| Some history here: Jennifer Granholm came up with the Cool Cities initiative to help communities focus on making themselves livable and attractive to people who benevolent ovelord Rick Michigan might describe as talent. Back during her administration, they also came up with Pure Michigan to promote the state as a tourist destination. The two things have as much in common as do spending on the state police and spending on the Michigan National Guard. MLive's in-house seditionist and conservative affirmative action hire Matt Davis weighs in. More specifically, though, the Pure Michigan ad in the Journal was aimed at those who might consider moving their businesses to Michigan or expanding or investing in the ones already here. And it was intended to send the message that Michigan is open for business (read: growing private-sector jobs, and from them, individual financial freedom).
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And not to make too fine a point on it, but former Gov. Jennifer Granholm's effort to attract jobs -- "Cool Cities" - left us with nothing more than a stockpile of cheap sunglasses. Does anyone think that investors took her effort seriously?
The point of Cool Cities was to help cities make themselves more appealing to today's young people. Young people, instead of moving to Chicago, stay in Detroit or Grand Rapids or Saginaw, and businesses either move there to take advantage of an existing workforce or they start to grow their own businesses. That's that economic gardening business we used to hear so much about. Pure Michigan, on the other hand, was originally a tourism campaign that was shamelessly politicized because there was an appropriations attached to it to make it referendum-proof, and they had to spend the money on something. |
