Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm has yet to start teaching her new Cal-Berkeley course on “state budgets, clean energy jobs, and diversifying the economy, and leadership” – but she already has a devoted student in the White House.<\/p>\n
President Obama’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night was remarkably similar to the failed economic vision of Michigan’s ex-governor – complete with Granholm’s rhetorical ruse substituting “investments” for “spending” – that she laid out in her State of the State address exactly five years ago. “If the states are the laboratories of democracy,” Granholm wrote in the Huffington Post last December, “Washington can take a lesson from what is happening in Michigan.”<\/p>\n
Sadly for the nation, Obama listened to his teacher.<\/p>\n
“We need a moon shot,” said Granholm in the Huffington Post. “This is our Sputnik moment,” echoed the president on Tuesday. Like Granholm, he is oblivious of the fact that this tired cliche had nothing to do with economy-building (the space race created no significant marketable products) and everything to so with superpower politics.<\/p>\n
Granholm envisioned a transformation of Michigan from Rust Belt to “Green Belt” with massive, European-like, public investments in infrastructure and alternative energy. “In five years, you’ll be blown away,” she predicted in what would become her signature line.<\/p>\n
Ironically, thousands of state jobs were blown away as Granholm’s vision diverted pols’ attention from much-needed reforms to the state’s budget and business climate. Since her speech in 2006, the state’s unemployment rate has exploded from 7.4 percent to 11.4.<\/p>\n
Now Obama wants to take the Granholm model national.<\/p>\n
Indeed, he already has. Obamanomics since 2009 have mirrored Granholmnomics – and complimented it with a huge infusion of federal dollars. While Democratic organs like The New York Times have swallowed White House spin that this is a new, pro-business Obama vision, it is in fact more of the same ol’, same ol’.<\/p>\n
Obama diverted one-sixth of the federal stimulus bill – a staggering $130 billion – to politically-connected corporations in the green sector. Obamanomics – and Granholmnomics – have always been “pro-business’ in the sense that they reward crony capitalists. Korea’s LG Chem, A123 Systems, Dow and others have receive millions in state and federal subsidies to build batteries and other visions of Granobama utopia.<\/p>\n
“The 21st Century Jobs Fund (is) the largest investment in diversifying our economy this state has ever seen,” said Granholm in her 2006 SOS. “It’ll create tens of thousands of new jobs. We’ll invest more than $2 billion in public and private funds to develop new sectors of our economy: Advanced manufacturing. Homeland security and defense. Life sciences. Alternative energy.”<\/p>\n
“We’ll invest in biomedical research, information technology, and especially clean energy technology – an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people,” mimicked Obama in this years’ SOTU.<\/p>\n
From promising more “investment” in infrastructure to high-speed rail to biofuels, Obama’s message is eerily similar to Berkeley’s new prof.<\/p>\n
But that “future” has come crashing down in Europe where the Granhobama vision has already been tried. Entirely dependent on government largesse to survive, Granhobama’s alternative energy business model in Spain, for example, has been gutted under budget pressure. As evidence of its fragility, Granholm’s Green Belt dream has already been cast overboard by her successor, Rick Snyder, in his very first State of the State address this January as Michigan faces crushing budget pressures – pressures that Granholm ignored on her way to utopia.<\/p>\n
Like Granholmnomics, Obamanomics is not only unsustainable – it diverts important investment dollars from the private sector. Welcome to Michigan, America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm has yet to start teaching her new Cal-Berkeley course on “state budgets, clean energy jobs, and diversifying the economy, and leadership” – but she already has a devoted student in the White House. President Obama’s State of the Union speech Tuesday night was remarkably similar to the failed economic vision […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6427"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6427"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6428,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6427\/revisions\/6428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}