On his Facebook page, State Rep. Justin Amash, R-Kentwood, has posted the text of an e-mail sent by MEA school employees union Communications Director Doug Pratt to Rep. Tim Melton, D-Pontiac, chair of the Education Committee:
Put in a graduated income tax...I can afford to pay to have good schools for my kid and others in my community. And put a tax on services...it is ridiculous that I pay a tax on clothes for my son or a night out at a restaurant (pretty normal middle class things) and I don't pay tax on my landscaping bills, my snow removal, my season tickets, my golf rounds, or my dry cleaning (all things that I and any other family in Michigan could do without if we chose). And don't feed me the line that it'll hurt our economy. I was just in Chicago over the weekend and bought a book at a Borders on Michigan Ave that had a 10.25% sales tax on it. That's almost double what we charge here...and I didn't wait until I came home to buy the book...
The term "Detroitification" — which I first coined in 2007 to describe the process by which the private sector is hollowed out to prop up an unsustainable government establishment — has been catching on in various places around the country.
The term generally implicates government employee unions that use their political muscle to keep the loot flowing to members in the form of outsized compensation and benefits, and to bitterly resist reforms like privatization. In the term's namesake city it also refers to patronage and corruption, with members of the local political class funneling boodle to their friends, relatives and key campaign supporters.
Overtime costs for municipal employees can quickly mount and therefore deserve special consideration.
"Overtime is typically an area for abuse," Mike LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, told the Erie (Pa.) Times-News for a story about that city's costs. Although such expenses can be legitimate in some cases, LaFaive said, such as for police officers and firefighters, civil service rules and union protections can provide "ample opportunities" for overtime for municipal employees.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm argues (with some remorse) that during her seven-year tenure, Michigan has cut more from its budget than any other state. The claim is dubious, but another milestone about which she does not boast is verifiable: Since Gov. Granholm's first inauguration in January 2003, Michigan has led the nation in tax increases.
Michigan boasts the longest coastline in the United States, has more than 12,000 inland lakes, hundreds of golf courses, state parks, camping facilities, snowmobile and hiking trails, wonderful towns and cities and a great human capital base. We enjoy four seasons and a temperate climate, and have very few natural disasters: no hurricanes, mudslides, earthquakes, wildfires. Our road system, power grid and access to unlimited supplies of fresh water are superb — all critical elements for business expansion. Our universities compete head to head with other institutions in the United States and attract students from all over the world.
Had Joe Biden's stimulus-boosting, damage-control visit to mid-Michigan this week been made open to the public rather than just a few hand-picked visitors, maybe someone could have asked him why a 4-year-old "taxpayer" received a "first-time homebuyer" tax credit of $8,000.
In presenting her executive budget, Gov. Jennifer Granholm stated, "I have cut more state spending than any governor in Michigan history, having resolved more than $10 billion in deficits since 2003." It's unnecessary to state that one of those budgets was "resolved" with a $1.4 billion tax hike — not exactly cutting more than anyone — but even the $10 billion is an overstatement.
While states are fighting for an ever larger share of the so-called stimulus money, Michigan should be glad it did not receive more than it did for a Detroit-to-Chicago high-speed rail corridor.
Randal O'Toole, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and an adjunct scholar with the Mackinac Center, explains why in this Detroit Free Press Op-Ed. This is the second time O'Toole has written about this issue for the Free Press since August. The first can be read here. You can also read a review of his recent book, "The Best Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future," here.
Recent news reports that the Canadian premier of Newfoundland and Labrador would obtain heart surgery at an American hospital occasioned teeth-grinding by supporters of a government-run health care system like Canada's, and snickers from those opposed to the Congressional plan to impose a system with many of the same features here.
Flags are everywhere at the Olympics, but the games are not about international strife. There, patriotism trumps nationalism, and performance eclipses politics. The Olympics highlight the fact that individuals, not governments, make countries great.
During the games, governments are no longer the faces of their countries. We care more about what a 16-year-old girl is doing on the ice than that the vice president is in the stands. In fact, the only spectators we care about are the very ordinary families of the competitors.
