What the citizens need to do is to fire the governemt wholesale in this state. We do not need government to raise our children, or provide healthcare, or to attract jobs and business. In a couple of my earlier posts, it is the voting public and not the politicians that are ultimately to blame.
Every business that I've ever worked for tends to hire those that share their values. A few training and teambuilding sessions I've had the honor to be in prove this. The citizens of Michigan want it all without compromise. In a business situation where many stakeholders are involved, there must be give and take, unless this is a dictatorship.
Now it seems, we have elected many little dictators that have no concept of negotiation. This is a reflection of the voters and until we wake up collectively, we will get the incompetent government we deserve.

Here's what we have: dead end jobs, no real career paths, lackluster support for alternatives and a system that only perpetuates itself. It feeds on its young. Pretty sickening.

What we need ! A system that is a real conduit between knowledge and a career.

Adjunct Professors need to be paid MORE than the tenured professors. We have the knowledge and a key difference, ambition.

As to funding of education, private or public, where are the funds for advanced degrees, legal, Phd or otherwise.

I have two Master's degrees, 25 years of experience, over 50, female and unemployed. Just where do I fit it this grand scheme of things. I attended all public schools and paid for my education myself, without grants or loans.

A couple weeks ago I read a column of yours, and you made some very practical points about Michigan's failed government and economy. Because of this I went to your web site and was truly disappointed to see not much more that the same hollow aspirations we routinely get from our politicians in Lansing. I was expecting a website overflowing with bold ideas for how to make Michigan stand up and shake off its dying image. Instead, there are vague pleas to support education and good government. Yawn! If you are going to energize the public you have to have more than tepid generalizations for people to read.

Your site should be launching more specific non-partisan ideas for change like you had in your column.

You are definitely on to something with the idea that a third force must arise and demand change. I, too have concluded that either party, Republican or Democrat, if given the opportunity, will destroy what's left of Michigan. With power split as it is now, we simply die a slower death.

With any luck, the auto industry will rebound to save us from ourselves, but that is far from assured. In the meantime, we have a Governor who is out of touch with most of the people she serves, and is incapable of convincing the business and investment community that she can even keep the state solvent. Raising taxes to reach solvency is a losing strategy, just as making cuts without real restructuring is also pointless.

On the other side, we have the Republicans who have done a miserable job of laying out any vision for what reforms should really look like. They simply appear to be miserly, anti-poor, and seem to offer nothing but demands for cuts. They define no new architecture for how our government should be constructed and operate; nothing for people to feel positive about.

We should be talking about truly radical changes that will put Michigan on the cutting edge. One example; Michigan should redefine public education as the government setting standards and goals and not operating schools. Schools at all levels should all be privately run and earn public funds only because they are producing graduates who are relevant to our economy. Parents should pick the schools they want for their children. YUP, vouchers for sure and end public schools as we know them, including our universities.

Do this and see how our economy transforms. The marketplace will cull out the irrelevant, ineffective and inefficient schools and colleges. Business will lavish support on schools that deliver quality, and business will have the resources to do it, because they won't be supporting vast networks of failing schools as they are now. The good schools that now exist will simply become private and thrive as they do now. Reasonable protections can be built into voucher payments to make sure no tax supported vouchers are used at schools that engage in racial discrimination or refuse to offer education to special needs children. Parents will no longer be able to be passive and negligent in the educational process, as they may be told to find another school for their delinquent children. Government should have ample resources to deal with the parents who don't get the message about their responsibilities. The so called "alternative" schools will also emerge in the process to help truly incorrigible kids. MEA would have to wake up and insist that their members see that the schools they were in were successful and cost effective, or they might see students going elsewhere, leaving them unemployed. A totally new paradigm for MEA, as newly forming schools might not vote to organize the work force at all. We need to let people get back in control of this process and re-involve the market place, but do it in a very big and revolutionary way.

In this example you can see that neither the governor nor the legislature is ever going to do anything this radical, but if the public gave that direction via the ballot box through referendum or constitutional action, it could get done.

I hope my comments were not too critical, and I certainly wish you well.

It sounds like Michigan government to me.