do the people there not even care? is it the auto industries fault? at least they got the Pistons
Michigan is a highly unionized state. When U.S. automakers like GM and Ford lose money they close plants, American plants. Foreign automakers aren't gonna put a new plant in Flint, where they have to deal with the UAW and other unions. Not when you can build them in cities like San Antonio - one of the least unionized cities in the U.S..
AND THE ANSWER IS:
Michigan is a blue state
Every State has positives and negatives and if you'd take the time to educate yourself on the State I'm sure you'd come up with an opinion that would render an "it's not" to your question.do the people there not even care? is it the auto industries fault? at least they got the Pistons
Because it's a blue state? ....<sigh>
Hey, I grew up in Michigan (actually, in Flint, the birthplace of General Motors) and it's not all bad! But I have to say that the UAW has done a huge part in killing the jobs in the area. Flint is becoming a run-down town and it's very sad.
But there are other areas that aren't so bad - and the great lakes are awesome. The white sand on the shores of Lake Michigan is so fine it looks like sugar. It is truly beautiful.
UNIONS & LIBERALISM -- Not necessarily in that order.
Have you ever been to Michigan?do the people there not even care? is it the auto industries fault? at least they got the Pistons
Have you heard of the phrase "contempt prior to investigation?"
Detroit is a hole. But that's a pretty small part of the state. Do you think the whole thing is like that one crappy place?
I grew up in Union country myself in Defiance, Ohio home of GM's Powertrain plant. Been up to Michigan many times but I find is that people up in the Midwest are much more loyal to American automobiles than I say almost anywhere else in the country.
Down here in Texas the loss of auto industry jobs doesn't bother people because they are not as impacted as those up North.
You'll see many more Foreign cars in parking lots around here.
At least that is what I perceive.
There was time in Defiance when all you had to do was graduate from Defiance High School....home of the Battling Bulldogs!...then step into the easy life of a job at GM making good money with great benefits.
Those days are gone although some of my friends were lucky enough to get in. I on the other hand took my liberal ass into the Marine Corps because I love this great Country despite what some of my fellow red state conservative republicans may think.
I thank God that my father was able to get a job at GM and make a comfortable living with a 6th grade education and get out of the migrant worker status.
Foreign automakers have simply out thought the US auto industry. While US automakers are exporting jobs, foreign automakers are creating jobs.
Even Detroit's not a hole; it's a beautiful, historic, and unique city. In the last ten to fifteen years the city has been improved under the leadership of Mayors Dennis Archer and Kwame Kilpatrick. I've been to Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Frankfort, Louisville - there's not a city that has the combination of history, size, frankness, and heart. It's an amazing place to live. We love our food, our cars, and our lives.
Stand in the main dining room of COBO HALL and look out across and icy Detroit River. Go to a bar in the old River Place district and hear about the history of the building you're in. Go to the River Place's crown jewel of restaurants - the Rattlesnake Club. Take in a Van Gogh or Bruegel in a trip to the Detroit Ins ute of Art and while you're there take in a classic cinema experience at the Detroit Film Theatre in their 1200 seat ampitheatre built in 1927 by renouned architect Paul Philippe Cret. Take in a Tigers Game at Comerica Park or a Red Wings game at Joe Louis Arena. Visit Hart Plaza just outside the Renissance Center. Fox Theatre, Detroit Opera House, the Fisher Building. See that statue that you may not recognize without an oversized Pistons or Red Wings jersey - the Spirit of Detroit.
Then come back here, tell how much fun you didn't have and that it's a hole.
Sooner or later I am going to get around to making it up to the Upper Peninsula. I'm not sure that a state with forests and plenty of lakeshore can be all that bad.
The whole state is worse than most people can imagine.
My wife loves it so much she wants to move there. When some of the Pistons fans dissed SA, we were all over them. We should extend them the same courtesy.
The most extreme Redneck I ever met was from Defiance, Ohio.
He would run his mile and a half semi-annual Navy fitness test barefoot(on pavement); and he liked to pour beer over his Fruity Pebbles for breakfast.
Oddly, he was pretty bright.
I loved growing up in Ohio and around Michigan, Indiana.
