Millions of dollars in “dues” will continue to be skimmed by the SEIU from the subsidy checks home health care workers receive, many of whom are family members caring for loved ones, after a federal judge issued an injunction against a new state law. Patrick Wright, director of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, discussed the issue on “The Frank Beckmann Show” on WJR AM760. Wright also told The Detroit News that the SEIU is taking about $500,000 a month away from the home health aides.
Allen Park’s foray into the state’s film subsidy industry has put the city into debt and put it on the verge of needing an emergency financial manager, according to an Op-Ed by two Mackinac Center analysts in the Port Huron Times-Herald.
Director of Fiscal Policy Michael LaFaive and Senior Editor Thomas Shull write that the state’s “ill-conceived” film subsidy program led Allen Park officials to believe the city could profit by building a movie studio. The authors then explain the state’s legal history of prohibiting the use of public money for private ventures.
School districts sometimes are referred to as a "local educational agency," but recently the one in Fruitport seemed more concerned with being a "local employment agency."
MLive.com reports that the school board voted against saving $240,000 by contracting out for custodial services — money that could be redirected toward educating students. The president of the janitor’s local union said board members, "felt that people shouldn't lose their jobs right now" and, according to MLive.com, specifically praised those on the board who have "ties to labor."
An increase in tobacco taxes in Illinois has led to concerns about cigarette smuggling and related crimes, according to the Chicago Examiner.
The news site cites Mackinac Center research on the issue, including this 2008 study.
Although the health care field has taken over the top spot in Michigan’s economy, one Mackinac Center analyst warns it will not return the state to prosperity because it lacks productivity.
Senior Economist David Littmann told The Detroit News that manufacturing jobs have more of an “economic wallop.”
Vincent Chin died 30 years ago today after being beaten with a baseball bat by laid-off autoworkers. He is memorialized by Tom Watkins in an excellent piece in The Detroit News today. Chin, a Chinese-American was celebrating his impending nuptials when he crossed the path of two xenophobes apparently bent on venting their frustrations on a man they mistook for Japanese.
Unions in Michigan are pushing for a radical constitutional amendment that would benefit the 3 percent of state residents who are unionized at the state, local and school levels at the expense of everyone else, according to a commentary by Labor Policy Director Vincent Vernuccio in The American Spectator.
The Michigan House has advanced legislation to gradually roll back the state’s personal income tax rate to 3.9 percent from its current 4.35 percent. That would be a good start, but a slight blip upwards in the state unemployment rate reported last week suggests this is no time for being timid or complacent.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
House Bill 5699, Cut state income tax: Passed 31 to 7 in the Senate
To move forward to Oct. 1 2013 an income tax cut from 4.35 percent to 4.25 percent that under current law will happen on Jan, 1, 2013.
Municipalities that institute cost recovery fees for emergency services could be double taxing residents, a Mackinac Center analyst told the Port Huron Times-Herald.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, said the fees could be a “tax by another name” if the municipality already pays for police and fire services through an operating millage. LaFaive also noted, however, that such fees can reduce the overconsumption of said services.
Michigan House Republicans have declined the invitation extended by the state Senate to close the school employee pension system to new hires, a transformational reform that would gradually eliminate the state’s 50-year pattern of chronic pension underfunding.
An article in The New York Times documents the craziness of current licensing laws across the nation.
In “So You Think You Can Be a Hair Braider?” the author focuses on Jestina Clayton, a Sierra Leone native who came to America, went to college, got married, had children and then tried to start her own business. Clayton lives in Utah, where she does a style of African hair braiding and found a niche market, providing for her family and creating value and wealth in the community.
The union-backed attempt to rig the Michigan Constitution is drawing state and national media attention after supporters submitted signatures Wednesday to get the measure on the November ballot.
“It is apparent that government unions did not learn anything from the Wisconsin recall vote last week,” Vincent Vernuccio, the Center’s director of labor policy, told CNBC, Bloomberg and CBS News. “Once again they’re pursuing policies that will enshrine special privileges for what amounts to just 3 percent of the population at the expense of the rest of us.”
Teamsters President James P. Hoffa writes in The Detroit News that the U.S. government should offer subsidies for companies to return outsourced jobs back to American soil. But buying back these jobs with tax money is unlikely to have any meaningful impact on the economy and be rife with special favors to Congressional cronies.
