Without Obamacare to demonize, their agenda is to find an agenda Likely Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, Terri Lynn Land’s debuted two new ads on Friday. Both were about the Keystone pipeline. This sudden shift of focus is reminiscent of Republican Gabriel Gomez’s failed attempt to win the Senate seat vacated by Secretary of State John Kerry […]

Focus on values and make the other side defend

There has been lots of great Obamacare news over the last few weeks. But public opinion of the law hasn’t improved. The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has been tracking this issue since 2009, before the bill passed. Their most recent poll, conducted at the end of April, found 36% saying the law is a good idea, consistent with the range in the mid to high 30s that they have seen the whole time (link is PDF).

Other pollsters, asking somewhat different questions, show higher or lower support for the law, but the same consistency over time. Why so little movement?

“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 […]

Nobody in Michigan would argue that we don’t need to take drastic measures to fix our crumbling roads. In some places, gravel roads would be an improvement over what the roads look like right now. One proposal being floated is to change the gas tax from a flat 19 cents per gallon to a percentage of the wholesale cost. This […]

And Obamacare is having its best week since it became law Despite predictions that the Affordable Care Act would slow the economy, job creation has spiked to a five-year high, with an estimated 288,000 jobs created in April. Despite predictions that it would bankrupt the country, the deficit is at a five-year low. Despite predictions that cancellations would dull the […]

Last year, Governor Snyder was asked about revising Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to extend coverage to members of the LGBT community. The fact that it currently doesn’t means that people like me can be fired from our jobs simply because we are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. Governor Snyder’s response was, in effect, “it’s not on my agenda” and […]

This is getting ridiculous More revelations are emerging about apparent cronyism by the administration of Republican Governor Rick Snyder. This time it’s benefitting one of Detroit’s most egregious polluters, the Severstal Dearborn steel plant. The Michigan Economic Development Corp., Gov. Rick Snyder’s business-promoting agency, worked for months behind the scenes with one of the state’s most flagrantly polluting businesses as […]

Better transportation choices will be better for all of us.

If you live in Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti or Ypsi Township, please join me, and a lot of other people, in voting YES on the transit millage tomorrow….

In Washtenaw County, even the opposition to the millage acknowledges the desire for better public transportation and is calling the “no” campaign “Better Transit Now.” Not that they are very clear on how a “no” vote will lead to better transit, but never mind that – they agree, at least in theory, with the goal, even if they don’t want to pay for it. And it’s hard to argue with the benefits of improving public transit, even for those (like me) who rarely use the bus. Even if you don’t take the bus, making it convenient for other people to leave their cars at home means traffic is better and we have less need to build more parking. Using less gas means less pollution, which is better for our health. And it’s better for our economy, creating jobs and economic development downtown and letting low wage workers get to work. (More details about the specifics of tomorrow’s millage are here.)

Tens of thousands have been cut off from the benefits they earned.

A study released this week found that the Michigan legislature’s cuts to unemployment insurance have meant a loss of benefits for 14,000 to 32,000 Michiganders a week. (full disclosure here, one of the study’s authors is a personal friend, and has been a client on other issues).

For those who may have missed it at the time, Governor Snyder and the legislature shorted the period the short-term jobless can collect unemployment from 26 weeks to 20 weeks, along with reducing eligibility and making it easier for employers to contest claims. And this was during a period where the national unemployment rate has remained high, and Michigan’s jobless rate one of the highest in the nation.

Corporatism is alive and well in state governments across the USA The Guardian newspaper has a blockbuster piece out today that shows how the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), has turned to working through state Attorneys General to stop any efforts by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The Guardian has learned that the American Legislative […]

Karen is just one of 272,500 Michiganders who signed up for coverage through Healthcare.gov, where a strong finish to 2014 enrollment bodes well for next year. So much good news, it’s hard to know where to begin. On Thursday, Obama administration officials predicted health insurance premiums would be stable in 2015, thanks to a large and varied pool of insured […]