I readily agree that labor unions have overreached in many cases the past few decades. At the same time, I stand behind high wages for workers, tough environmental standards, and fair taxation.

Did you know back in the ’50s, the Flint River used to change colors day by day depending on what color of paint the auto plants were running that day? The bottom of the Flint river running through downtown has been sealed off with concrete because of the high concentrations of heavy metals and other pollutants in the river bed.

The Flint River is a beautiful watershed — at least it WAS before it became synonomous with “sewer” thanks to the impact of decades of corporate pollution.

THAT is what corporations (and individuals) do when they are allowed to pursue profits without regard for the environment.

If business had its way, the Great Lakes would be nothing but greasy, smelly oil slicks lapping garbage-strewn coasts. The Cuyahoga river feeding Lake Erie actually caught fire numerous times in the 20th century due to its heavy concentration of pollutants. A particularly infamous fire in 1969 embarrassed Congress so much they passed the Clean Water Act of 1972.

You probably don’t think of these things because you have enjoyed the benefits of environmental protection laws all your life.

Those chemical companies you mentioned did not leave Michigan because they could not prosper in Michigan. They left Michigan because they could prosper MORE in a place where they could pollute more.

Are you suggesting that Michigan should be more like those other states and be more accommodating to polluters?

It is RIGHT for a society to impose the cost of pollution (prevention or cleanup) on the business that derives the economic benefit from creating it. Otherwise, the opposite happens: the business imposes the cost of its activities (increased environmental pollution) on the society, while keeping all the profits as well.

Naturally business prefers the latter arrangement and will move production anyplace where it can reduce its production costs to the minimum and maximize its profits. You can study Nigeria and other third-world nations sometime and see how corporations have exploited the lax regulatory environment in those countries to the devastation of the land and people.

If reasonable environmental protections “drive out” business, then I say to heck with business. Let them go. I would rather live in a clean state where I can drink the water, eat the fish, and breathe the air on minimum wage than stand in a cesspool in my high-priced shoes.

I grew up, and spent probably about 35 years of my life in MI. I began to hate it after my first year in college in Ohio, and then in the Army for a couple of years out West.

I think of Detroit, Benton Harbor, and Flint, when I think of MI. I am a hunter and fisherman, and love the outdoors, but every year that goes by the cost to hunt and fish, and maneuver through rulebooks costs more, while fewer and fewer people hunt. The big city anti-s are wrecking outdoor sports.

The winter is much too long, the overcast is too long, the rain too often. Factories not only must pay extortion to unions and eco-nazis, but pay huge cost in heat and snow clearance, sick days, and exorbitant taxes.

Of the three of my siblings and I, three of us live in the sub-tropical belt from Southern Californication, to southern New Mexico, to Florida, and my parents will move to one of those, or Alabama if they can ever sell their Lansing home. Once “man-made global warming” re-glaciates MI the Gaia worshiping eco-freaks will have their *pristine* wilderness state, and should be required by law to live in it permanently.

Don’t know about up north or in the UP, but in the SE, the problem is clear — an adversarial, us-versus-them, grievance-nursing, somebody-owes-me mentality. Whether it is the unions and union workers, who have the mindset of merely taking and getting the most they can out of management and government, or whether it is the race hustlers of Detroit, demanding that somebody else come in and do something to save them. On one side, you have “it’s all the white man’s fault,” and on the other side, you have, “the blacks are to blame.”

In the SE section of the state, rare is the individualistic, can-do, let me do it myself attitude. Those that do think that way have longed moved away. In short, for too many years, they have been New Orleans during Katrina. And like New Orleans, it has become a Third World hell-hole.

One of the sad and ironic downfall of Michigan was a multimillion dollar radio comercial advertisement aimed at small business’s to move to Michigan because of low taxes, Goverments pro business and low crime….These adverts was done in TEXAS!!Do they really think that the people in the largest economy, biggest exporter of manufactered goods,low tax’s,no state income tax ect…ect..are so stupid they would fall for such claptrap?But again a leftist liberal State Goverment,that doesn’t deal with facts but lives in a elitist fantasy world would think a bunch of “hicks” would fall for such snake oil.

Ooh! Ouch! (tee-hee)

The death of the Gay Old Party in a nutshell…