That button there on the right belonged to my mother. She was an ardent feminist and, in fact, took me to my very first political protest when I was in high school; an 85,000-person strong march in Chicago in 1980 demanding passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. 59¢ cents was how much women made for the same job a man […]

Do you ever feel like you never seem to be able to get ahead? That you work your whole life but, at the end of the month, the end of the year, you aren’t any further ahead than you were last month or last year? This one chart goes a long way toward explaining exactly why that is: As the […]

Tomorrow is Tax Day and the group FightFor15.org is holding rallies across the country demanding a living wage for low-wage workers like those in the fast food industry. Here in Michigan, there will be a rally on the campus of the University of Michigan at noon to demand that U of M begin paying its employees and those who work […]

I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who came through in such a profound way for this quarter’s fundraiser. Thanks to your generosity we have enough in the coffer to keep paying our writers and even bring on a new one (who I will be announcing soon.) In particular, the response to Anne’s Facebook post was nothing short […]

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette is our state’s top lawyer. He bragged about his legal acumen during his 2014 campaign. He also has over 100 Assistant Attorneys General on his staff. So, as Schuette prepares to defend our state’s ban on same-sex marriages before the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), you would assume that he would be well-positioned […]

Earlier this week, I was feeling pretty low. It was Day Two of our quarterly fundraiser and we had gotten a single donation of ten dollars. Usually by the second day we have a couple hundred, at least. It seemed like we were headed for a disastrous week and, with my business checking account nearly drained, there would be no […]

The privatization of prison food services to the for-profit group Aramark has generated a seemingly endless litany of scandals and more are likely to come as Progress Michigan plows through the results of their exhaustive FOIA request. The scandals so far have been thoroughly documented here at Eclectablog. Although this collosal failure at privatization would lead most good leaders to […]

After a Department of Justice investigation, Ferguson City Court Clerk Mary Ann Twitty, was fired after 19 years on the job for using her city government email to send racist emails. One email showed a photo of Ronald Reagan feeding a bottle to a chimpanzee with the caption “Rare photo of Ronald Reagan babysitting Barack Obama in 1962.” Another said […]

If you’ve ever spent time at Michigan State University, it’s hard to miss the twin smokestacks of the T.B. Simon Power Plant on the south side of campus. And it’s also hard to miss the gigantic piles of coal next to the plant or the hundreds of coal-carrying train cars that feed the maw of the behemoth. Starting in 2016, […]

Here in Michigan, we have a quirky bunch of messed up gun laws that allow people with concealed pistol licenses carry guns in schools. Because of the loophole, they can only do so if they open carry where everyone can see it. For me, it’s tantamount to having “I’m stoopid” tattooed across your forehead and anyone who open carries in […]

When the owner of Memories Pizza in Indiana recently told reporters that she would refuse to bake pies for wedding receptions if the couple were gay or lesbian, the story went viral. Lawrence Billy Jones III set up a GoFundMe page to “relieve the financial loss endured by the proprietors’ stand for faith” and he encouraged supporters of the homophobic […]