Progress Michigan blog posts.
Term limits were sold to Michigan voters as a way to oust legislators with experience and get citizen legislators making our laws. Since term limits have been in place, we’ve had a system where staffers and lobbyists have the knowledge, while the learning curve for new lawmakers is steep. But we’ve never seen a Speaker…
Today is Tax Day, which in right-wing circles is basically considered to be an anti-holiday. Conservatives loathe taxes and, therefore, hate Tax Day. Unfortunately, that narrative has taken hold in the minds of many Americans, not just those on the right. When you file your taxes, you’re helping to ensure that we can educate our…
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE News from Progress Michigan April 9, 2015 Contact: Sam Inglot, 616-916-0574, sam@progressmichigan.org Treasury Requests $52K to Fulfill Progress Michigan FOIA Request Public information given for free by other departments comes with huge price tag LANSING — Progress Michigan is calling on the Snyder administration to waive onerous fees related to a Freedom of Information…
Unpaid bills are just a pretext to turn the city into a playground for the wealthy By Matthew Kovac Ever since the City of Detroit started shutting off water to low-income residents last summer in what United Nations investigators denounced as a human rights violation, city officials have maintained that they are simply responding to Detroiters’…
Some scary news out of the Lansing bubble today: State Rep. Cindy Gamrat — a Dave Agema acolyte — announced she wants to join Agema as one of two Republican National Committee delegates representing Michigan The news broke today with little fanfare or news coverage, apart from some social media. State Rep. @CindyGamrat announces today…
By Matthew Kovac Just days after news broke that food vendor Aramark fed rodent-eaten cake to Michigan prisoners, newly released emails offer further proof that the company’s health and safety violations are rampant in the state prison system. Last October, Aramark staff at Saginaw Correctional Facility threw away food before realizing there were more inmates…
The American Legislative Exchange Council, commonly known as ALEC, appears to be facing some membership issues here in Michigan. We managed to get our hands on some ALEC documents, which proved to be an interesting insight into how the right-wing organization views the Great Lakes State and the type of vision they have for our state.…
By Matthew Kovac Barely two weeks after a coalition of social justice groups announced their campaign to advocate for workers’ access to earned sick leave in Michigan, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy is already running scared. Since the announcement, the right-wing think tank has published no fewer than four separate blog posts attacking the campaign, three of…
This week, we released an email that is part of our extensive research into the handling of food service in Michigan’s prisons by Aramark, a private corporation that was contracted by the Snyder administration to provide meals for prisoners. I’ll stop you right there if you’re thinking, “Who cares? These are prisoners. They deserve every…
By Matthew Kovac When news broke that Attorney General Bill Schuette tried to intimidate a journalist, word spread fast. Huffington Post reporter Dana Liebelson tweeted Monday that she had been hit with two subpoenas for her interview notes while investigating juvenile prison conditions in Michigan. The first arrived before the interviews were over. Then an…