Today I say goodbye as Executive Director of Progress Michigan, and after three years here I know exactly what I want to leave behind: a commitment from me and you to keep making progress in Michigan. There’s really nothing like Progress Michigan – no other progressive advocacy group that day in and day out gives…
Our guest blogger is Clean Water’s Michigan Director, Cyndi Roper, who wrote this post: If you were a Lansing lawmaker with a perfect environmental voting record in 2011, you were voting no. With a state House majority firmly in control of the legislative agenda, the opportunity to support good environmental protections simply didn’t happen last…
Today’s Tea Party Republican Senate debate in Mt. Pleasant may tell us almost nothing about the candidate most likely to challenge Debbie Stabenow in November. But it does say something about the cranky state of Republican Tea Party politics in Michigan. The Freep reported that Pete Hoekstra, the Republican frontrunner for Senate, is dissing the…
When the Mackinac Center for Public Policy staff laughed off the public disclosure yesterday of an email chain involving them, a powerful Republican lawmaker and a desire to destroy unions, the rest of us might not have gotten the joke. I can help with that. Here’s why the Midland-based, hard-right Mackinac Center might think more…
The right-wing, Moonie-owned Washington Times ran a story over the weekend accusing Congressman Dale Kildee of sexual assault based on interviews with the accused’s family, who are Kildee’s cousins. Kildee just released this statement in which the Flint Democrat strongly denies the allegations and reveals he brought the FBI into the matter after an attempt…
It’s only coincidence that on Veterans Day I am forced to recall my first wound as a Marine. It was sometime in late spring or early summer of 1969. A Navy oral surgeon removed two of my wisdom teeth, and the Marine Corps felt little sympathy for my pain. No drugs and no Purple Heart,…
When voters in Genesee County’s 51st state House District fired Paul Scott Tuesday for cutting education funding and other political crimes they defeated a huge right-wing money machine intent on grinding down public schools. Into the maw of the education shredder was fed more than $100,000 in support of Scott —maybe lots more when the…
There’s probably no stopping the constant lecturing of Tea Party Republicans about how awful it was for the federal government to have rescued GM and Chrysler. And it would be too much to expect them to understand how collective bargaining between unions and management can produce positive outcomes for civil society. But for the rest…
We met 38 years ago, at first living together as friends and then keeping in touch, more or less, ever since. So when the news came yesterday that Jan had walked to a park in Warren and shot herself to death, it was, of course, a shock. Jan’s death is tragic and horribly sad for…
State Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville says teachers disagree with Republicans so what Republicans will do is punish them by using the government to target only teachers for right-to-work legislation. Richardville says on Off the Record today that right-to-work legislation will happen soon, but only targeting public school teachers. He’s not interested in going after…