A story in Monday’s Michigan Capitol Confidential about the Detroit Water and Sewer Department employing a “horseshoer” due to antiquated union job classifications has garnered national media attention and nearly 180,000 readers.
Fox News, John Stossel on Fox Business News, The Wall Street Journal, the Drudge Report (top item in right column), MSN, The Blaze, Reason, The Washington Times and Neal Boortz (last item) all covered the story.
Though I’m a huge fan of both The Wall Street Journal and its esteemed drama critic Terry Teachout, the Aug. 17 edition featured a story more befitting a propaganda piece than real journalism. According to Teachout, property millages are a reasonable method for funding public arts institutions such as the Detroit Institute of Arts.
In a recent Mlive.com article, W.E. Upjohn Institute economist Tim Bartik says that school choice is an ineffective tool for improving education. The arguments he uses, however, ignore inconvenient truths that would render his arguments meaningless.
First, he states, “[T]here's no evidence to suggest that choice works very well” to improve academic outcomes. One must ignore a lot of research to make such a broad generalization. There are several studies of charter public schools that show students making significant learning gains. For example, Harvard economist Thomas Kane found “large positive effects” in a study of Boston charters, and a study by Stanford economist Caroline Hoxby showed charter school students in New York City making huge academic gains compared to their peers.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
Senate Bill 1040, Revise school pension system: Passed 21 to 16 in the Senate
To no longer provide post-retirement health benefits to new school employees, and instead give them a 401(k) contribution equal to 2 percent of their salary. Also, current retirees who are over age 65 on Jan. 1, 2013 would have to contribute 20 percent to the cost of these health benefits, up from 10 percent now. The bill would also authorize “prefunding” these retiree health benefits (despite them being optional and not an enforceable obligation on the state). In addition, current school employees would have to contribute more toward their pensions, or else receive benefits calculated under a less generous formula. The original Senate-passed provision to “close” the school pension system to new hires was not adopted.
Forty-six years ago, Chippewa Valley Schools began borrowing state money to help make payments on its debt. As of June 30, 2012, the Michigan Department of Treasury estimates that Chippewa Valley owes the state more than $143 million — almost $9,000 for every student enrolled in the district. And the district's state debt is growing. Last year, the district owed $120 million.
The city of Holland has reportedly granted limited permission to operate a downtown hot dog cart to Nathan Duszynski, the 13-year-old who received national attention for his efforts to open the cart to help his troubled family.
The Holland City Council voted Wednesday to allow Nathan to run his hot dog business until the end of October on the sidewalk adjacent to a downtown sporting goods store.
Online learning continues to grow in Michigan and around the nation. The International Association for K-12 Online Learning estimates that public school students took 1.8 million courses online in 2010, and another 250,000 students were enrolled in full-time online schools in 2011. A recent survey of Michigan school districts conducted by the Mackinac Center found that about 90 percent of them offer students some form of online learning opportunity.
A radical ballot proposal that would make union bosses more powerful than elected representatives was rejected Wednesday by the State Board of Canvassers, and is unlikely to find relief from the Michigan Supreme Court according to one Mackinac Center expert.
Joshua Smith is obviously a caring young man. The 9-year-old Detroiter recently set up a lemonade stand in front of his house with the purpose of raising money.
For what purpose? A charity perhaps? A neighboring family down on their luck?
No. The city of Detroit. The actual municipality. The one with a $200 million budget deficit.
More than 60 percent of school districts in Michigan privatize at least one of the three main support services — food, custodial or transportation — according to the Detroit Free Press. The information comes from the Mackinac Center’s 2012 school privatization survey. That is a 13 percent increase over 2011 and should save taxpayers about $13 million in the first year.
Grand Haven High School, a suburban school near Muskegon, received an 'A' on the Mackinac Center's new high school report card, which means that student test scores from 2008 to 2011 were better than expected, on average, given the socioeconomic background of its students.
On May 17, the Michigan Senate voted for a transformational fiscal reform by closing the defined-benefit school pension system to new hires starting in 2013, and instead giving these workers generous 401(k) contributions.
This came as a surprise, because the only reforms on the table before the vote were useful, if comparatively minor tweaks, to the existing defined-benefit system, which creates an additional layer of long-term taxpayer liabilities every time a new school employee is hired.
Erin Cummings is a Los Angeles actress who worked on the television show "Detroit 1-8-7," a short-lived series that was shot in Michigan and received money from taxpayers as part of the state’s film subsidy program.
