Not just predictable. Predicted.. Republicans in the Michigan Senate have a plan to fix the roads and they are going to raise $1.4 billion to git ‘er done. It’s going to happen by raising the gas tax, something I am 100% unequivocally totally completely entirely supportive of. That’ll raise about $700,000,000 by their reckoning. So, where does the other $700,000,000 […]

Thirty-four states along with Washington, D.C. have graduated state income taxes where wealthy people pay a higher percentage than people who make less money. This is also how our federal taxes are configured. Michigan, however, does not. We are one of only seven states with a flat tax. A recent EPIC-MRA poll shows that an astonishing 66% of Michigan voters […]

Not just predictable. Predicted. The dust hadn’t even settled on the epic crash and burn of Michigan’s Proposal 1 yesterday when Republican House Speaker Kevin Cotter began discussing his plans for slashing the budgets of other areas to come up with over a billion dollars needed to rebuild our crumbling roads and bridges. He gave a glimpse into his thinking […]

“Proposal one goes down in flames!,” gloated Todd Courser last night on his Facebook page. “Time to get to work and come up with a solution that will fix our roads without raising taxes! The money is there… all we lack is enough legislators with the political will to make the hard choices necessary to prioritize spending.” “The taxpayers sent […]

Part 3 of series. Part 1 is HERE and Part 2 is HERE. I have been writing about my strong support of Proposal 1 over the past couple of weeks. I have found few issues that have so divided the progressive community as much as Prop 1 has. Those of us, like me and Tony Trupiano, who have advocated for […]

Part 2 of a series. Part 1 is HERE and Part 3 is HERE. Before I get into this piece, I want to clarify a couple of things. First of all, in the conversation on Proposal 1 in Michigan, at least on the progressive side, we are starting from the position that Republicans are hideous leaders that created gigantic hole […]

Part 1 in a series. Part 2 is HERE and Part 3 is HERE. There are few topics that unite tea partiers with progressive liberals but Michigan’s Prop 1 has not only united these two disparate groups, it has, for all intents and purposes, turned many progressives into tea partiers in their own right. What I mean by this is […]

NOTE FROM CHRIS: Today is the soft-launch of our newest Eclectablogger Judy Matlock. As “judyms9”, Judy has been the most prolific commenter on Eclectablog for two years running according to our WordPress stats. And she’s not just prolific; her comments are insightful, often getting to the heart of the matter and bringing in angles that the author of the post […]

In less than 10 weeks from today the voters of Michigan will be asked to vote on the ballot question titled Proposal 1, or as it is commonly being called the “road fix bill”. Here are the main elements of Proposal 1: An increase in transportation revenue of $1.3 billion, with $1.2 billion a year going to roads and about […]

Let’s you and him fight… Thanks to the division within the Michigan Republican Party, the state legislature which is dominated by Republicans was unable to find a way to fund our roads. Their internal disputes led them to toss the decision to voters who will decide if we should the state sales tax by one-percent to pay for road repairs, […]

Incoming tea party extremists Cindy Gamrat and Todd Courser have already pledged that the first piece of legislation they introduce will be a personhood amendment that would ban abortion in Michigan. The fact that this is unconstitutional and has been tossed out in other states already does not deter the two from their crusade. And I use the word “crusade” […]