Crush Liberalism

Obama picks Granholm to help hone his economic message

God help us.  Nothing says “I want only the best on my team” quite like picking a woman who has Michigan teetering on a full, total economic collapse.  From NRO:

Now we know why Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm is on President-elect Barack Obama’s economic policy team. Judging by Obama’s Saturday economic address, he plans to address the nation’s ills with the same inept policies Granholm has championed for the last six years here in Michigan.

Granholm and Obama have much in common: They are both young Democratic party protégés, both are charismatic personalities, and both are left-wing, Harvard-educated lawyers with little experience running anything prior to assuming office. Like Granholm, Obama appears to have little grasp of market economics, but prefers showy public-works programs and utopian visions of bridging a carbon-addicted America to a new green economy that will employ millions.
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How has Granholm gone about creating this new green economy? With mandates and targeted tax breaks — just as Obama will likely propose. Granholm spearheaded a state Renewable Power Standard that mandates 20 percent of Michigan’s energy come from wind power by 2020, and she has showered tax breaks on alternative energy companies. Watch for Obama to do both on the national level.

The result has been a Michigan economy that has drowned under Granholm’s watch, with unemployment tripling to a nation-leading 9.3 percent at the same time that Michigan’s debilitating economic fundamentals — high taxes and overgenerous concessions to organized labor — have gone unaddressed. Granholm, however, has missed few opportunities for photo ops touting the companies that have benefiited from her tax handouts or her road-construction spending.

And she has landed a key position in Obama’s transition team, where she and the president-elect apparently agree that Granholmnomics is America’s future.

“Hope”?  I’m not seeing it.

November 25, 2008 - Posted by crushliberalism | economic ignorance, Obama