Michigan Policy Summit-Michigan Transit
Why bother?: Cost. Stress. Access (physically challenged). Environment. Urban renewal. Econonic stimulus.
Higher density along transit routes can leave larger open, green areas. Larger low density areas.
What do we need? Rail. Connecters. Paratransit.
What’s happening here? Regional Transit plan (tri-county)
How do we make it Happen? (And keep it going) Need to get the funding and keep it coming so that we don’t get a partial solution that stops. Keep the pressure on the elected officials to keep it moving forward.
Michigan Policy Summit-Clean Energy session-Post A
David Gard, Michigan Environmental Council Energy Program Director
IBEW training center
Sierra Club
Gard making reference to Smart Grids. “Michigan is uniquely positioned as long as we don’t get complacent.”
IBEW: “Green engergy is not a new trade. It is simply an extention of existing trades.”
“We’re ready to go!” with reference to Green collar jobs.
Sierra Club:Investing in clean energy will be the best return on investment for stimulus money.
This session is hard to follow as we don’t know who we are listening to. No proper introductions where done. This is more of a panel discussion than a worshop, so please be patient.
***Lunch Break***
Solutions.
Mike Schriberg, Policy Dikrector, Ecology Center, Ann Arbor
David Holtz, Exec. Dir., Project Michigan
Kristie ,
Schriberg: Renewable Potential is Barely being Tapped. Clean Energy Creates Good Jobs. More of those jobs will stay in-state. Create powerful incentives for clean, alternative energy production and manufacturing. Needs to be whole state, not just some municipalities. Protect Michigan Residents. Help those who need it most,cut their energy cost, thus helping them stay in their homes.
Next speaker (Kristie?) talking about pushing public policy, elected officials.
Holtz: Make June Energy Communication month. Talking about using Social Media. This guy is trying, but he is clearly not an early adopter. Still talking about an email campaign.
Let’s not get hung up on email. Let the conversation take place where your audience is.
Question from audience about net metering and wind turbines. He wants to build 2 near Manistee. Glad to hear someone wanting to do the right thing. This is what this is supposed to be about. What individuals can do.
Back to discussion about communications strategy. Yikes.
Schriberg talking about targeting the vulnerable elected officials. Pick your battles. Reminding the local elected officials of the concerns of the local voters that put them in office.
Audience member reminds us that the average person doesn’t have any of these issues on their radar screen. How do we get to the individuals not in this room? Not already interested in these issues? Meet them on thier turf and share these values?
Overall, a good session, but just a start.
Michigan Policy Summit-Post 4-Panel Part B
Ivers brings it back to Healthcare. Howard reiterates. Healthcare reform seems to be the underlying issue for all of the other challenges.
Kildee calls out ALL public officials as part of the problem. (He admits that he is a public official.) He is calling on all of his peers to step up.
Ivers states that our greatest opportunity and threat is globalization. “How do we get globalization to work for us”?
Howard wants to bring the bottom up stakeholders to the table when seeking solutions.
Pugh asks, “Have we bottomed out”?
Kildee: “It’s up to us”. If we don’t use our resources and stimus properly, we will not have bottomed out.
Howard: Referes to Boggs, in that we have the power to accelerate our rise from the bottom.
Ivers: “My fear, who’s going to have the good jobs”?
Scripps: Refered back to Kildee “It’s up to us”. Adapt and transition. Clean energy and knowledge capital are key.
Baker: “We have a ways yet to go”. But to be an optimist he said “Just think where we would be if we had President McCain.”
Michigan Policy Summit-Post 4-Panel Part A
Charles Pugh, Moderator
Dan Kildee, Treasurer, Genessee County
Dave Ivers, Secretary-Treasurer of Metropolitan Detroit AFL-CIO
Jaime Scripps, Assistant Deputy Director, Department of Enery, Labor & Economic Growth
Jeff Howard, Secretary-Treasurer, SEIU Health Care Michigan
Dean Baker, Co-Director of Center for Economic and Policy Research
Kildee speaks to a knowledge based economy! Speaking my language! Baker speaks to healthcare being one of the challenges in keeping the knowledge capital here.
Scripps speaks to the need for transitioning manufacturing to GREEN jobs. Howard addressing what Labor can do to help with this. He also brings the discussion back to healtcare.
Forclosure rears it’s ugly head. Kildee feels that we need to go after the banks to help. Education on how to protect yourself and save your home is needed. “Force public officials to take control of the landscape of the community” says Kildee. Don’t rely on the finacial institutions to do the right thing.
