Senate Bill 351, Clarify fertilizer use restrictions: Passed 27 to 10 in the Senate
To clarify that use of fertilizers and other soil conditioners which follows “generally accepted” agricultural and management practices AT THE TIME OF USE does not constitute a “release” of hazardous substances in violation of state regulations.
Today’s Michigan Capitol Confidential has coverage of Thursday’s vote by the state House Judiciary Committee regarding access to public records and attempts by legislators to define who or what is or is not “the media.”
The Center’s Open Government Initiative has more information on the public’s access to government records.
Taxpayers are constantly told that film incentives are supposed to be a “temporary” subsidy to “plant and grow” an industry. But as Milton Friedman once observed, “Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.”
In North Carolina, the legislature has cut the state incentive program, once among the most generous in the nation, down to zero starting in 2014. While debating the budget, the Motion Picture Association of America, sent a letter to the state that read: “[W]ithout an extension of the production incentive program, North Carolina will no longer be considered for major feature films.”
An Indiana county judge has held that the Hoosier state's right-to-work law is unconstitutional based on an Indiana constitutional provision that originated in 1816 and was meant to limit slavery.
Lake County Judge John Sedia, however, delayed implementation of the ruling until it could be appealed. The decision is almost certain to be overturned.
It seems counterintuitive to some people, but government subsidies can harm the very people they are meant to help. So it is with the way Michigan funds higher education.
Consider that 12 percent of college graduates in 1970 came from the families in the bottom 25 percent of income earners, but today that number is 7 percent, according to Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity at Ohio University and an adjunct scholar with the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
House Bill 4714, Final vote on federal health care law Medicaid expansion: Passed 75 to 32 in the House
To concur with minor changes the Senate made to the House-passed bill to expand Medicaid eligibility to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, which implements a key component of the federal health care law (called Obamacare by most people). This House vote sends the measure to the Governor for his signature.
Two people were arrested Thursday night as part of an anti-worker freedom protest at a policy forum in Vancouver, Wash., jointly sponsored by the Freedom Foundation and the Cascade Policy Institute. The Mackinac Center’s F. Vincent Vernuccio, labor policy director, was the keynote speaker at the event. You can read more about it here. Photos and video can be found here and here.
The Michigan Film Office announced recently that the producers of the next Superman-Batman movie would film in Michigan and collect $35 million in taxpayer cash for their efforts. The size and scope of the deal and film left me asking if one of these two superheroes might be kind enough to save taxpayers from another beating.
House Bill 4714, Accept federal health care law Medicaid expansion: Passed 20 to 18 in the Senate
To expand Medicaid eligibility to families and childless adults up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, which implements a key component of the federal health care law, called Obamacare by most people. Under that law, the feds are supposed to pay 100 percent of the expansion’s cost during the first three years, with the state responsible for not more than 10 percent of the costs starting in 2020. The House must still vote on modest changes the Senate made to the bill.
Every Republican legislator — including ones who voted ‘no’ on the Obamacare Medicaid expansion — shares some blame for its passage. Had they been willing to vocally buck the governor and raise a ruckus in their own caucus, they could have prevented a Speaker and Majority Leader they themselves selected from using the votes of Democrats and a minority of Republicans to ‘roll’ their own caucuses.
The argument that the public education system would improve if every child were forced to attend is so naive and simplistic that it's surprising Slate magazine published a piece arguing exactly that.
In Slate, Allison Benedikt said that every student should attend public school, and that you are a "bad person" if you send your children to a private school. Her argument boils down to the notion that if we are all required to send our children to public schools, we will all be invested in their success. She wrote:
Michael LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, told Bloomberg News that more corporate welfare for a new hockey arena in Detroit won’t solve the city’s ills.
“There’s a long history of politicians promising a renaissance, a comeback, a rebirth, basing their rhetoric … [on] construction of a heavily subsidized building in the city of Detroit,” he said. “And we’ve shown that it hasn’t worked.”
Fiscal Policy Director Michael LaFaive highlighted his newly released study on the economic impact right-to-work laws have on states, explaining to the Detroit Free Press that it takes about a decade for growth to begin.
Labor Policy Director F. Vincent Vernuccio told both Crain’s Detroit Business and The Detroit News that since right-to-work took effect in Michigan, unions have rejected the chance to reform in order to better represent workers and instead are turning to the same old tactics of intimidation and politicking.
