Michigan appears on a new list of anti-free speech states compiled by a prominent George Washington University law professor.
Johnathan Turley’s end-of-the-year list of “anti-free speech states,” includes states that signed an amicus brief supporting the Biden administration’s position in Missouri v. Biden, a case currently before the Supreme Court. The administration is defending its past actions to combat "harmful content" and "misleading information” on the internet, much of which relates to policies on COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccination mandates. Michigan made Turley’s “definitive list” by being one of those states.
An anonymous donor decided in 2005 to pay for college for everyone who graduated from Kalamazoo Public Schools, and Michigan lawmakers wanted to try to encourage more of that kind of generosity. They created Promise Zone Authorities back in 2008 to tap into local property tax revenue as a way of luring donors to give more for scholarship programs.
State and national teachers unions continued to lose members in 2023. The drop comes despite an increase in the number of public school employees in Michigan.
The NEA is down to 2.45 million active members in 2023. That’s a loss of more than 12,000 since 2022. The union has lost nearly 215,000 members since 2018, which is the year of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Janus v. AFSCME. That decision found that every public employee across the country has the right to opt out of a labor union. Overall, that’s a membership loss of 8.1%.
The new report from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Growing Michigan Together Council offers up old ideas and asserts that they will be effective at reversing Michigan’s population decline. The report’s authors offer little evidence that these recommendations will succeed and ignore the mountain of evidence to the contrary.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer recently signed legislation mandating Michigan utilities use 100% alternative energy sources by 2040. This package of laws allocates billions of taxpayer dollars to various subsidies to accomplish the goal of eliminating traditional energy sources.
By Molly Macek
Student achievement continues to decline despite record spending on K-12 education. Yet the Growing Michigan Together Council believes Michigan officials can improve results — and increase the state’s population — by spending even more on public schools.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Growing Michigan Together Council released its final report last week with recommendations purportedly designed to help grow Michigan’s population. One thing the report doesn’t mention is how the governor’s pro-union actions this year make Michigan a less welcoming place for people who might consider moving in, as well as a harder place for people who already live here.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s council on population growth just published its official report. I don’t recommend it for reading. It was stitched together by a 27-member committee representing interest groups, bureaucrats and politicians who were informed by other interest groups, bureaucrats and consultants. The resulting groupthink seems to have squeezed out all creative or useful ideas.
The growing environmental costs of the forced transition to electric vehicles are becoming clear. Unfortunately, these costs are only the tip of the iceberg. The human costs of reworking global transportation options are proving to be much more worrisome.
After working on fiscal policy issues in a number of other states, Iowans for Tax Relief Foundation Research Director Sarah Curry was surprised to find that nobody in the Hawkeye State compiled a list of all the debts and taxes voters were being asked to approve. So, she set about to change that. I speak with her about that effort, and her drive to deliver more information to voters, for the Overton Window podcast.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s Growing Michigan Together Council released a final report on ways the state could increase the state’s population Thursday. The report of the council’s findings mentions “funding” 54 times. It’s a good bet that means higher taxes to fund government solutions the council thinks are necessary.
By Molly Macek
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and some lawmakers are targeting homeschoolers in response to recent reports of abuse in a foster care home. They seem to want homeschooling families to register with the government, but it is unclear how such a requirement would prevent child abuse.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is concerned about the size of Michigan’s population and has created a council to study the issue and generate policy recommendations. She’s not the first governor to worry, though. Fifty years ago, Gov. William Milliken wanted to create a similar commission. Back then, though, the problem wasn’t too few people, but too many. Today’s policymakers could learn from this previous episode of population anxiety.
A draft of the state population growth council’s recommendations report contains little that has a demonstrated effect of increasing state population. Lawmakers should look instead to the latest review of the economic research performed by Mackinac Center scholar Hannah Kling.
Michigan seems to be ending 2023 the way it began, with surprise news about Ford Motor Company’s $1.7 billion, taxpayer-subsidized deal to build an electric vehicle battery plant in Marshall. In February, the head of a local development authority predicted the plant would directly employ 2,500 people. In late November, Ford announced a scaled-down version that would employ just 1,700. That’s a 32% reduction – just in the number of promised jobs, not even jobs that may ultimately exist.
Electric vehicles are marketed as having negligible impacts on the planet when compared to standard cars. However, electric vehicles have significant environmental drawbacks. They are proving to have at least as much environmental impact as conventional vehicles due to the demands of power supply, manufacturing processes, materials extraction, and waste disposal.
By Molly Macek
Families across the country are gaining access to more education options, thanks to new laws that allow tax dollars to follow students to the school of their choice. But not in Michigan, where families are limited in their schooling options due to a discriminatory amendment in the state’s constitution.
It took three-and-a-half years and $96.4 million ($1.1 billion today) to build the Mackinac Bridge in the 1950s. It’s been five years since the $500 million plan to build the Great Lakes Tunnel was first approved, and we’re still waiting for ground to be broken.
Government overreach is threatening consumer choice in automobile markets. Through a mix of mandates and subsidies, state and federal governments are forcing electric vehicles into the market. At the same time, intrusive regulations are making it increasingly expensive to continue manufacturing vehicles with internal combustion engines.
By Jason Hayes
The people of Michigan have one energy win they can look to as they go into the weekend.
This week has been a difficult one for Michigan residents as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed her extreme net-zero energy bills into law, leaving Michiganders with the dual specter of spiking electricity prices and impending electric grid instability.
New Mexico is moving to ban the sale of gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035, and not because the state passed a law to do so. The ban will happen because an unelected board issued a new rule. Rio Grande Foundation President Paul Gessing has been trying to get the board to reject that proposal, and he speaks about his efforts on the Overton Window podcast.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer gave Ford $210 million in taxpayer money for its battery plant in Marshall, plus other giveaways and tax abatements. The company later said it will be building a smaller plant that will employ 1,700 people instead of the 2,500 originally announced. Taxpayers are still going to be making payments to the company regardless of how many people it employs.
Senate Bill 648 was introduced November 9 with little fanfare, but it deserves a lot of attention for the size and scope of the revenue grabs and unintended consequences it will cause. The proposal would raise excise taxes on cigarettes by 75% (from $2.00 per pack to $3.50), increase the tax on other tobacco products from 32% to 57% of the respective wholesale price and impose a new tax on electronic smoking products. The cigarette tax hike alone may swipe an additional $381 million from consumers, after accounting for the expected increase in cigarette smuggling.
State licensing laws require a person to perform hundreds of hours of training, pay fees and pass a test just to cut, style, wash, braid or do other services with hair in Michigan.
Barbers need 1,800 hours of training, while cosmetologists need 1,500. (State lawmakers apparently value men’s hair more than women’s.) The total number of hours needed to cut hair legally in Michigan is more than the total educational hours required for lawyers.
In June 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME that all workers employed by a government entity, no matter their location in the U.S., have right-to-work protections. As a result, these workers cannot be forced to financially support a labor union in order to hold a government job. This decision had a significant effect on unions, costing them at least hundreds of thousands of members and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.
