An editorial in Tuesday’s Investor’s Business Daily cites James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy, and his analysis that each Chevy Volt sold has cost taxpayers up to $250,000 in the form of subsidies, tax credits and other corporate welfare.
A bill to increase the cap on the number of Michigan public school students who can participate in full-time, online charter “cyber schools” is now pending in the state House of Representatives. Based on committee hearings, some legislators seem particularly interested in how these schools spend their money.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, explains in a Bay City Times Op-Ed why Michigan needs a right-to-work law.
The Detroit News yesterday reported that the city of Detroit may be forced to sell some assets to deal with its mounting debt. The article mentions Belle Isle, the city's small downtown airport, water and sewer operations and other “crucial” assets that could be sold in an effort to forestall insolvency or the appointment of an emergency manager.
Patrick Wright, director of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, was the guest on “The Daily Drift” with host Gary Wellings on WAAM AM1600 in Ann Arbor Sunday.
Wright discussed the illegal unionization of home health care workers by the SEIU and how the union has skimmed some $28 million in “dues” from those private workers. You can read more about the scheme here.
The UAW is more and more becoming a political organization rather than one that is focused on representing the collective bargaining rights of its members, Labor Policy Director Paul Kersey told The Detroit News recently after UAW President Bob King called on members to engage in civil disobedience and re-elect President Barack Obama and Sen. Debbie Stabenow.
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder said that the state should become a national leader in its tax policies. The 2011 business tax reforms get the state close to that goal, according to the Tax Foundation’s state business tax climate index. Here is their summary of how Michigan’s corporate tax changes improved the state’s business tax climate ranking.
MichiganVotes.org sends a weekly report to newspapers and TV stations around the state showing how state legislators in their service area voted on the most important or interesting bills of the past week.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
House Bill 5075, Court consolidation package: Passed 34 to 4 in the Senate
To consolidate and reduce the number of judges in Michigan courts, as recommended by the State Court Administrative Office. This is one of several dozen bills reducing the number of Michigan judges in particular district, circuit and probate courts. Of little import to regular citizens, this is a matter of intense interest to county political establishments, which for more than a decade have succeeded in obstructing the reform despite widespread recognition the state has too many judgeships (and the costs associated with them). The bills are passing now with unanimous or near-unanimous votes.
That’s the verdict of British writer James Delingpole, in a blog posted in the Daily Telegraph, about an article by Kevin Myers published in the Irish Independent online version, brought to our attention by a Paul Chesser Facebook post. (Got all that? Ain’t the Internet grand?)
Corporate welfare, business subsidies and other handouts will increase $20 million, to $195 million, in Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposed 2013 budget, according to MLive.com, causing concern for one Mackinac Center analyst.
“I hope that the governor doesn’t scale these programs up year after year as we’ve seen happen in the past two administrations,” Michael LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, told MLive.com.
An Op-Ed about health insurance costs for public school districts written by two Mackinac Center analysts appeared Wednesday in Macomb County’s Advisor & Source. It also ran in the Antrim Review.
Written by Education Policy Director Michael Van Beek and Education Policy Analyst Kyle Jackson, the piece details how districts over time have shortchanged classroom spending as employee health benefits have taken up larger and larger chunks of money.
Senior Legislative Analyst Jack McHugh was a guest this morning on "The Tony Conley Show" on WILS AM1320 in Lansing, where he discussed a legislative pack of bills that could force motorists in Michigan to pay the highest gas taxes in the nation.
In a new commercial for U.S. Senate candidate and former Congressman Pete Hoekstra, an actress portraying a youngish Chinese woman rides her bike up to the camera and thanks "Debbie Spend-It-Now" for putting America deeply into debt. The actress’s less-than-perfect syntax has drawn fire for playing on stereotypes. But the real problem is the half-baked economics that the ad promotes.
The “R” or “D” after a politician’s name often does little to help voters understand the governing philosophy of their elected representative. The way many of their bills read, one might just as well replace those letters with a generic “S” for Statist or “PC” for Political Careerist.
The economic evidence for the value of right-to-work laws, which allows individual workers to choose whether or not to join or otherwise support a union, continues to build. Last week the Cascade Policy Institute issued a report indicating that Oregon would have 233,000 additional jobs and wage income would be 13 percent higher if it had passed a right-to-work law in 1985, at about the time neighboring Idaho took that step.
Public school special interests groups uniformly lobby for the state to give more money to school districts. To sell this idea to policymakers and taxpayers, these groups often claim that schools need "adequate," "stable," and "equal" funding. These talking points give rise to some common myths about school funding in Michigan.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, was quoted in an Alpena News editorial over the weekend about the impact on Michigan now that Indiana has extended right-to-work protections to its workers.
“I worry that without a right-to-work law of our own, Indiana will grow at Michigan’s expense,” LaFaive said.
Nick Dranias at the Goldwater Institute has run the numbers on the costs and consequences of the decision a few decades ago to give state, school and local government employee unions the power to force public bodies to engage in collective bargaining. It’s not pretty. Here’s an excerpt:
Patrick Wright, director of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, was a guest on “The Vic McCarty Show” Thursday on WMKT AM1270 in Traverse City. Wright discussed the plight of a group of graduate student research assistants at the University of Michigan whose rights to due process have been denied by the Michigan Employment Relations Commission, which ruled that students opposed to being unionized could not present their side during hearings on the matter.
Portage Public Schools had an odd reaction to some good financial news this week, telling a company that could save it $270,000 a year "no thanks." That offer came from Grand Rapids Building Services, a facilities cleaning contractor that proposed taking over the school district’s first shift custodial duties.
A Saginaw News article posted this afternoon asks in its story headline, “Is Fabiano Bros. a Monopoly?” The story covers a verifiable assertion I laid out in a commentary titled “Eight Ideas for Reforming Alcohol Control in Michigan.”
Unfortunately, the article is comprised largely of a collection of redirections on the part of the Michigan Beer and Wine Wholesalers Association, the Lansing-based trade group that represents state wholesalers. Fabiano Bros. is a beer and wine wholesaler headquartered in mid-Michigan.
An Op-Ed in the Orange County Register about public-sector pension reform in California cites a recent Mackinac Center study that found switching state employees hired after 1997 from a defined-benefit retirement system to a defined-contribution system has saved Michigan taxpayers as much as $4 billion in unfunded liabilities.
Just prior to noon Wednesday, the Indiana Senate passed House Bill 1001 on a 28-22 vote. Gov. Mitch Daniels signed the enrolled bill a few hours later. While the law does not change contracts currently in force, workers in Indiana will no longer have to pay union dues or agency fees as a term of employment when new union contracts are signed.
If there is a challenge in defending the right-to-work concept, it isn't researching or writing, it's boredom. Union officials continue to tell the same stories. After a while the material you have to read through and rebut gets repetitive.
For instance, here's retired AFL-CIO Program Manager John Kreucher in the The Jackson Citizen Patriot:
Jan. 29 through Feb. 5 is Catholic Schools Week 2012. To mark the occasion, you may like to read this 2005 commentary by Andrew J. Coulson, “Catholic Schools and the Common Good.”
