Now about this whole "retains jobs" concept... 7,400 jobs, 2,200 of them are new and the rest are spin-off or "retained."  That means that they were jobs that were going to shrivel up, die and go away without tax relief.  That means that Michigan wasn't competitive enough on its own what with our regulatory and tax structures.  That means that we were NOT a good place to do business and companies were going to be forced to leave the state.  And the companies expanding or building in Michigan for the first time, well, forget about those without tax relief.

The News admits as much a little further into their coverage:

For several companies, the tax abatements announced Monday played the deciding role in tipping the scales in favor of locating in Michigan.

"The tax break was instrumental. We wouldn't have done it in Michigan without it," said Greg Fisher of Fisher Coachworks LLC, which is going to invest $7 million to build an ultra-light hybrid bus in Livonia, creating 539 direct jobs.

All told I'd say that makes a pretty compelling case for the effectiveness of tax breaks and the need for broad based tax relief statewide.  Imagine the possibilities!  

Instead, what do we get?  We get the liberals running this state sitting up in their ivory towers, picking winners and losers.  Because central planning has worked so well everywhere else on the globe its been tried.  Company A gets tax relief and gets to expand while Company B gets none and will shutter their doors.  So let it be written.  So let it be done.  

And if Michigan Democrats can't tax their way to their utopian Michigan (where bridge cards fall like rain and every temp agency waiting line passes out free gum drops) then doggonnit they're going to sue and regulate their way to total unemployment.  

Start with bars and restaurants, where House Democrats are attempting again to move their statewide ban on smoking.  The Ivory Tower reports:

A decade-long campaign to ban smoking in restaurants, bars and other public places could come to a head this week if six lawmakers can fashion a compromise that might allow smoking in Detroit's casinos.

Another plan would let bars and restaurants allow smoking if they pay an annual fee to the state...

The lawmakers they're referring to are the conferees hashing out the differences between smoking bans in the House and the Senate.  Remember earlier this year the House banned smoking just about everywhere except the Casinos in Detroit while the Senate GOP effectively killed their effort by gutting that Casino exemption.

Now the Democrats are clamoring for the exemption to be placed back in the finished product so that they can tell Michigan job makers and small business owners how to operate.  

The casino exemption is a telling piece of this puzzle.  There's only one reason that House Democrats want it in there... they understand full well that if they ban smoking in casinos then they are going to drive away business in Detroit which will kill jobs and hurt revenue at operations that disproportionately benefit state and local government bodies.  They're hoping you won't notice that particular admission.

Smoking bans drive down business and kill jobs.  Period.  The Democrats admit as much, the same way they admit tax breaks create jobs, not with a press release or a news conference but by their actions, even though they try to camouflage and hide them.

Right now it looks like the Senate GOP will effectively defend personal freedom and the rights of small business owners in this one and will stop the Democrats from killing more restaurant jobs, but technically its still up in the air.

Even further out there is a new lawsuit filed by the Sierra Club over here on the west side of the state where the Grand Rapids Press informs us of efforts by the liberal special interest group to close down a plant on the lakeshore because of its carbon footprint.

James DeYoung last year spewed out 785 tons of sulfur oxides, 383 tons of nitrogen oxides and 173,653 tons of carbon dioxide, according to EPA figures.

That's a far cry from the area's biggest plant -- Consumers Energy's J.H. Campbell plant north of Holland, which put out nearly 30,000 tons of sulfur oxides, 9,300 tons of nitrogen oxides and 8.8 million tons of CO2.

Megawatt for megawatt, Holland's DeYoung plant puts out less of those pollutants than the Campbell plant, according to a Press analysis of EPA data.

The Holland BPW says expansion of the plant will improve emissions, but the Sierra Club said that won't make up for years of air pollution.

Ignore, if you can, the MSM's decision to use the word "spewed" there in that first paragraph.  Because the media isn't liberal and they don't editorialize or ever let their personal opinions seep into their hard news coverage.  But seriously, that's a whole different blog post.

So too is the broader discussion of the Sierra Club, one of the oldest and proudest lefty cash groups in the United States and an organization that counts the Granholm - Cherry team as allies and recipients of past endorsements.  (For the record.)

More important this morning is the fact that they want to take a thriving Michigan company, one that is hoping to expand and create jobs, and shut it down completely because it dares pollute LESS than the administration's pals at Consumers Energy.

I guess maybe the DeYoung plant shouldn't bother applying for any MEGA grants the next time the administration is picking winners and losers.