Lieutenant Governor-elect Brian Calley is urging the lame-duck Legislature to pass a new mandate that would force health insurance companies to include coverage for autism treatments in all policies, potentially requiring them to pay for extraordinarily expensive new treatment regimes whose efficacy is still speculative.
Senior Economist David Littmann recently wrote in a Detroit News Op-Ed about the need to hold the Federal Reserve Board accountable for the damage it has done to the American economy.
Littmann said the Fed “purposely chose to inflate the entire price level of the U.S. economy” and that “inflation-recession cycles of 1979-82 and 2005-09 reflect the Fed’s complicity in Washington’s political efforts to shove the price effects of oil and housing, respectively, under the carpet.”
Brighton Area Schools is one of only 32 Michigan districts currently operating with a budget deficit, even though it takes in more than $8,000 per pupil. According the Michigan Department of Education, the district overspent by 17 percent last year. A good place to start looking for ways to get out of the red would be the teachers union contract, since the costs contained therein consume almost 70 percent of the district's general funds.
Every year, state and local governments and school districts hand over tens of millions of dollars to unions with no questions asked. These funds are guaranteed under the guise of union dues, which are extracted from employees’ paychecks regardless of whether or not they support the union. But in reality, it’s government officials who agree to mandatory dues, then collect and turn them over. Those funds are available for a wide range of things, including electioneering, public relations, lobbying and litigation
A Lansing State Journal editorial today calling for term limit reforms cites Senior Legislative Analyst Jack McHugh, who wrote after the Nov. 2 elections that 86 percent of new legislators are already “political careerists.”
Saul Anuzis has announced he's running for chairmanship of the Republican National Committee. The former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party pits himself against sitting RNC Chairman Michael Steele.
Anuzis garnered respect in the state for employing strategies resulting in recent Republican takeovers of the governorship, state House of Representatives and Michigan Supreme Court, expanding the party's majority in the state Senate and increasing the GOP congressional delegation by two seats.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm recently wrote an article for the Huffington Post titled “A Mighty Wind,” in which she credits Michigan’s renewable energy standard of 2008 — which requires 10 percent of energy produced by the major utilities in the state come from renewable sources — for revitalizing the state’s economy. The mighty wind she feels blowing through the halls of government in Lansing probably seems more like a gentle breeze to job seekers around the state who are dealing with the second highest unemployment rate of any state in the country.
During a radio interview last week, incoming Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville was asked about the prospects for a right-to-work bill. Richardville replied that right-to-work, which guarantees individual workers will have the choice to pay union dues or withhold support based on their own values and their own opinion of the union's work, would not be a top priority: "Twenty percent of the workers in Michigan are unionized," MIRS quotes Richardville as saying, "and the idea of going in and changing one of the fundamental privileges for years seems to me to be more disruptive with little positive results."
While speaking overseas this week, former presidential candidate Al Gore took some questions about corn-based ethanol. So what does the green guru think about the fuel that was supposed to wean us off of foreign oil and cut carbon emissions?
“First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.”
Governor-elect Rick Snyder will have to sort through “conflicting information” as he attempts to convince state employees to scale back wages and benefits that are out of line with the private sector, according to an article in MiTechNews.com that originally appeared in the Gongwer News Service.
An Op-Ed in Sunday’s Lansing State Journal by Russ Harding, senior environmental analyst, highlights the points he has made in a new study titled “Environmental Regulation in Michigan: A Blueprint for Reform.”
Harding suggests, among other things that regulatory barriers must be removed so that businesses can locate or expand in Michigan.
A Detroit News editorial Sunday said that merit pay for public school teachers would “connect pay more closely to the quality of instruction, but also said that teacher benefits is a “better place to find cost savings,” and urged teachers and their unions to lead the reform.
Sharon and Doug Rothwell, former Engler administration veterans with corporate experience, are a good choice to head up Gov.-elect Rick Snyder’s transition team, Mike LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative, told the Detroit Free Press recently.
