Unique Calhoun County Program Offers Dental Care in Exchange for Volunteerism

One son needing braces is expensive enough, but twin brothers with wonky teeth?

It would have cost Karen Peterson more than $12,000 for her 12-year-old fraternal twins to get braces if not for a unique program that quietly began last year in Calhoun County.

"My boys couldn't have gotten their teeth fixed without it," Peterson said. "They would have had to go through life with teeth like mine."

Four years after the successful launch of the Dentists' Partnership, a Community HealthCare Connections program in which local dentists provide free care in exchange for patients volunteering in the community, a similar program for orthodontists and low-income patients has developed.

Tentatively named Better Smiles for a Better World, the program requires a deeper commitment from both the orthodontist and the patients because of the time and expenses incurred.

But the program has the potential to help deserving children get a better start in life, with confidence in their smiles and the knowledge that they have passed the favor forward.

And the idea has started to catch on.

www.battlecreekenquirer.com/article/20110306/NEWS01/103060307/1002/news01/Program-provides-braces-kids

Cutting Business Taxes: Not a Solution to Michigan's Unemployment

Even business is not convinced that reducing business taxes by 86% and raising personal income taxes by 32% will improve our state's financial fortunes and add jobs. In fact, one writer for Michigan Business says:

"... where (Governor Snyder's) justification for business tax cuts falls apart is in his contention that easing the tax burden on businesses will “enable all businesses and industries, large and small, to grow and create jobs.”

Republicans have been making this claim since at least the days of Ronald Reagan, but there’s little evidence that cutting taxes leads to job growth.

Michigan cut taxes throughout much of the past decade, but still lost nearly 850,000 jobs.

I know — you’re dubious of the claim Michigan cut taxes.

But the state tax burden — taxes as a percentage of personal income — has fallen from 9.5 percent to 7 percent over the past decade, according to the Senate Fiscal Agency.

Michigan was the only state in the country to experience a general fund revenue decline between 2000 and 2009, according to state Treasurer Andy Dillon.

State business tax revenues have fallen 15 percent since fiscal 2008, the year the MBT was enacted.

And Michigan’s business tax climate, which includes sales, personal income, business and unemployment taxes, jumped to 17th last year from 28th in 2006, according to the conservative Tax Foundation.

That included a period in which Michigan’s personal income tax rate jumped from 3.9 percent to 4.35 percent and the MBT, with its 22 percent surcharge, was implemented.

The MBT should be replaced, if for no other reason than to simplify what is an unnecessarily complex tax.

But it’s apparently not the jobs killer that Snyder and many lawmakers claim."

www.mlive.com/business/index.ssf/2011/03/rick_haglund_history_doesnt_pr.html