Michigan voters decide this year whether they want to call a convention for the purposes of revising the state's constitution. The dangers of a general rewrite of our state's basic governing document exceed any potential benefit.
The Michigan legislature regularly spends taxpayers' money on resolutions of tribute for an array of special interests, individuals and groups.
The moral, economic, and constitutional case for the federal government's involvement in housing is dubious at best, but the way it conducts its housing business now requires changes.
What was conceived as a protection for women in Michigan country clubs has become another entry on a long list of meddlesome and ultimately counterproductive restrictions on personal freedom.
An effort by the Michigan Education Association to extract an assessment from its members for a public relations campaign runs afoul of Supreme Court decisions protecting workers' rights.
Privatizing Medicaid through the use of vouchers would reduce state expenditures, improve service quality, and provide greater access to health care for the needy.
State regulations exist that stifle competition, protect inefficiency, and encourage movers to "call the cops" on each other. It's time to open the market up to competition and consumer choice.
Michigan's mental health reforms are relying on creative ways to place patients in compassionate community settings, and cutting loose local governments and private providers from inefficient state-run programs.
The state of Michigan should privatize its workers compensation insurer, but not by selling it to a quasi-public entity that enjoys many government-granted privileges.
Proposals to ban the chemical chlorine represent environmental extremism. Wild claims unsubstantiated by scientific evidence should not become the foundation of our public policy.
Two Central Michigan University professors argue that the unemployment insurance system is costly, bureaucratic, out-of-date, and in trouble. One solution is a privatized system of voluntary, tax-exempt Individual Unemployment Accounts.
Michigan dairy farmers who put cutting-edge research to work on the farm should beware: some people don't think that cows and science make a good combination. Will the public embrace science and economics or emotion and scare-talk masquerading as "environmentalism"?
Exempting Michigan's public school teachers from the Public Employment Relations Act would resolve the strike issue, remove barriers union policies have erected, and open the door for the advancement of good teachers.
Michigan's bureaucratic regulation of the intrastate trucking industry is not intended to protect the general public from harm. Rather, it is intended to protect existing truckers from aggressive competition in a free market. The sad case of a Grand Rapids company, Federal Armored, proves it.
Michigan's recent charter school legislation, a well-intentioned effort to introduce market forces into public education, suffers from stifling rules and regulations.
Detroit and other urban centers need a strategy that will address the urban sprawl problem and offer economic prosperity and growth opportunities to both cities and suburbs. That strategy must include reducing tax burdens and alleviating costly environmental regulations.
The Michigan legislature squandered an opportunity to reform education when it arrived at a Christmas Eve "compromise" package that largely reaffirmed the status quo-a watered-down charter school program, limited parental choice, and almost no cost containment.
Without additional spending, school administrators can take advantage of private sector expertise, accountability, and cost-effectiveness for public education.
Thanks to a 1937 law requiring state printing be done according to "prevailing wages," Michigan pays one-third more for printing lottery tickets than Indiana, Kentucky, and New York. Repealing it would save taxpayers more than $2 million.
Michigan's growth cities during the 1980s were also the ones that taxed and spent the least, while the state's declining cities taxed and spent the most. Detroit's dramatic decline was due in part to a tax burden seven times higher than the average Michigan municipality.
