As I have written about before, Republicans are petrified of a drive to put raising the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour on the ballot in November. It’s such a winning issue for Democrats that Republicans know that they simply must kill it or risk losing big on election day as more Democrats than usual turn out to vote in […]

University of Michigan law professor Steven Croley was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as general counsel for the U.S. Energy Department this week. Croley, the husband of State Supreme Court Justice Bridget Mary McCormack, has been working for the White House as deputy assistant and deputy counsel to President Obama and spends his weeks working at the White House. He […]

A willingness to confront reality is on the ballot Rep. Gary Peters has become the first U.S. candidate in a close race to call out his Republican opponent’s stand on global warming. “This is something elected officials should be talking about — we have to be concerned about it,” Peters told The Washington Post‘s Greg Sargent. “Certainly the voters would […]

It’s good to be know the king A Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) permit has been issued to Russian steel corporation Severstal this week, allowing the company that DEQ once called “the most egregious facility in the state” to continuing spewing pollutants in Dearborn and Detroit at levels far in excess of state regulations. As I wrote about earlier this […]

NOTE: this story has been updated HERE. When Tiffani Eaton stopped a violent classroom fight between two strapping high school boys by whacking one of them with a broom, she was fired by the Education Achievement Authority that runs Pershing High School in Detroit. EAA administrators defended her firing saying that she violated state corporal punishment laws; that it amounted […]

Rand Paul continues to fling any turd he can find at the Clintons for pretty obvious reasons. The first-term senator from Kentucky has to do something to show the GOP establishment he can be competitive in a general election, and he’s trying to keep the former president out of his home state’s Senate race so Rand didn’t sell out to […]

The Detroit News has a report out today that is both shocking and unsurprising. In it, they reveal that, since its inception in the fall of 2012, the Education Achievement Authority has spent nearly a quarter million dollars in travel, gas, a chauffeur for Chancellor John Covington, on furniture and other miscellaneous, non-education-related items. And they put it all on […]

Last week, a vicious fight broke out between two students at the Education Achievement Authority’s Pershing High School. With a non-functional walkie-talkie and no other adults around to help, teacher Tiffani Eaton had to act fast as the two brawling boys thrashed around the room, punching each other, and knocking over desks. She grabbed a broom handle and whacked one […]

Or possibly ever The Associated Press reports on a little-known benefit of the Affordable Care Act for low-income pregnant women: Lower-income women who signed up for a private policy in the new insurance exchanges will have access to additional coverage from their state’s Medicaid program if they get pregnant. Some women could save hundreds of dollars on their share of […]

When Republicans passed their odious “rape insurance” law, they did it on the basis that women should have to pay for their own abortions. It was a faux argument because there was nothing about insurance companies offering abortion coverage that forced anyone to pay for someone else’s abortion. But that, of course, didn’t stop them from making the argument. Now […]

“Here are some crumbs. Don’t eat them all at once.” Senate Republicans seem to be on a mission to outdo each other on making meaningless and insulting gestures toward lifting the working poor in our state out of poverty. First we had Rick Jones who proposed raising the minimum wage to a paltry $8.15 an hour and giving full-time waiters […]