A face for radio… I was on Night Shift with Tony Trupiano last night talking about my piece yesterday regarding ALEC’s presence in the recently-passed Medicaid expansion bill as well as the candidacy of Pam Byrnes for the 7th Congressional district. If you listen closely, you can hear me refer to Congressman John Dingell as “John Engler”. D’oh! [soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/107920765″ […]

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Of course ALEC has a place in Michigan’s expansion of Medicaid. They probably helped write the bill. After Senate Republicans passed H.B. 4714 on Tuesday to expand Medicaid to cover an additional 470,000 people, I thought it would be smart to have a look at just what’s in this legislation. I discovered that about 24 pages of the 40-page bill […]

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This is what happens when you vote Republican Since the beginning of this year, Eclectabloggers have written no fewer than 55 posts relating to Medicaid expansion, mostly centering on Michigan. When she came on as a contributor in April, Amy Lynn Smith instantly became a powerful voice for expansion of Medicaid in Michigan. There is no question in my mind […]

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Confirming what has long been accepted: ALEC is nothing more than a front group for corporate interests The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) calls itself “a nonpartisan public-private partnership of America’s state legislators, members of the private sector and the general public” that “works to advance the fundamental principles of free-market enterprise, limited government, and federalism at the state level”. […]

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Of course a corporate front group wants to stop this… When I was in grade school, you couldn’t run barefoot through a grassy field full of clover because there were so many honeybees that you were sure to be stung. Now, 40 years later, there are no wild honeybees left in America. Why? Neonicotinoid insecticides used to control aphids and […]

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You got your Right to Work and your corporate tax cuts. Now show us the jobs. For two months in a row, Michigan’s unemployment rate has gone up. It went up 0.3 points to 8.7% in June and, in July, it was up another 0.1 points to 8.8%. In contrast, the US unemployment rate was flat at 7.6% in June […]

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Let me ask you a stupid question. Would Republican governors and legislatures in more than two dozen states be about to turn down fully subsidized health insurance for millions of Americans if the Americans who were about to get this fully subsidized insurance weren’t poor? Before we pretend that this is a serious question, keep in mind that the Americans […]

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Rewriting history to blame unions for Detroit’s crisis is offensive and ludicrous

As I announced earlier this year at the Netroots Nation conference in San Jose, California, in 2013 the conference will be held at the Cobo Center in downtown Detroit. This will be an incredible shot in the arm for the city as thousands of progressive organizers and organizations come to Detroit for several days to share ideas and strengthen their relationships. It will also be a tremendously energizing moment for the many Democratic campaigns that will be in full swing next summer as we head into the final months of the 2014 election cycle.

This clearly has corporatist, Republican-supporting groups freaked out. They want to keep Michigan in the hands of their well-funded Republican legislators for as long as possible and the thought of losing the House or, even worse, having corporatist poster child Rick Snyder removed from office must give them cold sweats at night.

As part of their response, the Virginia-based Koch brothers front group the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity wrote an opinion piece for the Detroit News titled “Netroots nation comes home to the unions’ roost”.

Click through where I unpack the myriad lies and the blatant anti-union propaganda in this offensive op-ed.

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Detroit ruin porn from the Emergency Manager??? One of the most widely reported statistics about Detroit, thanks to Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, is that it takes, on average, 58 MINUTES FOR THE COPS TO ARRIVE OMG OMG OMG!!! It’s all over the news, Stephen Colbert had fun with it, and it’s giving people everywhere comfort in the fact that over […]

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Corporate malfeasance that harms the planet is not exclusively American It’s been two and a half years since the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant complex in Japan began spewing radioactive material into the air, land, and sea after it was destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami. Since that time, much of the world has turned its attention elsewhere with most […]

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The skids are greased [Caricature by DonkeyHotey from photos by Anne C. Savage for Eclectablog] It what can only be described as a clean sweep for Governor Rick Snyder and Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr, a federal judge halted three separate lawsuits filed in state courts attempting to stop Snyder and Orr from taking Detroit through a bankruptcy. The argument […]

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