Burt Folsom, senior fellow in economic education at the Mackinac Center, and his wife Anita have written a new book about President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, according to the Midland Daily News.
The book, "FDR Goes to War: How Expanded Executive Power, Spiraling National Debt and Restricted Civil Liberties Shaped Wartime America," is published by Simon & Schuster.
Note: There will be no roll call report next week. Any noteworthy votes next week will be included in the Feb. 10 roll call report.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
Senate Bill 204, Eliminate county commissioner vacancy special election requirement: Passed 26 to 12 in the Senate
To eliminate a requirement that a special election must be held when a county commissioner vacancy occurs during an odd numbered year. Under current law, special elections already are not required if the vacancy occurs in an even-nubered year (a regular election year, that is).
A recent House Education Committee hearing on repealing an artificial limit on the number of students who can take advantage of online charter public schools featured a full display of the unfounded opposition to allowing parents this choice. The opposition is driven largely by beneficiaries of the public education status quo, and falls into three categories: Fear of competition for school money; lack of trust in parents and potential competitors, and something called the “burden of proof fallacy.”
Labor Policy Director Paul Kersey is cited in today’s Wall Street Journal in an article about the economic prosperity enjoyed by right-to-work states as compared to non-right-to-work states. Kersey found that the economies of right-to-work states between 2001 and 2006 grew an average of 3.4 percent, compared to 2.6 percent for states without such a law, and job growth in right-to-work states grew 1.2 percent, compared to 0.6 percent in non-right-to-work states. For more information about right-to-work laws, please see our resources page.
Legislation been introduced that reportedly would extract more than $1 billion from motorists through a new state fuel tax and a huge increase in the vehicle registration tax. The latter, paid each year on a car owner’s birthday, would increase 67 percent on average according to The Detroit News.
Congressman Dave Camp, R-Midland, told an audience at the Mackinac Center Thursday that 2012 is “critical given the presidential election plus the ongoing effort to grow the still struggling economy,” according to WSGW AM790. Rep. Camp said he favors simplifying individual and business tax codes, including the elimination of most exemptions. He said he believes doing so would create 1 million jobs in the first year.
Graduate student research assistants at the University of Michigan have been denied by the Michigan Court of Appeals a chance to express their opposition to being unionized, according to the Detroit Free Press.
The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, representing the students opposed to the unionization, filed a motion with the CoA earlier this month. The Michigan Employment Relations Commission has assigned the matter to an administrative law judge for a hearing that begins Feb. 1. Only parties that favor unionization will be allowed to testify.
Today marks the 175th anniversary of Michigan’s statehood. To help celebrate, here are some commentaries that give a glimpse into the state’s early days.
Michigan: Privatization Pioneer
Jason Clemens, director of research at the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute and an adjunct scholar with the Mackinac Center, writes in an Op-Ed in Canada’s Financial Post that “heightened uncertainty imposed on the U.S. economy by Washington is a killer for investment …”
INDIANAPOLIS — Mackinac Center Senior Investigative Analyst Anne Schieber reports that the Indiana House passed House Bill 1001 today by a 54-44 margin. The legislation would make it illegal to force a worker to pay union dues or fees as a condition of employment.
This week is National School Choice Week and to celebrate, LearnLiberty.org has released a video exploring the benefits of giving students and parents more options. Dr. Angela Dills, of Providence College, gives four research-based reasons why school choice should be expanded.
Mackinac Center President Emeritus Lawrence W. Reed is the subject of an in-depth interview at The Daily Bell, the online journal of The Foundation for the Advancement of Free-Market Thinking.
Reed in the interview discusses what drew him to the freedom movement, his time with the The Mackinac Center and the goals he hopes to accomplish as president of the Foundation for Economic Education.
According to The Detroit News, former Gov. Jennifer Granholm made a deal with a group of wealthy and politically connected individuals in Oakland County to use state pension funds to guarantee $18 million they borrowed to set up a film studio in Pontiac, essentially making the pension fund the “co-signer” on the loan.
