The Ranking Member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in Washington, D.C. is Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland. He has been a fierce progressive advocate during his tenure as Ranking Member, standing up to Republican absurdity and malfeasance during the Benghazi Inquisition, the Planned Parenthood Inquisition, and during hearing on the Flint water crisis where Republicans seemed more […]

Over the past few months, teachers in the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) have had to resort to “sick outs” to get attention to the egregious working and teaching conditions they and their students are being forced to contend with. From black mold, rats, and cockroaches to warped gym floors and, this past week, the threat that they would not be […]

On Monday, I announced that we are bringing on a new writer at Eclectablog. Today, I am pleased to make the official announcement that Sommer Foster will be a regular (and paid) contributor to Eclectablog. I’ve been asking Sommer to come on board for over a year now and the stars have finally aligned in such a way that she’s […]

In 2012, Gretchen Driskell did what few thought possible and what fewer Michigan Democrats were able to do: she beat a locally-popular Republican incumbent, Mark Ouimet, to take back a state House seat, beating him by by six points in the Republican-leaning 52nd District. Two years later, she was such a strong candidate that the Republicans put up a weak […]

As the water crisis has unfolded in Flint over the past few months, there has been an enormous amount of finger pointing and blame shifting going around. Just this week, Darnell Earley wrote an op-ed piece for The Detroit News absolving himself of any of that blame, despite the fact that he or one of his predecessors was in charge […]

“We wanted to bring everyone in the progressive community together to talk about issues that they are concerned about and working on every day and to have some fun doing it.” As I wrote about last week, our friends at Progress Michigan are having fundraiser in Ann Arbor on June 3rd that features comedian Al Madrigal from The Daily Show […]

As a member of the 7th Congressional District, “represented” by Tim Walberg, I consider the 12th District my adopted district and Congresswoman Debbie Dingell as my actual Representative. That’s because, on just about any topic or issue you could name, Debbie Dingell DOES represent my views. She’s as solid a progressive as you could ever hope to meet. From the […]

As I so frequently say during our fundraisers, it’s your contributions that not only allow me to pay the regular contributors here at Eclectablog a small token for their creative output, but also make it possible for me to bring on new writers. Last week, in a bit of a “soft launch”, we published the first piece by our newest […]

This is the third in our four part series on women running for the State House of Representatives on Tuesday. I am a big proponent of more women being elected at all levels of government and I hope that this series helps to make that more realistic for these women candidates. Stacey Dogonski is a firebrand and I mean that […]

If I had to use only one word to describe Circuit Court Judge Deborah Thomas, it would be “fearless”. Judge Thomas, one of three people nominated by the Michigan Democratic Party for the Michigan Supreme Court (on the non-partisan section of the ballot), has never let adversity stand in the way of achieving her goals. Despite losing her father at […]

This is the first in a series of conversations I had with four women who are running for the Michigan State House of Representatives. Not only is it important to me that we elect more women to government at ALL levels, it’s also important that you know them better as well. This is the first in that series. There are […]