Small town USA was where I grew up and I loved it.
Traverse City, Macinac Island, the Dunes, the Great Lakes, the Canals, fishing, the flowing grasslands of Grand Rapids, the fall colors in the UP, the majesty of Lansing - I'm not trying to sound like a tour guide or a brochure salesman, but there's a lot here. History, natural wonders, great sports teams, unique art, music, and threatre. What speicifcally is so bad?The whole state is worse than most people can imagine.
The Great Lakes are the bomb.
Sunday Brings More Than a Game
By Michael Wilbon
Friday, February 3, 2006; E01
DETROIT There are more cranes and construction crews in Detroit these days than usual, probably more than at any time in the past 40 years.
Loft apartments in restored buildings off Woodward Avenue downtown reportedly are priced in the $300,000 range, which was unthinkable five years ago. Several burned-out buildings that were visible along Interstates 94 and 75 as recently as June during the NBA Finals have been torn down.
( cleaning up for the NBA Finals doesn't rank with cleaning up for the SB )
The streets leading into and out of the Super Bowl-related venues are cleaner than they've been in decades. New restaurants like Lola's in Harmony Park, a short walk from Detroit's two new downtown stadiums, were open and serving after 10 p.m. on Wednesday night.
It seems nobody has ever tried harder than Detroit to put on a good Super Bowl this week. But there's so much more at stake than that game or even the weeklong extravaganza. One of America's most important cities is auditioning for acceptance -- nationally and beyond. Known as much for the local murder rate as for being America's automotive and music capital, Detroit is hoping to say to the world, through the Super Bowl, "We've changed." All that's hanging in the balance is a city's worldwide reputation.
Rhonda Walker, the morning news anchor of Detroit's NBC affiliate, was born here, grew up in Lansing and graduated from Michigan State. Professionally, she wakes up every day this week to report on the city in which she lives and works. Emotionally, she walks a tightrope, which is why she said about Detroit being host of the Super Bowl, "We're experiencing a nervous excitement. We want people to see that we're an emerging and evolving city. People have known Detroit as a city without much of a downtown, as a city that took decades to recover from the riots of the late 1960s. But there's a transformation here. We're thinking, 'Please let people see us for who we are now.' "
Even so, some news isn't good. Only two weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. announced a plan to lay off 30,000 employees. And while most do not work in Detroit, a jolt to the auto industry is a jolt to Detroit. Overall, Detroit is rated one of the nation's poorest big cities. The population has fallen more than 50 percent since the 1950s when more than two million people lived here.
The most optimistic folks, including Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, see the Super Bowl as the cornerstone to a dramatic renaissance. "This game," the mayor said, "has served as the catalyst to move Detroit in economic development in a way we haven't moved in 50 years."
Since the 1980s, visiting Detroit really meant visiting Southfield, Dearborn, Troy, Pontiac (where the Lions played for years), or perhaps Auburn Hills, where the three-time NBA champion Pistons play.
My friend Rob Parker, who grew up in Jamaica, N.Y., and wrote a column for Newsday in the 1990s, said during a trip from the airport to the arena to cover a Knicks-Pistons game, "I would never want to live or work here."
Parker laughs now because he has lived here for 10 of the last 14 years, writing for the Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press, and now hosting a radio show. He has been pleasantly surprised all week by the lack of Detroit-bashing by the national media and visitors. "I think deep down," Parker said, "people want to be able to come to Detroit and enjoy a trip. It's an important city to America. Look, if you drive into certain places of Detroit, they'll look like the worst places you've ever seen in your life. So let's not act as if the streets are going to be paved with gold because the Super Bowl is here. It's unrealistic to think that everything is going to change in an instant. But you can find places that look like that in New York and Chicago and Philly, or for that matter most urban places in America."
