Joseph G. Lehman, president of the Mackinac Center, was a guest on Detroit's WDET Public Radio today, where he detailed the creation of the Overton Window and how it is applied to a range of public policy issues, including taxes and school choice.
The concept has drawn national attention and increasing Google popularity since Glenn Beck discussed it on his television program Friday.
Editor's Note for 1-21-2011: Today’s main story on MichCapCon.com is about Gov. Snyder’s call for repeal of Michigan’s item pricing law, which he says is outdated. The item pricing law is an example of a “consumer protection” law that has been aggressively enforced for several decades by all of the politicians who have previously served as Michigan’s Attorney General. This commentary, from 2009, spotlights some other examples.
(Editor's note: This blog entry was originally posted Oct. 28, 2009. It is being reposted after Sen. Alma Wheeler Smith, D-Salem Township, a 2010 gubernatorial candidate, announced her plan to restructure Michigan's taxes, including a graduated income tax topping out at 9.35 percent.)
David Littmann, the Mackinac Center's senior economist, writes in the November/December issue of dbusiness magazine about if, and how, Michigan's economy can recover in 2010. Littmann references two items written by other Center scholars, including Senior Legislative Analyst Jack McHugh's "101 Ideas to Revitalize Michigan," and a commentary by James Hohman, fiscal policy analyst, and Adam Rule, a 2009 summer research intern, that showed Michigan pays about $5.6 billion more per year in benefits for public-sector employees compared to the benefits of private-sector employees.
Editor's Note: This November 2009 article by Mackinac Center President Joseph G. Lehman discusses a reference made at the time to the Overton Window by Fox Broadcasting's Glenn Beck. For the Mackinac Center's new Overton Window Web page, including an interactive tool and answers to common questions about the Window and the Mackinac Center, go to www.mackinac.org/OvertonWindow or click here.
An editorial in Sunday's Grand Rapids Press highlights a 2007 Mackinac Center study on Michigan's prevailing wage law and calls for the act's abolition.
"The Effects of Michigan's Prevailing Wage Law," by Labor Policy Director Paul Kersey, examines the rationale behind the law and points out the millions of dollars it needlessly forces various entities to spend on projects when state money is involved.
Friday's Wall Street Journal has a piece by Eric Felten on a "dark skies" movement seeking to define outdoor lighting as a form of "pollution" and pass laws to boss people around regarding their choices on lighting up their own property. The piece characterizes those promoting such coercion as "trendy types touting natural lifestyles" and notes that, "for municipal busybodies, no cause is complete until it has been imposed on all one's neighbors."
The Michigan Economic Growth Authority is a discriminatory tax credit program sold as a way for Michigan government to "create or retain" jobs here. This week it even offered a special deal to a for-profit arm of the Service Employees International Union. Ironically, the MEGA deal was offered in part to address the union's complaint that it is at a disadvantage due to Michigan's "high labor costs" compared to two other states the SEIU was supposedly considering (one of them with a right-to-work law reviled by the union). This according to a document obtained by Detroit News business writer Daniel Howes ("State tax credit to labor union is baffling," Nov. 20).
Paul Kersey, director of labor policy, was a guest on "The Frank Beckmann Show" today on WJR AM760. Kersey discussed a $2 million refundable tax credit the Michigan Economic Development Corp. awarded to the Service Employees International Union.
Kersey blogged about the issue yesterday, raising several questions that legislators and taxpayers should be asking about this unique deal.
At a press conference Tuesday announcing several new recipients of discriminatory state tax breaks granted by the Michigan Economic Growth Authority, Gov. Jennifer Granholm repeated a number of false or misleading statements about this state government's policy of picking winners and losers, and its effects as a substitute for genuine labor, regulatory and tax law reforms.
Michigan legislators have introduced two bills (HB5558, HB5559) that would increase tipping fees to place trash in landfills. If passed, the current fee of seven cents per cubic yard will rise to $7.50 per ton. The increased fees are estimated to raise $145 million, according to Gongwer News Service. This could not come at a worse time for economically struggling Michigan households. Any increase in tipping fees would of course be passed on to consumers and businesses in the state already in the worst economy in Michigan since the Great Depression. The money raised by fee increases would go to local governments for recycling programs.
