finney, taken from the most recent MichAGAIN newsletter, which, in case you’re interested, invites Michigan ex-pats, like yourself, to attend a reception on December 27, at the Renaissance Center, to find out about employment opportunities in the state. “We have a message for Michigan natives who moved away in difficult times: today’s Michigan is not the Michigan you left behind,” said Finney. “Employers are hiring, new businesses are calling Michigan home, and the entrepreneurial spirit that built this great state is alive and well. Michigan needs your talent and experience to insure our businesses will continue to thrive and help grow the state’s economy.” The newsletter then goes on to rattle off a number of facts concerning the economic climate in Michigan. Among these are a Comerica report stating that our “economic activity index” is at a 10-year high, and one from the Bay Area Council Economic Institute stating that we’re the 3rd-best state in the nation when it comes to high tech job growth. I know they’re hosting events in Chicago as well. Do you get the sense that people are buying it?

TED: I’ve always said that Michigan didn’t become great because of the auto industry, the auto industry became great because of a Michigander. Michiganders are creative and entrepreneurial people; however, as I pointed out in the Salon article, the greatest tycoon Michigan has produced in this century is Larry Page, and he lives in California.

MARK: In your article for Salon, you say that, twenty years ago, after graduating from Michigan State, you moved to Chicago, along with all of your friends. As things in Michigan weren’t so terrible 20 years ago, at least relative to today, would I be right to assume that there were others things luring you there? In other words, as much as I’d like to attribute the brain drain to economics and politics, isn’t it probably true that a great many young people move to Chicago because it’s a relatively functional large city, where a lot of interesting things are happening, and where there’s a sizable dating pool? Which isn’t to say, of course, that politics and economics haven’t played a part in keeping Detroit from becoming such a destination. It may be a distinction without a difference, but I wonder if, in other words, we’re losing the war with Chicago just because we don’t have a thriving metropolis during a period in our history when bright young people are being disproportionately drawn to cities.

TED: Twenty years ago, the country was in a recession, and Detroit’s murder rate was its all-time high, because of the crack wars. When I graduated from MSU’s College of Arts and Letters, I don’t think any of the people surrounding me at commencement had a full-time job. I actually lived in Washington D.C., and Decatur, Illinois, working on a newspaper, for two and half years before I moved to Chicago. But so many of my friends from Lansing had moved there, I was able to plug right into a community. It was like being an immigrant. I think young people have always been drawn to cities. One thing I learned is that Chicago’s success comes at the expense of the other cities in the region. There can only be one Midwestern metropolis. It’s a consequence of globalization. Just as money and education are flowing to fewer people, they’re flowing to fewer cities… The Midwest only has room for one big destination city. The book “Caught in the Middle: America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalism” by Richard C. Longworth describes this phenomenon well. In its first golden age, from the 1890s to the 1920s, Chicago was luring young people from the farms. Now it’s luring them from the smaller industrial cities.

MARK: That’s awfully fatalistic. If I’m understanding you correctly, you’re saying that Michigan can never compete, as Chicago, having already won the race, and become the dominant regional player, will always attract the best and brightest. Is there really nothing that can be done? Aren’t there other examples of functioning, financially-viable cities existing within a 250-mile radius of a thriving metropolis?

TED: I’ll quote from Dick Longworth’s book: “This is the manufacturing heartland of America, and much of the manufacturing took place in the small towns and cities that radiated out from metropolitan centers such as Chicago or Detroit. The industrial era needed a lot of these cities. The global era doesn’t. Globalization concentrates everything and is concentrating the new workforce-educated knowledge workers, the creative people, the idea-mongers-in cities. You don’t need to scatter the production of ideas across the countryside, as you scattered the production of goods. You need to bring ideas together in one place and let them bounce off each other.” In truth, the best and the brightest have always gone to cities. Skilled, hard-working people with some secondary education could lead a middle class life back in the old home town, working in the local factories. That’s what’s gone now, and it dooms these towns, just as surely as it has doomed the old rusting mill by the tracks.

MARK: Speaking of Michigan cities, I’m curious if you’ve spent much time in Grand Rapids? It pains me to say it a bit, as I’m not a fan of the Amway empire, but it really seems to me that they’ve been doing a lot of things right (i.e. investing in local entrepreneurship, education, sustainability, health care, the arts, etc.), in spite of what’s happening in the rest of the state, where we seem intent on cutting taxes to the point of collapse. While their population numbers certainly aren’t large enough to put them in the same league with Chicago, I wonder whether there may be a lesson to two to be learned from their experience. And I wonder whether any parts of the Grand Rapids model could be replicated elsewhere around the state. Personally, I think it would be difficult, as much of what they’ve done has been made possible by personal philanthropy, the likes of which we don’t see elsewhere in the state, but I think it’s a question worth asking.