The legislature has scaled back the Michigan film tax credits, which previously awarded up to a 42 percent subsidy to select filmmakers. Most of this money went to Hollywood studios and productions.
Nathan Duszynski and his parents never imagined the firestorm his story would create.
Their concerns right now deal with more basic matters, such as where they will stay the night or whether Nathan will break even from his next hot dog gig. This was not the way they thought it would turn out. Their hope was that Nathan could get a jump-start on his hot dog business during the idle summer months before school.
The firestorm over the teenage entrepreneur whose hot dog cart was shut down by the city of Holland continues to draw national and international media attention, especially now that the Mackinac Center has learned Nathan Duszynski and his parents are homeless. National Review Online, The Daily Caller, Huffington Post, Reason, the (UK) Daily Mail, CBS News and Yahoo News have all written about the Mackinac Center’s coverage of the issue.
A bill to raise Michigan’s business tax rate from 6 percent to 15 percent — a 150 percent hike — was recently introduced by Rep. John Olumba, D-Detroit. This is both a massive tax hike and a huge expansion of government central planning.
It would discriminate in favor of manufacturers and businesses “primarily engaged in the business of research” by allowing these firms to pay taxes at the current 6 percent rate, as long as an enterprise added at least five new jobs to their payroll in the previous year. Every other kind of business would be socked with such a massive tax hike that many might just close their doors, causing a massive flight of both capital and jobs.
The House and Senate are in the midst of a summer break, so rather than votes, this report instead contains several newly introduced bills of interest.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
Senate Bill 1198: Authorize unemployment benefits while earning self-employment money
Introduced by Sen. Vincent Gregory (D), to exempt unemployment benefit recipients from the duty to seek and accept employment if the person participates in government-approved “self-employment assistance activities,” including “entrepreneurial training, business counseling, and technical assistance.” The bill would also allow a person to earn self-employment income and still collect unemployment benefits. Referred to committee, no further action at this time.
HOLLAND — Several weeks after a city zoning officer shut down his hot dog business, 13-year-old Nathan Duszynski and his parents are homeless.
The family was hoping Nathan’s hot dog cart could help them through a difficult time. Nathan’s mother, Lynette Johnson, suffers from epilepsy and his stepfather, Doug Johnson, has multiple sclerosis. Their illnesses have restricted them from finding permanent, full-time work.
Excerpt from a Charles Murray essay, “Why Capitalism Has an Image Problem”:
. . . What government can do to help is establish the rule of law so that informed and voluntary trades can take place. More formally, government can vigorously enforce laws against the use of force, fraud and criminal collusion, and use tort law to hold people liable for harm they cause others.
Everything else the government does inherently restricts economic freedom to act in pursuit of earned success. . . Every intervention that erects barriers to starting a business, makes it expensive to hire or fire employees, restricts entry into vocations, prescribes work conditions and facilities, or confiscates profits interferes with economic liberty and usually makes it more difficult for both employers and employees to earn success.
There’s something rotten in the state of Detroit Water and Sewage Department operations.
A new report by the independent firm EMA out of St. Paul, Minn., shows massive overspending and recommends that four out of every five jobs be outsourced or eliminated.
The Mackinac Center's new "Context and Performance" High School Report Card factors student socioeconomic status into four years of standardized test scores for nearly 600 public high schools in Michigan and ranks the schools accordingly.
Below is a list of the top 10 Michigan counties with the highest-scoring high schools. In order to avoid having counties with a single high school skew the results, counties with only one high school were not included in this list.
The Detroit Free Press today reports on a consultant’s report suggesting that staffing levels at the city of Detroit’s water (and sewerage) department could be slashed by 80 percent. In December 2000, Center analysts suggested that the city could sell its water system or contract out for management, thereby removing 100 percent of its employees from the city payroll. The city should still consider that option.
Michael Van Beek, director of education policy, was a guest on “The Frank Beckmann Show” on WJR AM760 today, discussing why schools — not parents — are required to provide supplies for students.
A few weeks after the release of the Mackinac Center's high school report card, the Michigan Department of Education released its revised school ratings, with a new focus on the academic achievement gap among high-performing and low-performing students.
In a recent post here titled “Lansing Builds a ‘Scaffolding for Plunder,” I wrote about House Bill 5667 sponsored by Rep. Joe Haveman, R-Holland, which would authorize “neighborhood enhancement” authorities with the power to impose higher property taxes (called “special assessments”) for various government spending projects including “pavilions,” sidewalk improvements, etc.
