“Offensive.” “Wrong…lousy.” “Shameful.” Those aren’t movie reviews. They’re reviews of the job done by Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson in her first big test as the state’s elections chief. What happened? Well, back in February Secretary Johnson added a citizenship checkbox to the ballot application, saying that it was only a matter of time…
The following is a guest blog, written by Ann Finkel. Ann is interning at Progress Michigan this summer. Election season is upon us! It’s a time when every citizen over the age of 18 – not just those with political clout, lots of money, years of experience in the political scene – have the opportunity…
Who is Richard McLellan? As a longtime Lansing attorney, McLellan has spent decades helping big corporations cash in on all Michigan’s most precious assets. The Mackinac Center was started in 1987 with funding from the little-known Cornerstone Foundation, created by McLellan, then an attorney with Dykema Gossett. Its initial effort was to privatize the Michigan…
Despite all the lies and hyperbole being spread by right-wing extremists over implementation of the different pieces of the Affordable Care Act, the truth is that many of the law’s provisions enjoy support from a majority of Americans. Among those provisions is a state health insurance exchange to allow people to more easily shop for…
Rep. Pat Somerville is out with his first mail piece of the fall campaign, and it should come as no surprise to anyone who knows how vulnerable he is: it claims “outside groups and special interests” are distorting his legislative record and stresses his votes against Snyder’s pension tax and education cuts. Check it out…
The Speaker of the House appeared on Fox News yesterday to complain about Gov. Snyder’s veto of Republican voter suppression bills, and received effusive praise from other Republican politicians for his comments. In reality, it was nothing more than an irrational attempt to gin up fear of a widespread plot to steal elections through fraud –…
If there is one simple lesson to be taken from last night’s results in the attempted recall of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, it’s that it is especially hard for one side to win an election when they are being so massively outspent. In recent days, reports have surfaced that conservative millionaires are aiming to put…
Yesterday Pete Hoekstra – whose past misdeeds in his Senate campaign have been thoroughly chronicled in this space – did it again. In his desperation to appeal to the worst elements of the Tea Party, he apparently felt it was necessary to suggest that the federal government should create a new office in order to investigate whether…
Last week, using the Twitter hashtag #23dollars, Michiganders Tweeted their ideas of what the average Michigan family wouldn’t be able to buy with the $23 election year tax gimmick originally proposed by Republicans in the state House. The gimmick had a total cost of $90 million to Michigan taxpayers, and came in the same year when…
Today Progress Michigan released a list of items that Michigan taxpayers won’t be able to buy with the 0.1 percent “income tax cut” that Lansing Republicans are proposing as they look ahead to November. For taxpayers earning $50,000 a year, the gimmickk would save about $23 in 2012. Click over to Pinterest and check out…