Man, remember these? BURGER KING INTRODUCES LEFT-HANDED WHOPPERS Burger King UK today announced the launch of its latest salvo in the battle of the Burger Wars – the new left-handed Whopper – which will become available nation-wide tomorrow April 1. The UK’s most preferred hamburger will still consist of lettuce, onions, pickles, mayonnaise, ketchup and four-ounce flame-grilled hamburger patty, but […]

You know, if this keeps up, Barack Obama is going to end up getting reelected in 2012. The unemployment rate fell to a two-year low of 8.8 percent in March and companies added workers at the fastest two-month pace since before the recession began. The Labor Department says the economy added 216,000 new jobs last month, offsetting layoffs of local […]

Talking Points Memo has an exclusive report detailing sweeping Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy to three of the biggest universities in Michigan. The universities involved are Michigan State University, University of Michigan, and Wayne State University. The Mackinac Center For Public Policy, based in Midland, Mich., submitted the FOIA requests last Friday […]

With all this talk about deficit reduction these day from both sides of the Congressional aisle, I was interested to learn this morning that there is actually a mechanism for members of Congress to return part of their salary ($174,000 per year for non-leadership positions) to be used toward reducing the deficit. Sure, it would be a token effort; symbolic, […]

To fully tell this story, you have to go back to the beginning of the protest rallies in Madison, Wisconsin. On February 17th, Governor Walker told the press that his office had received “over 8,000 emails” which he said were mostly supportive of his efforts to smash the unions. “The more than 8,000 emails we got today, the majority are […]

Every year at the Netroots Nation conference, a group of very hard-working, compassionate and caring people step up to help our men and women in the armed forces in an impressive way. They spend the year raising funds and soliciting contributions and then, in a several hour frenzy of activity, they assemble CARE packages to be sent to our troops […]

Yes, you read that right: outlawing workplace safety rules. Governor Rick Snyder has, apparently, identified one of the chief reasons Michigan businesses aren’t successful and why businesses refuse to come to Michigan: they are afraid we’ll pass a law requiring businesses to implement ergonomically safe workplaces. Well, they need not worry anymore. Today, Snyder signed a bill outlawing laws that […]

Americans have come to learn in recent years that factory farming, particularly of livestock and poultry, is a gruesome, animal-torturing enterprise. When the cubic footage of a chicken’s cage is scientifically calculated to maximize egg production, you can damn well be certain that the chicken’s level of agony is not going to factor into that particular equation. The farming industry […]

In Michigan, counties are reapportioned into districts by Reapportionment Commissions after each census. The Reapportionment Commissions are, by law, required to be made up of the county prosecutor, county treasurer, county clerk, and the two heads of the two county parties that received the most votes in the last election for secretary of state. In Oakland County, Michigan, this means […]

Cross-posted at Blogging for Michigan and Public News Forum. NOTE: Please check back regularly as I will update this post as new information becomes available. There are two big rallies scheduled in Lansing this week at the Capitol building to protest Governor Rick Snyder’s rights-stripping Emergency Financial Manager law and his budget. His budget, as you probably already know, transfers […]

Last night on the Rachel Maddow Show where Rachel did a fine job outlining what’s going on in Michigan right now. Check it out: Basically, GOP members of Congress in Michigan are pushing through legislation that would allow the governor to declare a financial emergency in any given town, village, city or township and immediately put that municipality under the […]