Michigan Policy Summit-Post 3-Grace Lee Boggs
Grace Lee Boggs of Grey Panthers fame receives a Lifetime acheivement award. She is gratfull to have come this far in life and “still have my marbles”. She is glad that we are not doomed to the fate of the dinosaurs in that we have within us the ability to save ourselves, to make the needed changes that we need to make. Google this woman. She is awsome. She is in her 90s and still a dynamic person.
Michigan Policy Summit-Post 2-Dean Baker
Dean is the Co-director of Center for Economic and Policy Research. He is talking about how we got here. Housing, overvalued dollar, etc. Nothing new here. Can we get to what we are going to DO about this now?
Bubble, blah, blah, blah. I guess we need to know where we are before we can move forward. I think most of us that are here already know this and are ready to move into the workshops.
Wow, novel concept. Why don’t we fire the economists that do a bad job? Thank you, Dean.
Baker attributes the April unemployment numbers not being as bad as we expected on the number of people that where hired for the census. Good point.
“If it sounds like I don’t like banks, it’s because I don’t” says Baker, as he points out the difference between how the bank bailouts where different from the Auto bailouts.
We shouldn’t be cutting services when it is needed most. This with regard to municipal services and healthcare.
Green stimulus will help move us toward recovery.
Why can’t we give empoyers tax credits for the health related costs that they incure for their employees? That would generate some stimulus.
Having to touch many topics in a short time, Baker did a good job. We will hear more from him as a part of the Panel.
Michigan Policy Summit 2009-Post 1-Arrival
Other than a lack of power sources and way too many empty tables, I am glad to see that the summit is underway. Starting with Lynn Jondahl turning the podium over to John Dingel, we are off to an old school start.
Labor seems to be present and got a strong shout-out from Dingel. Hope we get to other topics today.
Necessity spwans Entrepreneurs
Related to my last blog about the Jobless Rate, this article in the Detroit News http://tinyurl.com/cb546n features entrepreneurs that launched their business after loosing their employment. While I think they got the headline wrong, the fact that loosing your job can force your inner entrepreneur to surface is brought out in the article. Necessity is forcing those used to being employees into thinking about alternative sources of income. As the unemployment payments come to an end and a traditional job appears to be a less viable option, starting your own business, or looking at an independent agent opportunity becomes more appealing.
Is this a bad thing? I would say, no. The strength of the new economy is the small business, the creative capital. What do you think?
Disclosure: While I am featured in the photo, I am at B Nektar as a customer. The article is not about me. This was just a coincidence that brought the article to my attention.
Is the current Job loss rate a good thing?
Is the current Jobless rate forcing a shift in thinking? If you can’t find a job, you may be forced to make one. There is an entrepreneur in all of us. It just may take the current job market to bring it out in the open. While many in the market are “in transition”, former employees are writing books, turning hobbies into business models and taking on short term projects to create cash flow.
Once bitten by the entrepreneurial spirit, former employees are becoming psychologically unemployable. This may create a bit of a labor shortage when the economy turns around. So what? This may force companies to rethink how they get work done. How will they structure the ”job” so that someone will want to take it on? When a former employee learns not to depend on an employer for their livelihood, how can you reverse the tide? Do you want to?
Henry Ford may have been one of the fathers of the industrial revolution, but the current unemloyment rate may be the mother of the entrepreneurial revolution. As the cash starts flowing again, it will be flowing thru many small businesses instead of a few corporations. Are you ready?
Call Me Crazy
Crazy, or just a cockeyed optimist? If Detroit manages to stop the Regional Authority from taking over Cobo, thus preventing the Federal Stimulus and Regional dollars from being spent on renovating Cobo, can the Regional Authority take over the Silverdome property instead?
The Silverdome property is not landlocked. This would be an opportunity to build from scratch instead of the engineering challenges of updating the crumbling and landlocked Cobo. There is even enough property to parcel off the perimeter to be developed for additional hotel and dining space, thus actually generating revenue from the land sale.
Close proximity to the proposed movie studio at Centerpoint would provide additional backdrops for future movies. Could the venue be used to host one of the movie industry award shows? Just saying.
L.Brooks Patterson, would you be happy with a State of the Art, Regional Convention Center in Oakland County? You could wear the Tiara to the ribbon cutting and the Grand Opening.
