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2012 State of the County Since 2009 when the voters of Cuyahoga County changed their County structure, threw out their three Commissioners and elected a new County Executive, citizens have watched as the old regime has been put on trial (literally), and reform has started to happen, more quickly than anyone had dared hope. Just over one [...]

Politics is front of mind here in the Midwest. We’re also thinking about what to wear, watch, and where our friends went. Here’s a roundup of our top Changing Gears stories this week.

WiSCONSIN: Niala Boodhoo went to Madison, where she showed us how union members are still protesting a year after Gov. Scott Walker eliminated public employee collective bargaining rights. She reported on how they’re faring.

RIGHT TO WORK: Indiana is now the nation’s 23rd Right to Work state, only two months after Gov. Mitch Daniels made the legislation one of his top priorities. Will Michigan be next?

MIDWEST MIGRATION: Our Public Insight team has been tracking the stories of people who’ve left our states. There’s still time for our exiles to call us and leave messages for the folks back home. Meanwhile, read much more on our dedicated page.

T-SHIRTS: If you seek a Midwest t-shirt, look about you. Dustin Dwyer found our states are chock full of small companies making t-shirts that represent our region.

DIY DETROIT: Have you found that all those documentary films about Detroit are starting to look the same? Dustin offers you a how-to kit for making your own Detroit documentary.

Finally, a shout out to Troy “Trombone Shorty,” who sings the Changing Gears theme. He’s been immortalized by the New Orleans Jazz Fest.

After a number of years of writing for BFD, I’ll be moving on.

My duties at Purdue are expanding, and I’ll be relocating to Purdue. With my colleagues from around the country, I’ll be building out a national network of colleges and universities to support regional innovation and the new discipline of Strategic Doing. You can read more here.

BFD has been an enjoyable platform for me to share my thoughts on economic development in Cleveland. Best wishes to you all.

This year’s Super Bowl is between two east coast teams, but everything else about it is a showcase for the Midwest. The game itself is in Indianapolis, which gives the city global media exposure.

And then there’s the halftime show performance by Madonna. Before she was the Material Girl, Madonna was just a Midwestern girl.

Yesterday, Madonna sat down for an interview with the NFL Network’s Rich Eisen, and the conversation seemed to promote the Midwest as much as it promoted football.

Madonna talked about her high school in Rochester, Mich., and her love of the University of Michigan.

Eisen, himself a Michigan grad, kicked off the lovefest.

Go Blue,  Madonna. I never thought I would say that.

The two former Wolverines high-fived, then Madonna told Eisen:

I want my daughter to go to school there … I keep telling her Ann Arbor is an awesome place.

The whole exchange got us thinking: The Midwest has been producing pop-culture icons as long as there’s been a popular culture in this country, but who’s the greatest cultural ambassador of the Midwest today?

Whether you like the song or not, Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long” is practically a tourism ad for northern Michigan. Eminem, too, has done his share to promote Michigan.  Cleveland has Drew Carey. Kanye West, a controversial entertainer if ever there was one, still has plenty of love for Chi-town.

So, who’s your favorite cultural ambassador for the Midwest?

Name:Geoffrey Taylor
Midwest Home: Sioux City, IA
New Home: Eddyville, OR

My knowledge of my hatred of and my love of the Midwest is informed by many years spent there.

My high school is now a vacant lot, where scabrous alley cats urinate in the dirt, and the cold wind blows old papers in the same spot where I had to study algebra.  Yet my mind goes back to the room where Miss Edith Pollock taught me how to write.

I love Sioux City so much it hurts.  I wish to hurt it back.

Would I move back to the Midwest? Not if they made me the governor of Iowa.  Not for a million dollars in cash.  Not at gunpoint.  Not if I got to relive it all, and be a teenager again.  But the memories of that place and time are precious.

Yesterday, we offered our how-to guide for making your own documentary about Detroit.

Now our partners at the Public Insight Network want your thoughts. What would you include in your Detroit documentary?

The part that’s not so Super It’s Super Bowl weekend in Indianapolis. Cities that host the Super Bowl are usually hoping for a big economic boost. But there’s one kind of economic activity that Indiana officials are hoping to avoid: sex trafficking. Reporter Michael Puente from partner station WBEZ had a look at the city’s efforts last week.

Land for sale If you’re looking to buy some land, you might want to check in with Cleveland-based the Forest City real estate company. The company, which built its empire on land purchases, is now looking to unload more than 6,500 acres of land.

An art tax? The Detroit Institute of Arts has a world class reputation, but lately it hasn’t been making world class money. Institute leaders are exploring the option of a new regional tax to pay for operations.

The (not so much) money train Leaders in West Michigan have rounded up $4.6 billion in funds to improve regional rail lines. But that’s still $2.6 billion short of what they need for what they’re hoping to do.

On air NPR’s Talk of the Nation took on the future of American manufacturing jobs yesterday.

Call it the Timex of assembly plants. Chrysler’s Belvidere, Ill, factory takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

On Thursday, the carmaker said it will add 1,800 jobs at Belvidere, in northwestern Illinois, not far from the Quad Cities area. Some of the workers will make the new Dodge Dart, a revival of the 1970s nameplate, which Chrysler unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show. Others will produce the Jeep Liberty and Compass.

For Belvidere, and surrounding Boone County, the jobs are welcome. The area, where one in five people work in manufacturing, had a 14.4 percent unemployment rate in December, far higher than the national average.

Belvidere, which opened in 1965, has 2,700 workers, and has built a wide variety of cars for Chrysler, ranging from the small Plymouth Horizon and Dodge Omni to the big Imperial and New Yorker sedans and the Dodge Neon subcompact.

It lost 1,000 workers in 2008, not long before Chrysler got a bailout from the Obama administration and went through bankruptcy.

At one point, there was a single shift of workers at the factory, which seemed like it might be on the industry’s endangered list.

But Illinois gave the company a $68 million package of tax breaks and other incentives last year, and Chrysler is investing $700 million in the factory for improvements leading up to production of the Dart. New workers at the plant will be paid entry level wages of about $15 an hour, compared with the $28 an hour that veteran workers receive. They are expected to be hired by this summer.

Troy “Trombone Shorty” Andrews is special to us at Changing Gears. He gave us his song “Right to Complain,” for the Changing Gears theme song. He’s doing his part to help kids in New Orleans, in the same way that people are trying to help out in the Midwest.

Now, Andrews has gotten the ultimate New Orleans honor. He’s the subject of this year’s Jazz and Heritage Festival poster. It’s called Porch Song, and shows Andrews on the porch of his home in Treme. The artist is Terrance Osborne.

Andrews, 25, is joining a heralded group of musicians who’ve appeared on the poster, including Irma Thomas, Allen Toussaint, Louis Prima, Jimmy Buffett, and Fats Domino.

We talked to him not long after Changing Gears went on the air in 2010. Hear his interview a few months ago with our friends Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis on Sound Opinions, from our partner station WBEZ.