TED: I haven’t spent much time in Grand Rapids. I do know it tilts a little more toward Chicago. And, as not everyone wants to live in a big city, Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, and even Lansing may be good models for people who want a smaller town life.

MARK: A few days ago, after your article was released, our Governor, Rick Snyder, sat down with reporters from the Detroit Free Press, who asked him directly whether or not his recent passage of right-to-work legislation would drive away the young high-tech entrepreneurs, members of the so-called “creative class,” and new graduates. He essentially said that young people don’t care about right-to-work. Is he right?

TED: I don’t know how much they specifically obsess over right-to-work, but as Brian Dickerson pointed out in the Free Press, they want to live in a forward-looking, progressive state, and right to work is a sign of a state moving backwards.

MARK: You mentioned in the Salon article that, six years ago, you attempted to move back to Michigan, but were only able to find one job, which paid $25,000 a year, and offered no vacation time. You, as a result, decided to stay in Chicago. I’m curious if you could speak a bit about the kinds of jobs that you were finding in Michigan at that time, and what, if any, change you’ve seen since then… I don’t know if you’ve looked for a job in Michigan since, but I imagine that, in doing research for your new book, “Nothin’ But Blue Skies: The Heyday, Hard Times, and Hopes of America’s Industrial Heartland,” you’ve had the occasion to look into hiring trends here, and I’m wondering what you found… The reason I ask is that, in the article, you write, “Michigan has lost so many educated workers that the state’s leadership seems to feel it has no choice but to become a low-wage haven. The kind of place that attracts chicken processors, not software engineers.” And I’m wondering whether the data supports that. Do we know, for instance, that jobs for software engineers are declining, while low-wage jobs are growing?

TED: Interestingly, I ended up taking a job at a magazine with offices in Northwest Indiana, and I lived in New Buffalo. But I was laid off after a year, and the magazine went out of business a year after that, during the 2008 recession. So I bounced back to Chicago, where I wrote a book about President Obama, so it was all good. Since then, I haven’t had enough confidence in Michigan’s economy to entrust my career to it. In Lansing, I did visit a high-tech business called Niowave, which employs skilled craftsmen to build cyclotrons. Most were retired autoworkers, not earning as much as they had in the shop. An important trend is the auto industry’s two-tier wage system, which starts workers at $14 an hour, half of what their more experienced linemates earn. I think that shows there are not as many high-wage jobs as there used to be, even in supposedly high wage industries. Anecdotally, the shopping center near my mom’s house is now anchored by a Laundromat, a dollar store, and a plasma center.

MARK: Sorry for the detour, but, as you mentioned your earlier book, Young Mr. Obama: Chicago and the Making of a Black President, I’m curious to know if you might have any insight, given what you learned about him as a young politician in Chicago, as to how he might lead in his second term, especially as pertains to this fiscal cliff that we’re now approaching. Also, I’m curious as to how much access you had to him, if any, when writing that book.

TED: I had my access to him in 2000 and 2004, when he was running for Congress and Senate. I still have the tape of the nearly 2 hour long interview we did in 2000. As for the fiscal cliff, I tell people “I’m an expert on what Obama did 10 years ago, not what he’s doing now.”

Standing behind a podium in the Willard Hotel ballroom, before hundreds of reporters who were instructed not to ask questions, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre aggressively avoided even the slightest hint of responsibility, insisting that this horrible event happened not because too many military-style weapons are in circulation, but because we have “a national media machine that rewards (deranged and evil people) with the wall-to-wall attention and sense of identity that they crave” coupled with “a callous, corrupt and corrupting shadow industry that sells, and sows, violence against its own people… through vicious, violent video games.” Here’s a clip from LaPierre’s speech:

“In a race to the bottom, media conglomerates compete with one another to shock, violate and offend every standard of civilized society by bringing an ever-more-toxic mix of reckless behavior and criminal cruelty into our homes — every minute of every day of every month of every year.

A child growing up in America witnesses 16,000 murders and 200,000 acts of violence by the time he or she reaches the ripe old age of 18.

And throughout it all, too many in our national media … their corporate owners … and their stockholders … act as silent enablers, if not complicit co-conspirators. Rather than face their own moral failings, the media demonize lawful gun owners, amplify their cries for more laws and fill the national debate with misinformation and dishonest thinking that only delay meaningful action and all but guarantee that the next atrocity is only a news cycle away”…

[LaPierre's full statement can be found here.]

