Last week, former SEIU President Andy Stern revealed his preference for dictatorial governance in an article he wrote for The Wall Street Journal. Stern was once considered an innovative leader in the union firmament, which likes to portray itself as the model of democracy in action. For such an influential union advocate to embrace the Chinese methods of economic central planning and government is extremely revealing, and troubling to those who wish to maintain a free society in the United States.
America’s health care system is a dysfunctional mess for a fundamental reason: There is no real market in health care. It was wrecked by a combination of incentive-skewing federal tax policies, innovation-killing “fee for service” payment systems in the two federal programs that pay for practically half of all health care consumed (Medicare and Medicaid), restrictive state policies that create limited cartels of health care professionals and facilities (reducing supply and so increasing price), and more.
"As you know, every decision that impacts public school employees is made by an elected or appointed official. Because of this, it is very important that the members in your local association get involved and stay involved in the political process."
From the Michigan Education Association union pamphlet, “PAC Attack: Everything you need to know to create a PAC-tive local association!” This is part of a union “Building Full Capacity Locals” campaign.
Fiscal Policy Director Mike LaFaive is cited in a CBS News story about the city of Detroit’s financial struggles. The report also cites a Detroit-specific issue of Michigan Privatization Report that contained several recommendations that could have helped the city.
A Detroit News editorial agrees with the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation that graduate student research assistants at the University of Michigan should not be forced into a union and that the Michigan Employment Relations Commission should stick to its 1981 decision that the graduate students are not employees and therefore ineligible to be unionized.
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.
House Bill 4163, Require school bullying policies: Passed 35 to 2 in the Senate
To require schools to adopt a policy prohibiting harassment, intimidation, or bullying, but not one enumerating specific characteristics, including gender, race and sexual orientation. The bill does not include an exemption previously added by the Senate to its own bullying bill, Senate Bill 137, for "a statement of a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction." That bill will be allowed to die in the House.
In charter schools policy debates like the ones this week in the state House Education Committee, a fundamental distinction between charter public schools and district-run schools often gets lost: Every child in every charter school is there only because parents made a conscientious decision to send him or her there.
Gov. Rick Snyder has issued his first veto, rejecting a bill that would have placed limits on the ability of state employees to write rules more stringent than federal requirements without the approval of the Legislature.
His rejection of the legislation puts him at odds with legislators of his own party who have been working diligently to lessen the burdensome red tape regularly churned out by state regulators. In vetoing House Bill 4326, the governor has sided with bureaucrats over businesses and solidified Michigan’s anti-business reputation with companies that have operations in states where similar legislation is already state law.
Russ Harding, senior environmental policy analyst, is cited at AnnArbor.com today in a story about electric car battery maker A123 announcing layoffs of more than 100 workers. The company has received hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the form of subsidies and tax credits.
Two important developments at the NLRB, one probably good, one probably bad. Let’s get the bad news over with: yesterday the labor board voted to proceed with its regulations to speed up union certification elections. These are votes held at workplaces to determine if a union will represent workers. Unions would prefer to have these elections as quickly as possible, to limit the time that employers have to make the case against unionizing. Currently there is about one month between a request for an election and an actual vote. The NLRB’s new rules could potentially cut that in half. We had originally reported that a final vote on the rules would have taken place yesterday. That vote did not take place, but NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce did indicate they would approve the new rules later on. The board's lone dissenter, Brian Hayes, could conceivably derail the "ambush election" rules by resigning, which would deny the board a quorum, but apparently Hayes is reluctant to take this step, so the new election rules have been delayed a bit but will most likely be approved by the end of the year.
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has filed a motion to intervene in a Michigan Employment Relations Commission case regarding a scheme to unionize graduate students at the University of Michigan, according to the Detroit Free Press.
The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation has been involved in the case since July and today welcomed the Attorney General’s entry into the case.
A Detroit Free Press editorial opposing legislation that would remove arbitrary caps on the number of charter public schools contains a series of misleading, inaccurate and intemperate statements. The newspaper’s opening argument exemplifies the latter: “[T]he experiment [the Legislature] is trying to inflict on children and their parents is ill-conceived and dangerous.”
