Progress Michigan blog posts.
When people pride themselves on being fiscally conservative, you expect them to be fiscally conservative. So when Tea Party crackpots bested their establishment brethren and passed Medicaid expansion without immediate effect, costing Michigan taxpayers $630 million in the process, we were shocked. Much like launching missiles into Syria isn’t going to war in the “classic…
The Flint Sit-Down Strike, the Battle of the Overpass and the Anti-Right to Work rally last year — for generations, Michigan’s unions have been bloodied, gassed and arrested in order to protect the right to organize and the well-being of working families across the state. Unions were integral in establishing the eight-hour workday, implementing workplace safety regulations and building…
Although Medicaid expansion survived in the Senate by a thin margin, the legislation continues to be bogged down by conservative lawmakers who refuse to act. Without the two-thirds majority needed for immediate effect, Michigan cannot implement the expansion until April 2014. That means Michigan would lose out on $7 million a day in federal funding…
On Friday’s edition of “Off the Record,” Tim Skubick discussed the struggle for power between Republican Party stalwarts and Tea Party activists, and what it means for Medicaid expansion in Michigan. Chad Livengood, a reporter at the conservative-leaning Detroit News, cited the Michigan Freedom Fund as evidence of a Republican Party realignment, saying “They’ve gone…
Last week, we issued a statement calling on Rep. Lyons to end her outright hypocrisy and support Michigan’s public education system. One day later, Lyons was on The Tony Conley Show talking about the proposed color-coded school ranking system, but spent most of her time responding to our release by marginalizing Progress Michigan and our…
UPDATE: We put together a short sampling of some of the Michigan Pride 2013 speeches advocating for equality. Enjoy: This weekend, thousands of people will converge on Lansing for Michigan Pride 2013 to support and celebrate the LGBT community. It will be one of the rare occasions of the year when the majority of people…
It’s almost hard to imagine, but yesterday Rep. Tim Walberg went on Fox News and called the network – and all media – liars, saying: “Fox News doesn’t tell the truth, certainly none of the others do. So we’ve got to do our own media.” Why would Walberg bite the hand that feeds him? Two…
Representative Lisa Lyons is at it again. This time, she wants to change the Department of Education’s school ranking system to a letter-grade system. She says the color-coded system proposed is “ambiguous and unclear.” It’s well past time for Rep. Lyons to practice what she preaches. Rep. Lyons deserves a letter grade, and that’s an…
Today Governor Snyder took a dive – literally. He spent his day underwater, much like Michigan’s middle-class, touring shipwrecks as part of his efforts to promote tourism in our state. But unlike Gov. Snyder’s one-day excursion, working Michiganders have been underwater and struggling to make ends meet since he and his buddies decided that your…
Let me get this straight. Michigan’s unemployment rate is up (again), taxes for Michigan seniors are higher, there is a serious discussion about raising the sales tax to pay for roads and education funding, and we are now a so-called right-to-work state. Gov. Snyder and far-right lawmakers in Lansing repeatedly claimed that these measures were…