Lies, damn lies, and statistics Photo by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog Rick Snyder has embarked on a concerted effort to make you believe that he has turned Michigan’s job situation around. His latest farcical campaign centers around the fact that the number of people with jobs in Michigan is up 6.6% since 2009. Woo hoo! High five! Can […]

Even before the government shutdown, seniors were turning against the GOP. Rampant extremism had shaken the confidence of older Americans who were most responsible for giving the House back to the Republican Party in 2010. The shutdown combined with the second threat of a debt default — that would delay Social Security checks — in three years seems was too […]

Never gonna happen… Michigan Republican House member Tom McMillin who is on the House Education, Financial Liability Reform and Regulatory Reform committees is someone with whom I rarely agree. His attacks on education, in particular, make him one of the most reviled Republicans in the House. However, he has introduced legislation in this session and in the last session that […]

We don’t blame you, Governor. We’d hide that, too. [Caricature by DonkeyHotey from photos by Anne C. Savage for Eclectablog] With the announcement that Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is closing down the secretive NERD Fund without disclosing its donors, questions remain as to WHY he is keeping the donors secret. Considering that Charlie Secchia is the fund’s president, it’s possible […]

Corporate officials “can’t decide whether they want to close it or to keep it going” I wrote last about the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan back in August. At that time, there was evidence that radiation was seeping into the Pacific Ocean with the potential for much more contamination on the horizon: TEPCO has been pumping the water into […]

This is what happens when you elect people who hate the government to run the government Whether it’s the Tea Party Nation, TeaParty.org, the Tea Party Express, the Tea Party Patriots, or any number of the myriad local tea party groups across the country, their message is the same: We hate president Obama Shrink government and lower our taxes. “TEA”, […]

You know the GOP is ridiculous. They discovered the deficit they created on the day President Obama was inaugurated. They ran against Medicare reforms that they then adopted in their budget. They shut down the government then demanded negotiations they rejected 19 times. They spent much of the this useless government shutdown yelling at people for things they shut down […]

Thanks, kid. You’ve served your useful purpose. Now scram. First it was tea party extremist-in-the-extreme Kerry Bentivolio who who picked up a primary challenger in the form of foreclosure specialist and wealthy Big Businessman David Trott. Next up: Justin Amash. Amash will be primaried by Brian Ellis, a man who boasts that he has “all the money he’ll need from […]

This must be the “great progress” Donald Trump was talking about… As I mentioned yesterday, Donald Trump was all “Heckuva job, Ricky” on Twitter a couple of days ago, complimenting Governor Snyder on Michigan’s “great progress”. I’m thinking he wasn’t aware that today the Michigan Department of Technology, Management & Budget would be announcing that, for the third month in […]

Doing well by doing good This story refutes absolutely everything corporatists and companies whose business model requires the lowest labor costs possible want you to believe. According to them, there is no way fast food joints can succeed, turn a profit, and grow if they are forced to pay their workers a living wage. “Nobody will pay for burgers that […]

Oh, this is rich Last week a judge in Indiana ruled that the state’s so-called “right to work” law is unconstitutional. According to federal law, unions must cover everyone at a workplace but Indiana law prohibits delivery of services “without just compensation”. Since Indiana’s right to work law allows workers to benefit from union collective bargaining but does NOT require […]