Yesterday afternoon while most of us were driving home from work or home getting ready for dinner, Gov. Rick Snyder signed Senate Bill 571 into law. It’s now Public Act 269 of 2015. This legislation started out innocuously enough as a 12-page campaign finance reform bill that involved how funds are collected and distributed by organizations that manage “separate segregated […]

Twice in Michigan’s past Republicans have passed a law to take away the right to vote for all the candidates of a single political party with one mark on a ballot. Both times voters went to the polls and rejected their law. As the clock ticked down on the 2015 legislative session, Republicans passed the same damn law a third […]

Last month, I wrote about Senate Bill 571, a Republican campaign finance bill that will do a number of truly anti-democratic things. Here’s a recap from that post: [The] faux sincere desire for voters to be more informed was proven to be the lie that it is when [Republicans] passed Senate Bill 571. This bill bans using public dollars or […]

WHAT?! A corporatist presidential candidate hired a corporate shill to run his campaign?! Get oudda here! You can file this one in the “Well That Figures” file. Donald Trump, who had raised a tidy sum of just over $11,000 through the end of September in Michigan, doesn’t have any sort of ground game in Michigan at this point so, given […]

That guy on the right there is Wayne Bradley, the Michigan Republicans’ State Director of African American Engagement. He runs the GOP office in Detroit that opened two years ago with a special visit by Republican presidential candidate Rand Paul. You would think that a Republican working hard to reach out to Black Michiganders would err on the side of […]

As we wind down the year, those of us who pay attention to state politics are breathing a sigh of relief that the state legislature is no longer in session and working on ways to shape our state into the corporatocracy the Republicans so desperately want it to be. However, before they left Lansing for the year, they passed three […]

After over ten hours of behind the scenes negotiations among their caucus members, all but two Senate Republicans voted last evening to ban straight-ticket voting on Michigan ballots. The bill had been tie-barred to far-less-than-perfect legislation to permit “no reason” absentee voting. However, the tie-bar was removed before passage by the Senate and then sent back to the House where, […]

This week the Republicans in the Michigan House of Representatives passed Senate Bill 13, a bill that would eliminate the option of straight-ticket voting on Michigan ballots. While they claim it’s to make us all “more responsible” voters, the obvious intent is to make it just that more difficult to vote in Michigan. In fact, Progress Michigan recently showed how […]

Today a Republican-led House Elections Committee voted to eliminate the ability for people in Michigan to cast one vote for all of the candidates in a given political party with one vote. These “get big government out of my life” conservatives are only against rules and regulations when they aren’t benefiting them and they know that creating long waits, longer […]

Oh, my… Former staffers for ousted tea party philanderers Cindy Gamrat and Todd Courser have filed a federal lawsuit against the Republican leadership of the Michigan State House of Representatives claiming they were wrongfully terminated. The 36-page lawsuit, which you can read HERE, outlines repeated attempts by Ben Graham and Keith Allard to alert House Speaker Kevin Cotter and the […]

This past Wednesday during a Senate Education Committee hearing, Committee Vice Chair Marty Knollenberg (R-Troy) was discussing why some schools “fail”. During the course his comments, he made a statement that has dropped jaws across the country. “You mentioned why these schools fail,” he said. “You mention the economically disadvantaged and non-white population are contributors to that. And, you know, […]