Mackinac Center research on the amount of money taxpayers have saved since the defined-benefit retirement system for new state employees was closed in 1997 was cited in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial.
The Journal writes about the reluctance of Republicans in the Michigan House to do the same with the school employees’ retirement system, which is underfunded by tens of billions of dollars. The Toledo Blade also cited this fact. And The Oakland Press ran a commentary by Senior Legislative Analyst Jack McHugh about the matter.
When comparing the costs of the current "defined benefit" school retirement system to a defined-contribution system, some state analysts argue that the latter is more expensive.
Unfortunately, the claim is based on a rigged comparison. A defined-contribution plan will only cost as much each year as legislators want it to, something their official analyses ignore.
Michigan House Republicans argue that their plan to reform the school retirement system offers superior savings over a Senate-passed bill that would close the system to new employees. But much of the supposed savings come from accounting gimmicks. A better idea is to close the plan to new members, where the state will not be able to play these games.
Republicans in the Michigan House have let alleged “transition costs” attached to closing the state’s defined-benefit school pension system plan to new hires halt what would be a transformational fiscal reform. The issue is how the state “catches up” on current shortfalls in underfunded state pension funds. Paying huge upfront “transition costs" is one way, but it’s not the only way - incurring these costs is entirely optional.
The MichiganVotes.org weekly roll call report that just went out to newspapers all over the state contains suggestions that the reform momentum generated by the 2010 election may be giving way to complacency and a reluctance to rock the government establishment's well-appointed yacht.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
Senate Bill 1125, Authorize more state government housing subsidy debt: Passed 33 to 5 in the Senate
To increase from $3 billion to $4.2 billion the amount of debt the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) may incur in performing its role of providing taxpayer-backed mortgage loan guarantees, subsidies to certain developers and more.
If some legislators have their way, the state would gradually raise its minimum wage to $10 per hour and adjust it to inflation.
This would give Michigan the highest mandated minimum wage in the nation. It would also greatly harm the majority of workers and businesses in the state.
The president of the Ann Arbor teachers union, who has been a supporter of the now-suspended effort to recall Gov. Rick Snyder, said he will shift his efforts to the union-backed “Protect Our Jobs” ballot initiative, according to AnnArbor.com. The online news site also reported that Mackinac Center President Joseph G. Lehman issued an open letter to UAW President Bob King to publicly debate the issue.
Who was Ray Bradbury that he should be remembered by readers of this blog? Yes, he was a formidable writer, an enchanter, a conjuror of fantastic alternative realities. But, specifically, what is it about Bradbury’s legacy that bears mention here?
From my personal experience, Bradbury took me to Mars, past the Golden Apples of the Sun to sip goblets of Dandelion Wine with the Illustrated Man. His prose and subject matter resonated with this burgeoning science fiction/fantasy fan and future literature student far more than the books and stories by Isaac Asimov that I still read with zest. Asimov, you see, despite my inability to recognize or articulate it at the time, presented scientific knowledge as the summa of human understanding, desires and happiness. Not so with Bradbury, who portrayed the emptiness of lives devoid of magic, imagination and mystery. Science, too, is important in this universe — but balanced against the realities of humankind’s condition it is depicted as less a panacea for human frailties and suffering than as a placebo. Science makes life better, to be sure, but it also threatens to dehumanize if left unchecked by what T.S. Eliot and Russell Kirk deemed the permanent things — shorthand for recognition of a moral order that abjures decadence and materialism and champions beauty, truth and ordered liberty.
June 7, 2012
Mr. Bob King
President, UAW
UAW International Headquarters
Detroit, MI 48124
Dear Bob,
I was genuinely disappointed when event organizers said you withdrew from our scheduled debate over the “Protect Our Jobs” ballot initiative at the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce’s Mackinac Island Policy Conference last week. I looked forward to a lively and informative exchange on this far-reaching constitutional amendment. John Bayerl, who served as your last-minute replacement, did a fine job, but I’m sure the attendees would rather have heard your take on a proposal you’ve passionately endorsed.
Mark J. Perry, an economics professor at the University of Michigan-Flint and a member of the Mackinac Center’s Board of Scholars, recently testified before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, according to MLive.
Perry, who also runs the Carpe Diem blog, told the committee that President Barack Obama’s energy policy, which the president has called an “all of the above” approach, is actually more of a “some of the above” policy, MLive reported. A video of Perry’s testimony is embedded in the story. His comments begin around the 26-minute mark.
