Michiag Woes-Why people may be leaving

I was on the road the other day with a friend and had a couple of funny things happen. We pulled into a BP gas station in Kalamazoo, Michigan. I noticed that there was a special on coffee and a donut for only 59 cents.

We stopped to get gas before beating the Thursday price hike that happens at a majority of service stations in Kalamazoo. It is not unusual for gas stations to raise prices a dime a gallon every Thursday or Friday and then lowering them on Monday or Tuesday.

I went in to the store and got two 20 ounce coffees and brought them to the counter to pay. The gentleman said that they would be 98 cents each with tax. We looked kind of puzzled and asked about the 59 cent special. He stated that it only applied if we got a donut with our coffee.

So I said, can you pretend we took the donuts and charge us 59 cents. He looked very serious and said no! So we got two donuts, lowering the cost to only $1.18 for both 20 ounce coffees and two donuts.

The gentleman behind us apparently was going to do the same thing, he ran back to the
Bakery area to take a donut. He said that Michigan has been one interesting place. We smiled and took off to South Haven, Michigan.

Coincidently, we ran into Tom again at a park in South Haven. He was just getting around to drinking his coffee. He was wearing a Yankees cap. So we struck up a conversation about NYC and how beautiful South Haven is this time of year.

He mentioned that he was staying in a hotel in South Haven and he was sent by his company to consider relocating part of his companies business to Western Michigan.
I asked him if that would happen? Western Michigan unemployment is as high as 17.1 percent in a neighboring town Bangor, Michigan. I think Kalamazoo is about 7.1 per cent

He said that he has thought about it but pointed out some flaws. His first complaint was that there were no good restaurants that offered a totally smoke free environment. He spoke of some high priced restaurants that he had gone to while his family was visiting with him. “We all smelled of cigarette smoke. It was disgusting”. “Why would I want to bring my family into an unhealthy environment? When I asked people to put out their cigarette. They looked at me and made rude remarks”. He went on to say that there seems to be a lot of anger here in Western Michigan.

Tom and I discussed the weekend gas hikes in Western Michigan when he asked what was up with that. It did not seem like companies were being good partners in the community by price gauging every weekend. I had to agree, it did seem unusual to see weekend price hikes and I have never lived in an area where that has happened.

I have to agree, I cannot understand restaurants or even bars allowing cigarette smoking.
I was surprised to find a coffee shop on Westnedge Avenue in Kalamazoo that actually promoted itself as a smoking café. It was not unusual to see kids as young as 13 years of age in the café smoking. Some kids even bumming cigarettes off adults. This apparently is not policed by authorities as far as I can see.

He went on to talk about the people and service in Western Michigan. He seemed worried that the lack of employee enthusiasm at least in retail stores might be a problem. He was worried that finding employees who would join a non union company might be difficult. He was also worried about the possibility of unions interrupting his productivity.


I drove through the neighborhoods in Kalamazoo, Benton harbor, ST. Josephs and was surprised to see the lack of opportunity for minorities and the distinct separation of the African American population and the Caucasian population. There seems to be a larger than average ghetto population in Western Michigan. I told him that I had to agree. I noticed that even in the Arts. The events in Kalamazoo draw many Caucasian patrons but not many African Americans. Racial unrest has been a problem in Western Michigan,
I also have been surprised of the decay in the ghettos and the total feeling of disillusionment that exists. I attended a Kalamazoo Institute of Arts event open to the public. I counted 248 Caucasian patrons attending the event and less than ten African Americans.

I was at a bar in downtown Kalamazoo and was introduced to a guy who joined us for a beer. He told me a very offensive joke about how to baby sit black kids and etc. It is too racist to repeat. I have been shocked by how many times in Kalamazoo I have heard the N word. More so than in all my 5 years in Conservative Utah. It is very troubling to see how slow it ahs been for cultures to accept each other in Western Michigan

Michigan is haunted by a racist past that took a Supreme Court decision to allow Blacks to move into “White Neighborhoods” I recommend the movie “The Color of Courage”
To fully understand the struggle of African Americans during a time of post war prosperity in the United States.

