Granholm's Name in the News

I certainly celebrated Jennifer Granholm's exit from the Michigan statehouse much more loudly than I heralded in the administration of Rick Snyder. I don't for a second doubt that the electoral revolving door provided us with a better leader in Snyder, but in terms of degrees, I also like burning the roof of my mouth more than I like driving a 16 penny brad through my foot.

Yet, the instrumental role that Granholm played in blazing the trail Michigan followed into the promised land of economic despair also paid serious dividends to Granholm's career, even if it made mine suck. In the past few days she has landed a gig with the Pew Centers as an expert in, wait for it, energy, and she has also landed a high paying gig as a director at Dow Chemical, a Michigan behemoth that agreed to pursue state blessed and inferior energy alternatives in order to be able to gorge itself on government provided taxpayer dollars.

Granholm was the most dangerous sort of bureaucrat--one that believed her epiphanies were so valuable and so insightful that they justified the supplanting of billions of individuals whose less valuable epiphanies would normally contribute to the free market.

Her brilliant lawyer's mind transcended that of the collective, oddly, from the standpoint that it was the collective that theoretically benefited most if it obediently followed her singular directives. She believed in the value of the collective as a charity objective, as long as it obeyed. Taking care of the people is a lot easier if those same people will shut up and stay in line.

But, now she is on the other side of the rift. She may have been a miserable failure in terms of economics for the citizens of Michigan, but many of the contacts that she made while helping choke off Michigan's competitiveness are matches made in a you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours heaven.

Why wouldn't Dow want her on the board? She is knee deep in the slurry of government contacts and the way that, wink, wink, things work.

This might well be the best money that Dow ever spent, even if it comes on the heels of the worst eight years in recent Michigan history.