It might be Halloween, but the ghosts and goblins aren’t necessarily the scariest things roaming our state.

In the spirit of the season, here’s some of the spoooookiest policy ideas we’ve seen let loose recently to terrify the (mostly) innocent people of Michigan:

• The never-ending vampiric hunger for tax revenue that drove a state lawmaker to propose taxing the free meals traditionally enjoyed as perks for restaurant employees.
• The Creature from the Muskegon Lagoon: A proposal to create new public-private port authorities that may rampage up and down the coastline, crushing privately-owned docks.

• It’s the return of the Monster That Ate All Our Business Tax Revenue, this time with powerful allies.
• You cannot run. You cannot hide. And if your homeschooled children try to, you’d have to report them to the state government.
• Government scientists in secret labs have released fiscal toxins like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, laying waste to entire communities. You’d think we learned our lesson. But deep in a lab in Lansing, someone’s brewing up a state-owned Bank of Michigan and we’re not sure the containment fields will hold it.
• The Lonely Mountain. Mount Doom. The Mountains of Madness. There’ve been some terrifying mountains in the past, but none so portentous as the “mini mountain ranges” the EPA is using to justify its latest power grab.
• The quirky farmer often turns out to be the villain, who would have gotten away with it if not for those darned kids. These windmill-toting “farmers” are even more suspicious.

• Entire industries of workers, turned into zombies with no individuality or self-control through mandatory industry-wide labor bargaining agreements. That’s the “future of worker voice and power,” they say.

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