G4G Talking points for 09/26

[SharonRB]

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 26 (42 Days until Victory 2006)

Jobs Plan Success Story: Governor Granholm visited Tellurex Corporation, one of the awardees in the first round of 21st Century Jobs Fund projects.


Advanced Technologies, Diversifying Our Economy: Tellurex is an advanced manufacturing company – among other things, they have used cutting edge technologies to develop a cup holder for cars that heats or cools beverages.


The Most Aggressive Jobs Plan in the Country: This is the exact kind of business that Governor Granholm is working to bring to our state to diversify our economy – with Tellurex, Google, and others, her plan is starting to pay dividends that Michigan will benefit from for decades to come.


Dick Cheney Raises Money to Help Michigan Republicans: Cheney was in Michigan yesterday fundraising for Republican Senate candidate Mike Bouchard. Dick DeVos is largely funding his own campaign, and he was one of the top donors to Cheney and Bush’s presidential campaigns.


DeVos walks lockstep with the most extreme Republicans on a long list of issues: DeVos, Bush and Cheney supported outsourcing and unfair trade policies that hurt our people, they’ve worked to protect oil company profits at the expense of regular citizens, and they are against potentially life-saving stem cell research.

Headlines from Around the State

State News Editorial: Simon looks toward Mich.'s future
MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon is stepping in the ring to fight for Michigan's economy and environment… Honoring the agricultural tradition of MSU, the goal is to push our state into the 21st century by combining agriculture and technology to produce energy, fuel and certain products by way of organic materials. We've already got Gov. Jennifer Granholm doing her part to push biodiesel pumps into Michigan; it makes sense the head of a university, who is keen on research and technology, should sign up for the cause as well. This August, Granholm announced a fund of $250,000 to help convert gasoline pumps to alternative fuel pumps. That money should translate to 1,000 pumps being installed or converted by 2008, according the governor… The proposed bio-economy sounds too good to be true, but in reality, it isn't that far out of reach. If Simon, Granholm and other proponents continue to financially support this kind of research and development, we should soon benefit from a better, healthier economy.
Click here to read the full story...http://www.statenews.com/op_article.phtml?pk=37777

Booth Newspapers: Skilled trades try to win over parents
Trying to convince parents that on-the-jobtraining will offer kids the "other four-year degree," skilled trade groups are hoping more students will head directly to the workplace rather than college campuses. Robert Swanson, director of the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth, told a construction career conference in Lansing Monday that recent job gains in construction have been limited, but that's about to change. His office predicts that construction will be one of the fastest-growing jobs in the state, with 31,000 new positions by 2012. At 15 percent growth, "that's well above the 10 percent growth rate for all jobs,'' he said. Helping drive the increase is Gov. Jennifer Granholm's "Jobs Today, Jobs Tomorrow" plan that will condense 10 years of public construction projects into three years, according to Swanson.
Click here to read the full story...http://www.mlive.com/news/statewide/index.ssf?/base/news-8/1159222205319670.xml&coll=1

Toledo Blade Editorial: Pushing hard, by design
Michigan's Republican gubernatorial candidate should have set off alarms among every intelligent voter with his revealing comments about the state's science curriculum. Dick DeVos thinks it should include a discussion about intelligent design, also known as "a 21st-century version of creationism," also known as religion masquerading as science. Michigan voters who may have only been following the governor's race peripherally until now, should closely examine this striking DeVos revelation. It says a lot about the man who wants to lead the state forward while supporting ways to set it back decades with weakened state standards for science classes. . . . But there may be an appropriate educational venue for discussing an ideology grounded in religion. Mr. DeVos' Democratic opponent, Gov. Jennifer Granholm, gets it. She says school districts can explore intelligent design in current events or comparative religions classes but schools need to teach the established theory of evolution in science classes. . . . In an age when education is more critical for advancement than ever, Republican Dick DeVos doesn't get it. He favors sabotaging state science education standards with "the ideas of intelligent design" that lack empirical evidence and do not belong in a science classroom.
Click here to read the full story... http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060925/OPINION02/609250323