It’s a commonly accepted belief that public school teachers are underpaid. Last month in a visit to Ann Arbor, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan even called for schools to figure out how to double teacher salaries in order to attract and keep top-tier talent. But a report issued last week by the Heritage Center for Data Analysis questions the conventional wisdom and finds that, instead of being underpaid, people entering the teaching profession actually make one and a half times what they would have in other lines of work.
A group of graduate students at the University of Michigan object to an attempt to force them into a union, according to the Detroit Free Press.
The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation filed a motion on behalf of the 370 students, who point out that they are not employees of the university and thus not subject to unionization. The Michigan Employment Relations Commission in August upheld its 1981 decision on this exact same issue and rejected a petition by the Graduate Employees Organization to unionize graduate student research assistants at U-M.
Thousands of demonstrators marched around the White House this past weekend in opposition to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project, which would bring oil from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, to Texan refineries. This is ironic. Environmental groups frequently enlist conservative support for alternative energy by claiming that imported oil from the Middle East is a national security concern, but the demonstrators’ attempt to convince President Obama to deny the necessary permits for this pipeline punctures any illusions that the environmental movement’s infatuation with alternative energy is motivated by a concern about national security.
By Jack McHugh
In addition to the lawsuit against Obamacare filed by Michigan and 25 other states, a separate case has been filed by The Goldwater Institute Center for Constitutional Law. Diane Cohen, a senior attorney at the Goldwater Institute, recently told legislators at an American Legislative Exchange Council meeting, "Saying 'no' to a state exchange is absolutely critical to the success of our lawsuit and those pending elsewhere around the country."
The typical unionized government employee pays more than $450 dollars annually in membership dues or agency fees. With that kind of money available, one would think that unions could afford to pay their own staff for the time that they spend on union business. But for some reason, they don’t. Instead, local taxpayers provide many local union officials with paid “release time” or “official time” for union activities. This is a misuse of taxpayer dollars that should be brought to an end.
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.
Senate Bill 569, Authorize cash film producer subsidies: Passed 34 to 4 in the Senate
To convert the state film incentive program into straightforward handouts, rather than indirect ones, with payments to film producers of up 32 percent of their Michigan payroll expense, plus some additional subsidies. Reportedly the bill’s sponsor wants to increase the subsidies from $25 million already appropriated in 2012 to $100 million annually.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress is considered by many experts as “the nation’s report card,” and its latest results released yesterday offer little to celebrate in Michigan. Specifically, average scores here ranked 36th nationally in fourth grade reading, 42nd in fourth grade math, 28th in eighth grade reading and 36th in eighth grade math.
“No matter your thoughts about the Occupy Wall Street movement, the protesters are right in at least one respect: The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer.”
Variations on this statement have been repeated in dozens of blogs, commentaries and even news reports over the past several weeks. The claim comes via a Congressional Budget Office analysis showing that incomes for the top 1 percent of Americans grew by 275 percent between 1979 and 2007, while the lowest 20 percent saw their inflation-adjusted incomes grow by “only” 18 percent.
The Flint Journal today reports on an exclusive story in Michigan Capitol Confidential about the propensity of conventional media to report on teacher layoffs each spring, but then fail to report at the beginning of the school year how few, if any, teachers actually remain laid off.
It is a serious miscalculation for any governor, Republican or Democrat, to believe they can institute major change in the direction of a state agency by applying sound management principles. No matter how well tuned the governor’s management skills are, or those of the people he appoints, the deck is stacked against them. Executives with a successful private-sector track record often believe they can get the same positive results in government by applying the same management techniques that have served them well in the past.
Analysis by Mark Perry, chairman of the economics department at the University of Michigan-Flint and a member of the Mackinac Center’s board of scholars, is highlighted in a recent Washington Examiner editorial.
Perry analyzed data from the Federal Reserve and found that 56 percent of those in 2001 who were among the lowest income earners had moved up to a higher quintile by 2007, while 66 percent of those among the highest earners had dropped at least one quintile during the same time frame.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Labor loosened union financial disclosure rules, making it easier for union officials to hide questionable practices. The DOL during the George W. Bush administration had improved reports called for under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, but is now backtracking from these standards.
Articles written by Mackinac Center experts in the last few weeks have been picked up by four nationally known and highly read blogs and news aggregators.
A Michigan Capitol Confidential story by Tom Gantert that detailed gym teachers in certain Michigan school districts making more money than science teachers was picked up by Instapundit.com, Fox Nation and the Heritage Foundation’s The Foundry.
