Michigan's economic recovery...or not??!?

I started looking for some of this informatio to reply in another thread:
politics.abovetopsecret.com...

But, in fairness to that topic, I have started a new one, devoted entirely to how Michian fares economically. I fead in a local news article that Michigan and two other states are the only three states with negative job growth. *sigh*

Here's MI cheer-leading page for economic development:
medc.michigan.org...
We hear a lot about businesses leaving. The "average Joe", esp. the ones who would like nothing better than to work for a living, are often out of luck. The classified section isn't even thick enough to wrap fish.

Michigan ranks 38th for Adjusted Federal Expenditures Per Dollar of Taxes in 2003:
www.taxfoundation.org...

article on MI joblessness

state-by-state security funding:
www.stateline.org...

Michigan now gets back somewhere between 88 and 90 cents on each dollar it sends to the federal government in fuel taxes.

www.detnews.com...

Dang, I'm on a roll. As you can see, Michigan doesn't do a very good job selling itself to business or the federal government.

Last year when Pfizer *coughcough* merged with Pharmacia the main medical information office for Pharmacia was shut down and nearly everyone lost their jobs. The thing is that Pharmacia WAS the major source of employment for Kalamazoo. I hear that things are pretty bad there now.

We drove through the Upper Peninsula a few years back, actually before Clinton was in office.
Man, it is poor up there. How poor was it? The town we stopped in the get something to drink...we saw a liquor store that went out of business. I would think that would be about the last thing to shut down.

Today, I was in Meijer's, kind of a small scale local Walmart type store. Here it is BEFORE Christmas and they are cutting the hours of their regular employees. Leaving many departments short staffed.
This is certainly not a sign of a recovering economy.