The New Republic

When he visits a battery plant in Holland, Michigan, today, President Obama will talk about the connection between innovation, advanced manufacturing, and economic growth. But he has an opportunity to make an even more important connection: between government action and innovation READ MORE >>

Mike Alberti at Remapping Debate has a really good piece up about how local government consolidation is a political orphan. The people who are against it care much more about blocking it than the people who support it care about implementing it. READ MORE >>

What are states good for? The 19th century answer was that states are a critical counterweight to federal power. The 20th century answer was that states are laboratories of democracy--tinkering with the beta versions of laws and policies before other states or the federal government adopted them on a large scale. The 21st century answer is that states are the enablers and supporters of metropolitan economies. READ MORE >>

“We cannot win the future with a government of the past,” President Obama said last week, before promising a proposal to “merge, consolidate, and reorganize the federal government in a way that best serves the goal of a more competitive America.” He can learn something from Michigan’s Rick Snyder, the Republican governor who is retooling Michigan’s government, or significant parts of it, so that it is clearly in the service of the state’s metropolitan areas, its economic engines. READ MORE >>

Hatha Yoga means the union of opposites, and Claire Dederer had a lot of opposites to forge back into a whole. In her twenties, she hopscotched around the world, driving a forklift in Australia, touring Southeast Asia, taking a leisurely decade to finish college. “Work” in those days meant earning just enough to pay for pitchers of beer and cover charges at clubs. READ MORE >>

State of the state speeches usually have the feel of New Year’s resolutions. This year, say the governors, the state will be richer, smarter, better, happier thanks to new programs, new rules, and new ideas. Of course, this year the pronouncements are more sober and dourer. READ MORE >>

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The 21 largest metropolitan areas of the hard-hit Great Lakes region added more than 94,000 jobs in the second quarter of 2010--the largest one-quarter employment increase these places have seen in more than a decade. What’s even more surprising? The manufacturing sector accounted for more than a quarter of these job gains. READ MORE >>

How much are Ohio’s state leaders willing to sacrifice to be nice? READ MORE >>

The Cleveland metro is an export powerhouse. Exporting industries employed more than 110,000 of the region’s workers as of 2008 (over 10 percent), and its economy is among the nation’s most export intensive. READ MORE >>