Michigan politicians are fond of blaming the domestic auto industry's decline for all the state's problems. But "auto industry" just doesn't mean what it used to here. For example, domestic auto sales have fallen by 49.8 percent since their 1999 peak. Over the same period, however, inflation-adjusted state tax and fee revenues have only declined by 15.9 percent.
While Michigan's school funding "crisis" rages on, the Alabama Board of Education just came up with a plan to balance the state's education budget in one day.
Unlike Michigan, Alabama's state Board has the tools needed to contain the out-of-control labor costs that generate our public school establishment's perpetual and self-imposed funding debacles. Last week, they came up with two ways to balance the state education budget:
A Detroit News editorial cites David Littmann, senior economist for the Center, on what can be done to strengthen the dollar.
Jack McHugh, senior legislative analyst, participated in a panel discussion recently where a representative sampling of Michigan residents addressed issues ranging from education reform to welfare spending, according to the Lansing City Pulse.
The MEDC's decision to extend a $2,000,000 refundable tax credit to the Service Employees International Union is, to put it mildly, very questionable. This is a deal that warrants the strictest of scrutiny from the media and the public. The following are just a few of the questions relating to this grant for which the public deserves answers:
An unusual joint hearing occurring right now of two state House committees on Michigan's film subsidy program brought to mind a letter received last summer from Janet Lockwood, director of the Michigan Film Office. The letter was in response to a Mackinac Center press release describing how the subsidy program may actually destroy jobs.
(Editor's note: The House Tax Committee and House New Economy and Quality of Life Committee will hold a joint session at 9 a.m. today in Room 352 of the State Capitol Building. This text was e-mailed to all members.)
Dear Joint House Committee Members:
At its monthly board meeting today, the Michigan Economic Growth Authority voted to give a state business tax credit worth $2 million over five years to the corporate subsidiary of the Service Employees International Union for an operation that will provide administrative services for the SEIU and other local unions. MEGA is considered the "flagship" of the state's growing empire of "economic development" programs and authorities.
Apparently in terms of federal stimulus money and thousands of new jobs allegedly created, the luckiest place to live in Michigan is in the 48933 zip code. According to the U.S. Postal Service Web site, 48933 is none other than Lansing, our state capital.
"Pirate Radio," in theaters now, is a silly and inconsequential movie that represents a missed opportunity to show the negative impacts of government overreaching into what should be a private enterprise. In this instance, British government bureaucrats stymie a broadcast outlet for rock music in the mid-1960s.
A pattern of sorts is starting to emerge: When one hears numbers of “jobs created or saved” by various government programs, it appears to be more and more likely that such numbers were pulled by someone out of the vicinity of his or her own back pocket. Consider:
My colleagues at Watchdog.org and its state-level affiliates were the first in the nation to break the story that the $787 billion federal stimulus package "has doubled the size of the House of Representatives, according to Recovery.gov, which says that funds were distributed to 440 congressional districts that do not exist."
John Hood at National Review Online yesterday called Michigan the "epicenter of the fiscal earthquake," referring to the overspending crisis created by Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the Legislature.
Hood said there are alternatives to using tax increases and more federal bailout money to solve Michigan's budget problems, and that Michael LaFaive, director of the Center's Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, "has plenty of ideas." Hood also linked to LaFaive's bio, which gives access to every article, commentary and study LaFaive has authored during his time with the Center.
A Detroit Examiner columnist Friday cited Michael Van Beek, the Center's director of education policy, on Michigan's refusal to pursue school reforms that could help the state secure federal funding.
Van Beek detailed the situation here.
A Mackinac Center July Viewpoint was prescient, to say the least.
The piece, written by Oakland County Deputy Executive Robert Daddow, an adjunct scholar with the Center, was titled "A Perfect Storm: Batten Down the Hatches or Drown," and detailed the need for local governments to address falling property values, home foreclosures and property taxes when budgeting for the future.
