China’s new export restrictions on rare earths show one of the many ways decarbonization policies are disadvantaging our economy and threatening our national security. A wind, solar, and battery-powered future America would be heavily reliant on China. Decarbonization would disadvantage our economy and threaten our national security.
By Paul Godek
The New York Times’ most recent list of the top places in the world to visit included … the city of Detroit! Congratulations, Detroit. The New York Times praises the city’s rehabilitated Michigan Central Station, riverfront parks, museums, the soon-to-be-open Gordie Howe Bridge and a plethora of notable hotels, restaurants and shops. Kudos to all the hard-working, dedicated people helping to restore the city.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News March 25, 2025.
Michigan faces a crisis that demands immediate government attention. Just scan some headlines — paying special attention to the opinion pages — and you will get the message loud and clear: We have a crisis on our hands. Many, in fact.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News March 4, 2025.
Five years ago on March 10, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer declared a state of emergency in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Here in Michigan, the pandemic inflicted a toll, with 40,000 confirmed deaths, according to the state. Five years later, the consequences of Michigan’s lockdowns deserve to be examined.
As artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies rapidly reshape our world, legal scholars and policymakers face new challenges in regulating their impact. Daniel Crane, the Richard W. Pogue professor of law at the University of Michigan and a member of the Mackinac Center’s Board of Scholars, explores these issues on The Overton Window podcast.
By Jason Hayes
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer made a notorious 2018 campaign promise to “fix the damn roads.” After the Legislature decisively rejected her initial attempt to raise gasoline taxes by $0.45 per gallon in order to finance road maintenance, the governor took another seven years to unveil her second plan.
In Michigan, you can get a teaching degree and successfully work as a teacher in a school — yet lose your job if you are not a good test taker.
The Michigan Test for Teacher Certification is a 100-question multiple-choice exam. It was first established in the early 1990s. There is little evidence that it has helped Michigan turn out better teachers.
Michigan parents are blocked by the state constitution from exercising school choice options for their children in kindergarten, elementary, middle and high school. Yet strangely, there is bipartisan support for state financial assistance to parents and students who choose to attend private preschools and colleges.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News March 18, 3025.
Voters, economists and even many lawmakers agree that excessive regulations stifle job growth. But ask politicians, “Which regulations would you cut?” and they may struggle to provide a single example.
Dear Members of the Board of Trustees:
I watched with interest the March 12 board meeting, which addressed different ideas for housing the township’s work, including an expanded or new township hall.
During a comment period local resident Jim Engler said that the township “is now tied with Mt. Pleasant for the worst and least friendly area for development in the state of Michigan.” He urged you to “clear that with any developer in the state.” He also laid the township’s poor population growth at the feet of its officials' “overregulation, excessive fees and [a] general anti-business attitude.” He was not the only citizen to level familiar complaints, which present some challenges you should consider.
Who holds back the electric car? The answer to that old question turns out to contain surprising insight about the professed concerns of “climate activists.”
In the past month, Tesla electric vehicles have been vandalized in dozens of incidents. The electric vehicles, their dealerships, and their charging stations have been spray painted with swastikas, keyed, shot, and burned with Molotov cocktails. And it hasn’t been oil barons or auto tycoons committing these crimes.
Michigan’s House members approved bills in March that would give a long-term solution to the state’s decade-plus road funding debate.
Michigan’s state and local governments own roads that get people where they want to go. It is the responsibility of these governments to keep the roads in good working order. But roads are falling apart faster than they are being repaired, and it will take more public dollars to get roads on the path to continual improvement.
This article originally appeared in The Detroit News March 11, 2025.
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted every aspect of life. In the moment, it was hard to predict what would come next. But in May 2020, I tried.
I wrote down 25 predictions about the pandemic and government lockdowns, and I sent them to colleagues. I covered politics, policy, fraud, the medical industry, religious life, entertainment, sports and education. The criteria: Each prediction was specific, and I could not hedge my bets with conflicting guesses.
