Last fall, the veep used Flint as a prop to bash Republicans opposed to the president’s $500 billion jobs bill, claiming that murder and rape had tripled as a result of a cut in funding for officers. He implied further bloodbaths if Congress refused to act. Trouble was, Biden’s’ facts were made up out of thin air. In truth, murder had doubled in Flint, not tripled, and rape had actually declined.

Veep Gaffer was back (get used to it, swing staters) this week, milking another Michigan town for White House political gain. This time, Biden adopted Grand Rapids’ venerable American Seating Company as the poster child for the administration’s protectionist, anti-globalist business policies. “Your kids are going to hear as much about insourcing as you heard about outsourcing,” Biden told the crowd promoting the administration’s plan for punishing companies that outsource abroad.

The 125-year old America Seating firm should be proud that its success has attracted the attention of the office of the vice president. But voters should be leery of Biden’s attempt to force its business prescription on everyone.

American Seating is hardly a typical American company.

Begin with the fact that it is the only unionized major furniture maker in Western Michigan. Other “Furniture City” giants like Herman Miller, Hayworth and Steelcase do not fit the administration’s narrow definition of “middle class workers” as belonging to the UAW. Biden’s visit smelled of another Big Labor payoff.

American Seating can afford Big Labor in part because it is a niche company. Unlike its Grand Rapids brethren, it has moved away from retail furniture and into the narrower market of stadium seating — a market it dominates. More telling, 55 percent of its sales now depend on the manufacture of public transit seating.

That is, it depends on the likes Joe “Uncle Sugar” Biden.

Yes, the Obama Administration and American Seating know each other quite well. In 2010, American Seating officials flew to Washington to lobby for stimulus money for Grand Rapids’ public bus system; 80 percent of the seats on its vehicles are provided by American Seating.

Just a year ago, American Seating got a visit from Obama’s deputy transportation secretary who applauded the company for providing “green collar jobs” and proving the worth of The Buy America Act, a protectionist piece of legislation which forces the government to hire domestic companies like American Seating for projects receiving federal money.

In other words, Biden can applaud the fact that 75 percent of American Seating’s jobs are right here in the good ol’ USA because that’s how the company got Uncle Sugar’s money. Neat, huh?

The labor requirements of American Seating, in other words, are quite different than, say, a consumer products company that has to sell direct to the consumer. President Obama’s cherished Blackberry, for example, is manufactured almost entirely abroad because of the intense price pressure of that market.

And then there’s this. While government has been very good to American Seating, it hasn’t been so good to other Grand Rapids furniture makers. Union favoritism aside, Biden would likely have gotten a frosty reception from Herman Miller & Company because the Obama Administration is currently taking business from it. That’s right, the biggest U.S customer for office furniture — a market American Seating does not play in – is the federal government which is trying to steer federal contracts to the federally-owned Federal Prison Industries at the expense of West Michigan furniture makers.

So while one Grand Rapids company is benefiting from the federal government, others are being squeezed by it.

There’s a lesson in letting Washington get too involved in private industry. Beware of visiting veeps in election years.

So on Friday, President Obama came to the University of Michigan to decry the costs of higher education and lecture universities on being more fiscally responsible. We’re not making this up.

“If you can’t stop tuition from going up, then the funding you get from taxpayers each year will go down,” said Obama whose tution entitlement increases will perversely fuel the inflation he decries. His administrations’ stimulus grants to Michigan universities, too, have become a laughing stock of academic featherbedding, including $440,000 in taxpayer funding for a U-M study on galaxies with black holes and a $322,000 Eastern Michigan University study on languages of the Arctic.

The long student ticket lines and sycophantic media coverage of Obama’s U-M visit could not obscure the fact that Metro Detroit is a reminder of how Obamanomics has failed his two biggest 2008 election constituencies: Young people and blacks.

The Messiah has failed his flock.

“Young people may be the biggest losers of the economic recession,” writes Politico citing census data that puts youth unemployment at levels – only 55.3 percent of 16-29 year olds are employed – at its lowest level since WW2.

