It’s a good gig if you can get it See updates below. The Snyder administration recently gave three of its investment experts massive pay raises, making them some of the highest paid members of his administration. One of them, chief investment officer, Jon Braeutigam, makes more than the Governor and the Lt. Governor combined! The State of Michigan quietly increased […]

The organization is making great strides in its mission to create a food sovereign Detroit, while harvesting community spirit and new income sources for Detroiters. As we prepare for Thanksgiving, it’s a great time to check back with Keep Growing Detroit, an urban gardening organization I first reported on back in May. Keep Growing Detroit was established this year as […]

There has been a growing demand over the past decade for accountability in public education. Policy makers, students, families, and taxpayers all want teachers to be “held accountable.” Conventional accountability in teaching is based on student achievement on standardized tests and graduation rates. A current bill, HB 4625, is being considered in the Michigan House of Representatives and proposes that […]

Dude, really? Just admit it: homophobes dying off like dinosaurs. I was listening to a really terrific radio documentary by Michigan Public Radio’s Lester Graham the other day when I heard something right at the very end that made me about pee in my pants because it was so hilariously delusional. It was a statement from noted homophobic bigot Gary […]

A rock on one side and a hard place on the other Last year, the Detroit Institute of Arts had over a half million visitors. The museum is a huge tourist draw and an anchor for the area of Detroit that surrounds it. The cost to the city of Detroit for this priceless collection of art is exactly zero dollars. […]

As someone who desperately wants the Affordable Care Act to work, I’ve been tough on the failure to launch the health care exchanges necessary to make it do so. Maybe I’ve been too tough. My father-in-law — who spent his career building software that often had to map into federal government regulatory schemes — told me last night that this […]

Hallelujah! Photo credit: Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog I’ve written before about the amazing Hamtown Farms urban farm/garden in Hamtramck. The farm, which occupies vacant lots in Michigan’s most densely populated city, was a bright spot in a town that is struggling and under the control of an Emergency Manager. Although she had the power to save the farm […]

Dear goddess, no. Just no. Senator Rand Paul, who has publicly told America that he does not support the part of the Civil Rights Act that forbids businesses from doing things like preventing African Americans from entering their premises, will be in Detroit on December 6th to open the Republican African American Engagement Office. Oh, the irony. Paul told the […]

Who woulda thunk it? In 2012, thanks to Republicans ending the tax break Michigan residents can receive for charitable giving, most people predicted that charitable giving would plummet. It wasn’t a risky prediction, of course. It’s common sense. It was a move made by the GOP to pay, in part, for a massive tax break they gave to corporations. Well, […]

Who could have EVER seen this coming??? A downgrade of the bond ratings of 53 Michigan school districts is proving what charter school opponents have long warned against: charter schools are diminishing public schools’ ability to have stable budgets by siphoning off tax dollars into for-profit corporations. Moody’s Investors Service made this move this week citing “significant fiscal strain related […]

All the world’s a stage. Or at least Detroit will be if Sam White has anything to say about it. Sam White, founder and artistic director of Shakespeare in Detroit, has always had big dreams. This particular dream started with the successful production of Shakespeare’s Othello she produced and directed this summer in Grand Circus Park. But her dreams keep […]