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.