The dirty little secret is that Michigan pays too much for the government it gets.
The 10 states with the lowest tax burdens are growing at an average rate of 2.6 percent — almost double Michigan’s growth rate and 34 percent faster than the national average.
It bears noting that any park or other amusement facility that must rely on tax dollars, rather than private investment, is by definition not viable and thus unworthy of taxpayer support.
Many suspect that the political establishment has elevated government and school employees into a privileged class to be protected at all costs from economic changes that affect everyone else.
The yearly cost of policing the state’s highways could be reduced by more than $60 million by switching state police patrol duties to local sheriff’s deputies.
Despite all of the glitz and lofty rhetoric associated with major building projects, people continue to flee the city.
The best option for finding new road money is for the Legislature and governor to get serious about spending a lot less on things in state government that are far less important.
When politicians and their lieutenants prophesy doom if spending is cut, it pays to question what they define as “doom,” and for whom.
Parents and community groups must play an important role in increasing support for charter schools.
Wilberforce endured and overcame every obstacle imaginable, including ill health, death threats, derision from his colleagues and defeats almost too numerous to count.
The arguments both for and against the OFIS rulings indicate that these decisions involve a genuine policy debate — something that should, under the Michigan Constitution, be decided in the Legislature.
For every dollar that employers must pay in corporate taxes to the state, they have one dollar less to disburse as wages to workers or as investment in growth.
What’s unique about state business taxes is the manner in which they target a narrow and highly desirable group — persons willing to invest in the state.
Regulatory takings occur when the government enacts a regulation or law that diminishes the value of the property but does not take ownership.
Private-sector employers are realizing defined-benefit systems like MPSERS do not serve today’s aging and mobile workforce.
How we interpret our labor law, or any other law for that matter, is for us to decide, not a foreign dictator or world body.
Even if a company or individual can bear the cost, they may not be able to afford the time delays associated with agency demands for new data.
Liberty is more often eaten away one small bite at a time than by one big gulp.
Reforms need to be made that take Pontiac beyond the point of simply keeping its fiscal head above water.
“Life is service. The one who progresses is the one who gives his fellow human beings a little more, a little better service.”
This welcome news is yet another reminder that prognosticators of eco-catastrophe are off the mark.
Ideas worth supporting are those that are tested and found worthwhile because they produce results, not rhetoric.
Romney’s plan will allegedly perform the miracle of covering all of Massachusetts’ 555,000 or so uninsured residents without new taxes or a government takeover of health care.
With savings of this magnitude, it is not surprising that superintendents are investigating privatization.
Gretchen Valade improved Detroit’s cultural scene with her gift, just as tens of thousands of Americans have done with their own contributions to countless organizations and enterprises.
Michigan is the only state that has not implemented estate recovery in some form, despite the fact that the requirement has been on the books for more than 10 years.
There are many reasons people move, but it is probably easiest to sum all of them up with one word: opportunity.
With gas so plentiful and cheap, some Ohioans came to think it shouldn’t have a cost at all.
Similarly, the K-16 Proposal in Michigan would cost more and accomplish less than its advocates are sharing with Michigan taxpayers.
While federal reform efforts have stalled, Michigan residents are well placed to prevent the government from cynically confiscating the property where they live, work and worship.
You can’t choose your height or race or many other physical traits, but you fine tune your character every time you decide right from wrong and what you personally are going to do about it.
What will it take before government understands that gimmicks don’t work, and that only fixing the fundamentals of our business climate through broad-based reforms will?
Our educational institutions usually do not create incentives for instructional improvement by rewarding effective teachers and sanctioning ineffective ones.
Agencies and commissions have become so used to having free reign that they broadly construe their mission even where the Legislature only gives a particular agency or commission a limited task.
We can speculate, however, that a worker might sign a public petition at the request of a friend, but vote another way when protected by privacy.
In “The Patriot,”Mel Gibson’s character expresses skepticism about the American Revolution with a question that seems especially poignant today, when our own homegrown government takes more of our earnings in taxes than George III ever imagined possible: “Why should I trade one tyrant 3000 miles away for 3000 tyrants one mile away?"
The proposed mandate would substantially weaken the limited influence parents have in the current system.
There is an alternative to embracing Green Orthodoxy. Few states or school districts have actually evaluated the veracity and impartiality of environmental curricula.
Here’s how to save $1.855 billion by injecting competition into government operations, providing public employee fringe benefits comparable to (generous) Private-sector plans and eliminating non-core functions.
Using tax dollars to fund artistic pursuits is not in the best interest of Michigan citizens.
The governor’s five-year plan does not include reducing the cost of producing goods and services in Michigan — something that would attract industries trying to compete globally. Instead, the plan is built around the 21st Century Jobs Fund and other state programs that substitute central planning for the market process.
Organized labor has moved well beyond its core mission of championing workers’ issues to financing and promoting a range of policies and groups that have nothing to do with labor.
The Supreme Court under Chief Justice Melville W. Fuller did not stretch either the law or the Constitution beyond what the words said. When the justices found law to be in conflict with the Constitution, they usually sided with the latter, because liberty under the rule of law was their highest priority.
Banks, especially small and mid-sized community banks, have been consistently losing market share to credit unions because the latter enjoy status as nonprofit financial cooperatives for tax purposes.
More often than not, municipal broadband ventures have saddled taxpayers with unwelcome debt or otherwise failed to deliver promised results.
As citizens and taxpayers, we should be asking ourselves: Is golf one of the legitimate functions of government?
Given state bureaucrats’ lack of success implementing the law’s one existing requirement, we should not place much hope in an additional mandate to fix public education or improve the economy.
When it comes to defined benefits, corporations and municipalities have seen the warning signs and are changing course to avoid getting burned. Public school employee unions and their allies in Lansing would be wise to do the same.
Congress has effectively entered into land-use regulation, a domain traditionally left to state and local government. Worse, Congress delegated its authority to the Army Corps of Engineers, whose employees, whatever their expertise, never face the crucible of an election.