But LaPierre, I assume because he loves the 1st Amendment as much as he does the 2nd, doesn’t call for limits to be imposed on the entertainment industry. No, he takes the opportunity to sell more guns, saying, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” We should, he seems to argue, accept that there’s evil in the word, which is being coaxed along by large corporations, and be prepared to meet it with overwhelming force. Then, with the stage having been set, LaPierre offered his “meaningful contribution” to the national conversation, calling upon Congress to act immediately, “to appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school.” And, he said, the NRA would be there to help however necessary.

The NRA, said LaPierre, “as America’s preeminent trainer of law enforcement and security personnel for the past 50 years,” would be more than happy to lead this campaign, which they’ve christened the National School Shield Emergency Response Program. The NRA would, according to LaPierre, handle everything from the training of these several hundred thousand armed guards, and putting school access controls in place, to drafting designs for America’s next-generation schools, which, one can assume, will be virtually impenetrable… One would assume that the NRA would be compensated for playing such a critical role in safeguarding our nation’s children, but LaPierre didn’t mention that.

[note: One other thing that LaPierre didn't mention -- there was an armed guard on the grounds of Columbine High School on the day that school was attacked in 1999. The guard, Neil Gardner, exchanged fire with one of the gunmen from 60 yards away, but failed to keep him from entering the school, where he and an accomplice murdered 13.]

And, with that, LaPierre introduced former Congressman Asa Hutchinson, the man who, we were told, would be leading the effort for the NRA, as the National Director of the National School Shield Program. Neither man answered reporters’ questions, but Hutchinson, in his prepared comments, added a little more detail to the plan, as it had been put forward by LaPierre. Most interestingly, Hutchinson said that, for the system to work, you wouldn’t even need to hire police officers, as volunteers could do the trick. (Hiring police officers could be cost-prohibitive, as there are approximately 98,817 public schools in the United States, and God knows how many busses, each of which, one would imagine, would need to be protected as well.) Here’s a quote from Hutchinson:

“…If a school decides, for whatever reason, that it doesn’t want, or need, armed security personnel, that of course is a decision to be made by the parents of the local school board at the local level. The second point I’d like to make is that this will be a program that does not depend upon massive funding from local authorities or the federal government. Instead it will make use of local volunteers serving in their own communities… Whether they’re retired police, retired military, or rescue personnel, I think there are people in every community in this country who would be happy to serve, if only someone would ask them, and gave them the training and certifications to do so…”

And, at this point in the conversation, I think it’s worth reminding folks just how well the whole “volunteer armed security” thing worked out for Trayvon Martin this summer. Do we really want trigger-happy volunteer tough guys walking around our kids’ schools with loaded weapons, questioning our children about their comings and goings?

I can see the appeal of a relatively quick fix that gives parents the temporary illusion of safety where their children are concerned, but I can’t help but think that, if we follow this course of action, we might just be creating a more serious problem. The analogy that comes to mind is that of a community which, in hopes of eliminating one invasive species, introduces a more lethal invasive species into their local ecosystem. The hope is that the second species will be more easily dealt with than the first, but it’s almost guaranteed not to be the case.

[Video of Hutchinson's complete address can be found here.]

The response to this “defensive” and “paranoid” vision put forward by the NRA, from what I’ve seen online, has been universally unenthusiastic. Randi Weingarten, head of the 1.5 million-member American Federation of Teachers, for instance, called the proposal “irresponsible and dangerous.” And Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post called it, “absurd, unbelievable, tragic, obscene… evil.” I could go on, but I suspect that most of you already know that this idea is terrible, and will join me, over the coming months, in fighting it. The last thing this country needs are more guns in schools. Even if we’re just talking about one armed person in each school, that’s almost 100,000 guns, and what are the odds that bad things would happen, especially if we’re talking about unpaid volunteers being the ones with their fingers on the triggers? How long will it be before we start hearing stories about fathers of Muslim students being shot for “looking like terrorists,” or guns being accidentally discharged? I’d argue that it’s not worth the risk, especially when there are other means available to us. As we discussed yesterday, the evidence indicates that fewer guns in circulation means fewer gun deaths. Folks on the right argue that insane people will still find a way to do harm, and that’s true, but it will almost certainly be decidedly less lethal. Case in point – at roughly the same time that this gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary, taking the lives of 20 children, a similarly deranged man entered a school in China, wielding a knife. He slashed 22 children. Happily, though, in that case, they all survived.

[note: The image above is mine. I apologize in advance if any of my gun-owning friends get their feeling hurt.]

update: The best response to LaPierre that I’ve seen thus far.