Environmental ideology disguised in the form of government energy policy may accomplish what our enemies cannot – weaken America. Arguably a greater threat to our national security than terrorist attacks is the war on energy that has been declared by our own government, and it’s being fought on several fronts:
An Op-Ed by two Mackinac Center experts in today’s Detroit News outline the regulatory reforms Michigan should take to make the state’s alcohol distribution system less monopolistic and more favorable to consumers.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, and Todd Nesbit, an adjunct scholar with the Center and an assistant professor of economics at the College of Charleston, explain how state laws and regulations increase the price of alcohol and limit competition.
The center-left Brookings Institution released a report today called the "Education Choice and Competition Index," which attempts to measure how open to parental choice the nation’s 25 largest school districts are. New York City came out on top based on the scoring rubric.
An editorial in the Livingston Daily Press & Argus credits the Mackinac Center for helping to stop a diversion of $10 million of taxpayer funds for a movie studio in Grand Rapids as part of Michigan’s film subsidy program.
Lou Schimmel, an adjunct scholar with the Center and its former director of municipal finance, is featured in Slate regarding his new role as emergency manager for the city of Pontiac.
My colleague Jack McHugh might have wound up oversimplifying things a bit last June when he wrote to a lawmaker that the Mackinac Center’s goal is to “outlaw government collective bargaining in Michigan, which in practical terms means no more MEA.”
Nuances sometimes get lost in quick emails. There are things short of a flat prohibition on government collective bargaining that would improve things for taxpayers in Michigan, and the MEA would probably survive in every scenario we envision. But there’s no secret agenda being revealed here.
The political class in Lansing has a propensity to spend every dime they have access to as well as raiding dedicated funds. The latest effort to tap into state trust funds for the purpose of economic development is House Bill 5168. This bill would allow the Legislature to appropriate up to 5 percent of the Michigan Natural Resource Trust Fund, State Parks Endowment Fund or the Michigan Game and Fish Protection Fund for economic development subsidies that financial institutions have deemed too risky to loan money.
By many indications, the state of Michigan’s policy landscape has improved in the last year and Gov. Rick Snyder and the Legislature deserve considerable credit for changing many policies for the better.
What changes, for better or worse, will occur in 2012? We’ll find out soon when the governor presents his State of the State speech — which may occur as early as January. The governor’s speechwriters are no doubt already working on early drafts of the speech. We can’t be sure what big policy initiatives the governor might offer up, but we do hope they include more limitations than expansions of government influence in our lives.
Mackinac Center analysts discussed education and labor issues in both Detroit newspapers over the weekend.
Michael Van Beek, director of education policy, wrote in Detroit Free Press Op-Ed why Michigan needs to embrace online learning.
Paul Kersey, director of labor policy, was cited in a Detroit News editorial regarding a new state law that requires government employees to pay a fair share of their own benefit costs.
I’ve been shopping at Meijer most of my life — in Flint, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and now Midland. As a student at Eastern Michigan University, a group of friends and I would occasionally go to Meijer Thrifty Acres — we called it Meijer Fifty Acres — at midnight or 1 a.m. to stock up on Ramen noodles, Lucky Charms, Doritos, Mt. Dew, some socks, a taillight for the raggedy Chevette and a tropical fish for the aquarium. They indeed had everything you needed under one roof.
Analysis by two Mackinac Center experts was featured on the editorial page of The Oakland Press today.
An Op-Ed by Paul Kersey, director of labor policy, and James Hohman, assistant director of fiscal policy, questions the need for public-sector unions. Part of this Viewpoint, by Kersey, was also featured.
The National Labor Relations Board is determined to pass new election rules that will cut the time before a vote on union representation is held down to a matter of a couple of weeks. In their rush to put the new rules into effect, the board is cutting procedural corners and quite possibly violating the law.
Mark Schauer, a former Democratic congressman from Michigan and now co-chair of the BlueGreen Alliance, is urging Gov. Rick Snyder to veto House Bill 4326, making it the governor’s first veto. As reported by MIRS news service, Schauer claims that HB 4326, which prohibits state agencies from promulgating regulations more stringent than federal requirements without legislative approval, is a potential threat to the Great Lakes.
