Throughout this year's budget battles in Lansing, lawmakers disagreed sharply over how to balance the books. But they seemed to strongly agree on this: Michigan voters would never approve any kind of open, across-the-board tax increase. Yet last week's election returns may indicate that the politicians are dead wrong.

You might also have thought that state legislators would have their plates full trying to cope with the ongoing state budget crisis. But no. There is a small band of lawmakers in both the State House and Senate dedicated to either rolling back the will of the people " or throwing enough restrictions in the way that stem-cell research would be practically impossible.

Here's one small example of how badly the system of government is broken in Michigan. For weeks, Gov. Jennifer Granholm has been vigorously complaining about budget cuts to the schools. Then, this week, she shocked everyone. She acted to make the situation worse. Much worse. Out of the blue, she vetoed a portion of the school aid budget that for years has provided supplemental funding for some districts that have generally had higher funding levels.

They filmed a few scenes in Michigan last week for the soon-to-be-shown HBO movie, "You Don't Know Jack," about the apostle of assisted suicide, Dr. Jack Kevorkian. I imagine I'll see the movie, but for me, I imagine it is bound to be an anticlimax, no matter how well Al Pacino and Susan Sarandon portray Dr. Death and his sidekick, Janet Good. You see, I do know Jack.

Virtually every economist agrees on one thing: Michigan badly needs a better-educated work force. Yet if the state Legislature's actions in this year's budget battles are any indication, Lansing seems determined to not only fail to solve that problem, but to actually make it worse.

Michigan made a promise to high school students a few years ago. Work hard, do well in school and the state would provide you with a $4,000 Michigan Promise Grant to help with college tuition. This week, the legislature broke that promise.

Guy Stern started a new career this winter, one he never expected. He is now the interim director of one of Michigan's most impressive but least-known cultural jewels, the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills.

Nobody can recall seeing anything quite like it. Finally, after weeks of fruitless backroom negotiations, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm finally unveiled a state budget proposal. And it was immediately attacked -- not, as you would expect, by the Republicans, but by Speaker of the House Andy Dillon, the governor's fellow Democrat.

The United States still has a policy of granting asylum to all who can prove they are truly refugees from political persecution. A small group of those manage, against all odds, to get to Detroit every year, to a place that they know will help them see it. It is called Freedom House and is located in a rambling, century-old red-brick structure in the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge.

Sen. Kennedy's life and career hold an important lesson for government in Michigan. His successes best illustrate the main thing that is wrong with state government today, namely, term limits.

it could be argued that a rousing primary fight is just what the Democrats need, and that John Cherry, perhaps through no fault of his own, may be their weakest candidate, not their strongest.

She is the daughter of Palestinian refugees, a 33-year-old Detroiter who is the eldest of 14 kids. He is a billionaire. Eighty two-year-old Manuel J. Moroun owns the most economically important border crossing in the country, the Ambassador Bridge. He is politically powerful -- and is now, apparently, trying to take her down. Yet she isn't worried.

For those who understand state government, these are terrifying times in Michigan. What nobody yet knows is this: Next year, how will the state pay its bills?

This was a week in which more good news came out of Michigan's largest city than Detroit has seen in a long time.

The mainstream media have been mostly ignoring a ticking time bomb in Lansing that threatens to blow apart much of life as the state's citizens have known it. You might call it the Mother of all Deficits. Early in the week, the politicians were still maintaining that the shortfall for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1 was around $1.8 billion. Bad, yes, but capable of being completely cushioned by federal stimulus dollars.

The new passport policy is severely hurting tourism and the economy in both Ontario and Michigan. Traffic through the Detroit-Windsor tunnel, the main tourist artery, was off 22.5 percent last month compared to the previous year.

Speaking at Macomb Community College in Warren, President Barack Obama announced a mammoth $12 billion program he called The American Graduation Initiative. "It will reform and strengthen community colleges so they get the resources that students and skills need, and the results workers and businesses demand," he said.

There are still a few old-timers who remember him strolling across the University of Michigan campus on weekends with his wife. No. In the history books, he will always be Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, architect of the Vietnam War.

There was bad news for thousands of living Michigan adults who depend on Medicaid coverage. For them, this was the week their lives took a turn for the worse. This was spelled out in a letter they received last month from the governor's office. "Dear Beneficiary," it began, "Due to Michigan's budget problems, the State cannot continue to pay for some Medicaid-covered services." What that meant was then spelled out:

If Michigan is going to be economically competitive in the future, it has to have a better-educated work force. That's one of the few things that virtually every expert agrees on. Everyone, that is, except for the state Senate, which just voted to totally eliminate the best-known scholarship program, and make major cuts in other forms of needs-based financial aid.