Last week, Gov. Jennifer Granholm introduced the final budget of her tenure. She proposes spending $2.1 billion more than the current year, and requests a $554 million net tax increase for fiscal 2011. The tax hike comes from immediately increasing the tax burden on consumers by expanding the sales tax to services, while gradually implementing a reduction in business taxes.
Today marks one year since President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 into law.
Below is a sampling of what Mackinac Center analysts and scholars have written in the past year about the so-called stimulus bill.
A new study claiming that charter public schools are segregated should be ignored according to comments by Mike Van Beek, the Center's director of education policy, in the Chicago Tribune.
Van Beek easily dissected the flaws in the study. He also writes about charter schools here and here.
Tax breaks, subsidies, credits and other forms of corporate welfare must be addressed in Michigan's fiscal 2011 budget.
The Detroit News editorial today says this issue "has received scant attention from anyone" other than the Mackinac Center.
Here is just a sampling of the work Center analysts have done on this front:
Cutting corporate taxes, not "punitive" actions, are the best way to revive American industry, according to David Littmann, senior economist for the Center.
Littmann told Industry Week magazine that calls from labor for a national industrial policy will result in special interests, not the marketplace, coming out ahead.
"Recently the Mackinac Center using this kind of flawed logic took Governor Granholm to task for saying that Michigan didn't want to become Mississippi. Mississippi is the poorest state in the country, with high poverty rates and low education attainment. The Governor is right. Who wants to be like them? What an awful vision for Michigan: one of the poorest states in the country." Lou Glazer
A few days ago on the Facebook page of one of Michigan's Tea Party leaders (Wendy Day of "Common Sense in Government"), some reader comments were posted revealing confusion regarding the purpose and composition of that movement. I took the opportunity to expand on an answer from the Mackinac Center's "Tea Party Activist Toolbox," as follows:
Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh on Friday spent several minutes talking about the lawsuit filed by the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation against the Michigan Department of Human Services over the forced unionization of tens of thousands of home-based day care providers.
Henry Payne, editorial cartoonist for The Detroit News and contributor to The MC, wrote recently at National Review Online about what he sees as the "green indoctrination" of public school students.
CapCon Daily also examined this issue recently.
Dollar figures touted by Gov. Jennifer Granholm in her State of the State address last week came from a study about the supposed benefits of tourism subsidies that is not yet complete.
Gov. Granholm said that the state gets $2.23 back for every dollar it spends on advertising through the "Pure Michigan" campaign. That information came from a report that won't be finished for another month, according to the Livingston Daily Press & Argus.
A new study by the school employee union-sponsored Great Lakes Center for Educational Research and Practice claims charter schools managed by education management organizations are "strongly racial segregative." However, the report's use of the term "segregation" is misleading, and the overall conclusions add little to the debate over charter schools.
The lead editorial in yesterday's Lansing State Journal called for ending post-retirement health care benefits to state retirees of working age: "It's time for the state to stop subsidizing health benefits for former workers who are still of working age . . . In the private sector at least, the clear trend is that if people under age 65 want subsidized health insurance, they should expect to be full-time employees."
At a time when Michigan taxpayers are suffering a 14 percent unemployment rate, furloughs, and job and benefit cuts, Gov. Jennifer Granholm's proposed fiscal 2011 state budget blueprint calls for a broadening of service taxes and a 3 percent hike in unionized state employee pay on top of maintaining lavish pension benefits compared to the private sector.
Michael LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Center, was a guest on "The Frank Beckmann Show" on WJR AM760 today, discussing Gov. Jennifer Granholm's proposed fiscal 2011 budget. He pointed out several shortcomings in her plan and offered suggestions on what the state should do to reduce costs, lower tax burdens and create a job-friendly atmosphere. You can read more about those items here.
The exodus of young and educated young people from Michigan is one of those “clear, simple and wrong” explanations often cited as a factor in Michigan’s poor economic performance. The reality is that young people are already highly mobile even in a good economy, and that even in Michigan’s ongoing bad times, we're actually doing pretty well in attracting college graduates to the state.
