Because I like to know what's going on with Michigan Republicans, I regularly check in at Betsy DeVos' blog to see if she has anything to say which might be worth further research.

DeVos is the Chair of the Michigan Republican State Committee and is a member of the family which owns the massive Ida, Michigan sales/distribution company, Amway. Her husband, Richard DeVos, former President of Amway (now a subsidiary of Alticor, Inc., which he founded), is the son of Richard and Helen DeVos, whose foundation is a major funder of Religious Right organizations, such as the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and Coral Ridge Ministries. The foundation also supports parts of the Atlas Economic Research Foundation network, such as the State Policy Network. Richard DeVos, Sr. once contributed $150,000 to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's Republican Majority Issues Committee (for which the inaugural fundraising event was held aboard the DeVos family yacht).

She posted on May 7, for example:

George Weeks yesterday wrote a column about Governor Granholm "cleaning up state boards, commissions and task forces." He references 25 that she has removed. What he fails to mention is the 19 new boards that she has created to take their place. Net savings to the people...nothing.

I emailed her asking her to name the nineteen boards she referred to (that she took Mr. Weeks to task for for not mentioning!) and I received no reply. So, I've begun to wonder if all she really does is snipe anti-intellectually at our current Governor (Democrat Jennifer Granholm), or to cheerlead her hero Bush's very controlled visits to the state.

This morning, as I took a look at what she might be up to (and finding she hadn't posted anything since May 20), I decided to take a look at her archives. I found a reference to a wet blanket article "shed[ding] new light on" Governor Granholm's Cool Cities initiative.

The article is by Thomas Bray of The Detroit News, who writes:

I rushed to Google and got the answer. "Cool cities" is the phrase used by Carnegie Mellon Professor Richard Florida, who argued in The Rise of the Creative Class a few years ago that cities that attract gays, bohemians, ethnic minorities, as well as writers, actors and artists, tend to attract robust economic development and new-economy jobs. Cool.

Since this is an article that deals with economics, it is interesting, to say the least, that the first three groups he associates with the program are gays, bohemians and ethnic minorities, which, of course are social types. The occupations (writers, actors and artists) that would (likely) be at the heart of such a program, then, seem to be merely afterthoughts to Bray.

Hmmm... "Bray"... There was something familiar about that word, so I looked up the definition:

The harsh cry of an ass; also, any harsh, grating, or discordant sound.

What DeVos and Bray are missing with the concept of the "Cool Cities" program, is that its purpose is to create thriving, permanent communities within the economically foundering cities in Michigan.

Robert Faires, in the Austin Chronicle wrote:

In the Florida model, as outlined in his book The Rise of the Creative Class, that's laid out in economic terms: Artists enhance their cities' quality of life and add to the development of innovations, which attracts entrepreneurs and stimulates growth in the marketplace. The thing is, artists are drawn to places where freedom, tolerance, and creativity are encouraged. When those qualities dry up, like a waterhole during a drought, the artists leave for more hospitable environs. And there's nothing like a downturn in the economy to start sucking away support for diversity and originality.

Even if you view that model with skepticism, consider what economist Ray Perryman noted in a landmark study two years ago: The arts in Texas are responsible for more than $5.8 billion in economic activity per annum. That's 12.2% of total state fiscal resources, 12.3% of total expenditures, 13.6% of gross product, 14.6% of personal income, and 15.7% of the state's permanent jobs. No comparable studies specify the impact of the arts on the Austin economy, although a recent white paper by economist Jon Hockenyos claims that "the broadly defined creative sector" -- which would include high tech, entertainment and media, education, and professional services -- "accounts for more than half of the local economy." That makes for a sector worth worrying about when the chips are down.

Along the way, while researching DeVos, I also found that she is also directly related to the privatization of the war effort, as she is the sister of Erik D. Prince, founder of Blackwater USA. The four American "contractors" whose dead bodies were set afire and dragged through the streets of Fallujah last March were Blackwater employees.

Prince's (and DeVos') father made his fortune with Prince Corporation, a die-cast shop in Holland, Michigan, and was Holland's largest employer at one time. After the elder Prince's death, Prince Corporation was sold for $1.6 billion dollars, and in 1996 Prince formed Blackwater. So, it seems, Prince gave up die-casting in Michigan for casting others out to die in Iraq.