It’s good to be know the king A Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) permit has been issued to Russian steel corporation Severstal this week, allowing the company that DEQ once called “the most egregious facility in the state” to continuing spewing pollutants in Dearborn and Detroit at levels far in excess of state regulations. As I wrote about earlier this […]

Rand Paul continues to fling any turd he can find at the Clintons for pretty obvious reasons. The first-term senator from Kentucky has to do something to show the GOP establishment he can be competitive in a general election, and he’s trying to keep the former president out of his home state’s Senate race so Rand didn’t sell out to […]

And Obamacare is having its best week since it became law Despite predictions that the Affordable Care Act would slow the economy, job creation has spiked to a five-year high, with an estimated 288,000 jobs created in April. Despite predictions that it would bankrupt the country, the deficit is at a five-year low. Despite predictions that cancellations would dull the […]

Last year, Governor Snyder was asked about revising Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to extend coverage to members of the LGBT community. The fact that it currently doesn’t means that people like me can be fired from our jobs simply because we are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. Governor Snyder’s response was, in effect, “it’s not on my agenda” and […]

Republicans can’t decide: Is inequality actually a problem — or is it all Obama’s fault? Late last year, the Census Bureau reported that Americans who live below the poverty level own stuff! Cool stuff! With USB jacks and stuff! “In fact, 80.9 percent of households below the poverty level have cell phones, and a healthy majority—58.2 percent—have computers,” reported right-wing […]

President Obama launched a clean energy revolution and Republicans are still whining about Solyndra At the NRA convention this weekend, you didn’t hear one mention of the issue that’s most threatening to gun owners: the 19,000 suicides by firearms in America each year. But you did hear about waterboarding as a religious rite, #Benghazi and Solyndra. Solyndra became the synecdoche […]

The one simple sentence that can change everything The political momentum continued to shift away from Republicans this week as conservatives took shrapnel from the Bundy implosion, polls continued to show Obamacare is far more popular than repeal even in red states and Democrats have found ways to embrace the law as Republicans continue to fail to win “the big argument.” […]

Republican House Jase Bolger is on what appears to be a one-man effort to extort money from Detroit labor unions. He recently laid down a new condition for state support of the so-called “grand bargain” in Detroit, a carefully-crafted and complex agreement that would protect the priceless art collection held by the Detroit Institute of Arts and dramatically minimize the […]

And the obsession with repealing Obamacare is making it worse It’s no secret. The next generation of new voters is far more diverse and minorities are rejecting the Republican Party at historically high rates. Demographics are not destiny — but even The Washington Post‘s Chris Cillizza sees how this ends for the GOP: The concentration of young minority population in […]

Seriously, this is getting ridiculous MIRS has a damning report out this week about further examples of pay-to-play politics in the Snyder administration. According to their reporting, the Dickinson Wright law firm received a $225,000 contract with the state in July of 2013. The contract was signed by Attorney General Bill Schuette and former state Treasurer Andy Dillon. A week […]

Oh, that’s rich Michigan House Republicans are in a tight spot. With concessions made by every party swept up in Detroit’s municipal bankruptcy and a deal in place that mostly preserves retiree pensions and the Detroit Institute of Arts’ priceless art collection, the only hurdle remaining is the state ponying up $350 million. Given how much money they’ve essentially stolen […]