The following essay was written by Mitchell Robinson and is cross-posted on his most-excellent blog at MitchellRobinson.net. Robinson is associate professor and chair of music education, and coordinator of the music student teaching program at Michigan State University. Follow Mitchell on Twitter at @mrobmsu. His essay is reposted here with permission. Enjoy. A new report from the Justice Department recommends […]

Michigan’s 52nd State House District is a R+1 district that has been held by Democrat Gretchen Driskell for the past two election cycles. It was held briefly between 2010 and 2012 by now-MIA Republican Mark Ouimet. Before that, Democrat Pam Byrnes represented the district for four years, serving for a time as the Speaker Pro Tempore of the House. The […]

See update below. Last month, Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum wrote a piece for Eclectablog about Attorney General Bill Schuette’s crusade to ensure straight-ticket voting is banned forever in Michigan. In her essay, Barb explained how, at its core, Schuette’s effort is little more than an attempt to disenfranchise voters in our state. After a 3-judge panel of the 6th […]

I don’t normally just reprint press releases that I receive but this one is so important and so well-written that I’m going to break that informal rule. I am a firm believer that our country would be in a much better place if we had more women in positions of political power and Emerge Michigan plays an important role in […]

The following guest post was penned by Nick Wallace, a freelance writer/data journalist who lives in Ypsilanti. Enjoy. Arguments that credit individual politicians with ongoing macroeconomic trends should always be treated with skepticism. It is the rare elected official who can cause a recession or reduce the unemployment rate. This is particularly true of state and local leaders; governors, mayors, […]

Anyone shocked by this isn’t paying attention: Instead of speaking to the congregation at Great Faith Ministries International, Mr. Trump had planned to be interviewed by its pastor in a session that would be closed to the public and the news media, with questions submitted in advance. And instead of letting Mr. Trump be his freewheeling self, his campaign prepared […]

Yesterday I wrote about how Donald Trump is coming to Detroit on Saturday to prove to white people that he’s not racist. Though some may feel that’s a opinion, we now have proof. While he’s here, Trump will NOT be addressing the congregation of the predominantly black church where he’s taping a television interview. According to the Detroit Free Press, […]

State House legislator Gretchen Driskell, candidate for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District seat, began airing her first ad today. The ad, titled “Zero”, hits Republican tea partier Tim Walberg for his support of job-killing trade deals. The title refers to the number of trade deals like the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) Walberg has opposed. Walberg has supported every trade deal that […]

Republicans have been trying to sort out why black people tend not to vote for their presidential candidates since they got annihilated in 2008 and then again in 2012. Nowhere is their deficit more pronounced than in Detroit which has a population that is 83% African American. In 2008, 98% of Detroit voters voted for Democrat Barack Obama. In 2014, […]

It has now been 328 days since Gov. Rick Snyder publicly admitted that the drinking water in the city of Flint, Michigan had been contaminated with the powerful neurotoxin lead. This admission came months and months after the problem had been brought to light and, in the 328 days since then, no lead water service lines have been replaced through […]

I really don’t know how to respond to this. Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York City on the day of the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, literally claimed that … well, here are his words from a pro-Trump rally this morning featuring Trump’s running mate Mike Pence: Under those eight years, before Obama came along, we […]