(Editor's note: Below is the written testimony of Michael D. LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative at the Mackinac Center, submitted today to the State Senate Finance Committee.)
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Hitch a Ride

Michigan has been in trouble for a long while now. The state is going on 37 months at the top of the unemployment charts. But there's been no clear theory as to why we're in trouble. That's important because it tells us how we're going to fix the problems.
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On the Bubble

(Note: Following are the edited remarks of Joseph G. Lehman, president of the Mackinac Center, at an April 15, 2009, TEA Party on the steps of the Midland County Courthouse.)

Some elite commentators, including Paul Krugman in The New York Times, have been making fun of you, and the TEA Parties happening around the country. They've compared what we're doing to peasant revolts. (I see some of you brought your pitchforks and torches. Be careful with those, don't hurt anybody.)
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Mean Green Machine

In the film and book “Field of Dreams” protagonist Ray Kinsella hears a voice that whispers, “If you build it, he will come.” This may work as justification for constructing a baseball diamond in the middle of an Iowa cornfield, but as an analogy upon which to base a whole new economy, it’s nothing more than fantasy. But such seems to be the case with the green jobs mantra — proponents pat each other on the back that renewable energy mandates will provide major environmental payoffs in terms of a sustainable future and more jobs. Putting aside the arguments against the promises of a sustainable future for another day, the claims for job creation are as fictitious as Shoeless Joe Jackson redeeming his legacy in Kinsella’s cornfield.
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A Rising Tide

This graphic shows the increase in Michigan's unemployment rate since Gov. Jennifer Granholm and the Michigan Legislature approved a $1.7 billion increase in taxes on Michigan businesses and working families in late 2007.
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Government Bubble

The best title for any book ever written may be "Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds." Charles Mackay's 1841 classic describes the growth and sudden collapse of some of history's most ruinous investment bubbles. The recent credit and real estate bubble would fit neatly into Mackay's narrative. If he were writing today, he would no doubt note a new government bubble that our tax dollars are rapidly inflating.
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Tea Time

Editor's Note: The following are the edited remarks delivered by Kenneth M. Braun, policy analyst for the Mackinac Center, before about 1,000 people at a TEA Party in Hudsonville, Mich., on April 15, 2009.)
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T-Day

In economically hard-hit Michigan, Tax Day — April 15 — is an especially painful reminder of how heavy a burden big government imposes. Excessive taxes add insult to injury by sucking resources from residents and job providers in a state with the nation's highest unemployment rate (12 percent) and family incomes that have fallen 11.2 percent below the national average.
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T.S. Eliot, Russell Kirk and the Moral Imagination

What makes T. S. Eliot and Russell Kirk so important that we should be here tonight to discuss them? Well, for one, both fathered "ages." The 20th century was, according to Kirk, "The Age of Eliot," and Kirk himself inaugurated the contemporary Conservative Age with the publication of "The Conservative Mind" in the early 1950s.

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Campus “Business Ethics” and “Sustainability Scolds” Hide Real Agenda: Politics

In a "Christmas Wish List" published last December by a so-called "sustainable enterprise" institute located within one of our major university business schools, item-one was that companies create "real social and environmental benefits in return for the privileges and protections of incorporation."

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Attempts at Government Efficiency Are Misguided

In response to Michigan's depressed economy and sinking state revenues, Gov. Jennifer Granholm announced in the State of the State address her intent to reduce the number of state agencies from 18 to eight. While the governor's goal to make government more efficient through department consolidation is laudable, it is likely to achieve little in savings and may make it more difficult for residents and businesses to benefit from timely decisions. Government reorganization seldom addresses the real issues of what functions government should perform. Rearranging the deck chairs of government functions is not the same as reducing or eliminating programs that are not essential to the safety and welfare of Michigan taxpayers.

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Breaking Bad Breaking the Bank

When a man first veers permanently from a virtuous path, Southerners call it “breaking bad,” which is also the name of the AMC television series created by former “X-Files” producer Vince Gilligan. Currently in its second season, the show serves as a fitting metaphor for our state and federal governments’ slide down the slippery slope of Bailout Mountain and increasing intervention in the private sector — for once character Walter White breaks bad, each illegal and immoral action prompts several other increasingly more heinous and illegal acts. Similarly, when government betrays free-market principles by throwing money at problems in the private sector rather than allowing the system to right itself, a veritable Pandora’s Box of unintended, negative consequences ensues.

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Small Ideas About Small Business

The Michigan Business Tax provides a lower tax rate for small businesses with annual gross receipts of less than $20 million and business income of less $1.3 million. Eligibility also requires a firm to cap earnings distributions to an owner in any given year at $180,000.

Last week the Senate passed Senate Bill 69, which among other things would raise that compensation cap to $210,000.

This triggered a misguided class warfare debate that showed how little members on both sides of the aisle really understand small business realities. Specifically, the annual income a small business owner derives from his or her enterprise was characterized as being equivalent to assembly line wages — a fixed amount they collect just for showing up.
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