The Detroit Free Press reports that a pending state budget deal for the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1 will match expected revenue to desired spending by means of across-the-board cuts in department administration, a tax amnesty program, and an early retirement pension-sweetener for state employees. It contains no systemic reforms or program reductions. Meanwhile, with the end of federal stimulus subsidies, revenue projections for the following fiscal year fall off a cliff.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm's "Cool Cities" initiative has not done much to help the working middle class. Joel Kotin, a professor at Chapman University, sheds light on what is happening in American cities in an article appearing in "The American" titled "Urban Plight: Vanishing Upward Mobility." Mr. Kotin points to a Brookings Institution study that found that New York City and Los Angeles have the smallest share of middle-income neighborhoods of all American cities. The Brookings Institution found that in 2007, Manhattan ranked first in social inequality, with the top 20 percent earning over 50 times more than the bottom 20 percent, a gap similar to Namibia's.
Last Sunday, The Grand Rapids Press released a new study on the likely effects of a right-to-work law on Michigan’s economy as part of its ongoing “Michigan 10.0” series. Dr. Hari Singh, an economics professor at Grand Valley State University, wrote the paper, which focused on the automotive industry. Singh’s paper looks over some of the academic literature surrounding the issue, including two Mackinac Center studies.
An annual survey of nationwide employee health insurance costs contains good news for employers: The average premium increased by only 3 percent in 2010 — much less than in previous years.
Unfortunately, the good news doesn't extend to this state's public schools. Nearly $2 billion is extracted from Michigan taxpayers to provide health insurance to school employees, or $1,300 per pupil, and the rise in these costs shows no sign of slowing.
A recent Michigan State University study about school consolidation should be ignored both because of plagiarism issues and because its methodology is flawed, according to an Op-Ed by Education Policy Director Michael Van Beek in Sunday's Lansing State Journal.
The Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce is hosting the West Michigan Policy Forum in Grand Rapids on Sept. 16 and 17. Among the speakers will be Mackinac Center President Joe Lehman and David Littmann, senior economist at the Mackinac Center.
Lehman will join a panel on "Michigan's Budget & Spending Priorities," and Littmann will address "Michigan's Infrastructure and International Trade Corridor."
In an article by Julia Bauer, The Grand Rapids Press announced that it would be releasing a study on the implications that right to work would have in Michigan, as part of its "Michigan 10.0" series. Bauer also announced the result of a poll produced by the Lansing-based Rossman Group and Team TelCom showing that right to work had the support of 51 percent of Michigan voters. As proponents of right to work going back for 20 years, we at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are looking forward to the results, but until the full report comes out, a few observations are in order.
The Grand Rapids Press reports that some state legislators are seeking a three-day period in which to review bills before voting on them. The Press cites Mackinac Center Senior Legislative Analyst Jack McHugh, who said: "It is the rare bill where there is not a substitute. The minority members, most members, haven't seen that substitute, and Joe Citizen doesn't have access to it. Legislators very often don't know what they are voting on."
The state licenses many professions from barbers to engineers. House Bill 6374 would greatly increase the government control of hundreds of professions. Introduced by Rep. Pam Byrnes, D-Lyndon Township, the bill would prohibit license renewals unless an individual has taken a "continuing education course." Currently professionals that are licensed by the state must demonstrate "professional competence."
Every week, MichiganVotes.org sends a report to newspapers and TV stations showing how just the state legislators in each publication's service area voted on the most important and interesting bills and amendments of the past seven days. The version shown here instead contains a link to the complete roll call tally in either the House or Senate. To find out who your state senator is and how to contact him or her go here; for state representatives go here.
A recent blog post by James Hohman, fiscal policy analyst, appears to be the impetus for a column in today's Detroit Free Press about job creation in Michigan.
The second paragraph of the column reads:
The item was also mentioned in the MIRS Capitol Capsule (subscription required) and at AnnArbor.com.
A plagiarism investigation of a Michigan State University professor is ongoing, according to The State News. The issue was raised by Mike Van Beek, education policy director, after he reviewed a school consolidation study by Sharif Shakrani, a senior scholar at MSU's Education Policy Center.
I have argued here before that government "economic development" programs that pick winners and losers for selectively distributed "incentives" are in reality political development programs. A fine proof of this assertion was a PR stunt a few years back from Michigan House Republican leadership on a factory floor in Lansing.
