Last night, Rachel Maddow covered the Flint water lead poisoning story for a third time in the past month. In the segment, she lauded the Michigan press – including the ACLU’s crack investigative journalist Curt Guyette who wasn’t named explicitly – for their vigilance and doggedness in pursuing this story, something I agree with completely. For this report, Maddow brought […]

The Flint water crisis was declared a state of emergency by Mayor Karen Weaver this week — something we’ve known for months. But much of the nation still has no idea what has been perpetrated against the people of this battered city. One person is trying to change that. “Governor, the water of the city of Flint, Michigan has been […]

For the past couple of weeks, I have been trying to ensure that the utter and tragic failure of Gov. Snyder’s experiment on Detroit school children – the Education Achievement Authority – does not go down the memory hole. I told the story in 127 Eclectablog headlines and reminded people that these failures have been stacking up for four years […]

As LOLGOP wrote about Friday, Gov. Rick Snyder, who was the first governor in the USA to say he wouldn’t allow Syrian refugees to come to our state, said he wants a “pause” in providing a safe harbor for the refugees until “an appropriate review” can be done to ensure our screening processes are adequate. When NPR correspondent Steve Inskeep […]

You know that earlier this week Michigan’s governor Rick Snyder helped lead the shameful charge against accepting Syrian refugees that Republicans have cravenly engineered in order to stoke fears in the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Paris last week. Now we know that he called for a pause in the program for no clear reason. In an interview on NPR Thursday, the […]

[This post has been updated below.] The flow of thousands upon thousands of Syrian refugees escaping violent extremism and war-like conditions in their country has been in the news for months. Many Michiganders were relieved to see Governor Rick Snyder extend the welcome mat to those escaping oppression and violence. However, after the recent terrorist attack in Paris, Gov. Snyder […]

Republicans in Michigan, including Governor Rick Snyder are bragging to anyone who will listen to them about Michigan’s low unemployment rate. And it’s true. Our 5% unemployment rate is below the national average and at its lowest level since the summer of 2000. What they don’t mention, of course, is that the wages of our workers is perilously low. In […]

In April of 2014, under the direction of Flint Emergency Manager Darnell Earley, the City changed the source of its drinking water from the Detroit water system (drawing from Lake Huron) to the Flint River. The move was touted as a cost-saving measure which would save $7 million annually. However, there were problems from the start. High levels of bacteria […]

The primary justification for Emergency Financial Managers or Emergency Managers in Michigan from the very earliest iterations (and continuing through to today) is that some cities and school districts were just too full of corruption and ineptitude and that the state needed to swoop in and save the day. However, this easy answer has turned out not have been the […]

The following post was co-authored by David Holtz, the Chair of the Michigan chapter of the Sierra Club, and Anne Woiwode, the chapter’s Conservation Director. As leaders of one of the primary watchdog groups in Michigan when it comes to water quality, I asked them to weigh in on the ongoing crisis with Flint’s water supply. In their essay, Holtz […]

Governor Snyder persists in his feelgood announcements about Michigan job growth, but he does hedge his enthusiasm because too many of us observe the realities of what is now passing as “job growth.” Yes, reality rains on Snyder’s parade every time. Most of those non-automotive jobs are low paying part time jobs that keep people zigzagging back and forth across […]