But for the bright future to become a reality, our leaders in Lansing must compromise and reach agreement on many critical issues, predominantly in respect to finances.

The governor laid out an agenda that called for trimming the size of state government, reducing legislative pay, freezing insurance rates and college tuition, stopping coal plants and making a hefty investment in renewable energy.

Currently, insurance represents one of the few growing industries in Michigan, employing more than 111,000 people who work for, or whose jobs are dependent upon, 1,557 insurance companies across the state. For an administration that has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in the last 6 years, maybe it's not a good idea to go after "one of the few growing industries in Michigan?" Maybe just lay off of it? Maybe??? Hello? Bueller???

Even with the poor economy and the dismantling of Michigan's auto industry, Comcast continues to hold its customer base, according to Patrick Paterno, director of communications for the company in Michigan. With $2 billion spent on upgrading its Michigan systems in the past decade, Paterno said Comcast is in the state to stay.

Related to this is coal. Incidentally, I wrote a piece just the other day (one in a chain in the last few weeks - I guess I'm a "chain writer," two packs a day and still going...) on the subject (The Michigan Coal Stimulus) where I had this to say:

...here we have a private company willing to invest $2 billion in Michigan, with no stings attached (unlike the "stimulus"), putting Michigan moms and dads to work to fix a crumbling infrastructure - almost a full third of what we are to be getting from porulus. In fact, if you consider the other licences applied for to build modern, cleaner coal power plants in the State, there's more "stimulus" money there than porkulus offers, won't put our children and grandchildren in debt, won't add to the national deficit, won't cause inflation to limit economic growth, and it will be home-grown right here in Michigan. Moreover, the power plant to be built in Bay City is an "advanced supercritical pulverized clean coal plant." That's right - much better for the environment than the old dilapidated plants that pump out power for our homes now. This is a win-win for consumers in this great State.

Now, it appears that the Republican majority in the MI Senate is opposed to this lunacy. The Macomb Daily's response? Find "common ground." That common ground? Government cuts. Well - duh! Haven't the Republicans been saying this for some years now? The only reason this is even coming out of the Governor's office is because there is simply no other choice this time. She has spent the last 6 years inflating the government at a time of recession. Time to pay the piper.

That being said, let's just say that the Dems and Republicans can get on the same page about how to reduce the size of government. How does this translate to freezing insurance rates and killing the power generation industry in this state? The Macomb Daily believes that if you can find commonality for one solution, everything else will come together, Democrats and Republicans will be holding hands in Lansing singing Kumbaya, dogs will get along with cats. The Macomb Daily ends their piece with this:

Certainly, after all these years of the tug of war between the Democrats and Republicans, everyone's arms have to be getting tired.