Arthur C. Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, released his new book today titled “The Road to Freedom.” He wrote about it yesterday at Brietbart.com.
The Mackinac Center is pleased to welcome Brooks to Michigan for two events, June 12 in Grand Rapids and June 20 in Birmingham, to talk about the free enterprise system and why it aligns with the morals and values Americans hold dear. Tickets are $30 and attendees will receive a copy of the book.
Crime is just one of many factors that impair a city’s ability to attract economic development, a Mackinac Center analyst told The Saginaw News recently after the city of Saginaw was named as the most dangerous place for women in the country.
“If we want more business activity in the city, we have to avoid raising the cost of living and working in the area,” said Michael LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative. “Having high crime rates or even the reputation of high crime raises the cost of living and doing business in Saginaw.”
Here’s a prediction: Expect to see some school districts quietly launch campaigns urging parents to enroll “almost” 5-year-olds in kindergarten, even though they are considered too young under a bill passed unanimously by the Senate last week. Here’s how MichiganVotes.org described it:
Research and analysis by Mackinac Center education policy experts featured prominently in the Detroit Free Press Sunday.
Education Policy Director Michael Van Beek wrote in an Op-Ed about conventional school districts that are potentially breaking the law by trying to cherry-pick academically talented students who want to enroll via a schools-of-choice program.
By Jack McHugh
During a three-month period ending last September, 190,661 Michigan jobs disappeared. That’s nearly one out of every 20 jobs in the state.
So why weren’t there headlines about an employment apocalypse? Because during the same period 227,785 new jobs were created here. This “job churn” is typical of the dynamic U.S. economy and labor market, and it goes on continuously.
Among other actions this week, the House and Senate in effect rejected all the budgets passed by the other body the previous week, which is a procedural means of getting these into conference committees to work out the differences. The goal is to complete work by June 1 on budgets for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
If you’re a culture vulture as I am, you don’t often associate Michigan with poetry, and when you do it’s either fairly dreadful stuff like Edgar Guest or far removed from personal experience such as Thomas Lynch or Philip Levine. It is true several transplants have wound up in Michigan by happenstance, including academic hires such as John Ciardi and Richard Tillinghast. Homegrown Jim Harrison is a poet, but is better known for his fiction and essays.
Jason Clemens, director of research at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, Canada, and a Mackinac Center adjunct scholar, explains in this commentary that Occupy Wall Street protesters “offer policies that assume the people who face low income today are the same ones who encounter it tomorrow,” and fail to recognize the income mobility that exists in a free society. The piece appeared in the Financial Post on May 1, 2012, and is based on Clemens’s recent paper titled “Income Inequality: Oversimplifying a Complicated Issue.”
For every dollar of wages that school districts pay to employees covered by the state-run school pension system, they must kick-in an additional 25 cents to that system. This is up from around 10 cents in 2000, and without major reform the figure will only grow. The chart below breaks down the different components of this assessment.
In the April 27 edition of The Detroit News, Daniel Howes asks an entirely fair question: "What's the fix, labor, if EM law dies?"
The problem is he's asking the wrong party. Asking the unions for alternatives to PA 4 is somewhat like asking the Japanese military for alternatives to bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a means of ending the war in the Pacific. The unions are not likely to give us any workable solutions. To a large extent they are the problem.
A plan to provide “free” college tuition to Michigan high school graduates that will cost taxpayers billions of dollars is based on faulty research, according to one Mackinac Center expert.
James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy, told the Detroit Free Press that claims that more college graduates make a state more prosperous are untrue.
“Governing” magazine’s May issue includes a story about Michigan’s emergency manager law and calls the Mackinac Center an “influential” think tank. The story focuses largely on Lou Schimmel, the appointed emergency manager of Pontiac and the Center’s former director of municipal finance.
Michigan Capitol Confidential today is reporting on Senate Bill 1085, which would reinstate a ban on project labor agreements to “level the playing field” among union and merit-based companies that bid on government construction projects. Stories about low-interest student loans driving up college costs and subsidies given to welfare recipients for car repairs are also featured.