Late last night on a 5-4 vote, Bay City commissioners chose to repeal that city’s prevailing wage ordinance, something no city in Michigan may have ever done, to our knowledge. A prevailing wage law mandates union scale wages on government funded construction projects, regardless of who wins the bid.
This week marks National School Choice Week, a grassroots effort to spread the message about the importance of educational freedom. More than 260 organizations around the country have signed on, and these groups are working with local partners to host about 400 events, including several in Michigan. The week officially kicked off yesterday with a huge event in New Orleans.
Mackinac Center experts were featured in two of the state's largest newspapers Sunday with Op-Eds on two crucial policy issues at the forefront of today's debate.
Michael D. LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, wrote in the Detroit Free Press about why Michigan should pass a right-to-work law in order to remain competitive.
A Christian Science Monitor story today about how the right-to-work issue is playing out on a national scale cites this recent commentary, “What a Right-to-Work Law Will Mean for Indiana,” by Labor Policy Director Paul Kersey.
Senior Economist David Littmann was the keynote speaker at the Troy Chamber of Commerce’s annual breakfast Thursday, according to the Troy Patch.
“We’ve at least bottomed out and have a chance to be on a growth path,” Littmann said in his economic forecast. “We still have an economy that’s super vulnerable to internal and external shocks, and it’s true that a national election year like 2012 traditionally witnesses literally maniacal efforts at fiscal and monetary policy stimulation.”
This legislative week was dominated by the Governor's State of the State address, with mostly pro-forma sessions surrounding it. A few comparatively minor bills were passed on Thursday.
Y = Yes, N = No, X = Not Voting
Senate Bill 778, Restrict ad hoc road-end “marinas”: Passed 30 to 6 in the Senate
To establish that unless a deed, easement, or other recorded dedication expressly provides for it, a waterfront road end may not be used for boat hoists or docks; for mooring between midnight and sunrise; or for any activity that obstructs access to a lake or stream. Local governments could ban or regulate uses that are not specified in property owners’ deeds, easements, etc.
The AFL-CIO is starting a new public relations campaign and the first ad is, well, interesting. The theme is work as a common experience and as a form of giving to the community. As a statement of the dignity of working men and women, it's not bad. If you can overlook the source it's even moving. That's easier than you would think for an ad put out by the AFL-CIO, because it doesn't say anything about unions. Hardly even hints at them. Which is odd.
A Pontiac movie studio hoping to cash in on Michigan’s film subsidy program will fail to make its February bond payment, according to the Detroit Free Press. The Michigan State Employees Retirement System, which guaranteed the $18 million worth of bonds, will have to make the $630,000 payment.
Cities and school districts where emergency managers have been appointed brought that situation upon themselves, a Mackinac Center analyst told WEYI-TV25 in Saginaw.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, said “The painful truth is cities with emergency managers today would not have them if they had not fouled their own financial nests.”
Michael LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, is cited in a story today at Bloomberg Businessweek about the long-term, nationwide failure of corporate welfare incentives. LaFaive said such programs have been around since the mid-1930s, when Mississippi created a program called “Balance Agriculture with Industry.”
Mackinac Center President Joseph G. Lehman is cited in a column previewing tonight’s State of the State address at The Michigan View.
Lehman called Gov. Rick Snyder’s first term in office the “best year for reform since Gov. Engler’s first term.”
The column, by Henry Payne of The Detroit News, draws a comparison between Gov. Snyder and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, noting that the former praised the latter as a role model when introducing him at “An Evening with the Mackinac Center” in Lansing last November.
A letter to the editor in The Muskegon Chronicle about taverns losing business due to the workplace smoking ban contains an editor’s note that cites a November 2011 Capitol Confidential story outlining drops in sales that liquor license holders reported to the Michigan Liquor Control Commission in the wake of the ban.