College grads today face the bleakest job environment in generations as Obama’s regulatory juggernaut has flattened job creation. But at least Obama pays youth a visit.

The first black president continues to treat devastated urban areas like Detroit as fly-over country. While larding the UAW industry – er, auto industry – with attention, he has ignored Detroit’s economic implosion. The city just racked up a staggering 380 murders for 2011, once again laying claim to America’s Most Violent City, while unemployment hovers at 50 percent, adult illiteracy 50 percent, and Motown sinks into bankruptcy under the weight of obstinate Democratic unions.

Forty miles west of Detroit, Obama rolled out snappy contests like “Race to the Top” and “First in the World” funding competitions. But these gimmicks can’t paper over the realities of Detroit youth and Detroit unemployment. They are the true face of Obamanomics.

Daniels’ gubernatorial twin, Michigan’s Rick Snyder, is carrying out similar, metrics-oriented reforms after years of Big Government ineptitude under Obama’s’ twin, Jennifer Granholm. Yes, we can, America.

Indeed, Obama’s SOTU speech was a loud echo of Granholm’s infamous 2006 State of the State address in which she promised that “in five years, you’re going to be blown away” by her program of green investment, government spending, and government job retraining. Obama quoted chapter and verse from the Granholmnomics textbook.

- He heralded Washington’s failed investment in green energy companies like Solyndra – a repeat of Granholm’s 21st Century Fund and its failed investments in green companies like Fisher Coachworks, RASCO, and Evergreen.

-He scapegoated the Chinese for robbing American jobs, lifting a graph right out of Granholm’s speech when she promised that “I will continue to go anywhere and do anything to bring jobs to Michigan. Instead of seeing our jobs outsourced to China.” Echoed Obama: “I will go anywhere in the world to open new markets for American products. And I will not stand by when our competitors don’t play by the rules.”

- He found a mom – “Jackie Bray is a single mom from North Carolina” – who had been restrained by government to find a job. Just as Granholm did – “Armenia Smith, a Detroit mom who lost her job but gained the training she needed to become a nurse.”

- Obama even invited a Michigan man – Bryan Ritterby of Energetx, a wind turbine manufacturer – to declare that American manufacturing is back. Just as Granholm did in 2006 when she invited Greg Boll of Cummins Bridgeway.

And so on. Eerie, huh?

But Obama did go somewhere that Granholm dared not go: He presented himself as a capitalist pioneer at a time when American businessmen agree he is the most anti-business president in memory.

Governor Daniels used the late Steve Jobs to illustrate Obama’s contempt for out-sourcing, risk-taking One Percenters, while Obama tried to hijack Jobs’ memory for political gain.

“We should support. . . every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs,” said the president. ” So let’s pass an agenda that helps them succeed. Tear down regulations that prevent aspiring entrepreneurs from getting the financing to grow.”

In fact, Obama has been the enemy of innovators by tying them up in red tape and demonizing the private equity “wealthy” who provide their seed capital. “Having built a small business into a big one, I can tell you that today the impediments that the government imposes are impossible to deal with,” says Home Depot legend Bernie Marcus. “Home Depot would never have succeeded if we’d tried to start it today.”

“Contrary to the President’s constant disparagement of people in business, it’s one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs – what a fitting name he had – created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew,” said Daniels, getting the Jobs lesson right. “The extremism that stifles the development of homegrown energy, or cancels a perfectly safe pipeline that would employ tens of thousands. . . is a pro-poverty policy.”

Obamanomic is a pro-poverty policy. But we already knew that. Granholm tried it in Michigan.

He’s Michigan’s Mitch Daniels. How do we know? He’s told us so.

“When I looked around the country for role models, the state that popped up, that I believe is a top ten state, is Indiana,” said Snyder in introducing the Indiana governor at a Mackinac Center event in Lansing this fall.

His nod to Daniels is a familiar talking point in interviews. An admirer of Daniels’ business background, the ex-Compuware CEO has adopted Daniels “dashboard” metrics, long-term budgeting discipline, and government-as-a-service-business models.

