Gov. Rick Snyder was a guest this morning on “The Frank Beckmann Show” on WJR AM760, where he discussed his role in introducing Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels at “An Evening with the Mackinac Center” held Monday night at the Lansing Center. Gov. Daniels talked about his time in office and the steps he took to reinvigorate Indiana’s business climate, several ideas of which Gov. Snyder said he hopes to adopt in Michigan.
The Detroit Free Press is reporting that the United Auto workers is laying off 58 members of its staff. The Office and Professional Employees International Union, which represents UAW staff, is crying foul.
If collective bargaining really were the great deal for workers that its union propenents claim it to be, then layoffs would be rare and concessions would be mild when they came up at all. But collective bargaining is not magic fairy dust that makes hard economic decisions go away. As the Freep article itself notes, the UAW has lost nearly 75 percent of the membership it had from its peak in 1979, and it was just a couple of years ago that two out of the Big Three were in bankruptcy.
Lou Glazer of Michigan Future remains committed to his trope in Dome Magazine, arguing that Michigan needs to focus more on higher education. But making Michigan a mecca for talent will have little effect on the state economy if the evidence from the rest of the country is any indication.
Michigan's K-12 public school establishment is (once again) up in arms over "controversial" legislation to remove a minor restriction on private and home-school students who take advantage of existing “dual enrollment” programs to take a course at state colleges and universities. The Detroit Free Press reports: "Many in the K-12 community have raised concerns, primarily about the appropriateness of using public money for nonpublic students."
“If all the economists were laid end to end, they'd never reach a conclusion.”
— George Bernard Shaw
Shaw’s quip is a good summary of how most people look at economists and the economics field in general. But while professional economists often do disagree with one another, on some matters there are surprising levels of agreement. In one of the largest surveys of economists, Harvard professor Dr. N. Gregory Mankiw identified the areas economists agree on most. These are listed below with the percent of those surveyed who agree; links are to relevant Mackinac Center articles.
The federal government must rein in spending in order to help fix the economy, David Littmann, senior economist for the Mackinac Center, told a west Michigan group today, according to The Jackson Citizen Patriot.
“Spending needs to be rolled back,” Littmann said. “In 2012,w e have to separate the rhetoric from the reality.”
The Michigan Legislature is primed to expand the state’s film incentive program, which has only been authorized to spend $25 million this year instead of the more than $100 million it had been spending. The idea of rewriting the law was to allow the film office flexibility to use these funds to get the best bang for the buck. While these programs are ultimately a harmful waste of taxpayer money, the current legislation strips the ability of the state to be flexible. Without this, legislators will be tempted to spend beyond their limits in pursuing their Hollywood dreams.
Digital learning in K-12 schools is growing at an impressive rate as more parents, teachers and schools are understanding the benefits of (in the words of Gov. Rick Snyder) "any time, any place, any way, any pace" learning models. The Mackinac Center released a report earlier this year on the topic and has been hosting public forums all around the state to help educate the public on the powerful potential of individually customized learning.
Paul Kersey, director of labor policy, wrote in a Detroit Free Press Op-Ed Sunday that labor law needs a comprehensive overhaul to remove politics from the mix and provide “clear, permanent standards that empower workers” and make the process “less subject to the whims of whichever party happens to occupy the executive branch.”
The plight of a mother and father from Michigan who receive state aid to take care of their disabled adult daughter and son and are forced to pay dues to the SEIU under an illegal unionization scheme was detailed on Fox Business today. The story was broken by Michigan Capital Confidential Nov. 9.
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.
Senate Bill 693, Create state "Obamacare exchange:" Passed 25 to 12 in the Senate
To create as a state entity the "exchange" mandated by the federal "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act," the primary purpose of which will be to administer the insurance subsidies provided by that law to households up to 400 percent of poverty level (around $80,000 for a family of four in Michigan). Called the "MIHealth Marketplace," this non-profit agency would create a website on which individuals can select an insurance policy that complies with PPACA mandates, and have eligibility determined for the law's subsidies.
The Obama administration decided the federal government should be in the Christmas tree business as reported on The Foundry.org. Every fresh Christmas tree in the nation would be taxed 15 cents in order to fund a Christmas Tree Promotion Board.
Federal officials claim that the charge is not a tax and would not yield revenue to the federal government. Regardless of the validity of the nontax claim, the image of the Christmas tree does not seem to be endangered or require a federal bailout.
