Michigan - The Hell Hole of ALEC Experimentation

Michigan has been the hell-hole of ALEC policy.

Every nasty possible thing that ALEC offers has been pushed and pushed and implemented in Michigan.

ALEC-ers are determined to make Michigan the horror story of ALEC policy implementation.

The extremely sad thing is that the entire ALEC experiment is based on a free-market philosophy that has NOT been successfully implemented anywhere in the world. Even knowing that, ALEC state legislators just push ALEC legislation and policy - knowing that they are doing irreparable harm to their states.

The latest is this:

LANSING, Mich. — Republican slammed right-to-work legislation through the Michigan House and Senate Thursday, drawing raucous protests from throngs of stunned union supporters, whose outnumbered Democratic allies were powerless to stop it.

Just hours after they were introduced, both chambers approved measures prohibiting private unions from requiring that nonunion employees pay fees. The Senate quickly followed by voting to impose the same requirement on most public unions.

SLAMMED is a correct analogy to use.
   They are trying to ramrod this legislation through with no input!!!!

   Shove it down the throats of Michiganders

   Force it on the Michiganders

   Don’t have a democratic process – just slam that ALEC philosophy into Michigan

   Again – demand change of Michiganders – because we are in control, 

         you have no say, 

         this is an ALEC led dictatorship.

becausetheycan

And then so that the “wrongies” don’t get misled by the infamous liberal MSM – the Wall Street Journal published an article in support of the right to work for less legislation in Michigan.

But – I am sure they didn’t acknowledge some disturbing relationships in the article.

ALEC-er Stephen Moore had to immediately step forward to promote the ALEC philosophy being pushed down the throats of Michiganders.

From the WSJ (behind a paywall – so only this snip)

Michigan’s Right to Choose

Republicans are poised to move forward on right-to-work legislation, and the unions are fighting back.

By Stephen Moore

“Michigan would be the 24th state to institute a right-to-work law. Studies by Richard Vedder of Ohio University and the American Legislative Exchange Council have found major job gains in right-to-work states and losses in the northeastern and midwestern forced-union states. Right-to-work laws don’t ban unions; they simply give workers the choice whether to join. Economist Arthur Laffer, who has also studied the issue, says: “This is the best thing Michigan could do for an economic rebound.”

Moore

Vedder

Laffer

Well – it appears that ALEC philosophy is so bad 

– that the only people that they can quote to support ALEC philosophy 

– is other ALEC-ers.

ALEC’s Board of Scholars Program honors those whose distinguished work and dedication to market-based policy innovations have been, and continue to be, invaluable to ALEC and its membership. This convergence of ALEC with the great policy thinkers will further ALEC’s mission of expanding free markets, limited government, and individual liberty. The following are members of the ALEC Board of Scholars:

Arthur B. Laffer

Stephen Moore

Dr. Richard Vedder

And then you have this:

Rich States, Poor States

5th Edition – By Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore and Jonathan Williams

Where the ALEC philosophy on right to work for less is

          Status as a “right-to-work” state (yes is best)

Those three definitely share the ALEC secret handshake.

  

BUT when you go outside the inner circle of ALEC, you find other opinions:

As in these snips from:

Selling Snake Oil to the States: The American Legislative Exchange Council’s Flawed Prescriptions for Prosperity

Did the ALEC-Laffer variables reflecting state policy influence the rate at which states grew, holding constant the composition of the state economy? They did not. Neither variable—total taxes or “right-to-work”—had a statistically significant effect on growth in state GDP, growth in non-farm employment, or growth in per capita income.

The path to prosperity is paved with so called “right-to-work” (RTW) laws, according to Laffer and company. Such laws do not create a right to a job, of course. Instead they take away the right of labor unions to negotiate a contract provision requiring all workers covered by and benefiting from a union contract with a private company to contribute to the cost of negotiating and maintaining that contract. While Laffer and company insist on referring to states without a “right-to-work” law as “forced union” states, they must know that this is not true: no one is forced to join a union (which would be counter to federal law).

RTW states would more accurately be dubbed “Right to Freeload” states. The real intent of such laws, of course, is to weaken unions, which in turn weakens their ability to win higher wages and better benefits. The real objective is to suppress wages.

It has been demonstrated conclusively that wages are lower and benefits more meager in RTW states. In a study that examined the effect of a state’s RTW status, controlling for differences in the cost of living, demographics, job characteristics, education of the workforce, and other factors, it was found that in RTW states, compared to free-bargaining (non-RTW) states, wages are 3.2 percent lower, a smaller percentage of workers (by 2.6 percentage points) have employer-sponsored health insurance, and the percent of workers with employer-sponsored pensions is 4.8 percentage points lower.

Perhaps, as Laffer would have us believe, employers prefer RTW states and weak unions to such a degree that those states experience greater growth in GDP and employment. This turns out not to be the case.

A serious attempt to research the impact of RTW status on state growth would have to control for these other factors—state economic structure, climate, workforce demographics, and others—in order to isolate the RTW effect. Two recent studies have done just that. One concluded: “…right to work laws … seem to have no effect on economic activity.”36 The other found that right-to-work laws have no significant impact on job growth or the rate of new business formation, but do result in lower wages and lower per capita income.37

When you ALEC members supporting other ALEC members to promote and advance their own work and the philosophy of other ALEC-ers – you are looking at a very myopic and closed society type of thinking.

When you open up the discussion to other voices, you create a dialogue.

It is evident that Michigan ALEC legislators do not want a dialogue – they just want to shove the narrow-minded philosophy of the American Legislative Exchange Council down the throats of Michiganders.

becausetheycan