This morning the Michigan Senate Elections Committee voted to advance a Republican-sponsored bill – S.B. 13 – that will eliminate straight-ticket voting in our state. If it becomes law, you will no longer have the convenience of simply pulling one lever, filling in one oval, or punching one chad to vote for all the candidates in your preferred party. The […]

The road repair “plan” passed by the Michigan legislature this week has been touted as raising $452 million in the first year with the full $1.2 billion not kicking in until 2021. However, that “first year” is actually not until 2017. And, according to some great reporting by Chad Livengood at The Detroit News, we now know that, as soon […]

It is finished! “It is finished!” That was the title of a recent video posted to Facebook by Todd Courser. Michigan’s most notorious theocratic hypocrite used the final words of Jesus on the cross to make his final pitch to regain the House seat he fled just a couple of months ago. It’s a perfect encapsulation of a self-absorbed megalomaniac […]

House Speaker Kevin Cotter took to the House floor last night to tell us all that they have kicked the can down the road too far on road funding and, by golly, it’s time to get this done. Then he said something that is the most blatant exhibition Orwellian Newspeak that I’ve seen in some time: This is a plan […]

Wouldn’t it be nice if Michigan got mentioned on The Rachel Maddow Show just once for some cool thing that’s happening here? Sadly, once again it’s because of the complete Fail Whale that is the Michigan Republican Party and the clowns who inhabit it. Yup, Rachel Maddow finally picked up the Courser/Gamrate debacle. Ugh:

It’s no secret that Republican Congressman Mike Bishop (MI-08) has been in the pocket of Michigan billionaire Matty Moroun for years. In 2010, Bishop was the State Senate Majority leader and promised to hold a vote on a new bridge crossing from Michigan into Canada. However, he ended up blocking the vote, something Matty Moroun liked very much, indeed, since […]

The picture above is a screenshot of a Detroit Free Press article published yesterday. In the article, Gov. Snyder paints on an optimistic smile and says he’s confident that there is “strong momentum” for something getting done on road funding, despite a half decade of failed efforts on his part and on the part of his Republican colleagues in the […]

The unbearable costs of Republican politicians pandering to their base Michigan’s Attorney General Bill Schuette is wasting taxpayer agenda to join another partisan lawsuit designed to stifle the agenda of a president his state overwhelmingly supported twice. The Detroit News reports: Led by West Virginia, the states are asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit […]

“Only the Michigan GOP could look at crumbling roads, underfunded schools and struggling communities and think, ‘You know what? We need LESS revenue’.” That quote from Progress Michigan executive director Lonnie Scott sums up what happened last night in the state legislature perfectly. After more than two and a half years of wrangling to find $1.2 billion annually that experts […]

Bipartisan legislation would require hospitals to staff enough nurses to care for patients. This is something you’d think everyone could agree on: There should be enough nurses on a hospital’s staff to give patients the quality care they need. But if you’ve ever been in the hospital, you know that’s not always the case. And it’s downright dangerous. Numerous studies […]

It’s a been a while since we checked in on Michigan’s two most “special” political candidates (and by political candidates, I mean disgraced former state legislators trying like hell to get their jobs back at a place where almost nobody wants them) so I thought we would check in. First up, we have Cindy Gamrat holding a fundraiser last night. […]