GM Bankruptcy: End of the Road or New Superhighway?

General Motors recently filed a report with the federal government indicating the company may go bankrupt. Some will argue GM needs more federal assistance - strings attached and all, as per the forced resignation of Rick Wagoner - but the sad, hard truth is this: General Motors would be in healthier shape today had it filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11 statutes in late 2008.
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Merit Pay Goes National

We applaud President Barack Obama's recent announcement that he still favors merit pay for public school teachers who boost student achievement. This is not the first time he has broached the subject — mentioning it at last summer's National Education Association annual meeting drew a round of boos — but it is heartening that he has not abandoned support for the idea simply because one of his key constituencies disagrees. The president realizes merit pay for teachers is a necessary change.
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Visa Credit or Debit

A gentleman shared his letter to members of Congress with the Mackinac Center recently. In it, he urges halting all H2B visas for "importing workers that the Michigan 'Resorts for the Wealthy' use."

He contends that, "besides being paid sub-standard wages, these import workers do not know their rights and are basically 'indentured servants' for these rich resorts — resorts for the richest of the rich can well afford to pay a living wage and they should."

I responded as follows:
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Bounced Check

Congress is now considering the Employee Free Choice Act, a bill designed to make it easier for unions to win the right to represent workers. The bill has triggered a heated debate between unions on one hand and employers and employees themselves on the other.
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Art House

The hue and cry from the several arts community over the cutbacks of government subsidies is overblown. ArtServe CEO Jennifer H. Goulet recently opined in the Feb. 25 Detroit Free Press that Gov. Granholm's recommended 2010 arts appropriation of $1 million (down from $8.1 million in 2009, according to Goulet) eliminates "cultural institutions' capacity to provide the rich programming that transforms individuals and communities." I would argue that art and artists are better served if left to their own devices, as recent news stories of burgeoning Detroit arts communities brought about by cheap housing attest.
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Michigan's Many Tax Ranks

Defenders of Michigan's unreformed big government status quo like to cherry-pick measures of comparative state tax burdens that show this state to be "no worse than most."

Yet getting a valid indication of whether one state's overall tax burden is higher or lower than another is more complicated than most people imagine. Therefore, perhaps the best practice is to place a variety of such indexes side-by-side and let people judge for themselves.
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The First Two Letters of MEA

In an apparent bid to boost membership under the guise of "helping" school districts to save money, the Michigan Education Association union has proposed a 33 percent pension boost for school employees who retire before June 30, 2010. This self-serving measure does not save money, and should be summarily dismissed.
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They Won't Tell You Who Is Getting YOUR Money

"No government has ever misspent, overspent, stolen or otherwise misused so much as a single nickel taken from any taxpayer."

"Guns don't kill people, people kill people."

These statements are true because only people — not their tools — may be held responsible for bad behavior. As media and transparency advocates take notice of Sunshine Week 2009, this axiom should serve as a ruler to measure the sincerity of politicians posing as champions of government spending transparency. Like the villain with a gun, a bad actor on a public payroll can be a signal of great misdeeds.
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Public Comments, Private Property

Good Evening Mayor and Council.

I've been trying to decide what I should say to you this evening. It was obvious in Mr. Staton's (Op-Ed) in the Lansing State Journal on Feb. 19 that the vilified student landlord he referenced was us. Because we have been tireless advocates of the right to own property. Such a concept seems so obvious and basic to most Americans - the right to own property. Our family is very grateful for the work of our friends at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Institute for Justice.
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Stories My Legislator Told Me

Michigan Capitol Confidential, a free publication and public service provided by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, exists because the Center decided that a new tool was needed to compare what politicians say with how they vote.

The need for such exposure was recently confirmed in an indirect fashion when Michigan's energy providers asked the state Public Service Commission to let them increase consumer rates by $658 million. Last September, the state imposed a mandate that these utilities generate more of their power from renewable energy sources, and allowed them to pass the higher costs on to consumers. Passage of this mandate was the top story in the November/December 2008 issue of Michigan Capitol Confidential.
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A Trillion Wrongs Don't Make a Right

The pork-laden national disgrace being sold as a "stimulus" bill may say more about the country that swallows it than it does those who passed it. If Americans can be suckered into shackling themselves and future generations with trillions of dollars in new debt, shame on us.
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