By Molly Macek
Public school officials in Michigan have pounced on recent layoffs at the U.S. Department of Education, but these changes will have less impact than the high-flown rhetoric suggests. Lawmakers should tune out that shouting when they decide how to spend state education funds.
By Jason Hayes
The Biden administration belongs to the ages, but a new report from the Cato Institute reveals how just one of the former president’s signature laws did lasting damage to America’s society and economy.
In “The Budgetary Cost of the Inflation Reduction Act’s Energy Subsidies,” Travis Fisher and Joshua Loucks provide a sobering analysis of the actual price we are paying for the questionably titled Inflation Reduction Act.
On this day five years ago, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's first lockdown took effect. Lockdown policies were unprecedented in the state's history and deviated from Michigan's official plan for responding to pandemics. To date, the Whitmer administration has not revisited or studied the ramifications of her lockdowns. Important questions remain unanswered.
In the developed world, we take for granted many of the things that make life possible. Natural gas is an unsung foundation of modern life.
Natural gas heats homes and businesses while powering around half of Michigan’s electricity use. It is essential to the process of making fertilizer, plastics, propane, and more.
A new Utah law banning public sector collective bargaining passed last month, drawing both support and criticism. On the Overton Window Podcast, Representative Jordan Teuscher, the bill’s sponsor, explains that the ban empowers all workers by ensuring every employee has a voice in negotiations — rather than the small group within a union.
The Department of Government Efficiency is poring over the federal books to find government waste. The office taps into a populist impulse that says that the government is not on your side but on the side of some special interest. Waste is only one of the ways governments get captured for someone else’s benefit, however. There is a target-rich environment for policies that stick it to the little guy. Governments at all levels have them.
Michigan is raising its minimum wage gradually until it reaches $15 by 2027. What many people don’t know is how few workers earn the minimum wage. Nationally, roughly 55% of workers are paid hourly, and of those just 1.1% are paid at or below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour. Michigan’s minimum wage is $13.73 per hour. Increasing the minimum wage will disproportionately affect different groups, according to recent economic research.
This article originally appeared in the Detroit News February 11, 2025.
Last year, as the final moments of the Democratic trifecta in Michigan ticked away, one lawmaker became increasingly critical of her party’s leadership. Rep. Betsy Coffia, D-Traverse City, was completing her first term in the state House. She had just won reelection in a high-profile race.
Michigan lawmakers raised money from business taxes over the past two years only to hand it over to a few businesses. That’s not how state government is supposed to work.
Taxes are supposed to fund the government. One of those taxes, the corporate income tax, raises $1.6 billion annually. Over the past two years, however, lawmakers authorized $4.7 billion in business subsidies. They took $3.2 billion from thousands of Michigan businesses, then they gave that same amount plus another billion and a half dollars to a handful of businesses.
This article originally appeared in the Detroit News February 19 2025.
It’s fun to look ahead to the next big thing. On Feb. 9, the Philadelphia Eagles beat the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LIX. The next day, sportsbooks had odds on who would win next year’s showdown. Likewise, with elections: Once the votes are counted it’s not long before people speculate about the next political cycle.
This article originally appeared in the Detroit News January 28, 2025.
A few years ago, I flew into the Detroit airport and took a shuttle bus to the long-term parking lot. The shuttle bus hit some rough road, bouncing luggage up in the air.
Our bus driver couldn’t resist. “She said she’d fix the damn roads,” she yelled. “But she ain’t fixed the damn roads!”
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has talked the talk about occupational licensing, saying she wants to make Michigan’s regulatory structure better. It’s less clear whether the departments she oversees, and the Legislature, will walk the walk.
Michigan licenses hundreds of occupations, covering 20-25% of the state workforce. Many licensing requirements are arbitrary or overly restrictive. Others make no sense — as in, not at all.
