Bloomberg News reports that the firm Evergreen Solar will file for bankruptcy and close its operation in Midland, Mich. The maker of solar cells cites over-capacity in the industry, competition from China and fewer government subsidies as contributing factors. According to Bloomberg, the firm has 133 employees worldwide.
A majority of public school districts in Michigan are privatizing noninstructional services, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Nearly 54 percent of districts statewide now outsource food, custodial or transportation services, up from 31 percent in 2001. Almost 65 percent of districts in southeast Michigan do so, the Free Press reported. Only 48 percent of districts in mid-Michigan do so, according to The Flint Journal. The Journal also reported that 13 of 21 school districts in Genesee County, or 62 percent, contract out for at least one support service.
(Editor's note: This post was originally published Aug. 3, 2010.)
The Michigan Education Association has such a monopolistic stranglehold on unionizing public school teachers that most teachers don't even know that they can resign their union membership and become an "agency fee payer." The MEA has worked hard to limit teachers' rights to do just this, and currently the month of August is the only timeframe the union allows for members to resign.
A new column by Walter Williams in FrontPage Magazine comparing President Barack Obama to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt cites the work of two Mackinac Center scholars.
“Great Myths of the Great Depression,” written by President Emeritus Lawrence W. Reed, and “New Deal or Raw Deal,” written by Burton Folsom Jr., senior follow in economic education, are both used to show the similarities between the Obama administration and FDR’s propensity for creating overspending crises, raising taxes and increasing regulation.
School districts around Michigan are complaining about reductions in state aid, and many are responding by cutting extracurricular programs and rolling back their course offerings.
But at Oxford Community Schools, things look very different. This district is adding new programs, expanding the breadth of its curriculum, and eliminating "pay-to-play" fees for athletics. A large part of their success is their ability to successfully leverage technology and online learning to grow the district and offer students a more individualized, flexible and exciting learning option.
The Independent Women’s Voice organization has published a useful document called Your ObamaCare August Recess Guide - The Knowledge You Need, The Questions to Ask. It asks and provides some answers to these five questions:
The third question, “How will ObamaCare change my health care?” briefly describes how the law will affect your health insurance, your relationship with your doctor and coverage that may or may not be available from your employer. Here are a couple excepts:
An Op-Ed in Sunday’s Detroit Free Press by Patrick Wright, director of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, praises the Michigan Employment Relations Commission for making the correct decision in blocking an attempt to illegally unionize graduate student research assistants at the University of Michigan, but calls on the Legislature to clarify that “private contractors cannot be unionized as public employees even if they receive indirect state subsidies.”
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. Because the legislature did not meet this week, rather than roll call vote results this report presents a sampling of recently proposed state laws.
From MichiganVotes.org:
2011 Senate Bill 570: Allow certain log wall construction
Introduced by Sen. Michael Green, R-Mayville, to explicitly allow residential construction containing log walls if they meet requirements specified in the bill, including minimum average thickness of five inches, comply with “International Code Council standard ICC 400-2007,” and the “area weighted average u-factor for fenestration products in the log walls is a maximum of 0.31.”
New mandates flying out of the offices of the EPA in Washington will have profound impacts on the future vehicles we drive and how much we pay for personal transportation and the cost of transporting goods. First to arrive from the Obama administration was the doubling of the CAFE standard for light trucks and automobiles, followed by the recently announced mandated 15 percent increase in efficiency for large trucks and 18-wheelers.
On the Booth Newspaper conglomerate website, Mlive.com, contributor Jennie Phipps wrote an article recently titled, “How the money flows – how federal spending on water research translates into jobs.”
Ms. Phipps lays out a "pretty clear-cut example" of how government spending creates jobs:
Forbes is reporting that the federal Office of the Actuary in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has published annual projections of national health care spending showing that in 2014, the net cost of health insurance will increase by nearly 14 percent under Obamacare, compared to 3.5 percent without the law. Insurance premiums will rise at a 9.4 percent rate, versus 5 percent without Obamacare, an 88 percent difference.
Senior Economist David Littmann was a guest on “The Frank Beckmann Show” today on WJR 760AM, where he discussed the stock market, the national debt, interest rates and the country’s bond rating. Littmann also briefly discussed his other interest, that of his role as a graphologist, or someone who studies handwriting.
