My wife, Anne C. Savage accompanied me and Christine Barry, owner of Blogging for Michigan, to the State of the State address on Wednesday. She was there, as were we, with media passes. However, her effort to actually do any photographing of the event was completely shut down by overly-aggressive security and what seems to be a clear effort by […]

It’s a good thing we don’t have any real problems in the state of Michigan. The fantastic shape we’re in and the abundance of jobs gives Republicans the opportunity to work on things like THIS. A package of Republican bills in the state Legislature would boost penalties for public workers who go on strike. The legislation would also let employers […]

Last week, Senator and serial sexist Rick Jones from Lansing called public relations executive Kelly Rossman-McKinney a “hooker”. Brian Dickerson of the Detroit Free Press describes the situation: [Senator Jones] likened longtime Lansing public relations executive Kelly Rossman-McKinney to “a hooker” in the Michigan Information and Research Services’ widely read Capital Capsule, a daily report on state government news. Rossman-McKinney, […]

Gotta love this headline in the Detroit News this morning: Michigan Legislature praised for reform bills Sounds good, right? Here’s the thing: the only people “praising” the Michigan Republicans in the article are Michigan Republicans. But Michigan Republicans, I must say, think Michigan Republicans are totally freaking awesome. The closest you get to praise are these to bits: The Senate […]

Republicans got very, very busy in the short time between Thanksgiving and Christmas. One of the things House Republicans did was to vote to turn down federal funds for creating a statewide health exchange to help make health care insurance available to all Michiganders. In an action with major implications for health reform in Michigan, the state House has voted […]

Since his election last year, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has played the good cop/bad cop game to perfection. While he stays above the fray and issues calming and non-threatening platitudes, his Republican colleagues in the legislature enact a conservative agenda with a rapidity that Democrats can only marvel at. Time and time again, Snyder has talked about how a particular […]

You know that gigantic, $1.5 billion dollar tax cut Republicans gave Michigan businesses this year? I’ve been ranting and raving all year about how it was paid for in part by cutting a cool billion out of education. But there’s still half a billion that came from other places. One of the big cuts was to eliminate the tax exemption […]

On Tuesday of this week, Michigan Republicans held a public hearing on a controversial piece of legislation, HB 5002. As I have written about in the past, this bill makes law certain practices used by insurance companies to reduce or eliminate benefits for injured workers by using “imaginary wages” and “imaginary pensions”. While the legislation is highly controversial, Senate Reforms, […]

Republican sponsored legislation, Senate Bill 619 recently passed the Senate. This bill represents what could be the first steps toward eliminating large numbers of teachers from Michigan classrooms. A proposal in Lansing would remove most restrictions on the ability of students to attend school over the Internet, in their pajamas, without setting foot inside a classroom. The proposal would remove […]

For those of you reaching this post via Susan Demas’ silly article wherein she calls out some random liberal blogger on the internet, assigns his opinion as that of “the left”, and then files the story as “news”, I commend your attention to THIS POST. Last week, I wrote about proposed changes to Michigan’s Workers Compensation laws being put through […]

Turns out the Republicans’ retaliatory efforts to recall Democrats in Michigan was just an effort to collect contact information. Yesterday, Michigan Republican Party ended its recall drives against Democrats. Michigan Republicans have halted their efforts to recall state Democratic lawmakers, a spokesman said today. Stu Sandler, a consultant to the Michigan GOP who was organizing more than a dozen recall […]