The regulators of Michigan's Utilities have deemed that Northern Michigan has no need for additional energy.

That means that Northern Michigan will continue to have to buy electricity from downstate and other states to meet the energy requirements it currently has, as the electric co-ops have been doing, and for the foreseeable future.

It also means that Northern Michigan's stagnant economy is assumed to remain stagnant, a bet the State of Michigan is insuring.

Because the State of Michigan has no economic plan, other that managing it's own decline, Northern Michiganders can count on forever sending their children away to search for prosperity in another state.  Indeed, Northern Michigan's largest export is her children.

It is no secret that Michigan is over-regulated, but the fact that it has been put down a path of decline by the authoritarian control of the Granholm administration in concert with the Sierra Club and other radical environmentalist groups interested in killing any hope for change in it's economic development, cannot be ignored.

What it boils down to is that the Democrat Party is not interested in standing for the little guy.  From Al Gore and his demonstrably false attack on man, to Jennifer Granholm's inane wishful thinking of green energy supply, to Tom Karas and his dirty ties to radical environmental groups in California, it is obvious that feelings and hopes and wishes of a utopian society have replaced logic, science, jobs and results.

The two schools of thought, one, that energy is produced to fuel economic freedom, and the other, that energy should be produced to strictly feed absolute need, are diametrically opposed.

Economic freedom, an approach long abandoned by Michigan's leadership, is a quintessential goal sought in this state since it's inception, and is free-market based.

The strangulation of freedom is what our state government excels at.

Requests made by the Int'l Brotherhood of Electrical Workers were ignored.

Requests made by the Cheboyan and Presque Isle Development groups were ignored.

What the State has said, essentially, is that the small towns, the little guy, the union worker, have no right to enjoy high-paying jobs, to benefit their families.