It’s January 2013. A new president is sworn into office and calls upon Congress to enact an emergency repeal of Obamacare. In both the House and Senate there is a strong consensus for repeal, but confusion regarding a replacement.
Although the previous administration’s “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” is widely recognized as a disaster, the status quo in America’s broken health care market is almost equally indefensible. Dozens of new federal health care “reform” schemes are circulating, but neither the public nor lawmakers have any confidence they won’t create more problems than they fix. What to do?
As reported by Michigan Capitol Confidential, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has not decided whether to proceed with creating a state Obamacare insurance "exchange." Meanwhile, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas appears to be closing the door on further state Obamacare implementation, including an exchange, as announced in this press release received in the CapCon newsroom today:
The Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs announced Friday the names of its new 21-member Liquor Control Advisory Rules Committee. The committee was created for “identifying obsolete, unnecessary rules and regulations” according to a media advisory released by the state on Friday.
Former Gov. Jennifer Granholm and her husband Dan Mulhern, in an on line article in Newsweek, lament that America is losing manufacturing jobs to China — especially the so-called clean energy jobs. They are right about the problem. During her eight-year reign as governor, Granholm presided over a state that shed hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs. They are wrong, however, about the solution of targeted tax breaks and more public-private partnerships.
An attempt to unionize graduate student research assistants at the University of Michigan is not legal, according to the Detroit Free Press, MLive.com and AnnArbor.com.
Lansing political newsletters MIRS and Gongwer also covered the decision.
The Michigan Employment Relations Commission unanimously rejected a petition from the Graduate Employees Organization to unionize the students because they are just that — students — and not public employees. The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation had filed a motion in the matter on behalf of Melinda Day, a student who objected to the unionization.
Legislative restrictions are preventing Michigan from being a national leader in online education, a Mackinac Center expert told the Detroit Free Press.
“It’s based on this old model of how learning happened when a kid was sitting in a particular seat,” said Mike Van Beek, director of education policy, about the Legislature’s inability to act quickly on the matter.
A Detroit News editorial today agrees with the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation that graduate student research assistants at the University of Michigan should not be unionized.
The MCLF filed a motion on behalf of Melinda Day, one of those students, who is objecting to the illegal unionization attempts. The Michigan Employment Relations Commission in 1981, after 19 days of hearings and thousands of pages of exhibits, ruled that this exact same group of students were just that — students — and not public employees, therefore making it illegal to unionize them.
MIRS News (subscription required) reported last week that a state senator is trying to raise private money to replace 20-year-old carpeting in the Michigan House and Senate chambers. The report describes bids received three years ago that “came in between $70,000 and $120,000 for the House and between $65,000 and $130,000 for the Senate.”
The question of whether to create a state Obamacare insurance benefit “exchange” is a source of great confusion for state legislators and governors nationwide. Proponents of the exchanges, among them Obamacare's ideological supporters and many of the private businesses hoping to profit from exchange contracts, are adding to the confusion by claiming, “conservatives favor creating an exchange.” They often point to the Heritage Foundation, which helped develop the exchange concept and was involved in the creation of “Romneycare” in Massachusetts, cited by some as the prototype for Obamacare.
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. Because the legislature did not meet this week, rather than roll call vote results this report presents a sampling of recently proposed state laws.
Patrick Wright, director of the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation, was a guest on “The Michael Cohen Show” Wednesday on WILS-AM1320 in Lansing.
Wright discussed the case of Melinda Day, a graduate student research assistant at the University of Michigan who is fighting against illegal unionization. Wright filed a motion with the Michigan Employment Relations Commission on Day’s behalf, detailing that MERC previously ruled such graduate student research assistants are primarily students, not public employees, and therefore cannot be made part of a public-sector union.
The recent announcement by the Obama administration that the CAFE standard for autos and light trucks is being increased to a breathtaking 54.5 mpg has been met with a collective yawn from the motoring public. Why would such a major regulatory change that will drastically alter the types of vehicles that Americans are able to purchase not result in public outcry? Because they do not believe the new standards will actually be implemented.