And like Daniels, Snyder has achieved quick success, taking advantage of Republican legislative majorities to pass an astonishing sweep of legislation in his first year.

Mackinac Center President Joe Lehman calls Snyder’s freshman year the “best year for reform since Gov. Engler’s first term.”

Snyder’s vague, “reinventing Michigan” 2011 SOS barely hinted at the flurry of legislation that was to come: Business taxes cut, a balanced budget, charter school expansion, corporate welfare axed, government employment benefits brought more in line with the private sector, school spending restrained, teacher tenure toughened, welfare capped at four years, worker’s comp streamlined, the item-pricing law nixed, and more.

Democrats howled. Yet GOP conservatives rarely cheered — still suspicious of a man they tagged as a RINO during the campaign.

Now, as SOS II looms, party conservatives are again restive. As with SOS I, Snyder has given little hint of his legislative priorities. An then there’s that fellow Daniels next door who has become a conservative icon – elevated by a presidential election year in which his star rose and conservatives wept when he failed to enter the GOP fray.

As Daniels kicks off his legislative year with calls for a Right to Work Indiana, Michigan conservatives are once again ashamed of their governor. Why can’t he be more like Mitch?

But upon closer inspection, the R2W issue reveals a Daniels who is more like Snyder than the Right acknowledges. Like Snyder, Daniels did not initially embrace R2W. He shied from it. Indeed, while Daniels’ service in the Reagan administration and penchant for quoting The Gipper – both badges of scout honor that The Nerd lacks – gave him quick entry into the conservative club, his gubernatorial record has also been under constant attack for RINO-ism.

There was Daniels’ call for a 1 percent tax hike on the wealthy, his tax on liquor and beverages to fund a state takeover of sports arena and convention centers, and a state health exchange which raised taxes on cigarettes in order to help uninsured families purchase a private health insurance policy with state subsidies.

These controversial plays torpedoed the Indiana governor’s approval rating into the low 40s early in his term – reminiscent of Snyder’s equally problematic 30-something approval rating that is making Republicans nervous on the edge of an election year.

They have reason to worry, says Michigan political guru Bill Ballenger. “The polls are bad,” he says, remembering that Gov. Daniels’ policies led to Democratic gains and a split legislature in Indiana two years after his election.

In the end, Daniels’ relentless focus on fiscal discipline, education choice and economic growth paid dividends. With time, the reforms paid off despite his lack of ideological purity. Snyder looks to repeat that success.

Contrary to popular wisdom, the Daniels role model — followed to a “T” by Snyder — is not conservativism; it is creating a successful business climate. What defines Daniels and Snyder is their executive’s competiveness. They are CEOs who see their states as businesses in a battle for market share. And they will adapt their business models accordingly.

Listen to Snyder in that Lansing speech introducing Daniels:

“Governor Daniels was kind enough to have a meeting with me,” said Snyder of his 2009 visit. “I was telling people in the campaign that you know the largest source of business for the state of Indiana? It’s the state of Michigan because of the Michigan Business Tax. So here I was going down to Indiana (to tell Daniels that) I want to get rid of the dumbest tax in the United States so that (his state) doesn’t get most of the business from our state. Now, if you’re on the receiving end of that, would you be excited about seeing me? No.”

Fast forward two years. Snyder has made Michigan more competitive with Indiana — and suddenly Daniels has embraced Right to Work. It makes his “business” more competitive than Snyder’s. If Michigan’s governor is on the receiving end of that, will he be excited about seeing Indiana as a Right- to-Work state? No.

Which is why I’m betting Rick Snyder will soon be a R2W advocate himself. It’s how CEOs — er, governors — stay competitive.

It might be the hardest question a Michigan politician is asked to answer. The query is riddled with landmines. The answer must be Detroit-made, of course. But by which manufacturer? GM, Ford, or Chrysler? And does preference for a luxury car indicate the privilege of class? Does a favorite SUV betray a lack of concern for the environment?

