But that's not to say everyone's quiet on the subject.  The Right Michigan troll community has been actively backing Levin's comments and their friends at the state's most radical blogging community have jumped to Andy's defense now too.  

It's not a big deal, they say, that one of the state's economic development officials accuses Michigan job makers of being terrorists (and you can pick words apart all you want, anyone who engages in a "terror campaign" is, by that same definition, a terrorist).  In fact, they argue, he's right and "should be promoted!"  Because, after all, as one post on another site last week tried to explain, the Employee Free Choice Act is just as bad as persistently violent and occasionally deadly union busting tactics from the rise of America's industrial revolution.  Why, passing it would send industrial society right back to "The Jungle!"

Or, maybe, just maybe, it'll spur economic growth, protect employees from would-be union task masters with partisan political agendas and prevent another factory or two from shutting it's doors and moving to Mexico.  Maybe.  

But no matter the topic that led to Levin's accusations, there's a deeper issue now at work here.  A senior job recruiter on the state's payroll is on record calling job makers terrorists.  The liberal media might not be paying attention but investors and employers certainly are.  Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can and do hurt us in the job recruitment game.

Is it right?  Is it just?  Fair?  I don't know.  But it's reality.

One need look no further for evidence of the potency of words in economic development decisions than 2005 and the Delphi debacle.  The Troy based auto supplier, to refresh everyone's memory, was in the process of restructuring and preparing to do some serious downsizing.  They were going to eliminate thousands of jobs and consolidate operations somewhere here in the States.  

While Governor Pataki in New York jumped on the phone and started lobbying the company on behalf of his state, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels got in the car and drove north to visit execs at their headquarters... right here in Michigan.

And Governor Granholm?  Here in the company's home state?  She issued this statement:

"I am angry that this action occurs one day after headlines blared that Delphi employees were being asked to accept brutal, draconian pay cuts while upper management is being offered golden parachutes.  Globalization is ravaging Michigan's manufacturing job base."

All of the action prompted this reaction from the Washington Post:

Indiana likes having the nation's highest portion of workers -- 20 percent -- in manufacturing, so five days before Delphi, the Michigan-based automobile parts maker, entered bankruptcy, Gov. Mitch Daniels, a Republican who believes "conservatism can be active," called Delphi and praised Indiana as a paradise for even more Delphi operations than are already there.

Michigan's Democratic governor, Jennifer Granholm, responded to Delphi's travails differently, denouncing Delphi's executives, Washington and globalization. In the game of entrepreneurial federalism -- states competing to lure businesses -- score one for the Hoosier State, which in the four years before Daniels became governor had a net loss of jobs.

Worse than the scolding the governor took in the press was the evisceration the state took as a result of her rhetoric.  Delphi consolidated alright, to Indiana.  Thousands of Michigan jobs and all of the spin-off jobs they created and supported, gone, up in smoke, because of words.  Because of angry rhetoric.  

Fast forward to today.  The same governor continues to stand alongside a Deputy Director of DLEG who's accused job makers of being terrorists in an appeal to her radical union base.  And in the quiet of private boardrooms, strategy conferences and planning sessions across the United States investors are shaking their heads and once again scratching Michigan off the list for their next expansion.

Is it right?  Is it just?  Fair?  I don't know.  But it's reality.

It's time for the governor to prove she learned from her Delphi disaster.  Doing the right thing once in five years isn't too much to ask.