The Color of Courage is based on the true story of the civil rights case, Sipes vs. McGhee, one of the most significant cases to hit the U.S. Supreme Court. The NAACP was involved in the landmark case, and Thurgood Marshall, who was then one of the nation's top civil rights lawyers, represented the McGhees. Covenants used to segregate Michigan neighborhoods were ruled unconstitutional. Covenants in Michigan forbid Blacks and Jews from moving into certain neighborhoods.

I offered one arts group in Kalamazoo the opportunity to put together free Public Service Announcements in Spanish and they were dumbfounded and stated clearly that they were not interested. This type of separation of cultures and white dominance is very strong in Western Michigan. Unemployment for minority groups in some Michigan townships is over 20 percent. There are over 75-thousand Hispanic and over 82-thousand African Americans in Western Michigan. The Caucasian population stands at about one million.

In Kalamazoo and neighboring Counties. The African American and Hispanic voice is vacant from radio. The major ma radio stations in Kalamazoo, Michigan do not have a single African American talk show host on the radio. The neighboring town of Portage Michigan does not have a single African American on its board or on management staff at the library.

I have spent time at the Michigan works employment office and have seen the level of despair in the eyes of all cultures. Especially African Americans. The past week, a Minority job fair was hosted in Kalamazoo. I do not think it was very successful.
It puts a wedge between cultures said one unemployed Caucasian worker. Minority
Attendees called the job fair “window dressing”. There are no jobs for us said one person who have been unemployed for 16 months after being laid off by the Pharmaceutical merger between Pfizer and Pharmacia.

The governor of Michigan has ate this up and has tried to use unemployment as a
Tool to gain support for Democratic Presidential Hopeful John Kerry. But Michigan Governor Granholm has done little to make Michigan an inviting environment for companies to relocate to.

Michigan has been reeling from the continued exodus of companies from Michigan to warmer climates that offer lower taxes and lower wages. Young people continued to leave Michigan in a trend that experts say bodes ill for the state’s future and economy, according to population estimates released by the U.S. Census Bureau.

In the past three years, Michigan lost 41,529 people between the ages of 15 and 44, an exodus of about one person every 40 minutes. The statistics show a continuation of the trend reported in September, when the bureau estimated that more than 33,000 people had left between 2000 and 2002


A variety of factors appear to be driving the trend, including available jobs and amenities, The regions that are attracting people in that age group include Boston, Atlanta, Seattle and Austin, Texas. Those areas have population densities that foster interaction and innovation.

Michigan is losing manufacturing and information technology jobs because costs are too high, and as Tom said earlier “the likelihood of unionization in some industries deters investment, because its major corporate players still aren’t competitive enough and because the world has changed”
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Michigan taxes companies according to how many people they employ, so the larger the payroll, the higher the tax. Major employers such as General Motors are cutting jobs — not adding them.

Michigan’s health insurance costs are bloated by the Big Auto-Big Labor effect: Employers who don’t have the cash flow of a GM ., nor their union work forces, still are expected to match their top-shelf health benefits if they want to compete for the best and brightest.

Unfortunately the media has tried to simplify the problem, blaming it on the influx of illegal aliens that have come into the state and each major political party has blamed the other. While both have failed to work together for what’s best for the state of Michigan.

It is time to accept that the future of Michigan manufacturing will be very different from its past. The World Auto Manufacturing Companies that once helped us win two world wars and now is the auto industry’s intellectual epicenter. It will prosper with its brains and technical know-how, not its brawn and assembly lines.

Our nation is not what it was in the 1940’s or 1950’s. South Haven, Michigan. The place where I am writing this article is a tourist town that attracts many seasonal visitors from Chicago and Western Michigan. It is not the large shipping town it was almost a century and a half ago. They made the transition, a slow one but a good one.

Michigan needs to come into the 21st century with a plan and a government that works together with business to create opportunity for a bright and prosperous future. For Michiganders it is important to acknowledge that “It's important that we understand that without people joining forces and working together, we will not achieve the goals that are in the best interest of the people of Michigan. It is also important that we respect our differences.