The annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gives us all a raw look at how far conservativism has devolved from the days of Ronald Reagan. Instead of continuing down the path blazed by Reagan, conservatives have chosen instead to follow the racist bigotry and worship of all things corporate started by the John Birch Society in the middle of the […]

The anti-union, anti-teacher corporatist group Mackinac Center for Public Policy has a long history of promoting the demise of teachers unions and public schools. They prefer a world where children are taught by non-unionized teachers in charter schools that profit from our tax dollars. Which is why it’s bizarre to the point of being Orwellian that they have granted $1 […]

If you listen to DTE Energy and Consumers Energy tell the story, Michigan is perched on the precipice of an impending energy crisis of epic proportions. New ads running television – over 400 in the past two months – tell us that, thanks to federal regulations, many of our coal-fired power plants will be shut down. The result, they suggest, […]

Ed Buss was hired about five months ago by the Snyder administration to oversee the work of Aramark, a for-profit vendor who the Snyder admnistration outsourced prison food services to. Buss was brought in to clean up some messes that Aramark had made. What messes? These messes: Running out of food Making unauthorized food substitutions in violation of their contract […]

In a recent article in The Detroit News, tea partier Todd Courser compared himself to the legendary gladiators: “We were not created by the genteel side of Republican politics,” said Courser, a 42-year-old Lapeer attorney. “We were created from the rough and tumble work of gladiators.” It’s a beautifully ironic statement given who the gladiators really were: A gladiator was […]

For the past four years, Michigan Republicans, taking their cues from the anti-teacher group Mackinac Center, have defunded education, gone after teacher pay and benefits, and done just about everything they could to put public education and public educators out of business. Their model is to make teaching so unattractive that the professionals abandon it as a career, leaving the […]

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a Koch brothers-funded group that churns out pro-business model legislation for state legislators, has been incredibly effective at impacting policy at the state level. A recent study shows just how effective they have been: Building on research I am conducting with Konstantin Kashin, I used text analysis of ALEC’s model legislation, along with all […]

When the final numbers were tallied, the race in Michigan’s 11th Congressional District wasn’t even close. David Trott beat Bobby McKenzie by nearly 16 points, an astonishing feat even in the conservative 11th District. Being the wealthy guy that he is, Trott was essentially able to buy the seat. With the final campaign filings in, we now know just how […]

Welcome to Michigan under Republican rule Flint schools have been in financial trouble since 2011 when it first went into debt. In 2012, they eliminated 460 teachers and staff positions. In May of this year, they laid off 91 more teachers and staff and slashed benefits of the remaining teachers as an alternative to a 19% pay cut. Later in […]

In the wake of the blistering multi-day expose by the Detroit Free Press detailing the failures of for-profit charters in Michigan and the astonishing lack of transparency and accountability they enjoy, the charter school industry is ramping up its propaganda machine. Just in the past few days, there have been two op-eds in The Detroit News promoting their for-profit-with-tax-dollars model […]

Nobody likes to lose elections and when you’ve put has much heart and soul and time and effort into it as I and many of my friends have, it’s particularly depressing. I started working with a team of people in Washtenaw County to organize at the local level in February of 2013. From that moment until 8:00 p.m. last night, […]