This post has been updated. I’ve written extensively about Aramark, the for-profit prison food vendor that supplies food services to prisons across Michigan. They’ve experienced repeated food shortages, employees bringing drugs and contraband to prisoners, employees having sex with prisoners, and most recently, maggots in multiple food preparation areas. The state started cracking down on Aramark last March when they […]

Move to Amend’s David Cobb Tomorrow night, the Ann Arbor-area group Reclaim Our American Democracy (ROAD) will livestream a public debate between Move to Amend‘s David Cobb and corporate attorney James Bopp over the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision. The event takes place at the Pittsfield Township Hall (Pittsfield Township Administration Building, 6201 W. Michigan Ave., Ann Arbor) and starts […]

Yesterday, residents of the Detroit zip code 48217 held a press conference where they invited U.S. Senate candidate Terri Lynn Land to spend a day in their community to “enjoy” the polluted environment they live in every day. It’s polluted largely because those supporting Land’s failed candidacy have polluted it; groups like Koch Carbon and Marathon Oil. They want Land […]

This article is cross-posted from the website of Political Research Associates and appears in PRA’s upcoming Fall, 2014 issue of The Public Eye magazine, a special edition on neoliberalism and the Right. It was written by Jane Slaughter, an American journalist based in Detroit who writes frequently on labor affairs. Her writing has appeared in The Nation, The Progressive, Monthly […]

At the Michigan Democratic Party’s Nominating Convention this past weekend, Democrats passed an important resolution condemning the unethical and damaging foreclosure practices of Republican Congressional candidate David Trott and demanding a repeal of a law that allows vulture foreclosure firms like Trott & Trott, P.C. to immediately foreclose on homeowners. The resolution outlines a loophole that was passed by the […]

You know we’re in the steely grip of corporatocracy when this happens: West Bay Exploration Company has no plans to cease drilling at the corner of West Delhi and Miller roads northwest of Ann Arbor. The company’s oil rig is in Scio Township, where the Board of Trustees passed a moratorium last week against oil exploration activity. West Bay Exploration […]

For the past several decades, teachers have been able to “opt-out” of their membership in the Michigan Education Association (MEA), the teachers union that bargains collectively on their behalf for good wages, benefits, and working conditions and that is there for them when they are being treated unfairly. During the month of August, teachers that don’t see the benefit of […]

The Sustainability Group, a group aimed at fostering socially responsible investment, along with Walden Asset Management, which offers portfolio management services to socially responsive investors, have been working with Microsoft to encourage it to end its relationship with the corporatist group American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC.) ALEC is responsible for much of the pro-corporation, anti-union, anti-regulation legislation introduced in state […]

If you go to Rick Snyder’s Facebook page, you’ll see a picture of him smiling smugly under the banner “Michigan’s Comeback Kid”. Putting aside the fact that “comeback kid” actually refers to a person who has come back from some personal trauma, something our Governor has not done, the suggestion that Michigan is somehow roaring back to economic prosperity under […]

SEE UPDATE BELOW You know the corporate funders driving the push to dismantle and privatize as much of our public school system as they possibly can are freaking out when they do stuff like this tweet from the Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP): You also know they’ve stepped in it when they have to tweet out four explanatory tweets following […]

Despite the success of groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the State Policy Network (SPN) and their affiliates, and other related anti-union corporate front groups in making states like Michigan so-called “Right to Work” states, these same groups are having far less success in actually getting people to leave their unions. In Michigan, for example, only around 1% […]