Hard to see how this all ends well The Trump era is the Universe’s way of teaching people to stop making predictions. But I have to note one guess I may have gotten right. “Beto isn’t your problem, Bloomberg is” — was my late 2018 case that fans of Bernie Sanders fixated on the candidacy of a former member of […]

Don’t honor Snyder for poisoning one of America’s great cities UPDATE: Rick Snyder has decided that he will not poison Harvard, certainly because there are too many white people there. On Wednesday, he informed the Kennedy School that he’s “turning down” the fellowship he’d been offered. Finally, an appointment that’s more toxic than putting Betsy DeVos in charge of the […]

The worst governor in U.S. history requires the infamy he’s earned Frontline points out there is still no one in jail for the Flint Water Crisis. Meanwhile, Rick Snyder walks free. Snyder is free to plot his “next act” — which is what rich people do while 4.8 million federal employees plot their next meal — and travel the world […]

Testimony during a preliminary exam of several people indicted on charges related to the poisoning of Flint, Michigan’s drinking water with the powerful neurotoxin lead this week revealed that officials in the Snyder administration called the shots on how the water treatment plant would be run. The plant was taken out of mothballs in order to treat Flint River water […]

As Republicans in Wisconsin and Michigan work to cement their anti-worker agenda into our states’ laws during their petulant, sore loser session before they lose significant political power in 2019, perhaps the most outrageous is the effort to take away sick time pay for workers in over 93% of Michigan’s firms. This is because they changed the threshold for exemption […]

Think about the last time you got a call from Senate or Congress at the federal level asking for money. You either gave little or hung up the phone. Then think about that time you asked for yard signs and volunteered – there is a high probability that someone complained about the fact that the campaign office does not have […]

Last week, 550 gallons of coolant containing toxic organic solvents (alkyl derivatives of benzene, specifically) were released into Lake Michigan from an electrical transmission cable running under the Straits of Mackinac. It happened because a ship went through the Straits dragging its anchor. (UPDATE: It appears that it was a tugboat owned by VanEnkevort Tug & Barge.) Enbridge Energy clearly […]

First we had this: Then we had this: And throughout it all we had food service employees having sex with inmates, rotten, rodent-chewed food being served to prison inmates, and drugs being smuggled into prisons by prison employees. Since 2014, I have written roughly 30 posts about the privatization of prison food services in Michigan and they all tell the […]

“Recent water tests at elementary schools in Flint have found an increase in samples showing lead levels above the federal action limit.” That’s the opening line in an article in The Detroit News less than one month ago. Despite this, the state of Michigan, just days after turning control over the city back to local elected officials, declared the Flint […]

“So much for running a government like a business. You can keep the $100 your tax cut will give me, if you take responsibility for your conduct and reimburse me what your potholes have cost me.” That’s the message Ann Arbor attorney John Minnock had for Gov. Rick Snyder this week, as reported by the Detroit Free Press. He wasn’t […]

Most governors with a history of poisoning an entire city of Black people, an administration full of corruption and ineptitude, and with a laundry list of pro-corporate policies that have harmed the state in myriad ways would probably spend their final months in office being as non-controversial and quiet as possible. Not so with Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder. Despite his […]