There is a different atmosphere in Detroit these days, a city that not long ago seemed to be on another planet. Four years ago, the city was led by a "hip-hop" mayor famous for extravagant living, wild parties and behavior so outrageous that one out-of-town police force said it would no longer take responsibility for protecting him. Today, there is a new spirit of something like sobriety.

Want an indication of how volatile the automotive world is these days? On Tuesday, the government-controlled board that now runs General Motors announced it had selected a new chair for what was once the world's biggest corporation. The man they picked, Edward E. Whitacre Jr., doesn't have a day's worth of experience in autos.

Fewer than six months ago, Gov. Jennifer Granholm cut short a trip to the Middle East to fly to Washington to fervently argue that bankruptcy was not an option. Now, six months later, it turned out that bankruptcy was an option after all.

Well, the auto companies are in trouble, Michigan is heading for a new budget crisis and let's not even talk about the state's highest-in-the-nation unemployment rate. You just can't think about that stuff all the time. Summer is approaching, and you ought to take at least one good book along to the beach or on your fishing boat.

Today, it's just a dreary acre of earth on Woodward Avenue at Temple, on the edge of downtown, where cars are parked during ball games, and you might not want to be late at night. But a bunch of guys who put their lives on the line for their country have a dream, and a plan.

Michigan is falling apart. Literally. The infrastructure, that is; the dams and bridges and water systems. Though it was virtually ignored by the state's media, the American Society of Civil Engineers' Michigan chapter released a report Tuesday that ought to have been front-page news. Basically, it said that the state's roads and bridges are in terrible shape. So are the storm water and sewage systems.

The wonder of it was not that Dave Bing, basketball star-turned businessman-turned-politician, won last week's election to become Detroit's third mayor in less than eight months. The amazing thing is that Detroit had what was pretty much a normal election.

How is this for irony: General Motors, once the largest corporation in the world, the Cold War symbol of triumphant capitalism, is now proposing that the government become its majority owner " with the United Auto Workers union owning most of the rest.

Michigan indeed has a huge deadly force moving swiftly toward it: the current state budget deficit, which is getting bigger by more than $3 million a day, and has to be balanced, fast.

For Michigan, it was another grim week -- but one which, for the first time in a long time, provided two much-needed, serious glimmers of hope.

State budgets, by law, have to be balanced. The books for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 have a deficit that is now approaching $1 billion. The deficit for the next year is now estimated at double that, and growing. If an auto bankruptcy occurs . Finally, last week, State Budget Director Bob Emerson said what many had been thinking, that some stimulus money " combined with budget cuts " was going to be needed to cover the deficit.

Remembering that columnists often write tongue-in-cheek April Fool's columns, I wondered this week what readers might have thought if I had written the following in, say, April 2000: America's first African-American president this week insisted on the resignation of the head of General Motors as his price for continuing to prop up the failed automaker, which has lost millions of dollars every hour for the past four years.

Many inside General Motors and out are pinning their hopes on the Chevy Volt, the stylish, exciting new electric car due out next year. But are those hopes justified?

Every society has its myths, and here is one of Michigan's most damaging: Kids today spend as much, or more, time in school than their parents did, way back when. Think again.

As some wise old non-economist said, you get what you pay for. Perhaps the real issue facing Michigan taxpayers is: What kind of government do they want? If the answer is a professional, full-time Legislature looking after the affairs of a modern state, then the present salaries of the lawmakers are scarcely too large.

When Gov. Jennifer Granholm gave her annual state of the state address a month ago, most of the focus was on the grim economy and the approaching vast budget deficit. But she also took the toughest environmental stance of her career, telling the major utilities that she intended to hold up the approval process for any new coal-burning power plant in the state.

Four years ago, Detroiters had a choice between a solid civil servant with a track record of honesty and competence and their own "hip-hop" mayor, famous for high living, wild parties and leaving limousines idling in the street at taxpayer expense. This month, Detroiters showed that, at long last, they have sobered up. In a special primary election Tuesday, they picked two sensible candidates to compete to fill the remainder of Kwame Kilpatrick's term.

Supposedly, old Everett Dirksen, the famous leather-faced and gravelly-voiced Senator from Illinois, once said, "a billion here and a billion there, and sooner or later you're talking real money." Dirksen, who died in 1969, was a pretty shrewd operator. But in his wildest nightmares he never could have imagined what's happening with the auto industry today.