Michigan Capitol Confidential today is reporting that media accounts of actors’ reactions to Michigan towns in which they make movies never get around to pointing out how much money was taken from taxpayers and given to the producers of movies filmed in the Great Lake State.
A bill requiring retired legislators to pay more for their own health care is a matter of fairness, Senior Legislative Analyst Jack McHugh told the Livingston Daily.
“That’s a matter of fairness and perception,” McHugh said. “It’s about the atmospherics more than anything, and it’s good public policy, too.”
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
Senate Bill 961, Senate version of next year's public school budget: Passed 25 to 13 in the Senate
The Senate version of the public school budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, 2012. This would appropriate $12.71 billion, compared to $12.66 billion originally authorized for this year, and $12.68 billion proposed by Gov. Rick Snyder. The bill would increase the per-pupil foundation grant by between $116 and $232, depending on how much school districts currently receive. Both the House and Senate versions of this budget watered down and reduced the dollar amounts of "best practices" grants proposed by Gov. Rick Snyder, which make a portion of the money contingent on adopting specified fiscal and transparency reforms.
Jack Spencer of Michigan Capitol Confidential was a guest Thursday on “The Vic McCarty Show” on WMKT 1270AM in Traverse City, discussing his recent story about the continued dues skim that has allowed the SEIU to take nearly $30 million over the last six years from Michigan’s most vulnerable families.
According to an article posted on the Mlive.com news site, some Kalamazoo County public school officials are complaining that Lansing politicians want to “eliminate public schools.” Such alarmist rhetoric like this is not uncommon from education bureaucrats, although taxpayers might find the timing a bit odd given that both the state House and Senate have just increased education funding to nearly $13 billion next year.
The House of Representatives voted 56-54 to approve Senate Bill 619 Thursday, according to Michigan Capitol Confidential, which will increase the number of cyber charter schools in the state.
You can read more about the issue here and here.
Also, the ballot proposal to overturn Michigan’s emergency manager law appears headed for a court battle.
This week, Rep. Steve Lindberg, D-Marquette, offered the following amendment (defeated on an unrecorded “voice vote”) to the Department of Corrections budget for the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1:
That’s a nice sentiment if you happen to live in such a community, but does it really contribute to the general welfare of Michigan residents for prisons to be regarded as a government “jobs” or “economic development” program?
Michigan Capitol Confidential today looks at claims by MEA President Steven Cook regarding teacher pay. There’s also a case study of teacher benefits and be sure to watch the video of economist Thomas Sowell discussing welfare.
Gov. Rick Snyder signed Senate Bill 1018 into law more than two weeks ago, ending the illegal unionization of some 60,000 home health care aides. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports today, however, that “dues” are still being skimmed from their paychecks. CapCon’s skim-tracker shows that the SEIU has siphoned nearly $30 million from Michigan’s most vulnerable residents since the scheme was put in place six years ago.
Patrick J. Wright, director of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, was a guest on “The Frank Beckmann Show” on WJR AM760 Monday, discussing a lawsuit filed by an Indiana labor union against that state’s new right-to-work law. The suit alleges the law violates the union’s 13th and 14th amendment rights, saying that since right-to-work “requires dues-paying members to work alongside non-union personnel,” union members are thus subject to slavery.
A representative teacher in a typical Michigan school district can retire at age 56 and immediately begin collecting state benefits worth $48,161 annually, including $35,640 in pension and $12,521 in health insurance benefits. The insurance benefit cost assumes the person has a dependent spouse but no dependent children.
The claim by an Indiana union that the state’s new right-to-work law violates their 13th and 14th amendment rights “expands the definition of chutzpah,” according to Mackinac Center Legal Foundation Director Patrick Wright.
Wright was cited on the matter in a Michigan Capitol Confidential story that was highlighted by The Daily Caller.
