Corporate welfare – using your tax dollars to subsidize Michigan businesses in the name of creating jobs – is not a new idea. But it is a terrible idea.

Michigan tried to go Hollywood in 2008 with $500 million in film subsidies… and that flopped harder than “The Love Guru.” No permanent jobs were created, and film studios bolted as soon as the taxpayer-funded handouts dried up.

Corporate handouts are bad for business.

You would think this would make for an open and shut campaign finance complaint for Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, but you would be wrong.

This past January, Ingham County Sheriff Scott Wrigglesworth knowingly used public resources to announce his re-election campaign. Wrigglesworth, a first term Democrat, admitted he “made the mistake of using a county owned platform [to announce his re-election], which I should not have done.''

If the admission of the accused wasn’t enough to persuade Secretary Benson to find a violation, you’d think fellow Democrat and Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum admonishing the law breaking lawman for his “clear intent to use County resources to further [his] election to office” would do the trick. 

Again, you would be wrong.

What could Michigan do with an extra $231 million? Nearly a quarter of a million dollars would fill a LOT of potholes. At $42,887 per mile, you could pave over 5,386 miles of new road. At an average cost of $10,209 per child, you could educate 22,627 kids. But instead, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is going to flush it down the drain.

This column originally appeared in the Detroit News.

Earlier this month, lawmakers in Connecticut took to social media to congratulate themselves on passage of a bill setting up a new licensure requirement for men and women who apply eyelash extensions at beauty salons. Those kooky East Coast liberals. 

It was a comical example of big government run wild, but the reality is, in Michigan, onerous, arbitrary and costly licensure requirements are no laughing matter. 

We’re the state where a license to work as an auto mechanic costs $6 for a standard test, but a makeup artist is forced to graduate from a 400-hour course, pass practical and written exams, and pay the state $200.