The Mackinac Center continues to maintain a strong presence in media outlets in Michigan and throughout the country. Our policy staffers often are sought after for interviews and comments by reporters and oftentimes will write pieces themselves. Recently, a few of our staff members teamed up and wrote about topics that span multiple policy areas.
Two very different policy areas, environment and labor, joined forces in an op-ed published in The Detroit News. Jason Hayes and Morgan Shields wrote on how the policy focuses of the Whitmer administration sometimes cause conflict between two of her most vocal support groups. As they explained in the piece, “When looked at in terms of the blue/green divide — where loyalties to environmental activism conflict with traditional blue-collar concerns — the Whitmer administration has clearly sided with green at the expense of blue.”
While it’s nice to see collaboration within our organization, it’s great when we can work with members of other organizations. James Hohman recently teamed up with Carol Park from the Maryland Public Policy Institute to write about what Maryland can learn from Michigan’s pension reform success for an op-ed published in The Washington Post.
The streak of collaboration continued in another op-ed when Lindsay Killen partnered with Jase Bolger, former speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives, in The Detroit News. They wrote on how Michigan’s Medicaid work requirements “will reward the dignity of work that promotes the health and well-being of those served, help fill the strong demand for workers created by Michigan’s rebounding job market and foster stronger communities.”
The fight for worker freedom is still ongoing, and many national outlets have turned to the Mackinac Center for comments. Jarrett Skorup spoke to The Washington Times and used our calculations on union membership to explain how unions such as AFSCME have experienced a substantial drop in members. Bloomberg News quoted Patrick Wright on the same issue and The New York Times quoted a Mackinac Center blog post from 2017 on union membership and revenue.
As labor issues continue to gain national attention, Vinnie Vernuccio, a senior fellow with the Mackinac Center, wrote an op-ed on how union members prefer several different presidential candidates, which was published by Fox Business. Vernuccio was quoted by Fox News on how critical union support is in an election, saying “They are the Get Out The Vote. They are the money. They are the ones that are going door to door and really providing the political oomph behind a lot of Democrat candidates.”
