Commentary

CapCon’s agenda: facts and solutions

The multimedia era begins at Michigan Capitol Confidential

Dave Bondy has joined the Michigan Capitol Confidential team as digital and video content manager. The veteran broadcast journalist will extend CapCon’s reach into video, audio and social media. 

As traditional news organizations endure budget cuts and lose professional reporting talent, they fail to question or even recongize the absurdity of bills that Michigan leaders are pushing into law. CapCon aims to provide expertise and tenacity as the legacy media lose steam. 

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, CapCon’s parent nonprofit, maintains a legal team ready to to respond when government denies a request under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act.  The Mackinac Center Legal Foundation has sued the University of Michigan over its secrecy about such public topics as salaries at the Office of Institutional Equity, how the university spent donated funds, information the university supplied Gov. Whitmer’s officials about COVID policy and political statements made by the university president. Transparency is an ideal worth fighting for.

We are residents of this state. We want our elected officials to serve with integrity or at least with respect for the law. We bring accurate, document-based reporting on what government does, not just on what politicians say it does. Too many reporters have become excuse-makers and repeaters. We vow to be neither. When we take a side, we take your side.

Our goal is to provide you with the facts, data, documents and perspective you need to engage as a citizen.

Have your representatives in Lansing heard your voice this year?

How about the ones we send to Washington? What about your city council and school board?

Don’t click and scroll all day. Take what you learn and get involved. Our state institutions do not run themselves. The people who run them should always hear your input.

Please take the time to follow us on Twitter and Facebook, and spread the word to your friends.

Jamie A. Hope is assistant managing editor of Michigan Capitol Confidential. Email her at hope@mackinac.org.

Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.

Washington Watch

James introduces bill that would have blocked Michigan’s Gotion giveaway

Bill would prohibit American tax dollars from going toward companies owned by the Chinese Communist Party

If the No American Tax Dollars to CCP Act had been the law in America, Michigan lawmakers wouldn’t have been able to give Gotion $175 million to build a campus and upgrade area infrastructure.

Lawmakers on the Michigan House and Senate appropriations committees approved the giveaway last month, bringing Michigan’s tab for the $2.4 billion project to about $800 million, or one-third its cost.

In a statement announcing House Resolution 2951, Rep. John James, R-Warren, mentioned Gotion by name, and the bill targets “battery components” specifically. The proposed Gotion facility in Big Rapids will build electric vehicle battery components.

Read it for yourself: The No American Tax Dollars to CCP Act

The Gotion plant is “less than 100 miles from Camp Grayling,” James noted.

“We need to unleash and grow our economy, but not by selling our national security to the highest bidder," James said. “Financing the Chinese Communist Party only emboldens their quest for power and puts our nation at risk.”

Related reading: John James cautions against China dependency, arbitrary deadlines in transition to EVs

The bill would prevent American tax dollars from going toward companies “controlled by, operated by, or under the substantial influence of a foreign entity of concern.”

Companies that rely on Chinese technology would be subject to the bill, as would any company in which a Chinese company has at least a 20% stake.

The bill’s name references the Chinese Community Party, but the bill itself does not mention China.

James’ bill was introduced April 27 and referred to the House Ways and Means Committee. James sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The freshman representative describes himself as a “vocal advocate for countering the Chinese Communist Party’s grand strategy to seize control of the U.S. economy.”

When the U.S. House voted to create a committee on U.S.-China competition, James and 12 other members of Michigan’s congressional delegation, on both sides, voted yes. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Dearborn, was the only Michigander to vote no.

Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.