"This is regional economic warfare. Pure and simple."

[BeatleBoot]

From The Toledo Blade...

by Jack Lessenberry

http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081212/COLUMNIST17/812120329/-1/NEWS30

Anger grows in Michigan over Southern opposition to auto loans


DETROIT - Mark Dobias, a small-town lawyer from Michigan's Upper Peninsula, hasn't always been the domestic auto industry's biggest fan. But when it became clear that a few senators from places like Alabama and Louisiana were determined to do anything to block any aid to General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford, it got to him.

"This is regional economic warfare. Pure and simple. The wounded Rustbelt being bayoneted in the throat by economic interests in the East and Sunbelt with aid from their political toadies," he wrote me. He's normally a laid-back guy with a puckish sense of humor, but the hypocrisy was, he said, a bit much.

"Michigan is a great state. It has good people - hard-working people who make things. The nation has gained from its natural resources and industrial capacity. And now … we will remember this in the same way that Georgia remembers William Tecumseh Sherman," the union general whose armies laid the Southern state waste.

What was highly unusual, in Michigan's quarrelling political culture, was the unanimity with which the state's various factions united in support of trying to help the automakers - and disdain for the senators who would prevent that effort.

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[eShirl]

1. Feel that shift in the wind?

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[BeatleBoot]

3. Please visit this website

http://www.boycottalabamanow.com/

[FarCenter]

4. Federal Procurement Dollars by State

http://www.fpdsng.com/downloads/FPR_Reports/2006_fpr_section_II_geographic_views.pdf

Fiscal Year 2006

Alabama, per capita procurement - $1809, rank - 11th
Alaska, $3362, 4th
Arizona, $3032, 9th
Kentucky, $1471, 16th
Mississippi, $2406, 7th
Tennessee, $1206, 21st
Texas, $1679, 13th

Illinois, $489, 47th
Indiana, $826, 32nd
Michigan, $522, 44th
Ohio, $732, 35th
Pennsylvania, $832, 31st

[DainBramaged]

6. NJ, (MY home state) $842.66, 8,414,350 population Rank 30th.

[BlooInBloo]

7. Indeed.

[boomerbust]

5. They forgot this man also

[BeatleBoot]

8. He Kicked Ass and Took Names

For every $1 that Alabama pays in Federal Tax, they receive $1.64.


I say cut them off from Federal Welfare.

[StreetKnowledge]

9. Memo To Michigan

Join Canada. Seriously.

Better beer, better women, lots of car plants (look at Ontario) and a government that actually cares about its people rather than its K Street lobbyists.

Of course, this is satire. But I'm sure they could look across the border and get a few ideas.

[BeatleBoot]

10. Those car Plants in Ontario are GM, Chrysler and Ford

If the Big 3 go down, Oshawa, Kitchner, Mississauga, Guelph, Brampton, Port Hope all go down, too.