The Michigan Department of Education is revising the way it measures school performance, and while reform is sorely needed, the value of state-based school assessments is limited because they only allow comparisons between schools within Michigan’s borders. While this may confirm that the children of well-to-do parents in suburban districts out-score students in inner city schools, it tells us nothing about how these supposed high-flyers compare to the rest of the country or world.
After plans to negotiate $145 million in employee concessions failed, the state government will eliminate more than 300 job openings and require its unionized employees to take furlough days, according to the Department of Technology, Management and Budget. These moves point to a broken system that ensures automatic and unaffordable above-inflation pay increases.
A Michigan Capitol Confidential story forms the basis of an editorial in today’s Detroit News that says school districts should stop using taxpayer dollars to subsidize union activity and instead redirect that money to the classroom.
About 40 districts in Michigan pay teachers who are in union leadership roles at least half of their salary, including 25 that pay full-time. Many other districts allow “release time” for teachers to work on union business on school time.
The Heritage Foundation's health policy blog has posted a summary of a new study on creating an Obamacare insurance “exchange,” prepared for the Ohio Department of Insurance by the independent consulting firm Milliman, Inc. The firm used economic modeling to project the effects of the new federal health care law in Ohio.
An Op-Ed on school reforms by Mike Van Beek, director of education policy, recently appeared in The Holland Sentinel. One of the reforms he highlighted was a suggestion that the state remove the arbitrary cap of 1,000 students who are allowed to take courses through online charter schools.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, is cited in a Wall Street Journal column today that critiques former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s new book and says of her eight years in office that “the roll call of despair is not in dispute.”
Paul Kersey, director of labor policy, was a guest Monday on “To the Point,” an issues-oriented news show produced by KCRW public radio at Santa Monica College in California. The program, heard on public radio stations in major cities from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C.
The promise of green jobs has proven to be political hyperbole and alternative energy is proving unreliable and costly to consumers. So why does the political class remain so doggedly determined to foist these failed policies on the American public? The simple answer is political power. Politicians of both the right and left have been guilty of supporting bad public policy in order to stay in power.
The first of three education reform panels focused on virtual learning and hosted by the Mackinac Center is scheduled for noon today at the Grand Traverse Resort, according to TV7&4 in Traverse City. Other forums are scheduled for Oct. 25 in Grand Rapids and Nov. 16 in Birmingham.
Michael Van Beek, the Center’s director of education policy, wrote an Op-Ed for the Detroit Free Press Sunday that lays out a comprehensive overview of school choice in Michigan and a reform package before the Legislature that would expand parental choice.
An editorial in Sunday’s Detroit News cites a commentary written a decade ago by Mackinac Center President Emeritus Lawrence W. Reed on why Michigan should not pursue an Internet sales tax.
Cato Institute health care policy expert Michael Cannon testified recently before the Missouri Senate’s Interim Committee on Health Insurance Exchanges on why that state should not create an Obamacare exchange. His arguments apply just as much to Michigan, including this excerpt describing how creating an exchange will help entrench Obamacare.
Bruce Edward Walker, former managing editor of the Center’s MichiganScience, writes today at the The Michigan View about a bipartisan collection of legislators wanting to institute an “Amazon tax” that would subject Internet purchases by state residents to the state’s 6 percent sales tax.
As the Michigan Legislature wrestles with Gov. Rick Snyder's call to create the architecture of a state Obamacare health insurance "exchange," Mackinac Center adjunct scholar John Graham observes in The Health Care Blog: "The likelihood of exchanges being up and running by January 2014 is vanishingly close to zero. Indeed, they may not exist at all except in very few states — whether or not President Obama wins re-election."
In The Washington Examiner Wednesday, Mark Flatten reports that in 2009 “unions representing federal workers used almost 3 million hours of official time, the equivalent of more than 1,400 full-time employees, at a cost of $129.1 million,” to conduct union business at taxpayer expense.
Michigan taxpayers also provide huge sums to pay union stewards to do union work on the public’s time. For example, Michigan Capitol Confidential reported that "39 districts combined to pay at least $2.7 million to cover the costs of teachers who work on union business."
From MichiganVotes.org:
Senate Bill 567: Create another subsidy program for particular developers
Republican Arlan Meekhof from West Olive was the lone "no" vote.
A Senate Fiscal Agency summary describes the criteria for the handouts:
-- Increased the density of the area.
-- Promoted mixed-use development and walkable communities.
-- Promoted sustainable development.
Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville, R-Monroe, has placed regulatory reform on the agenda for the fall legislative session. The Senate leader has made a wise decision as Michigan’s oppressive regulatory regime is a significant obstacle to job creation in the state. Excessive environmental bureaucracy is a major problem, but it is not the only barrier to job creation. Employers who wish to expand or locate in Michigan are faced with extensive state and local requirements such as difficulty in obtaining business licenses and complex zoning requirements that they do not face in other states.
Last week, the pro-union Economic Policy Institute released a report on right-to-work by Gordon Lafer, an associate professor at the University of Oregon's Labor Education and Research Center. Dr. Lafer raised a lot of objections, most of which were trivial, to our claim that right-to-work would benefit Michigan's economy.
A subcommittee of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee recently held a hearing on proposed Environmental Protection Agency rules that will likely reduce the nation’s electricity output from coal-fired power plants by 25 percent. Astonishingly, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had not performed an analysis on the implications of the proposed EPA rules on electric reliability, nor do they intend to perform an analysis in the future. There was, however, division among the five commissioners who testified regarding the need to perform an analysis. The three Democratic commissioners, including the chairman, saw no need to do a reliability study, while the two Republican commissioners dissented.
The Detroit Free Press published a response to my essay, “Rethink state’s liquor distribution system,” on Sunday. It reads more like a beer commercial designed to redirect attention away from unnecessarily high beer prices, rather than a scholarly rejoinder to the facts presented in my original essay. There are four major problems with the letter:
The Flint Journal today is reporting on a story Michigan Capitol Confidential carried over the weekend regarding a recall effort against Rep. Paul Scott, R-Grand Blanc, and the involvement by the Michigan Education Association and the Michigan Chamber of Commerce in the matter.
A study from the Beacon Hill Institute in Massachusetts shows that rapidly increasing health insurance costs caused by that state's "Romneycare" system has "discouraged job and employment growth, especially the creation of jobs that offer health benefits." This led to 18,313 fewer jobs created in 2010, compared to what would have happened without the state's health care "reform" law.
Labor Policy Director Paul Kersey is cited in a Sunday Detroit News editorial about a proposal in the Legislature to extend right-to-work protections public school teachers.
Kersey told The News that while he supports what is being called, “right-to-teach,” he would rather see right-to-work granted to all employees.
The bankruptcy of “green jobs” darling Solyndra is in the news because it could potentially cost U.S. taxpayers $535 million due to a federal “stimulus” program loan guarantee. The Silicon Valley solar-panel maker’s failure comes on the heels of another “green” corporate welfare beneficiary also going under, Evergreen Solar (with a factory located in Midland, Mich.). These deals were big losers for Americans.
