Your “freedom” doesn’t include the right to tell women how their bodies work. When Todd Akin said that a woman’s body would not allow a pregnancy during a “legitimate rape,” he didn’t just betray a stunning ignorance of a woman’s biology. The American Journal of Preventative Medicine estimates over 25,000 pregnancies a year are a result of rape. Akin also […]

Shameless shilling for their corporate benefactors

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has been around for 37 years. They are listed as a charitable organization, a 501(c)(3), and yet their entire goal in life is help pass laws around the country that favor corporations and wealthy individuals while harming their political enemies. Their model legislative bills are aimed at destroying unions, expanding voter suppression, restricting women’s access to abortion services, imposing harsh anti-immigrant rules, weakening gun control and expanding “stand your ground” laws, and limiting corporate liability when people are harmed by a product or in their workplace.

Across the country, ALEC is having an impact. Their model legislation is being passed into law at an alarming rate, aided and abetted by the influx of tea party lawmakers. Conservative and dogmatic, they are easy targets for ALEC’s cookie cutter laws. They simply make a few changes (or not, in some cases) and sponsor the bill. No need to write the law themselves; all of the hard work has been done for them.

This week, Progress Michigan published a 73-page report on ALEC in Michigan.

Let’s you and him fight…

Tea partiers in western Michigan are taking on a strange adversary this month. In a widely-blogged screed from the Tea Party of West Michigan (“Influence policy, effect [sic] elections, protect the Constitution”), Tina DuPont is outraged the Right to Life of Michigan is supposedly supporting the formation of a state-run health insurance exchange mandated by the Affordable Care Act.

Details after the jump.

A successful myth, of course, but a myth nonetheless

A study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released last week shows that the claim by Republicans that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on the wealthiest among would harm small businesses is a myth. In fact, only 2.5% of small business owners are in the top two tax rates and only 0.5% of them are millionaires.

Ammunition to fight back against these lies after the jump.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire

On June 18th, Sterling Corporation employee and Jeff Timmer resigned from the Board of State Canvassers, leaving only one Republican on the elections board and a Democratic majority. While some feared that the remaining Republican, Norm Shinkle, would resign as well, leaving the group without a quorum and unable to approve a number of ballot initiatives pending for the November election, Governor Rick Snyder acted quickly and last week appointed Colleen Pero to the Board.

Described in glowing terms on the official announcement, Pero sounds like an innocuous and innocent choice. The truth is, however, quite the opposite. Colleen Pero has deep connections to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society and a host of other far-right, pro-business lobby groups.

The conservative plot against America It’s a scene that will go down in American history. On the night of President Obama’s inauguration—in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Hoover Administration—leaders of an extremist sect of the GOP met with one goal: destroying the Obama presidency. Messaging guru Frank Luntz, journalist Fred Barnes and philanderer/historian Newt Gingrich were […]

Desperation breeds desperate behavior The Michigan Board of State Canvassers has cancelled a meeting scheduled for next Tuesday, June 26th. I confirmed this with a phone call to the Elections Bureau this afternoon. Additionally, Republican Board member Jeff Timmer is rumored to have resigned and it is believed that the other Republican, Norm Shinkle, will resign as well, leaving the […]

When you don’t have the votes, you cheat

An anti-democracy group ironically called Citizens Protecting Michigan’s Constitution is asking Republican Secretary of State Ruth Johnson to throw away the petitions containing nearly 700,000 signatures to keep the Protect Our Jobs referendum off the November ballot, saying:

“We believe that you have a clear legal duty to reject the filed petition and to refuse to further process it, canvass the signatures or to refer the petition to the Board of State Canvassers for certification to the ballot.”

When you’ve lost the conservative press, you’ve lost

The Livingston County Press & Argus editorial page is not known for being part of the so-called “Liberal Media”. Quite the opposite, in fact. So, their recent Op-Ed “Politics trumps law for GOP judges” is significant.

Very significant.

If you’re going to take over our state, you at least need to file the paperwork

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy has long been the “policy house” for far-right conservatives in Michigan. Much like the national American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), their purpose in life is to create anti-union, pro-business policy and to assist in getting legislation passed that makes their policy law. In the process they work diligently to shape public dialog and the opinions of lawmakers in pursuit of their goals.

This is not a secret. They do it publicly and are brazen in their efforts.

Michigan Representative Sander Levin sees what they do as lobbying, which it is. He has proof and is now asking the Internal Revenue Service to look into the tax filings of this non-profit group which claims they do no lobbying. Rep. Levin sent the IRS a letter asking them to investigate…

A tale of an Obama surrogate who isn’t This is the Week of the Woman™ for the Romney campaign and Mitt is going whole hog trying to prove that it is he, not President Obama, who is the pro-woman candidate (maybe I should pause while you stop laughing.) His chief advisor in this effort is, apparently, his wife Ann, pictured […]