In times like these, it’s… Screw it. There have never been “times like these” in American history. Yes, we’ve had presidents who were incompetent or narcissistic and who surrounded themselves with like-minded, power-hungry sycophants. And we’ve had Congresses that have abdicated their duty to hold our leadership accountable. But we have never had the sort of confluence of all of […]

Every time the Republicans who run Michigan do some new incredibly regressive thing, I hear it from several people: “WHY DON’T YOU JUST LEAVE?” When Republicans imposed the most draconian, anti-democratic law on our state — our infamous “Emergency Manager” Law — I heard it. When Republicans passed a huge tax cut for corporations and paid for it by raising […]

Michiganders tried. We REALLY did. We TRIED to warn America about Betsy DeVos. We tried to tell the country that she is the epitome of everything that is wrong about the corporatist and dominionist approach to the destruction of public education. And nobody was more outspoken about her and her horrid goals than the writers here at Eclectablog. We’ve written […]

America is in big trouble these days. It’s not just that we have a narcissistic liar “leading” the country. It’s that our elected officials are unwilling to hold Donald Trump and his band of merry grifters accountable for their un-American policies and actions. Accountability. That’s the foundation upon which our republic is built. Elected officials and other leaders must be […]

It’s taken years of concerted effort but, at long last, Betsy DeVos and the Koch brothers can finally claim victory: Teachers in Michigan are now paid less today in both real and corrected-for-inflations dollars. In 2009, the average teacher salary in our state was $63,025. In 2017, the most recent year for which we have data, the average was only […]

There they go again. This important essay was written by Mike Jackson, executive secretary treasurer of the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters and Millwrights union. Please contact your state legislator and ask them to vote NO on House Bill 4406. The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), an anti-union organization, is hoping taxpayers further subsidize their failed training programs. This time, […]

INSERT PAINFUL EYEROLL HERE… The Republican Speaker of the House in Michigan’s legislature is Lee Chatfield, a 30-year old father of five and graduate of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University who attempted to bring a loaded handgun onto a commercial flight last summer. In a recent interview, Chatfield characterized Attorney General Dana Nessel and Governor Gretchen Whitmer as “driven purely by […]

Yes, our political opponents are worse. But we have to be better than THIS. In May of 2015, Sarah Studley was hired by the Michigan Senate Democrats into the position of Counsel and Senior Policy Adviser. For the first year, she loved the job and found it professionally fulfilling. A year later, however, that changed. After Andy Leavitt left as […]

As Joe Biden famously said, “Don’t tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I’ll tell you what you value.” In the era of Donald Trump, it might be more apropos to say, “Don’t tell me what you don’t give a damn about. Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what you don’t give a damn about.” […]

Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards at an MSNBC Town Hall in Flint with Rachel Maddow | Photo by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog It was, perhaps, one of the most unexpected stories to spring out the tragedy of the Flint Water Crisis. Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards, once hailed as one of the true heroes of the story, began […]

Now that Trump feels he’s been “COMPLETELY EXONERATED!!!”, his campaign has lost no time in trying to discredit his detractors by trying to get them blackballed from television. In a memorandum to “Television Producers”, his director of Communications, Tim Murtaugh, suggests that Robert Mueller has “decided” that Trump was not guilty of obstruction of justice and that he has exonerated […]