Washington’s response to the mortgage crisis ignored the very government policies that created the problem.
Policymakers are quick to issue press releases about how many jobs will be created when they give discriminatory favors to certain businesses. Where are the press releases when those predictions fall short?
A merit-pay program for Michigan's public schools would reward teachers based on student achievement, rather than longevity and advanced degrees.
In practice, this ruling will make it more difficult to achieve policy change through executive fiat because the courts will engage in a meaningful review to determine whether the agency action was permitted by the Legislature’s statute.
Implementation of smart growth policies frequently results in the loss of private property rights.
The decision to “show Michigan the money” — or not — is a matter of priorities, not resources.
Michigan lawmakers are unlikely to pass any of these eight ideas into law any time soon, even though a case can be made that each one would help turn around Michigan’s moribund economy. Sometimes the people have to act when legislators won’t.
Done right, school support service privatization can save money and improve services — even if the privatization option is used solely to persuade public employee bargaining units to sharpen their pencils.
The Mackinac Center has long recommended a “Big Three” of tide-turning policies: Eliminate the Michigan Business Tax, prohibit employers from mandating union membership as a condition of employment and rein in oppressive regulation.
But even with this very generous definition of what constitutes a representation expense, our review of union financial reports reveals that a typical union local in Michigan spends little more than half of its money on representing its members.
To the extent that this document is what it appears to be, it leaves little doubt that the Reform Michigan Government Now ballot initiative is a partisan power play.
Our leaders in Washington and Lansing should encourage the responsible development of our abundant oil and natural gas reserves by eliminating arbitrary road blocks such as the ban on directional drilling.
Given a state unemployment rate of more than 8.5 percent, Michigan cannot afford to abandon competition in electricity supply for the benefit of its two biggest utilities.
Michigan’s political establishment has a proven ability to postpone the hard work of truly reforming and downsizing state government.
The question that apologists for the status quo have failed to answer is why investors and job providers increasingly avoid Michigan.
Since our last survey, media reports from around the state indicate that additional schools are using privatization to yield savings.
Michigan’s future energy policy is far too important to leave to the behind-closed-doors manipulation of government officials.
These failed policies will see Michigan taxpayers actually writing huge checks to politically “sexy” enterprises favored by political elites.
The competitors who are eating Michigan’s lunch aren’t Mexico or Canada, but other states where investors and entrepreneurs enjoy lower tax rates, better labor climates and fewer excessive and unreasonable regulations.
As long as the MEDC exists it should do one thing noticeably well to help facilitate job creation: advance right-to-work legislation.
Maybe it’s time that we as taxpayers and voters query candidates for public office less on what they will do if elected and more on what they won’t do.
Because unionized workers in Michigan generally cannot withhold their dues without putting their jobs at risk, those employees and their dues are particularly vulnerable to waste, fraud and abuse.
Clearly, if one is looking for the cause of economic growth or decline, the relative number of bachelor’s degrees in a state is a weak indicator at best..
Across Michigan, institutions such as businesses, government, nonprofit organizations and unions are or have attempted to revise the way they address skyrocketing health care costs.
The answer is simple: Politicians don’t care about job creation as much as they care about the perception of it.
The obvious disconnect between environmental policy and science is hardly surprising given the political pressure to act on climate change.
True reform can only come when we first secure a more rewarding business climate as the source of all new job creation.
We should not happily accept the erosion of one of the pillars of our society — the right to own property, which necessarily includes the power to exclude.
Someone once said that politicians will do the right thing, but only after they have exhausted every other option. Michigan may have reached that point.
Michigan has carefully built and continues to maintain a culture of decline that is overtly hostile to outsiders and fearful of their competition.
On average, union employees spent 41 percent of their time representing members, according to their own report.
Ultimately, voluntary unionism is not anti-union. It is decisively pro-worker. It encourages unions to be more accountable and responsible.
Indeed, if the state’s economic landscape doesn’t change soon it may need to change its official motto from “If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you” to “If you seek a pleasant peninsula, move to Florida.”
The just-concluded budget saga demonstrates that the real priority is to preserve the government status quo, quite literally at all costs.
The real answer to reducing the cost of health care for teachers and school employees is for school boards to utilize the advantages of competition.
It would be bad for this state and bad for the Great Lakes were Michigan lawmakers to ratify Annex 2001 in order to placate the other Great Lakes states.
Ironically, the Michigan Supreme Court is being criticized for a “political” result when that result comes from applying the long-recognized standing doctrine that is meant to keep the courts from engaging in political activity.
In the short term the need is for immediate savings to allow repeal of the destructive $1.3 billion tax increase adopted as the capstone to this year’s state budget debacle.
The budget agreement that passed in the dead of night on Oct. 1 will raise taxes on Michigan residents, businesses and service providers to the tune of $1.358 billion for the coming fiscal year.
Sadly, however, the Legislature has ignored judicial recommendations that would promote meaningful long-term change.
I resolve to learn more about the principles of love and liberty so that I can convincingly defend them against the encroachments of power.
If the trend of the last five years holds, a majority of right-to-work states will have higher per capita disposable incomes than Michigan by 2010, at which point Michigan will be the real right-to-work-for-less state.
By the standards of the last century, air quality today is excellent — notwithstanding the claims of environmental activists.
This law authorized a regulatory taking of the livelihoods of hundreds of small business owners who can no longer use their property in the way they had done previously.
Competitive contracting continues to be a popular management tool for improving services and for saving money, which can then be reinvested into classrooms. All indications are that it will continue to grow in popularity.
In order to prevent misuse of nonmembers’ money, right-to-work laws or an end to compulsory unionism is needed. Paycheck protection laws are better than nothing, but they certainly are not optimal public policy.
Done right, privatization remains an effective management tool for school districts across Michigan.
Under the system defended by unions, an excellent teacher, whose students demonstrate significant learning gains, earns the same amount as the teacher who clocks in and then checks out.
A far more substantive reform would be for Michigan to join a cadre of states that provide specialized services by giving parents greater options.
The MESB consists of an executive director and nine members appointed by the governor. The board has no paid staff and all members serve voluntarily.
When government employees are involved, there is a case to be made that agency fee is something that ends up costing taxpayers.
Professional advancement in a bureaucracy comes from increasing one’s budget, not from achieving more with less as it does in the private sector.
If state lawmakers and the governor consider Michiganians more than mere cash cows, they should stop reading the “Tax Hiker’s Shopping Guide”...
Consensus is actually antithetical to the proper conduct of scientific inquiry.
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 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.
