I wrote the following on my Facebook page yesterday: “This is more than just an outrage. It is more than just two tea party zealots forcing their ill-conceived and obsessive behavior and “ideas” upon the unwashed and uneducated who have followed them with gusto and hearty resolve. This is more than just about hypocrisy and plain stupidity. “What it is […]

Back in March, I penned an essay critical of Michigan tea party legislator Todd Courser’s complete freak out over a bipartisan move to create a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) endorsement for graduating high school students. If students complete six credits each of math and science, a half credit each of technology and engineering, and meet certain other criteria, […]

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 […]

With Brighton Area Schools deciding not to consider chartering a new charter school in their district, the group trying to open a tea party-led school in Brighton has had to turn their attention to other places. Pasquale Battaglia, the brainchild behind the project and self-described “landlord” sent a letter to Dr. Craig Douglas, the Director of the School/University Partnership Office […]

After Brighton Area Schools declined to charter their school the organizers of the proposed charter school in Brighton called the Livingston Classical Academy, formerly the Lindbom Classical Academy – which is part of the American Classical Academy group, formerly the American Christian Academy – have not given up. According to two recent articles, the group continues to shop around for […]

NOTE: This story has been updated twice below and in HERE, HERE, and HERE. Over the past few months, I have written about the efforts of a group formerly known as the American Christian Academies to form a tea party charter school in Brighton, Michigan that would use tax dollars to run as a public school. The name of the […]

Last night, the Brighton Area Schools (BAS) board declined to take a vote on chartering the tea party “classical academy” being pushed by Pasquale Battaglia and a coalition of homeschooling parents. You can read more on the history of this politically extreme group HERE. After months of heated public discussion, the Brighton Area Schools Board of Education refused to even […]

We’ve all seen the signs in restrooms of restaurants we go to that say “Employees Must Wash Hands Before Returning to Work”. Why do you see these? Because it’s the law. The Food and Drug Administration requires it. That’s a good thing, right? Because, as the FDA’s regulations say, “Proper handwashing reduces the spread of fecal-oral pathogens from the hands […]

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, […]

At their meeting on Monday night, the board of Brighton Area Schools held a consensus vote on chartering a tea party charter school being proposed by the “American Classical Academy Coalition (ACAC)” (formerly the “American Christian Academy”.) The vote was 6-to-1 against chartering the “Lindbom Classical Academy” and a formal up-or-down vote has been put on the agenda for their […]