This new video from Progress Michigan is their best effort yet. It tells the story of Aramark coming to Michigan in a very smart and clever way. Privatizing our prison food services to a for-profit corporation is an experiment. But, as the the video shows, it was an experiment that was already proven to be a failed and flawed model […]

When Public Act 4, Michigan’s amped-up Emergency Manager law, was signed into law in early 2011, it was immediately put to use in Benton Harbor. It was the first time the new version of the law, which allows the state to impose an unelected person in charge of an entire city and gives them the power to dismiss local elected […]

This post has been updated to include information about Baird asking for a refund of the back interest he paid when he settled his tax bill. Richard Baird, already busted for getting a tax break on residences in two states and being registered to vote in both Michigan and Illinois, now has another issue to deal with: although he’s been […]

This post has been updated. I’ve written extensively about Aramark, the for-profit prison food vendor that supplies food services to prisons across Michigan. They’ve experienced repeated food shortages, employees bringing drugs and contraband to prisoners, employees having sex with prisoners, and most recently, maggots in multiple food preparation areas. The state started cracking down on Aramark last March when they […]

It’s been a terrific week of polling for Michigan Democrats. I’ve written about two polls (HERE and HERE) that statistical ties for Mark Schauer and Mark Totten with Gary Peters pulling away from Terri Lynn Land. Yesterday, a USA Today poll conducted by Suffolk University gives even better news. Here’s the synopsis: Mark Schauer leads Rick Snyder for Governor by […]

Governor Snyder has a new ad out this week called “Generations”. Like his previous ad, his voice has been altered to sound lower in pitch than his actual voice, a manipulation that is the perfect metaphor for the way he manipulates the facts in order to take credit for things that either didn’t happen or for which he had no […]

Mark Totten, photo by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog Yesterday I reported on new polling numbers show great gains by Michigan Democrats. Another new poll out this morning by Detroit News-WDIV (Local 4) confirms those numbers. (Cross-tabs are HERE.) The race for Attorney General continues to be surprisingly competitive and shows how weak a candidate Bill Schuette is. Schuette […]

A couple of weeks ago, I reported that Richard Baird, Gov. Snyder’s top confidant and “Transformational Manager”, had threatened to sue both Senate Democratic Leader Gretchen Whitmer and Michigan AFL-CIO President Karla Swift. Baird, who has a history of bullying, is now demanding a retraction of an op-ed penned by Swift and published in a number of Gannet newspapers across […]

Mark Totten, photo by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog A new poll out by PPP has some terrific news for Democrats. Mark Schauer is still in a statistical dead heat with Governor Rick Snyder, down just a single point – 42-43%. Snyder is under water with respect to his favorability with 51% of those polled holding viewing him unfavorably […]

Politics have many unofficial rules and philosophies that have been followed for years. Pundits of all political persuasions sometimes use these “excuses” to strengthen their point of view, or to protect their party’s candidate and to justify inconvenient truth(s). One such inconvenient truth is that incumbents for office, like Governor, for example, don’t need to debate their opponent. The conventional […]

Republicans and their friends in the media keep squinting at the horizon hoping to see a GOP wave forming for November’s elections. Their biggest argument for it is that it should be coming. “This year, Republicans should do not only well, but very well,” wrote The Weekly Standard’s Jay Cost, one of the many right-wing pundits who predicted Mitt Romney’s […]