In an interview with the Detroit Metro Times, United Auto Workers President Bob King suggests that the forced unionization of home-based caregivers is more important than Michigan's becoming a right-to-work state.
“[T]here was a whole series of legislation that [Snyder] said was not on his agenda that he signed,” King told the Metro Times. "There were [university] research assistants being denied collective bargaining rights. There were home health care workers, who were given some really strong assurances that collective bargaining rights would not be taken away from them.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
Senate Bill 89, Vehicle trade-in “sales tax on the difference” only: Passed 34 to 2 in the Senate
To exempt from sales tax the value of a trade-in when buying a new motor vehicle, titled watercraft or recreational vehicle. The buyer would only pay sales tax on the difference between the agreed value of the trade-in and the purchase price of the new vehicle. The tax break would be phased in gradually through 2021, when its value would reach $226 million annually.
The average teacher salary in Michigan is over $60,000 a year, according to The Daily Caller. That is second highest in the nation when adjusted for cost of living.
Education Policy Director Michael Van Beek told the news site that state Superintendent Michael Flanagan’s suggestion that all teachers in Michigan be paid $100,000 annually would cost taxpayers about $4 billion.
Education Policy Director Michael Van Beek writes in the Port Huron Times-Herald that teachers and school districts should be cautious about unions that want to extend contracts in order to circumvent Michigan’s new right-to-work law.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder is recommending that the state undertake a huge expansion of Medicaid, something originally mandated by Obamacare but made optional by the Supreme Court's ruling on the law last June.
Medicaid is a government welfare program that reimburses medical costs incurred by people below the poverty line, and is paid for by a combination of state and federal money.
In pursuit of more money for road improvements — something Mackinac Center analysts and others do not oppose — Lansing politicians are offering Michigan residents a Hobson’s non-choice between higher taxes and higher taxes. A real choice would involve raising taxes and cutting state spending by an equal amount while redirecting that money to roads. We have addressed the subject of road repair and funding before at great length, and recently in this essay.
The media can often have a philosophical bias towards government “doing something” to “solve” societal problems. One recent example is how those in the press perceive a popular issue like education funding.
Two years ago, in the midst of an inefficient tax system and large fiscal deficit, the education budget was trimmed 2.4 percent. At the time, the typical headline was: “Schools face deep cuts under Gov. Rick Snyder’s budget plan.”
At its Tuesday meeting, the State Board of Education will review a report it requested on charter public school performance. The board's report is less comprehensive and uses a different methodology than a recent Stanford University study, but finds similar results.
Teachers unions are circumventing Michigan’s new right-to-work law by trying to extend contracts for several years that would continue forcing members to pay dues or agency fees as a condition of employment, a Mackinac Center legal expert told WJRT-TV 12.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, told MLive that privatizing delivery of first-class mail would force the U.S. Post Office to become more competitive and cost-effective. The Post Office announced it would eliminate Saturday delivery beginning Aug. 1.
The U.S. Post Office, which is billions of dollars in debt, has announced it will discontinue Saturday mail delivery beginning Aug. 1.
As this 2007 Mackinac Center commentary points out, allowing private vendors to compete with the Post Office would be more cost effective and efficient.
Union membership is on the increase and wages are higher in right-to-work states, the Washington Examiner reports based on recent research by James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy for the Mackinac Center.
In The Detroit News, the presidents of the University Research Corridor schools argue that a dollar of state appropriations for their institutions returns $17 in economic benefits. But this analysis, regardless of accuracy, does not justify the appropriation.
Typing on computers that have replaced typewriters, which previously replaced ink-pen and paper, some reporters write about the concern that increased productivity is leading to irreversible job losses for workers.
"Some experts now believe that computers and robots will take over much of the work performed by humans, raising critical concerns about the future of jobs," wrote business and economics columnist Rick Haglund in MLive.
(Editor’s note: This is an edited version of a commentary was co-authored by Michael LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, and Zach Tiggelaar, executive director of the North Dakota Policy Council.)
North Dakota State Rep. Eliot Glassheim has proposed a hike (HB 1387) in that state’s cigarette excise tax from 44 cents to $1.00 per pack, a 127 percent increase. While his intentions are good — he says he wants to help people quit smoking — it’s doubtful as many people as he believes will do so due to tax avoidance.
For more than 500,000 Michigan students, the school they attend is the only nearby option.
According to data posted by the Center for Educational Performance and Information, the majority of Michigan school districts have just one building that serves students of a given grade-level.
With National School Choice Week just completed, Education Policy Director Michael Van Beek writes in The Detroit News that school choice has benefited Michigan students, in particular the performance of charter public schools as evidenced by the results of a recent Stanford University study.
By Jack McHugh
Medicaid provides health care services for people who are below the poverty level and is paid for by a combination of state and federal tax dollars. A huge expansion of the program — increasing eligibility to those with incomes below 133 percent of the poverty level — was baked into Obamacare, but then made optional for states by last June’s Supreme Court ruling on the law. Since that ruling governors and legislatures have been wrestling with whether to go along with the expansion.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
Senate Bill 61, Convert Blue Cross to non-profit "regular" insurance company: Passed 36 to 0 in the Senate
To convert Blue Cross Blue Shield into a “mutual insurance company” and make it subject to the same regulations as regular health insurers. Although it would remain a non-profit, current restrictions on the entity's ability to own for-profit subsidiaries would be reduced, and it would no longer be subject to close oversight by the state Attorney General. In return for being granted this conversion, BCBS would pay "up to" $1.56 billion over 18 years (meaning it could be less) into a fund that would supplement various health-related government programs, with specific spending items selected by a board of political appointees. The bill does not include abortion restrictions that caused Gov. Snyder to veto the same measure when passed late last year.
House Democrats in Lansing recently called on the Michigan Economic Development Corp. to be more transparent and accountable in a press release, saying the organization is "notoriously secretive."
The latest salvo against the MEDC was inspired, at least in part, by the organization’s use of state money to buy an advertisement under the “Pure Michigan” label that featured Michigan’s new right-to-work legislation.
The SEIU has just passed $34 million skimmed from home-based caregivers.
The “dues skim” began when the Service Employees International Union teamed up with the administration of former Gov. Jennifer Granholm in 2005 in order to use a shell organization to take money from tens of thousands of caregivers to be used by the union. The vast majority of these caregivers did not vote in the “election” to certify the union and are relatives or parents looking after disabled loved ones.
(Editor’s note: This response is from the authors of the Center’s recent study on the effect of taxes on cigarette smuggling.)
February 1, 2013
Mr. Danny McGoldrick
Vice President for Research
Tobacco Free Kids
1400 I Street NW, Suite 1200
Washington, DC 20005
Adjunct Scholar Gary Wolfram in a Bridge Magazine article Thursday about an audit showing the failure of the Michigan Economic Development Corp. to properly evaluate the effectiveness of its corporate welfare handouts credits Mackinac Center as being ahead of the curve as an MEDC watchdog.
Mackinac Center President Joseph G. Lehman is featured in an interview in the Winter 2013 edition of the “Insider,” a publication of the Heritage Foundation, about the Center’s role over the past 20 years in bringing right-to-work to Michigan.
Lehman earlier detailed those efforts in an interview with National Review, and he and Labor Policy Director F. Vincent Vernuccio wrote about it late last year in The Wall Street Journal.
One thing heard constantly in the debate over right-to-work laws is that workers in unionized workplaces do have a choice since they can avoid paying for union political funding by exercising their "Beck Rights."
This is (kinda) true, but it should be noted that unions have always fought —and continue to fight — against this right.
