News Flash: Shut Up Dude

Today on The Detroit News' politics blog, some guy named Richard Burr pointed out some data that indicated that moving information from United Van Lines indicates that more people are leaving Michigan than coming in to the state. According to his post:

Michigan set an all-time record when 70 percent of the shipments United made were out of state. That is more than 10 percentage points higher than North Dakota, which traditionally led the country as a place that Americans tried to escape from until Michigan took over the top spot about three years ago.

Here's what I hate about this news - WE KNOW. Everyone knows. More importantly, though, is that I don't care (well, not exactly). Without argument, it sucks chestnuts that people are in the position that they have to leave the fine landmass of Michigan. For some reason they chose to live here, and for some reason they are in a position where it is best for them to leave. For too long we lived in our own little isolated bubble in which unfortunately unsustainable jobs and a huge series of tangential jobs were propped up by a long-suffering domestic industry, and news like this is simply additional affirmation of a fact that is beyond debate. It's like if I punched you in the face and then I said to you "I just punched you in the face. And I banged your wife. Hey-oh!" Is it merely a reporting of the facts? Or an attempt to make people in Michigan wake up from some dream we are not actually having, change our mind, and say "wait, let's keep people here instead of letting them go"?

I suspect his intentions are a little more annoying - the post is in the politics blog, and Richard Burr, author, voted for Bush and admires Ronald Reagan. From this little information, my guess is that he is working to link people's departure to our Dem governor and something or other to do with her policies. This is exactly why I quit my last job. I worked as an ice de-melter and the ice kept melting, and I just couldn't stand having to deal with the constant negativity about the melting ice. Not cool, laws of nature, not cool.

I'm trying to keep an open mind about this last concept - could the governor have prevented the collapse of the domestic auto industry, or alternatively, replace the literally hundreds of thousands of lost auto jobs with environmentally friendly careers creating power from happiness, related smiles, and cow poop?