The Michigan View popped The Question to the state’s political leaders at the Detroit Auto Show’s black-tie charity event, January 14 (and a coupla Michigan celebrities just for fun). And to notch up the pressure, we also asked what cars they own. Here are their brave answers.

Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville

“A Chrysler 300, a Chrysler 200 convertible, a Ford Mustang, and a Cadillac ATS,” said the senator from Monroe in naming the show cars he’d like to take home with him.

You’ve got one there from every Detroit manufacturer, senator.

“Of course. I’m not stupid!” he laughed.

Governor Rick Snyder

“I’m a nerd. I really like all the new electronics in these new cars,” said the governor as he surveyed the new, hi-tech Dodge small car, the Dart. “You’d have to ask my wife what car she’d want to take home from here. ”

As governor, Snyder is chauffeured in a government car – getting his work done in the back seat as he commutes around the state from his Ann Arbor home. “My kids each drive a Ford Escape,” he says. And then, dusting off memories of his driving days: “I used to own a Corvette.”

There may be hope for the nerd yet.

Mayor Dave Bing

“I no longer drive a car,” said Detroit’s CEO, who, like Governor Snyder, uses the back seat as an office. “But I like what Detroit is making.”

So, Mr. Mayor, if you could take anything off the floor tonight, what would it be? A Camaro? A Corvette? A Mustang?

“Yes!” responded a mayoral aide and whisked the winking mayor to his next media interview.

L. Brooks Patterson

“I drive a Chevy Impala,” said Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, “but I’ve got my eye on a new Chrysler 300.” But you knew that one of Michigan’s most colorful pols was only getting started.

“I used to own a Plymouth Barracuda,” he said of the famous, snarling, early-70′s muscle car. Close your eyes and you can easily picture Brooks cruising the Woodward Dream Cruise in the hot rod icon.

And what would he drive off the show floor? “Oh, I want that new Viper,” he said of Chrysler’s plans to re-introduce the earth-shaking supercar. Alas, Brooks will have to wait for New York’s auto show to get a peek.

Miss Michigan Kristen Danyal

The only thing prettier than the cars are the ladies, chief among them Miss Michigan’s stunning Danyal who we found wowing passersby in front of the Ford exhibit. She was raising money for The Pink Fund, a breast cancer awareness group. The 21-year old beauty’s stallion? A Range Rover Sport.

True to the state she represents, this miss knows her wheels. “I’d take the Maserati GranTurismo or the Chevy Volt,” she said of her dream cars.

Attorney General Bill Schuette

“I drive a Buick Lucerne, my wife a GMC Acadia, and we also have a Jeep,” said the AG describing the contents of his garage.

His dream car? A Chevy Camaro he said without hesitation. Careful, top cop, have too much fun in that bad boy and you’ll attract the cops.

Radio Talk Show personality Paul W. Smith

It’s never hard to find celebrities at the Detroit show. They hang out at the WJR-Radio booth where Paul Dubya – as he is fondly called – broadcasts the show every year. Looking regal in a black penguin suit, Paul W took a break from chatting up celebs to divulge that he cruises in Buick’s head-turning Enclave crossover.

His dream car? The familiar voice of Detroit’s early morning drive wants Caddy’s new Bimmer-beating ATS or Lincoln’s sleek new MKZ.

The Dingells

The lion of Michigan’s Congressional delegation, cane-wielding John Dingell, was on hand in the original electric vehicle – a golf cart – to speed him on his rounds. The Dean of Dearborn had kind words for the Caddy XTS, but his heart is with Ford. What car would he cruise in for the ladies – one Mrs. Dingell in particular? “A Ford Mustang,” he replied.

For her part, the diminutive Debbie – who keeps a flaming red Cadillac STS and a Ford Escape in the family garage – also has likes Detroit muscle. She’d like to drag Big John’s Mustang in her show favorite: a Chevy Corvette.

But in the Obama Administration – like the Sheen camp – failure is winning. So the president is sending his Energy Sec to take a victory lap at the Detroit Auto Show next week.

