Battlegrounders
[ home | archives | email ]

MICHIGAN: JENNIFER VS. GEORGE [Henry Payne 10/26 07:39 AM]

Jennifer Granholm, Democratic governor of Michigan and cheerleader for John Kerry, wants you to know how terrible things are in Michigan.

The state, she moans, has the third highest unemployment rate in the nation. In one year, 16,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost. And since Sept. 2003, household income has dropped by $900 – from $45,258 to $44,358. Surf the TV, pick up a newspaper, or turn the radio dial, and Michigan’s governor is there to tell you the bad news.

But the governor — who took office in January, 2003 — insists she has had nothing to do with this abysmal record. She’s a victim, a helpless bystander. She wants you to believe it’s all President George Bush’s fault.

Really.

Granholm has enjoyed healthy, 60-percent approval ratings despite the state woes on her watch. But by calling attention to Michigan’s problems to politically damage Bush, she risks closer scrutiny of her own record.

Indeed, a look at the numbers might indicate that Democrats like Granholm have more to answer for than Bush. Michigan, for example lags the US economy in employment growth. Despite unemployment declines across most of the 50 states, Michigan saw its unemployment rate rise in September to 6.8 percent.

Granholm complains that Bush is outsourcing Michigan’s jobs to foreign countries, but that charge is flimsy at best. In fact, most of Michigan’s manufacturing job losses have been “outsourced” to other US states, not overseas – particularly to the southern US where employers do not suffer from the high labor costs and militant labor culture of Michigan unions, a key Granholm political ally.

As the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this fall, the highest rates of employment increases in the nation are in the South (Georgia - +15,000; Texas - +14,400), while Michigan leads in employment decrease (-45,000, -1 percent).

Surely this is more a referendum on Granholm’s performance versus other governors than on George Bush’s record.

Even liberal Detroit Free Press business columnist Tom Walsh doesn’t buy the Blame Bush mantra: “If there's a message from these depressing data,” he writes, “it's that Michigan is still not seen as a fertile spot to set up shop and create jobs.”

"Today,” Granholm intones on the stump, “fathers and mothers who have worked loyally for a company for decades, are now reading the papers and wondering: 'When is my job going to China? To Mexico, to India,' " Granholm said. "'Am I next? Who is standing up for me?' John Kerry will."

But perhaps voters here should be asking: how will the Granholm/Kerry plan of stronger unions, higher taxes, and job-killing federal fuel economy requirements make Michigan more attractive to employers?