Labor Policy Director F. Vincent Vernuccio in the Lansing State Journal explains how unions, in order to succeed, have to return to their original mission of serving members and abandon their century-old model that focuses on an adversarial relationship pitting employees against employer and treats members as interchangeable cogs.
The state is giving Hollywood-based Warner Bros. $35 million of Michigan taxpayers’ money to film parts of its new Batman/Superman movie here. It will be a follow-up to “Man of Steel,” which so far has grossed more than $600 million worldwide.
“Lawmakers and others are blinded by the glitz and glam of Hollywood when they consider this public policy,” Michael LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, told The Daily Caller.
In a weekend interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mackinac Center for Public Policy Scholar Richard Vedder is called the "foremost expert on the economics of higher education."
Vedder directs the Center for College Affordability and Productivity at Ohio University and was interviewed to discuss President Barack Obama's recent tour of colleges and his proposal that seeks to tie financial aid to college performance. Vedder said that some of the president's ideas make "decent, even good sense," but that the plan is "not dealing with the fundamental problems."
Adjunct Scholar Michael Hicks was a guest on “The Frank Beckmann Show” on WJR AM760 this morning, discussing a new study on right-to-work that he and co-author Michael LaFaive released.
The study details the positive economic growth experienced by states with right-to-work laws compared to what would have occurred had they not passed such laws.
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy released a new right-to-work study titled, "Economic Growth and Right-to-Work Laws" in which these authors find that states with right-to-work laws do better economically — sometimes much better — than they otherwise would have.
By Jack McHugh
Avik Roy reports in Forbes that a new study by the Lewin Group, a health care consulting firm, suggests the Obamacare Medicaid expansion may cost hospitals hundreds of millions of dollars in losses due to greater-than-expected "crowd-out" effects.
This is when individuals drop or lose higher-quality private health insurance because of the availability of "free" taxpayer funded coverage, specifically, lower-quality Medicaid.
In May, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan visited Detroit Public Schools' Thirkell Elementary to honor the school for its performance. After visiting the school, Duncan said he was "very, very encouraged" by the progress made at Thirkell and other DPS schools.
Readers of the Detroit Free Press opinion pages Sunday received a healthy dose of Mackinac Center analysis.
President Joseph G. Lehman and Board Chairman Clifford W. Taylor, former chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, explained why the Michigan Senate should not vote to expand Medicaid under Obamacare; Michael Van Beek, director of research, wrote about his recent study examining why students in Florida are outperforming their Michigan counterparts; and Carole Chase, a Center supporter, was cited on the negative impact Obamacare will have on small businesses.
A Mackinac Center Legal Foundation lawsuit on behalf of four city of Dearborn workers against Teamsters Local 214 is generating a large amount of state and national media coverage, including The Detroit News, MLive, Lansing State Journal, Macomb Daily, TV9&10 in Cadillac, the Cadillac News, WJRT-TV12 in Flint, WNEM-TV5 in Saginaw, FOX32 in Traverse City, the (Owosso) Argus-Press, Midland Daily News, Port Huron Times-Herald, the Miami Herald, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Houston Chronicle, the Charlotte Observer, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Albany Times Union in New York, WTOL and WTVG in Toledo, the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, the Bradenton (Fla.) Herald, the Enquirer-Herald in York, S.C., The State in Columbia, S.C., FOX28 in South Bend, Ind., the Daily Reporter in Greenfield, Ind., WBNS in Columbus, Ohio, the Times-Post in Pendleton, Ind., the Ventura County Star in Camarillo, Calif., The Tribune in San Louis Obispo, Calif., and the Macon (Ga.) Telegraph.
As part of its Open Government Initiative, the Mackinac Center in July and August hosted four town hall meetings around Michigan to help educate residents about the Freedom of Information and Open Meetings acts. Panelists included representatives from the ACLU of Michigan, the Michigan Press Association, The Center for Michigan/Bridge Magazine and the Michigan Coalition for Open Government.
CMU Public Radio says August is “an important month” for right-to-work in Michigan, reporting that teachers can exercise their worker freedom rights this month and resign from their union.
“Workers in contracts that have been renewed, entered into or expanded after March 28th” don’t have to financially support a union as a condition of their employment.
You have to admire the Upper Peninsula’s get-it-done attitude, even on civic matters. For instance, in 2009 the state stopped funding the state fair in the Upper Peninsula, so they organized their own. The fair just concluded its fourth year last weekend.
