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Hundreds of thousands of subscribers and readers have embraced the bimonthly print edition of Capitol Confidential over the past two years. Now, that same in-depth analysis of legislative action the conventional media cannot or will not cover is available online, with new content posted every day.
Last week Oregon voters approved a ballot initiative imposing a $700 million hike in business and personal income taxes. The Wall Street Journal reports that the government employee unions which funded the effort spent some $6.5 million, or $2 million more than business and taxpayer advocates raised to oppose it.
News Advisory
Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2010
Contact: Michael D. Jahr
Senior Director of Communications
989-631-0900
Tally of Proposed Government Expansions and Limitations in State of the State Address Available Wednesday Night
Mackinac Center experts available before and after for analysis of economic development, budget, education and other proposals
Gov. Jennifer Granholm gives her last State of the State speech tonight.
Mackinac Center analysts have reviewed each State of the State speech dating back to 1969 and tallied the number of proposed expansions and limitations of government that each governor has offered. The "scorecard" of proposals below provides some insight into each administration's desire to see government solve perceived public policy problems.
A new study published in Environment Science and Technology analyzes the environmental impact of school choice policies in St. Paul, Minn. The authors found that eliminating school choice would lower emissions rates 3 to 8 times and curb the "significant environmental consequences" of providing more educational opportunities for children.
David Littmann, senior economist for the Mackinac Center, was a guest on "The Frank Beckmann Show" on WJR AM760 Monday morning. He discussed Michigan's economic woes and proposed spending cuts Gov. Jennifer Granholm is said to recommend in her "State of the State" address Wednesday night.
Media interest continues to abound over the story Mackinac Center analysts broke Thursday about filmmaker Michael Moore's latest movie being approved for a taxpayer-funded subsidy under the Michigan Film Incentive.
Fox News, The Hawaii Reporter, Detroit Examiner and The Calgary Beacon covered the story, while The Detroit News included it in Saturday's "Editorial Quick Hits." Financial News Watch included a post Sunday. The Nashville Tennessean and The Dallas Morning News also linked to other coverage.
Michael Van Beek, director of education funding, writes in an Op-Ed in Sunday's Lansing State Journal that "Proposal A is a marked improvement over the previous method of financing public education, and Michigan schools, students and taxpayers have all benefited from it."
Writing for the MSU Capital News Service, Chenqi Guo reports the following:
One of the realities driving the push for a government takeover of the American health care market is the unsustainability of current government health care programs, including Medicaid, which provides coverage for low-income persons. (In Michigan, spending on this and related health programs for the poor has skyrocketed from $8.2 billion in 2000 to nearly $13 billion this year.)
Shortly after Ford reported profits of $2.7 billion in 2009, the United Auto Workers responded by filing a grievance against the company. The union’s grievance against the company was not, strictly speaking, for making a profit — that’s apparently still allowed under the contract — but for rewarding someone aside from UAW-represented workers.
A brand new survey shows that parents of school children in Detroit overwhelmingly desire more school choice. Every single one of the 600 Detroiters surveyed support more scholarships and financial aid for private schools, and 95 percent of the respondents favor tax incentives for businesses to fund those scholarships.
During a hearing on binding arbitration last Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mike Prusi poo-pooed concerns that the risk of arbitration affected all collective bargaining, leading local officials to make concessions that they otherwise would not make. According to Gongwer, Prusi said that "[i]f they're negotiating out of fear, then they don't belong at the negotiating table." (Subscription required)
A Mackinac Center news release details how filmmaker Michael Moore's latest movie was approved for a taxpayer-funded subsidy through the Michigan Film Incentive, even though Moore himself appears to criticize the program in this video from Communications Specialist Kathy Hoekstra.
Legend has it that Alexander the Great, while encamped at Gordius, came across a cart tied to a post with an incredibly complex knot. There was a prophecy that the man who untied this knot would be ruler of Asia. Alexander “untangled” the knot by slashing through it with his sword and went on to conquer Asia as far as India. This is the story of the Gordian Knot, and its moral is that sometimes the best answer to a complex problem is the simplest one.
