Predictably, as gas prices are escalating due to rising world demand and recent political instability in the Middle East, some politicians in Washington are calling for a release of oil from the nation’s strategic petroleum reserve. According to The New York Times, Sen. Jeff Bingaman, chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has joined others this week in calling for a significant sale of oil from the reserve. The response from some politicians to release oil from the strategic petroleum reserve with the hopes of lowering prices (a questionable outcome) points to the fallacy of making U.S. energy policy based on short-term political considerations rather than a long-term balanced energy policy that is in the best interest of the nation.
Every week, MichiganVotes.org sends a report on interesting votes and bills in the Michigan Legislature, and includes how each legislator voted. To find out who your state senator is and how to contact him or her go here; for state representatives go here.
Gov. Rick Snyder has stated that “Michigan is not Wisconsin,” and that he doesn’t want to pick a fight with unions. Yet when it comes to the costs of school employee benefits, Michigan is eerily similar to Wisconsin, and in both states the root cause is also the same: government employee union collective bargaining privileges.
Yesterday the Michigan House voiced its opposition to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to side-stepping Congress by promulgating rules that regulate greenhouse gas emissions. House Resolution 19 was introduced by Rep. Aric Nesbitt and passed by a 65-44 vote. Resolution 19 asks Congress to ban the EPA from unilaterally imposing greenhouse gas emission regulations, strip the agency's funding for this, and impose a two-year moratorium on new air, water and waste management regulations except for in emergencies.
Economist Thomas Sowell once characterized minimum wage laws as a disconnected third party (the government) preventing those directly affected (a potential employer and employee) from doing what they have both agreed upon.
Legislation has been introduced in Congress to increase the wage below which restaurant servers and other tipped workers are prohibited from working. This sub-minimum wage would rise from $2.13 to $3.75 this year, and to $5.50 by 2013. In Michigan, these workers may not work for less than $2.65 per hour before tips.
Home-based day care providers around Michigan are reacting with joy to the news that the Michigan Department of Human Services will stop illegal “union dues” withdrawals from the subsidy checks the small-business owners receive from the state for watching children of low-income parents.
WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids reports that although a Kent County Circuit Court judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation against 10 school districts over illegal contract language, “Judge James Redford stated in his opinion his ruling is not an approval of the policy” and he is “concerned it was even included in the collective bargaining agreements.”
National and statewide media are reporting on the decision by the Michigan Department of Human Services to stop taking illegal “union dues” out of subsidy checks sent to home-based day care providers on behalf of low-income families.
The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Forbes, The Washington Examiner, The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press all covered the announcement. The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation filed suit against the DHS on behalf of three day care providers in September 2009 to end the practice.
Many school boards around the state are attempting to renegotiate current contracts or negotiate new ones with their local teachers unions to contain costs. Here's a brief recap of some of the new contracts agreed to recently.
Hudsonville
The teachers union has signed on to a new one-year extension of its collective bargaining contract with the district. Salaries will increase across-the-board by 1.25 percent in the next school year, after going up 2.5 percent this year. On top of these pay hikes, individual teachers will also get annual “step” raises averaging 4 to 5 percent. The average salary in the district in 2009 was $59,410.
Governments at all levels have enthusiastically jumped on the green bandwagon. Government intervention done in the name of saving the planet from environmental destruction usually comes in the form of product bans or mandates that place restrictions on the purchase or use of products commonly used by consumers on a daily basis.
In his column for the Detroit Free Press, editor Stephen Henderson expresses frustration from the Michigan film incentive’s lack of success in attracting a permanent presence in the state. He writes:
The credits also need a clear end point. The idea behind the subsidy was to encourage infrastructure to take root here for the industry, so that it could thrive even past the credit’s existence. But how long should we be expected to wait for that to happen?
The Macomb Daily reported last week that the Warren Consolidated School District cut a cumulative $440 million from its budget over the past decade. Here is the relevant passage from the news story:
"[The spokesperson] said the belief by some in the community that schools have done nothing to fight budget deficits is wrong, and that the district has cut $440 million from its budget during the last 10 years. The district is operating on a $169 million budget, and has used $4.5 million from its savings fund to make ends meet, he said."
