Government officials working to cover up questionable behavior is as old as politics itself but it’s rare to catch them boldly doing it in real time. That, however, is exactly what Progress Michigan staff did during a recent investigation into what appears to be improper use of private emails to do government business and possibly doing political work while at […]

On May 30th, when Michigan Lt. Governor Brian Calley announced his candidacy for governor ahead of the 2018 election, he told the audience, “What you will see over the course of this summer is the most high-tech, effective, grassroots campaign, a movement to amend Michigan’s constitution.” “Move over establishment,” he said, “Because the people of the State of Michigan are […]

There’s a messed-up loophole in Michigan’s gun laws that makes it legal to open-carry a firearm without the need for training or a permit. If you carry a concealed weapon, training and a permit are required by law. Republicans have decided now is the time to correct this discrepancy but their approach is to make it worse. Much, much worse: […]

In what can only be described as a laughable op-ed in The Detroit News today, multi-millionaire Republican and Foreclosure King David Trott attempts to portray a Republican bill to roll back consumer financial protections under Dodd-Frank and kneecap the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a federal bureau that has “won almost $12 billion in refunds and relief for an estimated […]

The effort to bring federal dollars into Flint to help them deal with the Republican-made catastrophe that poisoned their drinking water with the powerful neurotoxin lead has been long and arduous, primarily because Republicans themselves did everything they could to make the path long and arduous. First, it took nearly a year for Republican members of Congress to even pass […]

In March of 2015, Michigan Democrat Jim Townshend introduced legislation in the House – House Bill 4341 – that would change Michigan’s regressive flat state income tax to a graduated tax. Not surprisingly, it never went anywhere in the Republican-controlled House. And that’s a shame because, if implemented, it would increase state tax revenues by as much as $700,000,000 $870,000,000 […]

The U.S. House Republicans’ super-secret Obamacare replacement is out and it’s all about freedom. Yes, if you’re one of the 20 million Americans who gained health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, you may soon enjoy the freedom of no longer being covered. We don’t know how many people will be covered, but even Republicans acknowledge that it will be […]

Back in 2009 when the Affordable Care Act was being debated, all it took was for three or four tea partiers to gather with anti-Obamacare signs on a street corner and they got all sorts of publicity. Now that the tables have turned, that sort of publicity appears hard to come by, at least in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District. This […]

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 […]

It’s a well-worn technique used over and over and over again by Michigan Republicans: send up a trial balloon of something outrageous that even folks from their own party ask “What the hell???” Then, they come back with something slightly less outrageous but still truly outrageous hoping we’ll all fall for the head fake. I call this the “fake concession” […]

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 […]