Progress Michigan blog posts.
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…
What’s worse than unethical lawmakers crafting legislation? Unethical lawmakers facing absolutely zero repercussions for blatantly sidestepping a moral duty and trying to disenfranchise voters. Secretary of State Ruth Johnson claims to uphold the law in Michigan – repeatedly citing putting a stop to fraud as a top priority – but her actions following this scandal…
If it weren’t for the extensive text-message record it would have been the perfect Kansas City shuffle. Democrat Rep. Roy Schmidt plotted with Republican House Speaker Jase Bolger to switch parties a moment before the filing deadline and outsource the competition to a candidate of their choosing: his son’s friend. In effect, robbing Michigan’s 76th…
The following is an editorial written by State Representative Barb Byrum (D-Onondaga). If you have questions about this commentary, please contact Rep. Byrum’s office by calling (517) 373-0587. Republicans in the legislature recently passed House Bill 5061 and Senate Bills 751 and 803, which would add unnecessary barriers to the voting process and would suppress…
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…
Income inequality is defined as “the unequal distribution of household or individual income across the various participants in an economy.” Based on this definition, it’s clear Lansing Republicans have the wrong priorities. The evidence shows that support for middle class families and funding for K-12 schools in Michigan have fallen by the wayside, while big corporations and…
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 –…
We’ve all experienced the bitter taste of disappointment in life. We’ve all had reactions we regret. But as the Hartland Township “Retake our Government” group is about to prove, there are always new lows for extreme reactions to disappointment. The local “tea party” group planned to burn then bury the 2,409 page Affordable Care Act.…
UPDATE: The Affordable Care Act is upheld – the individual mandate stands. Remember: this isn’t win for Obama but for the millions of Americans who will be covered! Today is the day! Shortly, the Supreme Court of the United States will rule on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and whether or not the…