He was on a ship steaming up the Detroit River one day in 1848, a young congressman who wasn't going to run again and was trying to figure out his next move.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm is well known for warm, rosy, mostly upbeat speeches. But this year, her office indicated that the annual State of the State speech couldn't be, and wouldn't be like any of the past six she has made. When the governor began speaking, the voters still mostly saw their familiar cheerful, yes-we-can optimist, when what they need is a dose of reality and solutions that make sense.

Draw one connecting Ann Arbor to Michigan State University in East Lansing, and another connecting the University of Michigan to Wayne State University in Detroit. Then draw another, connecting Detroit to East Lansing, and the irregular triangle is complete. Welcome to the University Research Corridor.

How's this for a great idea, seeing that Michigan is in a deepening recession and piling up a vast state budget deficit: Cut the pay and benefits of state legislators. What's more, Speaker of the House Andy Dillon, a Democrat from the blue-collar Detroit suburb of Redford, is pushing the idea.

Suddenly, after months and months of despair, there was a glimmer of good news from the domestic auto industry. Yet while nobody wants to be a naysayer, there are some indications that GM's much-ballyhooed battery announcement may mean less than apparently meets the eye.

If there is anyone in Michigan who has reason to be optimistic about the state's future, it is Dr. Sean Morrison, director of the University of Michigan's Center for Stem Cell Biology. Newly freed to conduct cutting-edge research and waiting for soon-to-be-available federal funds, he can at last begin to build an institute that not only opens new frontiers in science, it could conceivably help the state build a new high-tech future.

Come with me on a time-travel adventure, back to a far-distant era in which the Dow Jones averages closed at about 12,800, and a surge in auto sales was widely expected. In other words, the world of ... Jan. 4, 2008.

Michigan has endured wars, depressions, enemy invasions and endless boom-and-bust cycles ever since the first few French explorers arrived in their canoes. Yet next year may be the most challenging one the state has faced in its history -- and the year that determines its future.

Sadly, Michigan has more to worry about than the survival of its auto companies. Education -- especially, big-city education -- is in a state of profound crisis. Fifty years ago, the Detroit public schools had a problem that today is virtually impossible to imagine: Parents in the suburbs would sometimes lie about where they lived to sneak their kids into the highly-regarded Detroit system.

Mark Dobias, a small-town lawyer from Michigan's Upper Peninsula, hasn't always been the domestic auto industry's biggest fan. But when it became clear that a few U.S. Senators from places like Alabama and Louisiana were determined to do anything to block any aid to General Motors, Chrysler and Ford, it got to him.

All may not be hopeless for Michigan, says Charles Ballard, an economics professor at Michigan State. He is encouraged by President-elect Barack Obama's plan to invest heavily in an infrastructure-based plan designed to create as many as 2.5 million jobs.

There was something almost painful about listening to the leaders of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler testify before Congress last week.

The domestic auto industry is living on borrowed time. And there may not be enough of that to keep General Motors alive until the new administration takes office. The nation is gripped by economic crisis, and the one that most urgently needs action threatens to devastate the economies of Michigan and Ohio. General Motors is facing a cash-flow crisis that could cause the automaker to run out of money to pay its bills, possibly as early as January.

How bad a disaster was last week's election for Michigan Republicans? Consider this: Two of their incumbent congressmen were defeated, in seats that were designed to be completely safe for them. U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, a Democrat, became the first person in state history to get more than three million votes, setting another record with his 1.4 million-vote margin over a hapless opponent.

Regardless of who wins, Michigan next year faces something far more frightening than the worst Halloween nightmare, because it is really going to happen. One way or another, the battered Chrysler Corp. is almost certainly going to cease to exist. Most likely, it will be "merged" with General Motors. For Michigan, that will be beyond devastating.

As far as Michigan's future is concerned, the most important thing on the ballot may not, in fact, be the presidential election, but a constitutional proposal addressing stem cell research. Proposal 2 would allow scientists to use donated, early-stage embryos discarded from fertility clinics for stem cell research that some believe could lead to what would seem like miracle cures.

For Saul Anuzis, these are not the best of times. Michigan's Republican Party chairman has to keep his troops up and focused at a time when his "brand" is down in the polls. That, however, isn't the worst of it. Two weeks ago, his presidential candidate, John McCain, suddenly abandoned the state.

You may think you are going to vote for John McCain or Barack Obama next month, but, like it or not, you really aren't going to. In fact, you can't. Michigan voters who think they are voting for McCain will actually be voting for a bunch of folks most of them never heard of -- people like Alfreda Schmidt and Jerry Roe; Henry Hatter, Tom McCleary and Susan Hartounian.