From MichiganVotes.org:
2010 House Bill 5771 (Ban "stealth" unionization of employees paid with government assistance money)
Introduced by Rep. Justin Amash (R) on Jan. 27, 2010, to establish that a person whose private employment compensation comes from a direct or indirect government subsidy is not considered a government employee, and so is not subject to being inducted into a government employee union, as happened to the home day care providers who are the subject of a Mackinac Center lawsuit, or the Medicaid-recipient home personal care services providers subject to a similar scheme for which Senate Bill 731 would give statutory authorization.
Previous posts here have described legislation passed by the House (House Bill 4075) and pending on the Senate floor (Senate Bill 927) to let local governments borrow to pay for retirement health insurance benefits that current and past officials have offered to local government employees.
President Obama's call to provide tax relief for some, but not all, job providers was a "mixed bag," according to Michael LaFaive, director of the Mackinac Center's Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative. Obama talked during last night's State of the Union address about eliminating the capital gains tax on small businesses.
The American labor movement reached what may prove to be a critical milestone last year when government employees, for the first time ever, made up a majority of union members. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a little more than 7.9 million government employees across the country were union members. Government employees now make up 51.4 percent of union membership, a sharp increase over the 48.7 percent of union members who were employed by government in 2008. The public-sector “takeover” of the union ranks is part of a long trend in which unionism has become more and more a feature of government. In 1983, the first year reliable numbers are available, only 27.9 percent of union members were in the public sector.
MIRS News reports that two Michigan legislators will introduce legislation to increase the state gas tax by 8 cents per gallon and the state diesel tax by 12 cents per gallon.
According to the American Petroleum Institute, Michigan now imposes the nation's 7th highest state tax on gasoline, and the 13th highest tax on diesel. This is because in addition to a 19-cent per gasoline tax and 15-cent per gallon diesel tax, the state levies the 6 percent sales tax on fuel, plus a 0.875-cent per gallon tax that was originally imposed to clean up leaking underground fuel tanks, but was diverted to displace general fund money in the Department of Environmental Quality budget in one of the Legislature's many "fund raids" in recent years.
Although public charter schools are required by law to admit all students who apply, a common criticism is that charters fail to enroll enough special education students. Statistics show that public charter schools have proportionately smaller special education enrollments than conventional public schools, but recent trends suggest the difference will continue to dwindle.
President Obama should make tax cuts a centerpiece in his State of the Union address tonight, according to a Detroit Free Press columnist, and Michael LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Center, agrees.
LaFaive told Stephen Henderson that the president should cut marginal tax rates, rather than offer rebates. Henderson also said Obama should "embrace health savings accounts," and allowing companies to sell health insurance across state lines, two ideas Center scholars have addressed in the past.
One of the new ideas to come out of Lansing is sure to make state government more expensive by increasing the cost of the state vehicle fleet. House Bill 5042 introduced by Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith, D-Salem, requires that all future new light trucks purchased by the state be alternative energy vehicles. Existing state owned trucks for the model year 2007 and newer are to be retrofitted to achieve greater fuel efficiency or converted to alternative fuels if it can be done cost effectively. In addition, the legislation requires that 50 percent or more of new vehicles purchased by the state for passenger transport be alternative fuel vehicles.
The Michigan House has passed legislation (House Bill 4075) to let local governments borrow to pay for retirement health insurance benefits that current and past officials have offered to local government employees. Senate Bill 927, sponsored by state Sen. Mark Jansen, R-Grand Rapids, would do the same, and the Senate Appropriations Committee has reported the bill to the GOP-controlled Senate with a recommendation that it pass.
David L. Littmann, the Center's senior economist, said a proposed new tax on banks could hamper their growth and reduce their willingness to loan money.
The tax of 0.15 percent on bank liabilities would be levied against banks with more than $50 billion in consolidated assets, according to an editorial in The Detroit News. Littmann told The News that banks just under that cap might be motivated to stay under the limit, which in turn means less money to loan.
Michigan's unemployment rate of 14.6 percent was the highest in the country, according to today's release from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The next closest state was Nevada, which increased to 13.0 percent.
Michigan's rate actually decreased by 0.1 percentage points from November. But before calling the recession over in Michigan, the rate fell because there were fewer people looking for jobs, not because there were more people finding jobs. The BLS estimates that, when including marginally attached workers and people employed only part-time for economic reasons, Michigan's rate is above 20 percent.