The Washington Examiner today is reporting on a story that Michigan Capitol Confidential broke recently that outlines how parents who receive state subsidy checks to stay home and care for their disabled children are considered union members and see a portion of those checks siphoned off as dues money.
In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, legal reformer Philip K. Howard highlighted strident examples of government employees defrauding their pension systems. Thankfully, Michigan’s state retirement benefit systems have been remarkably free of such problems. It’s a testament to appropriate policies and decent administration. Nevertheless, while the state is good at preventing outrageous abuses, it needs to fix a system that still imposes outrageous costs on taxpayers.
The Mackinac Center released today the full results of the 2011 school support services privatization survey. For the first time, more than half of the state’s public school districts contract out for food, custodial or transportation services. This survey contains a more detailed analysis of the results.
It’s a commonly accepted belief that public school teachers are underpaid. Last month in a visit to Ann Arbor, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan even called for schools to figure out how to double teacher salaries in order to attract and keep top-tier talent. But a report issued last week by the Heritage Center for Data Analysis questions the conventional wisdom and finds that, instead of being underpaid, people entering the teaching profession actually make one and a half times what they would have in other lines of work.
A group of graduate students at the University of Michigan object to an attempt to force them into a union, according to the Detroit Free Press.
The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation filed a motion on behalf of the 370 students, who point out that they are not employees of the university and thus not subject to unionization. The Michigan Employment Relations Commission in August upheld its 1981 decision on this exact same issue and rejected a petition by the Graduate Employees Organization to unionize graduate student research assistants at U-M.
Thousands of demonstrators marched around the White House this past weekend in opposition to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline project, which would bring oil from tar sands in Alberta, Canada, to Texan refineries. This is ironic. Environmental groups frequently enlist conservative support for alternative energy by claiming that imported oil from the Middle East is a national security concern, but the demonstrators’ attempt to convince President Obama to deny the necessary permits for this pipeline punctures any illusions that the environmental movement’s infatuation with alternative energy is motivated by a concern about national security.
By Jack McHugh
In addition to the lawsuit against Obamacare filed by Michigan and 25 other states, a separate case has been filed by The Goldwater Institute Center for Constitutional Law. Diane Cohen, a senior attorney at the Goldwater Institute, recently told legislators at an American Legislative Exchange Council meeting, "Saying 'no' to a state exchange is absolutely critical to the success of our lawsuit and those pending elsewhere around the country."
The typical unionized government employee pays more than $450 dollars annually in membership dues or agency fees. With that kind of money available, one would think that unions could afford to pay their own staff for the time that they spend on union business. But for some reason, they don’t. Instead, local taxpayers provide many local union officials with paid “release time” or “official time” for union activities. This is a misuse of taxpayer dollars that should be brought to an end.
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.
Senate Bill 569, Authorize cash film producer subsidies: Passed 34 to 4 in the Senate
To convert the state film incentive program into straightforward handouts, rather than indirect ones, with payments to film producers of up 32 percent of their Michigan payroll expense, plus some additional subsidies. Reportedly the bill’s sponsor wants to increase the subsidies from $25 million already appropriated in 2012 to $100 million annually.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress is considered by many experts as “the nation’s report card,” and its latest results released yesterday offer little to celebrate in Michigan. Specifically, average scores here ranked 36th nationally in fourth grade reading, 42nd in fourth grade math, 28th in eighth grade reading and 36th in eighth grade math.
“No matter your thoughts about the Occupy Wall Street movement, the protesters are right in at least one respect: The rich are getting richer, and the poor are getting poorer.”
Variations on this statement have been repeated in dozens of blogs, commentaries and even news reports over the past several weeks. The claim comes via a Congressional Budget Office analysis showing that incomes for the top 1 percent of Americans grew by 275 percent between 1979 and 2007, while the lowest 20 percent saw their inflation-adjusted incomes grow by “only” 18 percent.
The Flint Journal today reports on an exclusive story in Michigan Capitol Confidential about the propensity of conventional media to report on teacher layoffs each spring, but then fail to report at the beginning of the school year how few, if any, teachers actually remain laid off.
It is a serious miscalculation for any governor, Republican or Democrat, to believe they can institute major change in the direction of a state agency by applying sound management principles. No matter how well tuned the governor’s management skills are, or those of the people he appoints, the deck is stacked against them. Executives with a successful private-sector track record often believe they can get the same positive results in government by applying the same management techniques that have served them well in the past.
