Technology giants Microsoft, Google, and Facebook have all made recent announcements that they have or are leaving the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the corporatist group that puts out pro-business model legislation to shape state policy and laws to benefit Big Business. Now the online giant Yelp is joining them. Via Common Cause: Internet powerhouse Yelp, which specializes in helping […]

On the heels of Microsoft, and then Google, leaving the American Legislative Exchange Council, a Facebook spokesperson now says that they will leave the corporatist front group in 2015, as well: Google’s departure, “really puts Facebook and Yahoo in an uncomfortable position,” said Jay Riestenberg, a research analyst with Common Cause who follows ALEC. Facebook may be next out the […]

Today on The Diane Rehm Show, Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed that the internet giant was leaving the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC, a front group for corporate interests, puts out business-friendly model legislation for its legislative members to use to create laws in their own states. There has been massive pressure on Google to leave, especially after Microsoft […]

On October 8th, the fourth season of the FX hit TV show, American Horror Story will begin. However, you don’t have to wait until October to experience the real American horror show of corporatist governors that put corporate interests ahead of working families. People in states like Michigan get to “enjoy” that every day. Today, AFSCME is releasing a series […]

In her painfully good new book This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein sums up what she thinks it would take to address the threat of climate change: “In short, it means changing everything about the economy so that our pollution doesn’t change everything about our physical world.” She argues, alarmingly, that conservatives understand this far more deeply than those on the […]

Former state House Representative Paul Scott earned a reputation during his time in office as one of the most anti-teacher legislators in Michigan. In his position as the Chair of the House Education Committee, he oversaw some of the most egregious attacks on teachers since Republicans swept into power following the 2010 election. It was bad enough that, eventually, Scott […]

When Michigan Department of Corrections Director Dan Heyns told Rick Snyder’s Chief of Staff Dennis Muchmore that he was “concerned about [Aramark] losing control of a joint” in FOIAed emails released by Progress Michigan, he was predicting the future, it appears. This morning, the Detroit Free Press is reporting that an Aramark employee has been arrested for bringing drugs into […]

Most of the time, when I read stuff slithering out of the Mackinac Center’s propaganda arm Michigan Capitol Confidential, I just shrug it off with a Reaganesque, “there they go again”. But every once in a while their effluvium is so nonsensical that it makes me read and reread it again to make sure that it isn’t something coming from […]

I’ve written plenty about Aramark in Michigan, the company that rakes in piles of your tax money as governments outsource key services to this for-profit corporation. I’ve also talked about how their for-profit prison food contracts have had problems in other states, as well. But Aramark isn’t just in the prison food business. One of the other things they do […]

This past week, David Dayen wrote a tremendous piece for the New Republic titled, “Michigan’s ‘Foreclosure King’ Is Trying to Win a Seat in Congress”. It’s a remarkable piece particularly because he takes what is an incredibly complex and inscrutable process – home foreclosures – and does a Clintonesque explainer on it. In the process, he details just how unethical, […]

This new video from Progress Michigan is their best effort yet. It tells the story of Aramark coming to Michigan in a very smart and clever way. Privatizing our prison food services to a for-profit corporation is an experiment. But, as the the video shows, it was an experiment that was already proven to be a failed and flawed model […]