Last December, Aric Nesbitt, a proud Republican member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), introduced a bill, H.B. 5205 that went largely unnoticed. The bill would reclassify petroleum coke (“petcoke”) and solid waste as a “renewable energy resource”, eligible for renewable energy tax credits. Yes, you’re right to gasp. Earlier this month, Executive Director for the Michigan League of […]

Michigan’s Republican led legislature adjourned on Thursday without passing the package of road repairs Governor Rick Snyder says he’s been working on for years. This should be clear reminder what happens when you elect Republicans to public office: sabotage. Business leaders need to face that an increasingly intractable GOP has no interest in doing anything that might give voters the […]

Michigan GOP’s new motto: “(Over)react first, get the facts later” Last March, Michigan Republicans announced that they were going to essentially fine Michigan State University a half million dollars for having the audacity to provide courses that were, in their words, “encouraging labor disputes”. As it turns out, that wasn’t the case at all. The courses were not open to […]

In general, when you see a car with American flag and bald eagle stickers all over it, there’s also a “Support our Troops” ribbon sticker to go along with them. For some people, nothing says “patriot” like a “Support our Troops” sticker and nobody loves to wrap themselves in that patriotic swag more than Republicans. But, for some Republicans, that […]

In the midst of the worst of the Great Recession, before Barack Obama was even sworn in, Eric Cantor was the leader of the movement to do nothing to help the new president fix the disasters he inherited. During the debt limit crisis of 2011, the author of The New New Deal Mike Grunwald points out, Cantor’s job was to […]

When the choice is between an incumbent tea partier whose own brother calls “mentally unbalanced” with “serious mental issues” and a corporatist foreclosure specialist, the choice was easy for Mitt Romney. He went for the corporatist leech on the jugular vein of society and predatory vulture banker, David Trott: “As someone who grew up in Michigan and has family currently […]

If there was one lesson of the last decade, it was that Texas Republicans weren’t extreme enough News that the Texas GOP is embracing the crock science of turning gay people into ex-gays known as “reparative therapy” has overwhelmed the bigger story coming out of the Lone Star State — the party’s latest platform is pretty much a complete list […]

We’ve recovered all the jobs Bush killed or, as the GOP says, time for a new Bush After a record 51 months of consecutive job growth, America has finally recovered all the jobs lost in the Great Recession. We now have 98,000 more jobs than January 2008 — a record for this country. This is a bittersweet victory considering that […]

This week Michigan legislators passed a package of bills dubbed “The Grand Bargain” that will help our state’s largest city, Detroit, get back on its feet. Missing from that package was a bill that would have prevented regional municipalities from renewing the existing voter-approved 10-year millage or the levying a new millage to fund the Detroit Institute of Arts. (Details […]

Attempting to deceive senior citizens is, simply put, sick and disgusting. Governor Snyder is summoning his inner Obi Wan Kenobi, using the Jedi Mind Trick to try to convince seniors that he’s not taxing their pensions. “I want to be proactive, ” he said, “and let people know it’s NOT a pension tax. What we did was clean up our […]

We can’t do anything about climate change but we won’t just sit back and let women get birth control Less than a day after President Obama unveiled his plan to curb carbon emissions using the EPA’s regulatory power, China indicated that it will be curbing its carbon pollution for the first time ever. This historic act of cooperation (and self-preservation) […]