After all, cluelessness runs in the Administration family. Asked by oil mogul Harold Hamm if he were aware of the oil and gas revolution marching from the Dakotas across Pennsylvania, Obama reportedly replied: “Oil and gas will be important for the next few years. But we need to go on to green and alternative energy. Energy Secretary Chu has assured me that within five years, we can have a battery. . . with the equivalent of 130 MPG.”

The Ego-in-Chief long ago declared fuel-efficient cars the future in his presidential campaign – then bought Chrysler and forced its Fiat management team to build a 40 MPG Fiat 500 tin can to prove his point. The 500 failed in 2011 as miserably as Mr. Chu.

Chrysler rebounded in spite of its presidential savior as the company sold 419,000 Jeeps at a $5000-profit-per-sale. Obama’s Fiat? It sold a mere 20,000.

Save the planet? SUV the Planet is Fiat’s motto.

Yet The One will hail Detroit’s 2011 resurgence as an affirmation of his vision. “The Obama administration will be in full force at next week’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit – with at least two cabinet secretaries and several other key officials in attendance,” reports The Detroit News as Chu, Commerce Sec John Bryson, EPA Chief Lisa Jackon, and NHTSA Chief David Strickland will all descend on Detroit. .

For his keen insight into post-carbon America, Chu is the headliner. He will discuss “how innovation can help keep the industry . . . competitive,” continues The News.

This just a week after Chu’s latest blunder was exposed. Fisker, the recipient of $529 million in Energy Department loans, recalled its luxury Karma plug-in due to fire concerns. The Finnish-built $100,000 vehicle is a toy for the super rich. This is reviving the American auto industry how? Chu is also under fire for throwing $730 million at Russian billionaire Alexei Mordashov, arguing that the lightweight steeel produced by his Detroit Rouge Steel property is essential to greener autos. And so on.

In taking federal loans, this is the kind of clown that Detroit’s Big Three have let in the door. And like the proverbial dinner guest, he doesn’t know when to leave.

Toast.

Like Michigan’s Rick Snyder in 2010, he was an unelectable RINO despite deep pockets and impeccable organization. But just as Granholmnomics predicted the failure of Obamanomics, Michigan is proving to be America’s’ barometer in the 2012 election as well. One Tough Nerd meet One Tough Mitt. As in the 2010 governor’s race, conservatives have realized that a competent businessman is their best hope to win independents and a must-win election.

How dead was Romney?

The tea party tsunami of 2010 announced the overthrow of Obamacare as the defining issue of 2012. Romney’s Massachusetts fling with the individual mandate was a sin. When the former governor refused to disavow Romneycare – Obamacare’s evil Massachusetts twin – in a closely-watched May speech in Ann Arbor, conservatives all but wrote off his GOP nomination chances.

“The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board is painting Mitt Romney as a ‘compromised and not credible’ candidate for president, wrote Politico.

Prominent National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg called the speech “a sincere, intelligent, cogent, informed political disaster.”

“Romney has a huge problem that a wide array of Tea Partyers, Republican activists and officials, and conservative operatives think he can’t overcome: RomneyCare,” concluded Jennifer Rubin, author of The Washington Post’s influential “Right Turn” blog after polling conservatives at the annual CPAC summit in February. “If there is one point of consensus among plugged-in Republicans on the 2012 field, it is that Romney can’t win unless he does a mea culpa on RomneyCare. Since he didn’t and he won’t do that, he’s not going to be the nominee.”

He was finished. Rejected by the body conservative. Not.

Last week, conservatives from National Review to Ann Coulter to Bill Bennett rushed to the microphone to denounce Romney’s only remaining viable opponent, conservative icon Newt Gingrich, as. . . unelectable. The clear inference of this piling on: Mitt Romney is conservative’s pick as the most-electable candidate.

What happened?

Through a combination of skill, circumstance, and sheer luck, Romney has emerged as the candidate for the times. Yes, the son of successful Michigan Governor George Romney could have clinched the nomination long ago if he had only renounced Romneycare in 2009. Or 2010. Or even last May. He didn’t, but his vow to repeal Obamacare upon entering the White House reassured the Right.

