Progress Michigan blog posts.
Apparently, calling for “an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules” is just too much to ask of Congressional Republicans. Because even before President Obama had started delivering his State of the Union address last night, GOP lawmakers were recycling their old…
Our guest blogger is Clean Water’s Michigan Director, Cyndi Roper, who wrote this post: If you were a Lansing lawmaker with a perfect environmental voting record in 2011, you were voting no. With a state House majority firmly in control of the legislative agenda, the opportunity to support good environmental protections simply didn’t happen last…
After refusing for years to release his tax returns, Mitt Romney finally disclosed two years of them today, revealing that he pays a lower tax rate than millions of middle class families and has used offshore accounts in Luxembourg, Ireland, and the Cayman Islands. But is Romney hiding the rest of his tax returns…
Two years ago today, the US Supreme Court ruled that corporations are people and money is speech, overturning two decades of precedent prohibiting direct corporate and union expenditures in political campaigns. The decision has been widely recognized as an encroachment on our democracy and elections, with criticism coming from nearly every corner of the political world. But is…
WTF was that? What was supposed to last 24 minutes turned into an hour long affair. Apparently, the Governor doesn’t speechify in dog years. Listing from point to point, Gov. Snyder’s State of the State address seemed to lack a vision for Michigan or even a coherent message. If you were hoping for a plan,…
Tomorrow Gov. Snyder will deliver his second State of the State speech, and we’ll hear a lot about what a great job he thinks his administration is doing. Before we get ahead of ourselves though, let’s look at a quick recap of 2011: At last year’s State of the State, Gov. Snyder famously said, “Job…
Today’s Tea Party Republican Senate debate in Mt. Pleasant may tell us almost nothing about the candidate most likely to challenge Debbie Stabenow in November. But it does say something about the cranky state of Republican Tea Party politics in Michigan. The Freep reported that Pete Hoekstra, the Republican frontrunner for Senate, is dissing the…
There is a problem with sexism in Lansing, but it goes far beyond the fact that too many legislators make sexist comments and create a Capitol culture that’s disrespectful toward women. This is the pattern we’ve seen since Republicans took control last year. The overwhelmingly male Legislature – even more male these days – is…
After holding the nation hostage during the debt crisis and refusing to extend the payroll tax cut without large giveaways to Big Oil and Wall Street, Congressional Republicans this week decided to begin 2012 just where they left off in 2011. Embodying their role as hypocrites, Sen. Mitch McConnell and Republicans in Congress expressed “outrage”…
In 2011, Gov. Snyder and the Republican majority in the state Legislature raided the School Aid Fund and slashed school funding, opting to give a $1.8 billion tax break to CEOs and corporations. When all was said and done, they cut school funding by almost a billion dollars, hurting our kids and making Michigan less…