"Quite simply, unless the governor can freeze medical, litigation, motor vehicle crash and other costs, this is simply anti-competitive, anti-business and anti-consumer grandstanding."

--Jeffrey Junkas, spokesman, Midwest Region American Insurance Association, speaking about Granholm's call to freeze auto insurance rates for a year.

"We are extremely disappointed in the governor's call to slow the construction of new power plants in Michigan. Last year we worked with the governor and a bipartisan group of lawmakers to implement comprehensive energy reform to help build affordable new generation in our state. This delay in action will cost Michigan much need jobs, investment and slow our economic recovery."

--Doug Roberts Jr. of the Michigan Chamber of Commerce

Translation: The Governor's newly announced initiatives will kill jobs, drive up utility rates and send highly-mobile insurance companies (they only need to move a desk chair and unplug a phone from the wall) and their employees scrambling for the state's borders.
The Detroit News:

The governor called for what she termed "a comprehensive effort to dramatically change the shape and size of state government" to be headed by Lt. Gov. John Cherry. That's an important exercise, but it would have been more useful had it been done several years ago, not in the penultimate year of her last term in office.

After all, many of the state's major business groups have already issued reports and analyses of changes that could add up to nearly $1.5 billion in savings. These groups, joined by the nonpartisan Center for Michigan, have formed a coalition to push for these changes.

Translation: The Governor has been asleep at the wheel.  And not just for the last six years, but, apparently, for the first month of this year, too.

Even Tom Walsh at the Ivory Tower got in on the act:

She pointed in her State of the State speech Tuesday to thousands of new jobs coming in the alternative energy and movie industries, and those are worth celebrating.

But Michigan has suffered a net loss of 426,000 jobs on Granholm's watch.

Why did she not move more rapidly to bring state spending in line with Michigan's shrinking stature?

For years, for example, the salaries of our governor and legislators have ranked among the five highest in the 50 states. Why have we waited until now to make these symbolically important cuts?

Michigan was one of only two states, along with New Jersey, to pay for its own wetlands permitting operation while the federal government did it for the other 48 states. What took so long to take action on that no-brainer, which Granholm announced Tuesday?

His entire column is like that... we could quote it in its entirety except for that pesky "fair use" thing.  You'll just have to click the link above and give it a gander yourself.

And forgive Tom for assuming in his opening sentence that the Governor actually cut lawmaker salaries by 10% last night.  He's not used to being this tough on Granholm and it may have thrown off his fact-checking meter for a moment.  (The Governor can ask for but does not actually have the power to do anything with lawmaker salaries.  Out of her purview.)

Last night's speech may have given us nothing but a morning's worth of temporary intellectual honesty from a handful opinion editors and columnists in this state but that's better than we've gotten from this Governor in the past.  Suppose that means I have to call that performance a success.