Here's the good news. Just in case you didn't think your legislature could get anything done, it is now against the law for the state to produce or distribute any map, drawing, or graphic image of Michigan that leaves off the Upper Peninsula.
No stylized hand logos, no cute little mitten images, nothing. Leave off the UP and you are in BT. Big Trouble, that is. The governor signed that bill into law yesterday, and when I heard that, I immediately gave thanks that my kindergarten teacher is no longer living. If my memory is correct, one of the first things she taught us to do was put our little hands on a piece of paper and trace them.
"See, you've made a map of Michigan," Mrs. Hunter told us. That was enough to convince me that our state was somehow special, a feeling that has stayed with me ever since.
By the way, the governor also signed a law allowing pharmacists to fill prescriptions which out-of-state doctors send them by e-mail. She signed another bill that lets funeral directors off the hook if somebody never shows up to claim cremated remains, and a companion law that said we need to keep a record of these ashes.
And she signed a couple other even more obscure bills. So, it isn't quite correct to say that your lawmakers can't get anything done. They just can't manage the really important stuff, like balancing the budget and coming up with a way to fund education.
They are going to have to work harder at the hard stuff, though. That's the conclusion you'd have to draw if you paid attention to the University of Michigan's annual economic forecast, which was revealed yesterday. In a sense, the news was better than last year's, when the atmosphere might have best been described as controlled panic. The forecasters then urged the federal government to act swiftly to prevent a Great Depression-like collapse.
Yesterday, they said the worst has been avoided. "We were spared another depression, but still had to weather the period that has been dubbed the Great Recession," economist Joan Crary said. And while the recession is technically over, the aftereffects are going to be with us for years, the economists said.
In fact, what's going on now is indeed reminiscent of the Great Depression in some ways. That downturn also lingered for years. Prices went down during the depression, and last year, for the first time in more than half a century, we had deflation, not inflation. The Consumer Price Index actually fell by a third of one percent.
And now, as then, even consumers who have some disposable income are reluctant to spend it, because they fear something might happen to plunge them into financial disaster.
That may be prudent, but economists who just a few years ago worried about the inflationary effects of too much spending, now want the consumer to get out and spend and boost the economy.
They especially need to spend in Michigan. So I have a suggestion for our lawmakers. Go back to work and pass another law requiring all of us to buy a few of the new maps that have to show both peninsulas, and maybe a box of Michigan coasters too.
You'll be able to show your Wolverine pride, and help out our state. And what could possibly be better than that?
Comments