The most beautiful "R" word

Finally.

For years, there has been a group of dedicated people that knew that this metro region NEEDS co-operation and regionalization. It's been a dirty word. I've heard people called racists and communists around here for the mere thought that there needs to be a mass transit system (not two, wasting buckets of money), that there needs to be co-operation on a range of issues.

This region is so scarred by racism and poke-your-neighborism it's ridiculous. We separate like oil and water, and not just along racial lines. We catfight between eachother holding onto our one-square mile fiefdoms (thank you Michigan state constitution), afraid of losing any power for the common good.

Finally, I think we may be at the tipping point. There have been repetitive news articles that a good sum of business folks are just fed up with things not working. I'm not in Mackinac, but I'll tell you that I am and all my friends who have already left this state were, because in part, of the silly, childish games our leaders have consistently played pandering to a constituency of fear and isolation, wasting our tax dollars while professing to save them.

No more. Finally, we're in the tank enough between the automotives and the ground we're losing to other cities and states that our leaders might just listen to the sensible cries. The sensible cries that say if you have 900,000 poor people packed together who can't get to work it's a bad idea. The cries that say we need COBO to succeed. The cries that the zoo makes more sense as a regional entity. The cries that we're throwing money out the window expanding for developers into all areas of the 10-county region and letting our inner suburbs' infrastructure rot... because sprawl is now consuming our suburbs. The sensible cries that no matter what some may think, we're all interdependent and our economic future is knitted together just like every other region in the entire world.

Sorry folks, unlike what I've been told by some, it's not the rest of the world that's doing it wrong, the statistics and the jobless prove that we're the odd ducks.

I hope this dream doesn't die on the island this week. The fate of millions in this state depends on leaders doing what they are supposed to do... and that's lead.