After Attorney General Bill Schuette’s bombshell charges against two former Flint Emergency Managers last week, Flint is back in the news and, as usual, is a complete embarrassment to our state. First, we have news this morning that an Assistant Attorney General in Bill Schuette’s office signed off on an administrative consent order that led to the charges being filed […]

With the bombshell news yesterday that two former Flint Emergency Managers are being charged with felonies in their connection to the ongoing tragedy known as the Flint water crisis, the calls to repeal Michigan’s anti-democratic “financial martial law” are rising again from around the state. The corporatists that see Emergency Management as a key to accomplishing their dual goals of […]

There is a whole lot of news to report about the ongoing tragedy in Flint, Michigan where the drinking water of tens of thousands of city residents was poisoned with the powerful neurotoxin lead through actions taken by state-appointed Emergency Managers. The biggest news of the day is that Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette is bringing charges against two Emergency […]

We talked about this during this week’s podcast but I think it deserves a post all of it’s own. Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards recently completed a new round of testing of the water entering the homes of Flint residents and found that 43% of them are still contaminated with lead: Water in Flint continues to improve, researchers reported Friday […]

NOTE: This post is a companion piece to this week’s episode of The Sit and Spin Room podcast. Click HERE or scroll to the bottom of the post to listen to the podcast or find it wherever you get your podcasts by searching for “Sit and Spin Room” on iTunes, Stitcher, etc. The news that President-elect Donald Trump had nominated […]

Back in March of this year, the city of Flint announced that it intended to file a lawsuit against the state of Michigan in the Court of Claims over the poisoning of the city’s drinking water with the powerful neurotoxin lead. There were no immediate plans to do so but they needed to be on record so that option remained […]

Donald Trump is making a quick swing through Flint today to do a photo-op and will undoubtedly blame the catastrophic poisoning of the city’s drinking water with the powerful neurotoxin lead on Democrats. This, of course, is patently and provably absurd. The poisoning of Flint is the direct result of decisions made by a parade of Emergency Managers appointed by […]

I got into a bit of a Twitter tussle the other day with a self-styled “education policy expert” for a Michigan corporate education reform group. While this person has never taught in a public school, and has little background or experience in education at all, he is now the Education Policy Director for this organization. After exchanging tweets for a […]

Over two years ago, a federal judge swept aside multiple delay tactics by the administration of Gov. Rick Snyder and allowed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Michigan’s Emergency Manager Law to move forward. The wheels of justice turn slowly but they do, indeed, turn and today arguments were heard on the case, Phillips v. Snyder, before the U.S. Court […]

When, in the wake of the Flint water crisis, Dan Wyant resigned from his post as director of the Department of Environmental Quality, Gov. Rick Snyder’s outgoing chief of staff lamented the move. “I’m not sure why this decision was made but if it’s only optics, keep in mind that finding a replacement who has the trust of the business […]

Last year, as part of the deal over road funding that led to Proposal 1 on the May 2015 ballot, a school financing report was commissioned by the state to determine what it takes to educate a child in Michigan. This week, that report was released and it shows, as anyone who is paying attention to education in our state […]