That's a result of many factors, from a city administration making national headlines and regular appearances on Court TV (or TruTV or whatever they're calling it now) to rampant and widespread layoffs to a tax and regulatory structure that has driven record numbers of businesses and families out of Michigan for the better part of a decade.

We can run all of the Pure Michigan ads we want, but Detroit's image doesn't seem to be rebounding.  It's getting worse, and if today's other headlines are any indication neither a turnaround in perception or reality is anywhere even close to the horizon.

With the Big 3 making national news every day for their nearly incessant panhandling in Congress, and now only days after General Motors announced 2,000 more layoffs we get word that Ford Motor Company is going to ax another 1,200 employees themselves, a full 20 percent of their finance unit.

Those aren't factory and manufacturing jobs.  Those are white collar finance jobs.  What the Granholm-Cherry administration likes to call the "jobs of tomorrow."  

For twelve-hundred families they're now officially the "jobs of yesterday."  

Matters are only made worse, then, by folks like Michigan Democratic Congressman Dale Kildee who is in the papers lambasting GM for not  EXPANDING.  The Flint Journal reports:

U.S. Rep. Dale E. Kildee today blasted General Motors for its sudden decision to cancel construction contracts at a planned engine plant here.

"I am extremely disappointed with the vague manner in which General Motors has kept the people of Flint informed with respect to production of the Volt and Cruze engine here in Flint," Kildee, D-Flint, said in a prepared statement...

A story like this is a two-fer on the downer scale.  It's difficult enough that a major employer scratched plans to create new Michigan jobs but the problem is only compounded when a politician runs to the paper to criticize private industry for making tough employment decisions.

There's no partnership there.  There's no understanding.  There's no sympathy or assistance.  When a job maker in another state reads Kildee's nonsense he learns one thing... Michigan's political leaders are tone deaf when it comes to the current economy and what it takes to run a successful business.

The Congressman might as well post a "JOBS NOT WELCOME" sign on each of the state's borders.  

And when only 8 percent of the population would even consider coming to your biggest city in the first place we can't exactly afford to be turning anyone away.