After eight years of an anti-science Bush administration, science got a bit of a boost with the election of Barack Obama. Political cartoonist Tom Toles from The Washington Post commemorated the event with this spot-on comic: However, Republicans continued to push their anti-science ways, working to thwart the Obama administration’s efforts to combat climate change at every turn. Again, Tom […]

This is becoming indecent… It’s no secret that Michigan Republicans are deeply in the pocket of corporations in our state. One of their first orders of business after taking control of our state government in 2010 was to pass a massive tax cut for corporations paid for by raising the taxes of over half of the residents in our state […]

First we had this: Then we had this: And throughout it all we had food service employees having sex with inmates, rotten, rodent-chewed food being served to prison inmates, and drugs being smuggled into prisons by prison employees. Since 2014, I have written roughly 30 posts about the privatization of prison food services in Michigan and they all tell the […]

“Recent water tests at elementary schools in Flint have found an increase in samples showing lead levels above the federal action limit.” That’s the opening line in an article in The Detroit News less than one month ago. Despite this, the state of Michigan, just days after turning control over the city back to local elected officials, declared the Flint […]

In April of 2012, control over Muskegon Heights schools was handed over to an un-elected Emergency Manager, appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder. By July, Emergency Manager Donald Weatherspoon had signed a contract to turn the entire public school system over to the for-profit charter school operator Mosaica. Two years later the district was still insolvent and having to borrow almost […]

This post has been updated to correct information about training requirements for a “special police officer”. It takes a lot to surprise me when it comes to “Republicans Gone Wild!” type legislation in Michigan these days. After all, this is the state where Republicans passed a law forcing women to purchase special insurance to cover abortions – what I call […]

As Republicans in the U.S. Senate are considering their last ditch, hail Mary attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, there’s one aspect of it that should be truly concerning to everyone and that’s the concept of giving healthcare dollars to the states in the form of block grants to spend largely as they wish. Here in Michigan, our Republican-controlled […]

Long-term readers of this site probably know about the State Policy Network (SPN). This is the Koch brothers-funded network of state-based “think tanks” used to spread anti-worker, pro-corporate propaganda with the goal of changing policy and laws in states to favor businesses and to harm the positions of workers. Working with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) Americans for Prosperity, […]

In George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, documents that contradicted Big Brother’s enforced worldview were burned by sending them down the Memory Hole by the Ministry of Truth. It’s a frightening concept really, that the government could control our thoughts and memories by eradicating any it doesn’t like. That is no longer a concept, it’s being put into practice by the […]

Bill Schuette hasn’t filed paperwork to run for governor in Michigan yet but there are plenty of signs that he’s going to. For instance, he has already raised nearly $1.6 million. But the clearest evidence is that the man who has spent millions upon millions of our tax dollars to promote his extremist conservative views has finally started doing his […]

One small section of a 798-page bill titled the “Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2017” was clearly written by lobbyists for the forest products industry. Buried on page 366 is this statement: To support the key role that forests in the United States can play in addressing the energy needs of the United States, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Agriculture, […]