Here’s one question that every Republican at every town hall needs to be asked ASAP The GOP’s nameless Affordable Care Act “replacement” has been leaked after reportedly being pulled for review by the CBO because it was about to be scored as not adding any coverage over straight repeal and the numbers look atrocious. It is what we expected to […]

This is madness. A Michigan law passed by Republicans allows for schools that don’t meet specific requirements for academic achievement to be simply closed. Shut down. Kids thrown out. It’s a draconian step, one that essentially tells parents, “We don’t want to make the investments in your children’s schools needed to bring them up to par, so we are giving […]

Well, it looks like Betsy DeVos is at it again. This time she’s sharing her thoughts about education and teaching with her new friends at CPAC, the conservative political conference going on right now in National Harbor, MD. Here’s a quote from her “prepared remarks” on Thursday: “The faculty, from adjunct professors to deans, tell you what to do, what […]

In the wee hours of the morning today after a marathon 12-hour session, House Republicans, led by House Speaker Tom Leonard, face-planted mightily in an effort to blow a $1.1 BILLION hole in the state budget by reducing the state income tax over the next four years. Their original salvo was to eliminate the state income tax altogether, an idea […]

Michigan Republican Congressman Tim Walberg is a tea partier’s tea partier. According to his rhetoric and actions in Congress, there are very few things that wouldn’t benefit from “local control”. He wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act and return healthcare programs to local control. He regularly talks about “improving education and job training initiatives through more local control“. When […]

This is a serious ‘people should be in the streets with their flaming pitchforks of rage’ moment Here’s where we are at on repeal of the Affordable Care Act: It was supposed to happen on January 20. It didn’t. That’s good. Some Republicans in the Senate are demanding a replacement be passed along with repeal. Republicans can only lose 2 […]

Peter Greene, the amazing education blogger at Curmudgucation, broke a story this week that should send a chill down the spine of anyone who values both public education and the separation of church and state. In his piece “The Hard Right’s Planning Document for Education”, he reveals a new report out from the hard right group Council for National Policy […]

There has been a lot of chatter recently about the Trump administration’s plans to eliminate federal arts agencies, such as the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Public Broadcasting Service. As has been reported widely, eliminating these agencies would only amount to a savings of 0.02% of the federal budget, but they seem […]

GOP still plans to replace insurance for 25 million with a ‘congratulations for your struggle’ You may not remember but Obamacare was supposed to be repealed by now. “The reality is that the ground has shifted enormously in a very short time,” Topher Spiro, Vice President for Health Policy, told me. “Right after the election, Republicans vowed to have a […]

I was honored to be giving a talk on education policy at Wayne State University today (thanks for the invite, Drs. Wendy Matthews and Abby Butler!) during the Senate vote on Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education. While it was painfully ironic for all of us when Ms. DeVos was approved–by the closest vote for a Cabinet […]

Michigan Congressman Dan Kildee reminds Governor Rick Snyder and others that without the Affordable Care Act, there would be no Medicaid expansion. At the moment, the future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, is anyone’s guess. Congressional Republicans and Donald Trump promised to repeal the law on the President’s first day in office … but that obviously didn’t […]