john auchter

Sunshine Week is a nonpartisan collaboration among groups in the journalism, civic, education, government, and private sectors that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government.

We live in difficult, challenging times. Our nation is again at war. (Wait. What's that? Oh, sorry. Our nation is again at major combat operations.) Closer to home, Michigan faces continued economic uncertainties. Affordability is a growing crisis. Reading scores for our children are abysmal. The calendar tells us winter is almost over, but we all know it isn't.

It will help if readers are familiar with slapstick movies from the early 1900s — Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, Three Stooges, and the like. Specifically the classic bit with a guy carrying a long board on his shoulder and — as he navigates safely through a construction site — unknowingly and repeatedly clobbering people with the back end of the board.

It's natural for political parties to evolve. Over the course of time, they adjust to meet the realities of their current era. A century ago, the Democratic Party was primarily a combination of Jim Crow southerners and working-class northerners. Sixty years later it started shifting more toward the party of minorities and women. And today, it's the neurotic, often self-defeating mishmash that we all know.

President Donald Trump flipped the middle finger Tuesday to a person who could be heard calling him a “pedophile protector" while he toured a Ford truck factory in Michigan. In video shared by TMZ, Trump points to a person who is not seen in the frame and mouths some words. He then flashes his middle finger in that person's direction.

But I'm stuck on sadness and bitterness for now and expect to remain there for a while. Sadness because of the loss of life. Not just Ms. Good but for all the human beings that have suffered (and will suffer) because our wannabe dictator needs to keep his base frothing with fear and anger.

A gentle reminder (especially to myself) that just because Christmas is over doesn't mean it's over. The story continues.

I've seen where right-wing folks have been opining and conjecturing and outright accusing Governor Whitmer of corruption. That she's on the take from big tech and their billionaires to build their data centers. There doesn't seem to be actual evidence of that. It's projection.

The firing of the University of Michigan football coach was very much a developing story as I came up to my deadline, so I didn't want to try to speak to the particulars of the Sherrone Moore case. But I do feel like I'm on solid ground in asking the question: What the #@&*% is wrong with college football coaches?

I hate to be cynical. But sometimes there are pretty good reasons. Unfortunately, in these United States of America, efforts to resolve the gun violence epidemic offers one of those pretty good reasons.