More importantly, as Obamanomics has strangled the recovery in its crib, 2012 has become an election about jobs and leadership – not ideology. Alarmed by Barack Obama’s abdication of leadership, voters – just as in Michigan after Granholm – crave competency. Romney’s unflappable demeanor in the GOP debates reminded voters what that looks like. And like One Tough Nerd in Michigan, One Tough Mitt’s business background is not only reassuring – but the antidote to Obama’s painful lack of management experience.

“Governor Romney won our endorsement last time,” wrote National Review in its anti-Gingrich edit, reminding readers that Mitt was the conservatives’ choice over John McCain. “He is highly intelligent and disciplined, and he takes conservative positions on all the key issues.”

Romney was also lucky in his opponents. Heavy-hitters like Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie demurred. A third Great Right Hope, Rick Perry, was more impressive on paper than on the field. Cain imploded. Newt polarizes. The latter two also reminded voters of the importance of family stability in a nominee – so much for Mormonism being a negative.

And so conservatives have resurrected Romney after driving a stake though his heart.

As Iowa approaches, Romney has surged ahead in the latest Rasmussen poll. In a state he wasn’t supposed to win. Just like the nomination he wasn’t supposed to win. Like Snyder in 2010 (against Virg Bernero), Mitt will face the class warfare arrows of a Democratic demagogue. And like Snyder (and the ghost of Jennifer Granholm), voters will respond to an executive who knows how to create jobs.

Or so conservatives are convinced. Welcome back, Mitt.

In a shrewd political move at the end of the Washington fiscal year, House Republicans – led by Michigan’s Fred Upton - inserted language in the annual Appropriations Bill funding the U.S. government that blocks federal energy standards banning the traditional, incandescent light bulb. Thomas Edison can stop spinning in his grave and the American people can cheer a victory for consumer choice.

The light bulb ban was a dark symbol of the Obama Administration’s zealous appeasement of the green god of Global Warming. It was also a window into Washington crony capitalism as General Electric lobbied for a bulb ban – initially also supported by key Republican lawmakers – in order to force consumers to buy more expensive compact fluorescents. Like CAFE laws that mandate industry auto mpg, the restrictive federal energy rules were a sneaky backdoor regulation mandating the amount of energy a bulb used – effectively eliminating the cheap incandescents chosen by 85 percent of American consumers.

“It’s a milestone for personal freedom,” says Freedom Action’s Myron Ebell who fought hard in the trenches to overturn the ban. “This is a significant reversal of Nanny State regulations. Maybe this is a turning of the tide.”

The bulb’s rescue however, will not restore the hundreds of jobs lost over the last two years in the United States as GE and other bulb manufacturers shuttered factories and shipped the jobs to China where more expensive CFL bulbs can be manufactured with cheap labor. The action also does not remove the dreaded act from the books. It has only been defunded. Republicans say it will take the election of a Republican president to scrub the anti-incandescent ban from the books.

“We heard the message loud and clear from Americans who don’t want government standards determining how they light their homes,” said Rep. Upton in a statement.

Upton’s leadership did not come without eating some crow as he was an original sponsor of the ban when George Bush – suffering from Guilty Oil Man Syndrome – pushed the legislation in 2007. Despite repeated setbacks as House efforts were met by Harry Reid’s Senate stonewall, Republicans maintained pressure as the public became more aware of the impending January 1, 2012 ban.

Democrats and their corporate cronies did not go down silently. “The light bulb language had emerged as a sticking point in negotiations this week,” reports Bloomberg News, “and its inclusion in the final bill is a blow to Democratic efforts to remove it.”

“I strongly oppose that language,” huffed Senate Energy Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-New Mexico, who was joined by an Iron Triangle of Democrats, Greens, and industry groups. “Eliminating funding for light bulb efficiency standards is especially poor policy as it would leave the policy in place but make it impossible to enforce,” raged the coalition.

