To say that Michigan's economy is in the dumps would be understatement. In many charts which compare states by factoring in unemployment rates alongside population exodus, Michigan ranks at the absolute bottom, because it has the highest unemployment rate and the highest population exodus rate.

But there's a little bit of "competition" (if you'll forgive the gallows humor) over who gets to be at the absolute bottom. In this report, Michigan is ranked as only the 48th worst.

What keeps pushing Michigan's numbers to the bottom is the plummeting economy of the greater Detroit metropolitan area.

Two charts I found here (which should also be of interest to people in many other areas of the country), illustrate graphically that this area is at the absolute nationwide bottom in two key categories:

First, the Net Domestic Migration rate.

And here's the Employment Growth rate.

The DMA decline is shocking -- and nearly twice that of the second metropolitan area.

Just as Rome wasn't built in a day, it took time to reach such such a low. This sordid state of affairs is a product of years of economically ruinous government policies:

[I]f and when they do have to bury Detroit, I hope that all the current and past representatives and senators from Michigan have to serve as pallbearers. And no one has earned the "honor" of chief pallbearer more than the Michigan Representative John Dingell, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee who is more responsible for protecting Detroit to death than any single legislator.

That seems awfully, um, harsh, doesn't it? What mean-spirited, extreme right-wing pundit would say such a thing?

Oh, it was Thomas Friedman, writing in the New York Times.

The problem is, Dingell is not running for pallbearer in chief. He is running once again for the office he has held for the past 55 years. I don't think he wants to leave that office until he is carried out by pallbearers, and his title is inherited by his wife Debbie (who would be in the unique position of being the hereditary pallbearer of both a husband and the area his policies destroyed). We read about ruinous political dynasties in countries like Argentina and North Korea, but it appalls me to see such a thing happening in the United States.

How anyone in this area could even consider voting for Dingell is beyond me. But I have only been here for two years, so I'm lacking in feelings of nostalgia, or whatever it is that keeps the man in office.

If you think this sounds like another shameless campaign pitch for Dingell's opponent, Dr. Rob Steele, you'd be right. It isn't often I see a non-politician who has been successful in life and in business running against someone who so epitomizes everything that is wrong in politics today and who has done so much to devastate the economy.

People of Southeast Michigan, wake up! You have nothing to lose but your pallbearer!

Why vote for a pallbearer when there's still time to vote for a doctor who can save you?