Michigan has at best been treading water for forty years--living under the delusion that a return to the good old days of 1920 to 1970--when the state ruled the automobile word--were just around the corner. What's around the corner is change, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told an audience yesterday at the Detroit Regional Chamber's 2010 Mackinac Policy Conference.From MLive:
"It's either about real change, or it's about baloney," he said. "I'm here as an outside observer. If it's about baloney, it's a waste of time. Are you into real change, or do you want to love each other while you decay? There are reasons the system hasn't changed. There are reasons Michigan has absorbed more job losses than any other state in the country."
Then Newt went after the unions, "In Michigan, you've spent a generation of throwing away prosperity by subsidizing people who aren't productive." He suggested that lawmakers should make Michigan a right-to-work state, if not for the private sector, at least for government employees. Failing schools? Replace them. But one of Newt's ideas is way-off. He says students should be given--which means taxpayers would have to pay for them--Kindles or iPads. He says its cheaper than buying textbooks, but Gingrich doesn't realize that kids will steal these devices from their classmates, or the students will choose to sell them on eBay, or they will get lost, or get destroyed by being dropped or getting wet. Just like cell phones. As for Detroit, Gingrich thinks declaring the onetime industrial behemoth a tax-free zone is a sound idea.
Related posts:
For sale: Michigan
Marathon Pundit Series: Upper Peninsula Upventure
Technorati tags:
labor 
politics 
uaw 
news 
jobs 
economy 
unions 
newt gingrich 
automobiles 
cars 
auto news 
michigan 
Detroit
No comments:
Post a Comment