The financial crisis and the bailout crisis have, to put it mildly, made for some of the strangest political alliances seen in a long time. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is on the same team as the man she loves to hate, President Bush.

Mark Gaffney, president of Michigan's AFL-CIO, doesn't have to work hard at telling union members that the last eight years have been bad for them. Few have much use for George W. Bush. Nor do they have any love for John McCain. But he knows very well there are white, blue-collar union workers who just won't vote for a black man.

General Motors celebrated its first century last week. It was a century in which it sold 450 million cars, became the largest corporation in the world and stood for decades as the symbol of American innovative and technical power. Yet even as the celebration swirled around the company's Renaissance Center headquarters, there were whispers of unwelcome reminders that this wasn't your father's GM.

Last week, the morning after the Republican National Convention was over, John McCain and Sarah Palin flew to greet thousands of cheering fans at Freedom Hill Amphitheatre, an open-air park in Sterling Heights more often used for rock concerts. They got a tremendous reception from adoring supporters, some of whom wore caps reading "Another Democrat for McCain."

When news broke that a plea deal had finally been reached and that Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick would resign, I found myself wishing the city had a Gerald Ford in the wings. Thirty-four years ago, after two years in which the country had undergone the same kind of tension Detroit has for eight months, President Ford took the oath and immediately addressed the nation.

There's a part of Brenda Lawrence that still doesn't believe this is true, that makes her want to pinch herself. Four years ago, the mayor of suburban Southfield was a delegate to her first Democratic National Convention, in Boston. She remembers, as everyone does, the riveting keynote speech by a then nearly unknown young senate candidate named Barack Obama.

The good news for Michigan is that it now seems certain that their entire delegation will be seated at the Democratic National Convention. And the bad news ... never stops. For starters, one of those delegates will be the man who, a year ago, could have been listed as the Rt. Hon. Kwame Kilpatrick, mayor of Detroit. But it would be hard to say that with a straight face today.

U.S. Rep. Thaddeus McCotter lives in Livonia, a leafy, nearly all-white Detroit suburb. Congress is in recess and he, like every other member of the House, is running for re-election. But he mostly isn't here. Instead, he's back in the Capitol, in a House chamber in which the lights and microphones have been turned off, with a few dozen of his Republican colleagues.

Less than two years ago, Detroit's Kilpatrick family was riding high. Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick had just been re-elected without a single challenger in either the primary or general election. Her son, Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, was the golden boy and the comeback kid of Detroit politics.

At Ford Motor Co., there must be a powerful temptation to live in the glorious past. The present is getting to be, well, a little painful. The latest bad news was the newest round of devastating losses; $8.7 billion in the second quarter alone. Ford tried to put the best face on things, noting that most of that was due to "accounting" reasons.

How much political courage do Michigan politicians have? Very little, and less all the time. That's the conclusion reached by Project Vote Smart, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to creating better-informed voters.

Congressman Bart Stupak, D-Menominee, has even more reason than most of us to be concerned about the price of oil. His district is easily the region's largest, in terms of square miles. He represents all the Upper Peninsula and a broad swath of the western Lower Peninsula, all the way down to Bay City. Many of his voters aren't wealthy, and have to drive long distances for work or to go shopping on the weekends. They aren't happy over the price of gas, and many of them are wondering who to blame.

The stage is set for an epic battle at the polls this November that may determine Michigan's future. And it doesn't involve a single candidate for office. But it might be this year's most important contest of all. Michigan voters are all but certain to be asked to amend the state constitution and the state's ban on embryonic stem cell research.

Pretty much everyone in Michigan says they are fed up with the high cost of government and the greed and selfishness of the mitten state's politicians. Not to worry -- help is on the way, says Dianne Byrum, a spokesman for a mysterious new group called "Reform Michigan Government Now!" They believe they have just the prescription, and are fighting to get it on the ballot in November.

First, the good news: Far fewer Americans live in high-poverty, high-crime neighborhoods like inner-city Detroit than just a few years ago, and the number is continuing to decline. The bad news is that for the rest of us, that may be a bad thing.

Everyone who has ever seen a TV courtroom drama knows that if you are charged with a crime and are too poor to afford a lawyer, the state will appoint one for you. Yet if you think that means everyone gets "equal justice under law," you are sadly mistaken -- especially if you live in Michigan.

As it stands now, Michigan Supreme Court judges are essentially chosen by Republican or Democratic party bureaucrats. Is that really the best way justice can ultimately be served?

If Michigan is to have any hope of returning to its former prosperity, everyone agrees it needs to attract the high-tech, highly-skilled "new economy" jobs of the future. Now comes one more effort to undermine the teaching of evolution in public schools.