I read Parker a quote from a story this week in which a 59-year-old man named Arthur Lauderdale, who lives on the East Side, said essentially that the money changing hands downtown at Super Bowl parties this week isn't doing a thing for his neighborhood, which is about four miles from Ford Field. But the conversation at Lola's, with people originally from Detroit or transplanted here, revealed an increasingly popular sentiment that the jump-start has to begin downtown and work its way east and west. "It has to work its way out from downtown," Parker said of the new businesses springing up around Comerica Park, where the Tigers play, and Ford Field. "The Super Bowl is a symbolic and geographic starting point. And people are excited. They're good people, the nicest people in the world here. It's hard being the butt of jokes for years and years. I think the at ude is, 'Let's hold our breath and hope we don't get ripped to shreds.' "
I know exactly what Parker's talking about because I've taken verbal and written shots at Detroit over the years. I once said it looked like Beirut. Since Cleveland's revitalization in the mid-1990s, Detroit has become the easiest target among big American cities.
But Detroit has the beginnings of a riverfront (on the Detroit River that separates the city from Canada) that ought to make the District of Columbia jealous. General Motors has invested tons of money in a project Kilpatrick calls "a $2 billion waterfront development."
In some ways, the Steelers' Jerome Bettis is the face of Detroit's renaissance, at least for this week, and not just because he's a native playing in the big game. Bettis is purchasing land and interests at the Uniroyal plant that is so visible and reflects how big the auto industry is here. The mayor said of Bettis, "He's not just coming home to play a game; he's coming home to get his hands dirty."
The game is still more than two days away and there are things beyond Detroit's control that could flare up, like the traffic mess that will ensue because of federal security concerns that have led to street closings. Maybe things seem great because so many expected the worst. Either way, R&B fans are excited about concerts featuring Smokey Robinson, Chaka Khan and the Ohio Players. The league and the players' union have initiatives, economic and educational, all over town.
Nobody seems to remember Detroit percolating like this. "We want to redeem ourselves," Kilpatrick said, "and re-introduce ourselves to the world as the new Detroit."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
The whole state is worse than most people can imagine.
This just verifies that you've never been anywhere near Michigan...
I flew into Detroit for a meeting in Ann Arbor a couple of years ago. All I can say is -- for being the "Motor City," they've got some really, really, crappy streets. , the rental I drove had no suspension left. I wondered about that and soon realized why they don't bother to fix it...the roads would just break it in about 30 minutes.
There is so much to see in Michigan and many beautiful places. Have any of you seen the movie "Somewhere in Time" with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour? That film was shot on Mackinaw Island - a very beautiful place that doesn't allow any cars, except for the fire truck! You can rent bikes and ride around the whole island in a couple of hours.
And Battle Creek is where much of our cereal is made. Grand Rapids has the annual tulip festival and Traverse City has the cherry festival (it also has some of the highest priced real estate in the country!) Even Flint (where I grew up) has some very interesting areas relating to the birthplace of the auto industry. I believe you can still go to the Dort Carriage Factory - which is where the auto industry was started - and see many items relating to the automobile.
Up north, you can see miles and miles of beautiful white birch trees and magnificent evergreens. And the fall colors in the upper penisula are absolutely breathtaking! Go all the way up in the upper penisula and you can see the Soo Locks at Sault Sainte Marie.
The Soo Locks have been referred to as one of the great wonders of the world and are still the largest (& one of the busiest) waterway traffic systems on earth! Watching huge vessels pass through the Locks is a unique experience that cannot be seen anywhere else in the United States! The Locks consist of two canals and four locks that allow vessels of many types/sizes to safely traverse the 21-foot drop in elevation of the St. Mary’s River between Lake Superior and Lakes Michigan and Huron. From viewing decks, you can watch Lakers and Salties (ocean-going vessels) as they travel the seaway between ports and navigate the rise/drop of the water levels.
Anyway, Michigan is a beautiful state and should not be judged soley by what Detroit looks like!
I think Mr. Jones just means that Michigan is a hole because there's lots of women of child-bearing age that live there. Mr. Jones doesn't like women.
I used to deliver to Chicago, and then drive over to Coldwater, Michigan, to pick up a load coming back to SA. I thought it was very pretty country and the people I encountered were quite nice.
Can't argue with that. The roads around here are the absolutely worst...
Well, I haven't lived in Michigan since 1992, but I went up for a visit in August. My sister picked us up at the Detroit airport and we drove down to Flint. The roads were pretty bad and there was a lot of construction. My husband commented on the horrible roads.
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