For the most part, I give little credence to newspaper endorsements except when they are out of character. However, the Detroit Free Press endorsement of Rick Snyder deserves to be discussed derisively for the absurdity that it is. If you read the commentary accompanying the endorsement, you would assume that Mark Schauer would have been their choice. These are some […]

This whole “privatize government services to a for-profit corporation” thing is just going so well isn’t it? Prison food vendor Aramark has stubbed its toe a few times, but, hey, we have to “work with them”, as Governor Snyder put it. And by stubbing their toe, I mean: Running out of food Making unauthorized food substitutions in violation of their […]

I had a conversation with Ann Arbor-area state Representative Jeff Irwin recently and he brought up a point few people are discussing related to higher education. There’s been a lot of focus on how much money is in Gov. Snyder’s budget for education and Gov. Snyder wants everyone to believe that he has put MORE money into his education budget […]

We’re very proud to announce a new project of Eclectablog called “Big Picture”. Big Picture is a subsite of Eclectablog that gives you a visual reframing of the issues and stories you care about. It’s a political story, told in words and pictures that gives you a broad view of important topics, presented in a compelling fashion. While several of […]

Photo by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog I always look forward to Public Policy Polling (PPP) polls because they are one of the most accurate pollsters in the country. They have a new poll out, done for the League of Conservation Voters, that has some very good news for Democrats. First, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate is crushing his […]

Gov. Rick Snyder may have thought the drumbeat of scandals with for-profit prison food vendor Aramark was behind him in the last two weeks of the election. But he was wrong. A former Aramark employee has come forward to talk about serving raw meat and undercooked meat and meat-based food to inmates. Even after she brought the situation to the […]

I have been following Tesla Motors for many years. They are one of the most exciting companies to start up in the past decade, producing all-electric vehicles that are attractive, powerful, and that represent a true breakthrough in technology, especially from the battery side. And they have done it largely without government assistance, to boot. No government body has had […]

See update below. If you are sitting around wondering if it’s worth your while to get involved in the massive Get Out the Vote (GOTMFV) effort in the last two weeks of this election, two polls out this week should give you the nudge that you need. First we have a poll by Republican pollster Mitchell Research & Communication that […]

With all of Gov. Snyder’s “Comeback Kid” and “Road to Recovery” rhetoric, you’d think Republican candidates in Michigan would be piling on to support the idea that Michigan is on the rebound. Not so with Republican candidate Mike Bishop who is running in Michigan’s 8th Congressional district to replace Mike Rogers. He had this to say recently: Bishop, 47, is […]

The Michigan Democratic Party released bombshell news today that the Snyder administration awarded $26.4 million in no-bid contracts to a high-dollar donor to the Snyder reelection campaign. On June 9, 2014, the owners of J&B Medical Supply, which supplies diapers and other incontinence products to Department of Community Health, hosted a lavish fundraiser for Rick Snyder in Bloomfield Hills which […]

I first encountered my dear friend Michael Rains on the streets of Ann Arbor. He had a cart he has dubbed “the Democracy Machine” and there was a crowd of people around him, waiting to sign petitions to recall Governor Snyder and to repeal Michigan’s anti-democratic Emergency Manager law. If there is a crowd of people in Ann Arbor – […]