Jarrett Skorup, research associate for online engagement, writes in an Op-Ed in today’s Grand Rapids Press that building a new light rail system in Detroit would be repeating the mistakes of the People Mover.
The Legislature is set to consider a bill that would repeal Public Act 312 of 1969, which creates a binding arbitration process for labor disputes involving police officers and firefighters. On its surface, binding arbitration seems to be an attractive way to bring unions and employers together and create a contract when the two sides cannot agree on terms, but in practice binding arbitration has failed to resolve labor disputes quickly and fairly.
Every week, MichiganVotes.org sends a report on interesting votes and bills in the Michigan Legislature, and includes how each legislator voted. To find out who your state senator is and how to contact him or her go here; for state representatives go here.
(Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt of a commentary titled “Free Public Radio Is Anything But,” which appeared Feb. 23, 2011, at National Review Online.)
Despite claims that public radio only costs U.S. citizens $1.35 a year, the real-world costs are far higher. I interviewed several public radio station employees recently, and discovered state taxpayers cover far more of the costs it takes to bring “A Prairie Home Companion” and “Car Talk” to listeners.
Paul Kersey, director of labor policy, was invited to testify before the state House Oversight, Reform and Ethics Committee regarding Michigan’s prevailing wage law, according to both MIRS Capitol Capsule and Gongwer News Service.
Prevailing wage dictates that union-scale wages be paid on construction projects involving taxpayer money, regardless of who gets the bid.
It has been difficult to figure out who benefits from carbon trading exchanges designed to cap CO2 emissions in the name of fighting global warming. Most busineses and virtually all consumers will be penalized by higher energy costs, which will result in less economic activity and a further loss of United States jobs. Nor is the evironment a beneficiary of carbon cap-and-trade systems. Even many supporters of carbon trading admit that the environmental benefit of a cap-and-trade system in the United States is almost too small to measure — somewhere in the neighborhood of a projected drop in temperature of a few hundredths of a degree during the rest of this century.
The case involving the forced unionization of some 40,000 home-based day care owners and operators still awaits a decision by the Michigan Supreme Court, according to WWTV-WWUP TV9&10.
The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit against the Michigan Department of Human Services in September 2009 on behalf of three day care owners who are forced to pay union dues out of subsidy checks they receive from the state on behalf of low-income families.
Democratic lawmakers in Wisconsin and now Indiana are refusing to show up and vote on union-related legislation because they are afraid the bills will pass. Their absence prevents their respective legislative bodies from having a quorum and thus being able to conduct business. In various ways they have said their purpose is to protect collective bargaining “rights,” which are actually legal privileges, for public-sector workers.
Benefits for government workers at all levels in Michigan cost every state resident about $580, Jack McHugh, senior legislative analyst, told WILX-TV10 in Lansing.
“Michigan public employees collect fringe benefits that extend what they would be in the private sector by $5.7 billion per year,” McHugh said. “I think if you asked most Michigan residents are you willing to write a check in order to give public employees $580 more than what you get, most would say I don’t think so.”
A new study that claims Michigan receives an economic benefit from its film subsidy program has come under fire, according to statewide media reports.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Center’s Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, told WEYI-TV25 in Saginaw that no study so far on the subsidy program shows a positive economic benefit.
With public employee unions throwing tantrums in Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan over proposed budget cuts, it’s worth remembering that no matter how out of whack they get, government employee compensation levels will never be enough for these unions. This attitude is in the DNA of public-sector unions, and it defines their reason for existing.
The public school establishment is united in decrying as “devastating” Gov. Rick Synder’s call to trim less than 5 percent from school spending, or $300 per pupil from this year’s level. Some pose as being “offended,” and others nod at hysterical claims that “this has the potential to destroy K-12 public education.” While the Chicken Littles will get their headlines and may even frighten a few of their more credulous neighbors, the reality is that schools don’t have to cut a single program or employee if they don’t want to.
Madison, home of the University of Wisconsin and site of the Wisconsin state Legislature, is one of the few cities that can match up with Ann Arbor and Berkeley, Calif., for leftish trendiness. It is often referred to, by both admirers and critics, as “Mad-town.” Seldom has a city’s nickname been quite so appropriate.
