Author Archives: Phil Power

Whatever you think of Detroit, it is hard to imagine Michigan thriving if our largest city isn’t on some kind of road to prosperity. And plenty of folks, both business-oriented (think DTE Energy, Business Leaders for Michigan) and philanthropic (think the Kresge, Skillman and Hudson-Webber Foundations) are committed to and heavily invested in the city’s [...]

The coverage of Betty Ford’s funeral last week pushed my thoughts back to the mid-1960s, when I ran the Capitol Hill congressional office of Rep. Paul Todd, Jr., D-Kalamazoo. Those were days when Rep. Gerry Ford, R-Grand Rapids, was on his way up in a career that would ultimately take him first to the position [...]

This may sound too good to be true, but it is true: Michigan could easily transform itself into a global freight gateway that could create more than 200,000 jobs and add billions in economic activity. And this could all happen within the next decade. If we play our cards right and this all works out, [...]

If you’ve been around for awhile, you’ll have noticed that both our state and national politics have become nastier and more partisan in recent years. Why? I have developed what I call the “single sandbox theory.” Simply put, it suggests that a fragmented news media have spawned countless single sandboxes, each occupied by a partisan [...]

There was a different, pleasing feel about last week’s Mackinac Policy Conference. True, the crowd on the wonderfully long, pale green and white porch of the Grand Hotel, punctuated by blazing red geraniums, was as aggressive as ever around the bars at cocktail time. But the mood was markedly different than in recent years. “This [...]

As we head into Memorial Day weekend, here are two straws in the wind to mull as you sip your lemonade … It’s now clear that Michigan’s economy has turned the corner. Things aren’t perfect yet, but seasonally adjusted unemployment figures put our jobless rate for April at 10.2 percent, according to the Michigan Department [...]