Radio host Ron Jolly of WTCM recently wrote about right-to-work protections for employees in the Traverse City Business News, explaining that making Michigan a right-to-work state would lure more job creators to the state while allowing unions to continue operating and organizing.
(Genuine) Tea Party supporters are already fuming about the dirty trick of a (fake) "The Tea Party" political party created with the assistance of Democratic Party operatives; another abuse of democracy this week may add to their ire: A government entity that received $14.6 million of taxpayer money in the current state budget organized a publicity stunt to lobby for more government spending, called the "First Ever Sandbox Party Convention" in East Lansing.
New union jobs in Michigan auto plants pay $14 dollars an hour and are awful tough to find. It wasn't that long ago that GM eliminated 20,000 jobs as part of its bankruptcy.
New non-union auto jobs in Mississippi, which has right-to-work protections for employees, pay $15 an hour, and even in a tough economy, they are relatively easy to find. In fact, there's a new Toyota plant near Tupelo that's looking to hire about 2,000 workers.
Every week, MichiganVotes.org sends a report to newspapers and TV stations showing how just the state legislators in each publication's service area voted on the most important and interesting bills and amendments of the past seven days. The version shown here instead contains a link to the complete roll call tally in either the House or Senate. To find out who your state senator is and how to contact him or her go here; for state representatives go here.
Observations:
1. Tea Partiers are expected to play a big role at the Michigan Republican convention this weekend. However:
2. Tea Partiers endorsing candidates risk making themselves a part of the system they seek to overturn.
3. Politicians, don't tell me how don't tell me how efficient government will be when you are in charge, or how bad you think the Michigan Business Tax is (who thinks it's good?). Instead, tell me what spending cuts you propose to enable the MBT's elimination (among other things):
A Nolan Finley column in today's Detroit News shows remarkable sympathy for government support of Michigan's dwindling horse racing industry. Several points stand out:
Column: "Lansing is allowing an established segment of the entertainment industry — horse racing — to wither, taking with it hundreds of jobs and small businesses."
Last week's state-by-state employment release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that Michigan led the nation in job growth from June to July. The state gained an estimated 27,800 jobs in the month.
That's better than all but three months in the high-growth 1990s: February 1990 (42,900 jobs), January 1998 (36,200 jobs), and August 1998, when a GM strike ended and the state regained 63,300 jobs (still less than the 70,200 the state lost during the strike month).
A new union contract in Mt. Clemens ties satisfactory teacher evaluations to pay raises. To be sure, this represents a move toward breaking from the assembly line mentality of the single salary schedule in favor of a compensation model based in part on performance. But this baby step is probably too small to have any impact on student achievement.
A push by the UAW to get back concessions it gave up when Chrysler and GM declared bankruptcy leaves the union stuck in a "time warp," Senior Economist David Littmann told Bloomberg today.
"They want to make things the way they were, and they're not," Littmann added.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an interview on Pakistan Television said "there is a linkage" between the recent occurrence of natural disasters and climate change. She went on to opine "We are changing the climate of the world." She might have thought twice before making such a sweeping prophesy if she could have read about a just-released study that found no convincing link between losses from disasters and climate change. The report "Have disaster losses increased due to anthropogenic climate change?" was written by Laurens M. Bouwer, a researcher at Vrije University in Amsterdam. In a blog post on the study, New York Times author Andrew Revkin observes, "... front-page thought and the eagerness of climate campaigners to jog the public have sometimes created a tendency to tie mounting losses from weather-related disasters to human-driven global warming."
Politicians of all stripes should generally be wary of advice from the media, so Rick Snyder’s supporters should hope that their man takes Leonard Fleming’s report in Monday’s Detroit News with a grain of salt. Fleming finds that conservatives and tea party leaders (the legitimate ones that is) remain unenthused about the GOP gubernatorial candidate. To the extent that Fleming’s article deals with Snyder’s positions, it winds up focusing on social issues, quoting one Kalkaska native’s worries about stem cell research, and then moving on to an interview with the president of Michigan Right-to-Life. The article concludes by citing state Sen. Alan Cropsey’s recommendation that Snyder find “a more conservative running mate who’s good on issues involving guns, abortion, and economics.”
It's hard to imagine how the current state liquor distribution system could be made worse, but according to MIRS News, Gov. Jennifer Granholm has discovered a way. She apparently wants to make this partial monopoly into a complete one, selling the lucrative privilege to just one outfit.