Gov. Rick Snyder yesterday in a speech at the Michigan Rail Summit proposed a vision for making Detroit the hub for a rail system serving North America as reported by the MIRS Capitol Capsule (subscription required). He envisions a rail freight and passenger system that would connect Montreal to Detroit to Chicago to St. Louis.
(Permission to rebroadcast in whole or in part is hereby granted. A courtesy super or CG crediting the Mackinac Center would be appreciated.)
In his special address on education in April, Gov. Rick Snyder called for a new learning model for Michigan schools in which students could learn "any time, any place, any way, any pace." In a study published last year, the Mackinac Center detailed Michigan programs that have embraced this model through online learning and digital technology. More recently, we've hosted public forums on the topic, and heard from school teachers and administrators as they share how they are accomodating the range of student needs with digital learning tools.
A particularly innovative learning program in Michigan is the Widening Advancement for Youths Program, or WAY. WAY is operating in more than 100 school districts in Michigan and is reengaging students that dropped out of school, lost interest, or just didn't fit in the frequent one-size-fits-all, standardized brick-and-mortar classroom. Glen Taylor, one of WAY's founders, will be speaking at our upcoming online learning forum on November 16 in Birmingham.
WEYI-TV25 in Saginaw reported Monday night, based on a story that first appeared in Michigan Capitol Confidential, that Grand Blanc Community Schools has added nine teachers for the 2011-2012 school year. Grand Blanc is home to Rep. Paul Scott, the Republican chairman of the House Education Committee who faces a recall election on Nov. 8.
As described here last week, the latest tack of Republican Obamacare “exchange” proponents is to characterize their “MIHealth Marketplace” as a positive good rather than a least-bad option among several bad choices. They are even using labels like “conservative” and “free-market” to describe the entity whose main role will be to administer the billions of dollars of insurance subsidies the federal Patient Protection Act distributes.
Senior Environmental Policy Analyst Russ Harding in the Detroit Free Press and Senior Legislative Analyst Jack McHugh in The Holland Sentinel this weekend both take on the failure of corporate welfare and central planning, explaining that such subsidies have failed to create jobs and negatively impact the economy.
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.
Senate Bill 619, Passed restrictions on public "cyber schools:" Passed 20 to 18 in the Senate
To eliminate a cap of two on the number of online public “cyber schools,” and also eliminate a cap of 1,000 on the total number of students that can be enrolled in all state cyber schools. Reportedly, there is now a waiting list of 4,500 students who want to get in but are not allowed. The bill would also reduce restrictions on entities contracted to run a cyber school, repeal a mandate that every cyber school operate all grades from K to 12, and more. Republican Senators Casperson, Kahn, Nofs, Caswell and Rocca joined all Democrats in voting "no."
Last week, Vice President Joe Biden tried to use the crime situation in Flint to bolster the case for something that the Obama administration insists upon calling a jobs bill. In the process, the VP mangled sex crime statistics and generally came off very much like the understandably agitated young man in the "Bed Intruder" video that went viral last year, singing, “Hide your kids, hide your wife.” Vice President Biden and the administration, however, have no such excuse for their histrionics over crime and their blithe disregard for economic realities in Flint.
According to a report in the Midland Daily News, the now defunct Evergreen Solar plant in Midland is set to go on the bankruptcy auction block. Scott Walker, a local economic development official, told the Daily News that he hopes the facility can be put to use again in a new way.
Paul Kersey, director of labor policy, was a guest on WMKT AM1270 this morning, where he discussed a legislative proposal known as “right-to-work for teachers,” as well as the economic benefits of right-to-work laws.
This week, I listened to a Republican state senator try to convince a Tea Party audience that the Obamacare “exchange” legislation Gov. Rick Snyder has recommended is really a positive good and a “conservative” idea. The presentation didn't seem very coherent, and neither does a set of talking points currently being circulated by GOP exchange proponents. These are chock-full of buzzwords like “conservative” and “free market,” along with claims that the exchange will “lower costs” and “ensure choice, fiscal prudence and competition.”
The Legislature is currently debating a package of bills (Senate Bills 566 to 568) that would expand the discretion of political appointees on the board of the Michigan Strategic Fund to hand out cash subsidies up to $10 million to particular companies they select. While lawmakers are quibbling over deck-chair details, these pickers of winners-and-losers would have extremely broad latitude to give the dough to almost anyone they want.
By Jack McHugh
The Boston Herald reports that in 2009, between 46,000 and 49,000 Massachusetts residents were fined under that state's Romneycare law for not having health insurance, or for having a policy that did not include all the mandated coverages imposed by that law. The federal Obamacare care law is modeled on Romneycare, including its “individual mandate" that every person must have or purchase a health insurance policy meeting its requirements.