What would happen if you took virtually all of Michigan's leading politicians, the state's top business leaders and much of the media, and confined them on a tiny island in the middle of northern Lake Huron? You'd have the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce's annual Mackinac Policy conference

Currently, your federal government, at great expense, is prosecuting one Geoffrey Nels Fieger, the state's most flamboyant and flamboyantly successful attorney. They say he violated campaign finance laws.

Years ago, the time-honored tradition was that Democratic presidential candidates formally kicked off their fall election campaigns in Detroit on Labor Day. But don't look for Barack Obama to show up in Detroit this fall.

At first glance, the sudden agreement by Michigan's Democrats on a solution to their primary mess looks like a victory for Hillary Clinton. But in fact, it is anything but.

The energy package now briskly moving through the Michigan Legislature sounds like an environmentalist and consumer's dream. However, if the bills become law -- and speedy Senate passage is expected -- the average consumer may end up being startled.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration finally announced new fuel economy standards, but is Detroit prepared, technologically and politically, for the new standards?

Vern Ehlers is a pillar of the Christian Reformed Church and a stalwart Republican; at 74, he shares a birthday with one of his political heroes, Ronald Reagan. But he is also genuinely worried about the Great Lakes, and the water supply generally, which is why he is the major co-sponsor of the Clean Water Restoration Act of 2007.

Practically speaking, Republicans should have no chance to carry Michigan in the presidential race this November. But this year, they just might.

Once upon a time, the buzz in Detroit was all about what would be the hottest new muscle car of the year. What a difference a decade makes

Dr. Jack Kevorkian's bid for Congress is really a cry for attention from someone the world has passed by, and whose quarter-hour of fame was used up soon after he went to prison nine years ago.

Detroit City Council President Ken Cockrel Jr. is a serious, rational man who looks nothing like a certain famous and now-dead country-western singer. Nevertheless, he said wryly, "I've felt a lot like Johnny Cash these last six weeks."

You might say it was a bad week for Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. But it wasn't a great week for those who live in his city, either.

Hillary Clinton's victories in Ohio and Texas last week had another consequence that almost no one realized on election night. They meant Michigan Democrats -- and probably those in Florida, too -- will finally have to swallow their pride.

Northwest Airlines and Delta are in serious merger talks. Most airline mergers have been ballyhooed as being great for the industry and great for the consumer, and have turned out to be neither. This one, however, may be different.

In the latest episode of "the government that couldn't shoot straight," Michigan's two highest-ranking Republican officials dealt the state a temporary blow which may prove a lasting setback to attracting jobs and foreign investment to Michigan.

So here's the situation: The race for the Democratic presidential nomination is the closest and most exciting in American history. And the Michigan Democratic Party has screwed things up almost beyond belief.

It may not be clear which Democrat really won Super Tuesday, but there is one big Michigan Republican winner — and it wasn't Mitt Romney.

Lily Tomlin once said "No matter how cynical you get, you can't keep up." Naturally, she is a native Detroiter. So what does a mayor say to the people he represents when he's been exposed for lying under oath and using city resources to have a steamy affair with a subordinate?

There has always been one big problem with ethanol as an alternative fuel. It's normally made out of corn, and experts agree the nation couldn't possibly produce enough to make a difference in the nation's oil consumption.

Last Sunday, the pastor of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church invited Cleveland's U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich to address his congregation after the service. Hundreds packed into the modest-sized sanctuary. Hundreds packed into the modest-sized sanctuary. By and large, they were just Democrats hungry to see a presidential candidate -- and very angry at their party for denying them the chance to participate fully.

Willard "Mitt" Romney always has been conscious of his father's legacy. Indeed, he's been on the same path, exactly four decades behind. George Romney, the hard-charging three-term governor of Michigan, was 40 when his youngest son was born.

Judge Milton Mack has been frustrated for years with Michigan's increasingly crowded and costly prison system. What's more, the chief judge of Wayne County Probate Court thinks he knows how to save taxpayers a lot of money and heartbreak.

This was a year when it became perfectly clear to anybody watching closely that the political system is a mess in Michigan. And worse, that no one in power is trying to fix it.

Sean Morrison, the 39-year-old director of the University of Michigan's Center for Stem Cell Biology, is a rarity among scientists. Personable, well-spoken and easygoing, he seems as much at ease with the media as he is in the laboratory. But he must be one of the most frustrated men in the state. By all accounts a brilliant young geneticist, he has the resources of one of the nation's major universities and a background in what is the cutting-edge frontier of biology: stem-cell research.