The following guest post is by Sue Browne, Regional Programs Manager for the BlueGreen Alliance in Michigan. Photo by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog. It’s hard to believe that last year’s bad weather cost taxpayers like you and I around $277 million in damages across the state—a $67 million increase from the year before. Had our infrastructure been better […]

Yesterday, I wrote about the activities planned for teachers at the Arts and Technology Academy of Pontiac (ATAP), a for-profit charter school run by Mosaica. These “Teacher Appreciation Week” activities featured a variety of what can only be described as humiliating activities planned for the teachers to raise funds for the school. They included: MANDIVA – Our 3 favorite male […]

Terri Lynn Land, we need equal pay AND more flexibility

Terri Lynn Land (deservedly) caught a lot of heat last week over her suggestion that women would prefer flexibility over equal pay. And Senator Stabenow slammed Land again in a strong op-ed in the Free Press yesterday, bringing home the tangible impacts of lost wages.

Stabenow and others are right that it is unjustifiable for women to be paid less than men for doing the same work. But there’s a kernel of something worth addressing in Land’s comments, something that points to another ongoing inequality in the U.S. – inequality at home, linked in a vicious cycle to lower pay at work.

If you are in the Farmington Hills area on Wednesday this week, April 16th, please consider joining Anne and I for an Eclectablog presentation to the Farmington/Farmington Hills Democratic Club. The event starts at 6:30 p.m. and will be at the Pipefitters Local 636, 30100 Northwestern Highway, Farmington Hills. Their Facebook event page is HERE. The following night, Thursday, April […]

New projections from the Congressional Budget Office show just how well the Affordable Care Act is working. In news that’s certain to have Obamacare’s opponents sputtering with outrage, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released updated estimates on Monday on the cost of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to the federal government — and to individuals. The verdict? It’s going […]

“From V to Shining V” Lady Parts-friendly U.S. Senate Candidate Gary Peters and Lizz Winstead, photo by Anne C. Savage As I’ve been mentioning in the pieces I’ve written about our 10-year “Blogaversary” party, Lizz Winstead’s Lady Parts Justice project is coming to Michigan this year with a special event at the Capitol Building in Lansing. And they need your […]

Teacher humiliation for fun and profit Mosaica Education, Inc., a self-described “for-profit education management organization”, runs eight different for-profit schools in Michigan: Arts and Technology Academy of Pontiac Bay County Public School Academy Bingham Arts Academy Edgewood Elementary School Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School Mosaica Online Academy of Michigan Muskegon Heights High School Muskegon Heights Middle School In fact, […]

I won’t bore you with a list of reasons to support Eclectablog. You’ve seen them all already this week : ) We simply ask that, if you find value in what you read here, you make a small contribution to keep us going. Thanks so much. Here’s how you can contribute: First, you can make your donation using the PayPal […]

BREAKING: 14 to 20.3 million Americans gaining health insurance may be a good thing Since news broke that enrollments in the Obamacare exchanges had broken 7 million, there has been a steady stream of positive indications for the law. Signups in the exchanges continue at impressive pace as the deadline to complete applications nears. Medicaid expansion is taking off in […]

Speak loudly We are in an epic battle in this country, particularly here in Michigan, to wrest control of our elections and our government back from the corporate giants that are increasingly more powerful. On one side you have a national network of groups coordinated under the State Policy Network which pump massive infusions of cash into groups like the […]

Peters, Totten: Hit your opponents on Obamacare

If you are watching basketball and the play is constantly at one end of the court, you have a pretty good guess who’s winning, right? (HINT: not the team that’s spending all its time defending). The same thing goes for hockey, soccer, football…and communications.

When Chris interviewed me when I started writing here he asked about the mistakes I see progressive communicators make, and I answered that playing defense instead of offense is one of the biggest ones. I see too many candidates and advocates spend their time defending against attacks, trying to justify to the public why their views aren’t wrong, rather than going on the offense against their opponents and forcing them to explain the ways they are out of touch with American values.