Tag: 2004

Michigan Anti-Affirmative Action Proposal Has 60 Percent Support

A group calling itself the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative began circulating petitions back in November to put a question on the November 2004 ballot on whether or not to ban racial discriminatory admissions policies at universities and colleges in Michigan.

Many of the leaders of the Republican Party came out against the idea. One of their fears is that such a proposal will help increase turnout of Democratic voters in the election that could impact other elections, such as those for the president and statewide offices. A ballot initiative that would have created an educational voucher system in Michigan lost soundly in 2000 and was credited for increasing turnout among Democrats (i.e., it may have cost Bush the state of Michigan).

According to a Detroit News poll, however, the proposal enjoys 64 percent approval today, and the actual support is probably a bit higher given some people’s reticence to discuss racial issues with pollsters. Those actually opposing the initiative are only at 23 percent. That’s a pretty stark contrast with the voucher initiative which was pretty much a losing proposition very early on.

If the group can actually manage to collect the necessary signatures, it looks like this proposal has a good shot at passage in November.

Source:

Michigan voters want affirmative action ban. Charlie Cain and Mark Hornbeck, Detroit News, January 20, 2004.

Michigan’s Proposal 4

One of the more bizarre election year campaigns here in Michigan centers around Proposal 4. This is an initiative that would alter the state constitution to restrict how the state can spend the money it receives as part of the tobacco company settlement.

Of course the legal theory behind the tobacco settlement was that states had paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in extra health care costs for smokers, so the tobacco companies should compensate them for this.

In Michigan, like most states, little of the tobacco settlement money has gone into the health care system or into initiatives to lower smoking rates. Instead it goes to fund thing like scholarships for college students and a large part of the settlement gets kicked backed to cities to use however they please.

Proposal 4 would essentially change that, forcing the state to spend the money on health-related issues.

So what we have in Michigan is a war of words between hospitals and doctor on the one side and college students and municipalities on the other. It’s kind of funny to see anti-Proposal 4 commercials referring to hospitals as “rich special interests.” Yeah, hospitals are really rolling in the dough.

But what’s absurd is that both sides are wrong. The money shouldn’t be spent on smoking cessation programs or college scholarships or the pet projects of Michigan cities. If tobacco use really increased state expenses, then that means that taxes in Michigan were artificially high to pay for the health problems of smokers. The tobacco settlement, then, should be given back to taxpayers either directly in the form of refunds for past taxes that subsidized smokers or in the form of a tax cut.