Upton was joined by Reps. Joe Barton, R-Texas, and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, in saving the bulb – with a significant assist from Speaker John Boehner and House Appropriations Committee Chair Hal Rogers of Kentucky who know a winning political issue when they see one.

Along with the 120,000-job Keystone pipeline, the bulb issue is proof that the Green religion is not only an imposition on personal freedom – but a job killer.

This time, Big Government lost. Merry Christmas.

“(Light rail) is a giant hoax perpetrated on the taxpayers of Detroit and the United States,” wrote transportation expert and Cato scholar Randal O’Toole in The Michigan View.com last week. “Although promoters often call light rail ‘rapid transit,’ it is actually very slow. When operating in city streets such as Woodward, they average less than 15 mph. The $60 million-per-mile cost of building light rail is enough to build a four-lane freeway. But the average light-rail line carries only about one-fifth of a freeway lane. Since most of those people would have ridden a bus, light rail offers little congestion relief.”

Buses. What a concept. They currently beat Michigan’s other “high speed” rail boondoggle, Amtrak, from here to Chicago.

In breaking the news to Michigan’s Congressional spendaholics that he will be redirecting its $25 million grant to a tri-county, 27 station initiative, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood “told the Michigan Democrats that Detroit didn’t have the required funding to make light rail work – either in matching funds or long-term operations,” reports The Detroit News.

No surprise there. O’Toole details the whopping costs – now $200 million per mile of rail construction – in Portland. “Not only does light rail cost a lot, the costs never stop,” he writes. “Construction costs are only the beginning. These are followed by the subsidies to development, which in Portland cost taxpayers $60 million a year. Then there are the maintenance costs – all those tracks, wires, stations, and expensive railcars are far more costly to maintain than buses.”

LaHood gave no further details on what caused the sudden change in direction. Just last month Sen. Carl “It’s fun to spend other people’s money” Levin crowed about millions more for Woodward’s rail line.

But here’s a hint from The News story: “(Governor) Snyder and others have pushed for a cheaper rapid bus line.” The accountant-turned-governor surely knows his O’Toole.

“A light rail system 3.8 miles up Woodward doesn’t speak to regional transportation,” added Detroit Mayor Dave Bing who also has a business background. “Not when 60 percent of the employed of the city work outside the city.”

The usual suspects screamed at being thrown from the train. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that “Green Belt” Governor Granholm would have blessed the move. Sen. Carl Levin stamped his feet at not getting his $500 million train. Detroit’s MSM sprinted to local activists to condemn the move.

Amazing. With America drowning in red ink and Detroit on the verge of bankruptcy, they still think money grows on trees.

We’re not making this up.

“The Learning Channel’s new show ‘All-American Muslim’ is propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law,” said the evangelical Christian group, the Florida Family Association, as it celebrated Lowe’s buckling to pressure to pull its ads. “The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish.”

Oh, please. By this obtuse standard, the Cosby Show was propaganda because it showcased middle-class blacks while ignoring the carnage of inner city gangs.

In fact, Christian groups should applaud “Muslim” precisely because it is a celebration of liberty and traditional family values. Were these values embraced in next-door, inner city Detroit, there would be a lot less pain in the world. “All-American Muslim” is a window into what makes America great – an immigrant culture (in this case, Middle eastern) that celebrates family, education, and hard work to afford the next generation a better opportunity.

Says one Muslim police officer in the show: “I really am American. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.” You bet.

Spend time on Muslim Dearborn’s Warren main street and you’ll see American pride worn on every sleeve. These are people who came to America by choice. When Saddam Hussein’s statue fell in 2003 there was more American flag-waving in this Metro Detroit enclave than at a Michael Phelps gold medal ceremony.

But TLC’s Dearborn is hardly a Mideast ghetto – its is the American melting pot at full boil as young Muslim women parade in miniskirts while others cover themselves in hijabs. Indeed, if TLC really wants to stir things up, it should follow around Dearborn’s Rima Fakih, the curvy, hard-drinking, pole-dancing beauty who was the first Muslim women crowned Miss USA.

In Dearborn, Muslim comes in a red, white and blue bikini.