By Jack McHugh
In her weekly Wall Street Journal column, Kim Strassel offers some benchmarks for who congressional Republicans’ should choose to be the next House Energy and Commerce Committee chair. Michigan Congressman Fred Upton is one of the candidates, and — as described in today’s Michigan Capitol Confidential — this has some on the right fuming.
Because no votes were taken in the Legislature this week, this report instead contains several newly introduced bills of interest. Note: There will be no report next week, the week of Thanksgiving.
Senate Bill 1569 (Extend government pension tax exemption to private sector pensions)
Introduced by Sen. Michael Switalski (D) on November 4, 2010, to extend to the pensions of non-government workers the same state income tax exemption granted to the pensions of retired government employees. Note: Although government pensions up to certain limits are state income tax exempt, the pensions of non-government workers are not exempt and are subject to the 4.35 percent state income tax. Referred to committee, no further action at this time.
According to MIRS Capitol Capsule (subscription required), the Michigan Lodging and Tourism Association (MLTA) is "hoping to send a clear message to lame duck legislative leaders — don't you leave town without funding Pure Michigan."
The private trade group wants public funds to advance their industry, and to this end they've launched a billboard campaign:
Editorials in both the Port Huron Times-Herald and Livingston Daily Press & Argus about the changes in the Michigan Legislature due to term limits cite research by Senior Legislative Analyst Jack McHugh that first appeared in Michigan Capitol Confidential.
The Bureau of Economic Analysis recently released a key measure of economic growth that showed Michigan has gone more than a decade without increased production. New gross domestic product figures, a measure of the value of an area’s goods and services production, showed that Michigan’s economy produced 8 percent less in 2009 than it did in 2000 when adjusted for inflation. The nation rose 15 percent during this period.
Teacher salaries and school district spending transparency are the focus of two Detroit News articles today that rely on the expertise of Mackinac Center analysts.
“We’re at the crossroads of trying to maintain a government and school system that we’ve grown accustomed to as a relatively rich state,” Education Policy Director Mike Van Beek told The News. “And now we’re a relatively poor state.”
Senior Economist David Littmann is the primary source for a Detroit Free Press article today regarding GM’s IPO, saying it is in “fine shape.”
Littmann said investors are attracted to the stock offering due to GM’s cost-cutting following bankruptcy last year.
A Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives could mean an easing on the federal fuel standards that many think would harm American automakers, Senior Environmental Analyst Russ Harding told Bloomberg recently.
“This stuff that Obama and some of the Democrats are talking about on the fuel standards is fantasyland,” Harding said. “You’re not going to achieve those numbers with technology we know about in this day and age.”
A "multidimensional" crisis that's been unfolding for decades may finally be coming to a head in the Detroit Public Schools: The district is virtually bankrupt, the schools are unsafe and they generate the worst student achievement results in the nation. And now, Robert Bobb, the governor-appointed emergency financial manager, is waving the white flag, asking the state to borrow against future revenues to bail out the district. Doing so would be unfortunate for both students and state taxpayers.
Last month, the U.S. Attorney’s office announced that Robbin Wolff, a former bookkeeper for UAW Local 383 in Benton Harbor, had been sentenced to two years in prison for embezzling more than $200,000 in union funds. Wolff pled guilty to embezzlement and falsifying union records last July.
It appears likely the starry-eyed promise of Hollywood has left the taxpayers of Allen Park with quite the handful of overpriced real estate.
This unhappy ending seems to be in line with how events have unfolded since the “groundbreaking” at Allen Park’s Unity Studios.
(The following is an edited version of a letter to the editor of The Detroit News in response to their editorial "Ours: Keep film credits for now." The Mackinac Center and others have written extensively on this subject and disagree with the notion that the Michigan Film Incentive program is a policy lever necessary to the economic well-being of the Great Lakes State.)
