If it’s even a little true that we play out our fantasies through the movies we watch, then what are we to make of Rick Snyder’s choice for budget director? John Nixon, executive director of Utah’s Office of Budget and Planning, was named today by the governor-elect to be the point person in dealing with…
E.J. Dionne writes this morning about the politicization of Thanksgiving by the right in a column entitled “A holiday from bickering.” Until I read E.J.’s column morning I was completely unaware that historians from the Tea Party had been training their sites on today’s holiday. Apparently the idea of sharing–even a meal–is an attack on…
If you read a front-page Detroit News story this morning headlined “High Teacher Salaries Under Scrutiny” you might have been shocked to learn that some teachers make $100,000 and that some “could” make near that if they had a master’s degree. The News’ spin on the story was that teachers were getting rich while the…
It’s a good thing the United States Supreme Court decided corporations were people too and gave them permission to secretly spend unlimited amounts of money on politics just in time for the 2010 elections. Otherwise Republicans might have had a harder time winning control of the U.S. House and all of Michigan state government. Soon…
Business Leaders for Michigan–the big business CEOs who want big tax cuts for themselves–are investing heavily in this year’s election. So far the CEO-led group’s campaign spending topped $200,000, according to campaign finance records on file with the Secretary of State. BLM invested heavily in House Speaker Andy Dillon, who lost his election for governor…
If Democratic voters don’t turn out on Election Day, and independent voters help make a huge Republican wave on November 2, Big Oil and Big Coal will have won a stealth victory that will doom America to dependence on foreign oil and more greenhouse gas pollution for years to come. For that we would largely…
Those shadowy, right-wing front groups who have spent $80 million to buy a Republican takeover of Congress are now flooding hundreds of thousands of dollars into three Michigan races for seats held by Democrats. Yesterday, MoveOn.org issued a report, Buying Democracy,(see below) showing a corporate front group from Iowa, American Future Fund, has spent $506,761thus…
Sunday’s televised debate threw a rare spotlight on Rick Snyder, the kind he didn’t entirely control. Mostly what we heard from him was a blank pistol firing into an echo chamber–lots of empty noise repeated as meaningless sound bites like “values-based budgeting.” The format was narrow and didn’t allow for much real debate, and among…
The blog MassLive is saying the Boston Globe has a story about a suit alleging political sabotage involving Michigan-based Strategic National Consulting chief John Yob. Yob has several prominent Michigan Republican clients who have paid his firm more than $300,000 this election cycle. They are (with fees paid as of September 2010*): Rick Snyder for…
Image via Wikipedia Forget for a moment that the Republican Pledge to America announced yesterday is utter nonsense if you try to make the math work. Economist Paul Krugman writes that the GOP pledge to end the Bush tax cuts would create an additional $3.7 trillion in debt over the next decade, a problem…