If you wanted something done in your community, would it ever occur to you to send a check to Washington, D.C., so the federal bureaucracy could take a cut before sending back the rest?
Government subsidies for a new Tiger Stadium amount to corporate welfare. Other big businesses have to raise their own private capital-why not baseball? This article makes the philosophical and economic case for private sports facilities.
Most Michigan counties are net losers in the grab for public arts dollars. The claim that government spending on art produces a special "multiplier" effect is spurious. The bottom line: Art is too important to be dependent on government.
A private nonprofit environmental group knows that the free market is the most effective tool for protecting the environment. This is a wonderful success story of voluntary cooperation instead of government coercion.
Ironically, taxpayers' cherished deductions and loopholes stand in the way of meaningful tax reform. There is a fairer system that would still provide adequate government revenue.
Two new laws take effect in April 1995 that will help Michigan's 1.7 million school children and their parents. Will schools take advantage of the newly created freedoms and opportunities?
The prison business is booming in Michigan-fifteen percent of the General Fund. Can taxpayers afford the bills that mount from business as usual? Michigan can save hundreds of millions of dollars by trying what other states are already doing.
Michigan's turbocharged economy is a result of courageous government streamlining and downsizing. If the federal government is serious about "reinventing," it should follow Michigan's blueprint.
In a stunning retreat from free-market principles, Governor Engler asks Michigan to join the bandwagon of states in which government picks the industrial winners and losers. The MEGA plan will not work, and may have unintended negative consequences.
When government forces others to do its bidding without providing the money to pay for it, it is called a mandate. Politicians and bureaucrats try to wriggle out of the responsibility with carefully crafted code phrases. This glossary of "governmentese" will entertain and enlighten.
