Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktJennifer Granholm claims, on Jon Stewart, that she causes Michigan’s problems with her crazed tax cutting and reducing the size of government. Although, eventually, some private-public partnerships yielded some results–thanks to Obama.
She has some interesting theories. She paints a very different picture of herself than, say, Rush Limbaugh does.
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All Things in Moderation 
Who is this Jennifer Granholm? Never heard of her?
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That Granholm interview is some of the dopiest tripe I've heard in a long time. The old laws of economics are abolished by globalism, now big government and planning are the answer. Rubbish. Not to mention that she is trashing our basic constitutional order of federalism.NR just published an interesting article comparing the economic histories of Detroit and Houston over the past century. I had forgotten to mention it to see what the Texans and Michiganders among us think. Don't have time to find the link now, but it might be findable.
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She certainly does have presence though. So, Wisconsin started to beat back through investment with OBAMA? (gasp, the horror!)
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Granholm is the former two term Governor of Michigan who has a book to sell. She was born in Canada or she very well might have been a Presidential or VP candidate. Whenver a spot opens up on the SCOTUS her name generally get floated out there, too. She's taken a lot of heat and is generally blamed by voters in Michigan for the state of the…err…State. Right now Republicans control the State of Michigan and it is largely due to what happened to our economy while Granholm was Governor.
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This is the story QB was talking about. I'll try to take a look at it tonight.http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/277078/houston-we-have-solution-mario-loyola
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"The old laws of economics are abolished by globalism"Thomas Friedman said so! The world is flat. And states shouldn't compete to attract jobs. Jobs should be assigned to each state by federal job allocation tables. 🙂
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There's a part 2 of the interview. And a part 3, apparently.
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Jennifer Granholm has identified what we need to do to solve our problems: emulate Singapore! Yaayy!
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I don't know how Granholm's claims of having aggressively cut taxes and government hold up, but I think Michigan's troubles were of such a long-term and profound nature that it was going to have a rough go anyway, and at least two of the car companies woes continued for larger reasons.What is never explained in any rational way are claims like the one she implicitly makes that government money and intervention were needed to get lithium battery production to Michigan. If that is an economically efficient and viable proposition, why is government money needed to make it happen? And what is the proof that the investment money could not have been put to better use wherever the government took it from?
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Even better, QB, in the part 3 (online only) she makes the case that universal healthcare is needed to get healthcare expenses off companies' (specifically, automakers) backs, and then the jobs that left for Canada would come back to Michigan. Because corporations and the wealthy won't put their tax savings from tax cuts into hiring or building new plants or starting businesses, but they will but their healthcare savings from having single payer healthcare into hiring more Americans to work in new American plants paid for by not having to pay for health insurance . . .
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QB:But to the old hands of the battery industry, the first Volt contract was no surprise. They saw an old theme playing out. In the 1980s, American scientists had devised the lithium-ion battery, the technology that will power today's generation of electric cars. But in the 1990s, Asian firms commercialized them, manufactured them and began exporting them to every corner of the world. — http://www.nytimes.com/cwire/2011/02/02/02climatewire-growing-an-american-electric-car-industry-a-t-5879.html?pagewanted=all
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That's some fine thinkin'. Taxes aren't a cost; we know that because they are only paid on profits. Btw, I apparently wasn't banned at PL. I tried commenting from my office and it worked fine. Must be some bad internet mojo at my house.
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Oops, that was an answer to Kevin. I should pay more attention.
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Taroya, what's the point I'm missing?
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You wanted to know why we had to have gov't intervention to make the batteries.We lost the market, so had to have help.
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KevinI've heard people on both sides of the political spectrum claim that health care should be separated from employment. Obviously, they wouldn't all support single payer, as I do, but the fact that it is linked so inextricably to employment is one of the problems in reforming our options.I also don't see why a new and innovative industry shouldn't benefit from a temporary boost from the government in the form of tax exemption or government loans. It doesn't always work out the way it's supposed to ie the oil industry's never ending tax breaks or Solyndra, but I think it's a good policy. It's not that much different than R&D to me.
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Taroya, I guess I don't know what that means. If there are Americans who could make batteries better or more efficiently, they should, and they should have. If they can only do it if they are subsidized by government, then they can't really do it more efficiently.lms, one of the problems with government "investment"is precisely the kind of problem represented by Solyndra, isn't it? Politics begin to drive it, and corruption is waiting at the door. I see the whole mania for government "green jobs" as largely this same thing. We keep being told they are "the jobs of the future" and all that, but strangely they won't come to be unless the government creates them. Something is wrong with this picture.
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If the auto industry and the UAW, which between them controlled MI politics, had developed a statewide unitary health care policy divorcing insurance coverage from employment, MI is a state that would have served well as an experimental laboratory, because all through the 90s – 00s that industry complained it was at a 10%-17% cost disadvantage with the Japanese and the Europeans solely because of health care costs. That industry once had the political clout to effect that change but it did not.QB, a net income tax is simply not a cost, because it is zero if there is no net income. Thus net income is optimized at a price, and that price is the same whether or not a net income tax is imposed. If you project a certain sales level and then project an expected profit margin, say 10%, and net income taxes are 30% of profit then you can build an edifice in which net income tax is a 3% cost. But it is not a cost unless you make a profit and it is not a cost that can therefore be assigned to pricing. OTOHSales taxes and franchise taxes are variable costs beginning with first dollar, and property taxes are fixed costs.
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QB- I agree on casting blame on Granholm, but I was just stating how things have been perceived by the voters here. There is also a point about the fact that many of things she signed got through a State Legislative branch that was at least partially controlled by Republicans. As to her claim about cutting taxes, let's just say I find it dubious at best. The Michigan Business Tax has been held up as the primary factor in driving business away from Michigan and it was one of the first things Governor Snyder got rid of when he came into office. I don't think she was quite the evil tax raiser she was painted as nor is she the tax cutter she's now portraying herself as.
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qb: "lms, one of the problems with government "investment"is precisely the kind of problem represented by Solyndra, isn't it? Politics begin to drive it, and corruption is waiting at the door."You had me at "politics begin to drive it". It doesn't even have to be corruption: it can just be the people with the most clout have already made up their mind who they want to get what, and danger signs and red flags are ignored. Politics always end up driving it, when the government is trying to single out winners and losers (without having a specific product they are actually contracting with the company to receive; it might have been better that the government just ordered solar panels from Solyndra for every government building).
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