What could possibly go wrong?

On the banks of the Detroit River, giant three-story tall mountains of black rock have been accumulating, quickly and quietly enough to take a lot of Detroiters and neighboring Canadians by surprise. The piles are petroleum coke or “pet coke”, a by-product of the processing of tar sands oil from Canada. A newly upgraded Marathon Petroleum refinery in Detroit now allows them to process the tar sands oil, producing copious amounts of the high-sulfur, high-carbon waste product.

A recent New York Times article shows that Michiganders and Canadians alike are concerned by the use of land directly on the Detroit River to store the potentially hazardous pet coke.

Click through for more.

Sign the petition and make your voice heard. The very first post I wrote for Eclectablog was about Senate Bill 136, the “Religious Liberty and Conscience Protection Act.” This bill would allow healthcare providers, facilities and insurers to refuse to provide or cover “objectionable” healthcare services on religious or moral grounds. As I explained in that post and two that […]

The power of tenacity and coordination

Anne and I like to recharge our mental and spiritual batteries by tossing our kayaks into our beater pick-up truck Steve and heading out to Pickerel Lake in the Pinckney State Recreation Area. It’s actually on a chain of three lakes that includes Crooked Lake.

The wildlife on these lakes is abundant and, especially in kayaks, you can get startling close to the animals.

On Friday night, we whipped up a batch of margaritas and headed out for a sunset booze cruise. While we were paddling, we came across something I’ve never seen before: two Red-Winged Blackbirds systematically attacking and driving off two adult Sandhill Cranes who had strayed too close to their nest.

Video and photos after the jump.

Either we break up the big banks or the big banks break us Attorney General Eric Holder made actual some news this week amid the GOP’s scandal frenzy: he told the House Judiciary committee that big banks are not too big too jail. He was willing to criminally prosecute the nation’s largest banks, though he hasn’t done so since the […]

Good people are fighting every day for Michigan’s students. This organization is among them. Just when you begin to despair over the seemingly endless battles public education is facing in Michigan, you find a reason to feel optimistic. In Pontiac, one of the Michigan school districts that’s struggling the most, an organization called Bound Together is providing an environment where […]

Heartless is as heartless does If you were a lawmaker and were given the chance to reduce the number of uninsured Michiganders by nearly half and save the state nearly a billion dollars over the next ten years, what would you do? If you were a Michigan Senate Republican, you would reject it. That’s what Michigan Senate Republicans did yesterday […]

Ooo-ooo, that smell… Last month, after the Detroit News tore back the curtains on the secretive “skunk works” group, staffed by some of Gov. Snyder’s aides and aimed at destroying our public school system while funneling the proceeds to for-profit charter schools, the group was quickly reconfigured to be one that was more, shall we say, public? The Governor’s staffer […]

That’s gonna leave a mark

Republicans are going Code Red to defend their desire to exempt charter schools from any sort of additional scrutiny, including being held to the same educational standards as public schools are. Toward that effort, state Senator Phil Pavlov went on the attack against the State Board of Education for even suggesting it. Pavlov is the chair of the Senate Education Committee. He then went on to blame the State Board of Education for the dire financial situation schools like those in Buena Vista and Pontiac find themselves in.

State Board of Education President John Austin, someone whose name has been talked about as a terrific choice for Lt. Governor of Michigan given his experience in education, is not taking this lying down. He put out a statement today, slamming Sen. Pavlov for his blatant politicization of our education system in Michigan. It’s a thing of beauty.

Read it over the jump.

This is what a blue state state looks like 56.8 percent of Michigan residents support same-sex marriage, according to a new poll from the Glengariff Group. That’s up 12.5 percent from a year ago largely due to a shift in the views of Republicans and independents. In 2004, the state approved a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, even as it […]

You don’t know what it’s like until it’s your life. Clara Sanders-Stevens works hard every day, directing the Project 21 after-school program for the Oak Park School District. But, because she’s an independent contractor, she’s responsible for her own health insurance. And she just can’t afford it. I don’t need help with food or rent, but I need health insurance […]

Follow your tax money (right into the pockets of for-profit school shareholders)

Yesterday, the same day that we learned that the Snyder administration had bowed to the suitable outrage and national media attention they had received over the closing of the Buena Vista school district due to lack of money and had released funds, we also learned that two Michigan high schools are closing as well. These to high schools, Albion and Inkster, won’t reopen in the fall because their school districts cannot afford to do so. In Albion, “officials hope to reach a deal with nearby Marshall for students to attend high school there”. In Inkster, the high school will be run by a charter.

And yet, in school districts across the state, we see new buildings and renovations going on. Flat-screen televisions in the hallways, brand new campuses, state-of-the-art sports facilities. How is this possible? How is it that students in one district can go to school in a cutting-edge, shiny new facility while students in other districts see their schools shuttered for lack of funding? It can be explained by how we fund our schools and the shiny new buildings and hallway televisions don’t always tell the full story.