Ruh-roh, Raggy

The scheme to rig the distribution of Michigan’s electoral votes to make sure that Republicans can take full advantage of their gerrymandering of our Congressional districts has been given the dreaded “not on my agenda” label from Republican Senate Majority Leader Randy Richardville.

When a Michigan Republican tells you something “is not on my agenda”, you should be very, very skeptical. Details after the jump.

Wait. What???

With Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act poised to free nearly half a million Michiganders from having to get their healthcare from emergency rooms and save the state $10 million in the first ten years, our Governor, Rick Snyder, appears to be wavering because of ‘capacity’. This is despite a report that came out this month indicating that Michigan doctors are ready, willing and able to take on the influx of uninsured patients.

So, what, we should just let them keep going to emergency rooms for their healthcare? More after the jump.

Bra·zen [brey–zuhn], adjective: shameless or impudent

On January 15th, Americans for Prosperity held a “Citizens Watchdog Training” in Warren, Michigan. As usual, the entrance fee was a nominal $10 because he entire event was heavily subsidized and underwritten by the Koch Brothers-funded corporate front group.

At the event, tea party Senator Patrick Colbeck was very forthright in explaining how multimillionaire Dick DeVos and Michigan Republican Chair Ron Weiser bankrolled the effort to make Michigan the country’s 24th Right to Work state. Audio and transcript after the jump.

How about it Republicans? Do you care for Michiganders or not?

With Republicans actively seeking to prevent the expansion of Medicaid in Michigan under the Affordable Care Act and Democrats seeking to make it happen, doctors in Michigan are ready, willing and able to take on the new influx of patients that would entail. Think about it: a savings of $1 billion over ten years, 400,000 new Michiganders covered by health insurance and doctors expanding their practices to accomodate.

Who could be against THAT? Only conservative ideologues, that’s who.

Details after the jump.

Sorry face, this nose has got to go

It what can only be described as one of the most intentionally childishly mean-spirited, hurt-people-to-spite-Obama acts in recent Michigan history, state Senator Bruce Caswell from Hillsdale has introduced legislation that specifically prohibits Michigan from expanding Medicaid coverage as permitted under the Affordable Care Act.

Just so we’re clear: it’s not that he’s just suggesting that we not do this incredibly smart and money-saving, life-saving thing. He is actively seeking to make it illegal to do so.

Details of this pathetically childish insanity after the jump.

Ensuring our energy policy doesn’t compromise our water supply

In 2005, President George W. Bush signed the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (pdf) into law. This comprehensive law does everything from providing new subsidies and incentives for renewable energy production (like wind, solar, biomass, wave & tidal, and geothermal) and tax breaks for energy conservation improvements on homes to providing incentives for increased drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and exempting oil and gas producers from certain requirements of the Safe Drinking Water Act. It even extended Daylight Savings Time by a week. There’s a fine summary of this 551 page bill HERE.

One of the components of the Energy Policy Act was Section 979 which compelled Energy Secretary to study the interaction and interplay of water-related issues and energy-related issues. The intent was to ensure that we fully understand how our country’s energy policy impacts our water resources.

The study is eight years late and there’s a petition to sign to move it forward. Details are after the jump.

My, my, Governor. That didn’t take long.

Remember when Governor Snyder and his Republican colleagues were telling us all how important making Michigan a Right to Work state was for improving our economy? “It’s freedom to work!” they said. “It will make us competitive with other states!” they claimed. “It will create more and better jobs!” they told us.

Turns out that even Governor Snyder doesn’t believe that tripe. Less than a month after his Economic Development Corporation spent $144,000 on a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal touting our new Right to Work status as one of the attractive benefits of setting up shop in Michigan, this week Snyder admitted it’s all a damn lie.

Details after the jump.

Who wants to belong to a political party that can’t win fairly?

Michigan Republicans’ intend to change the rules to assign our state’s presidential electoral votes by Congressional District. While this may seem sort of innocuous, once you realize how severely they have gerrymandered our state, the implications of this begins to sink in. Here’s the reality:

• More Michiganders voted for Democrats statewide than for Republicans
• President Obama would have gotten less electoral votes than Mitt Romney in the 2012 election

I will be writing more about this topic but I wanted to draw your attention to some of the smartest writing and smartest advice on this topic that I have seen yet. It comes from MMColo at Daily Kos. Their article is titled “Republicans Plan to Steal the Presidency (And might not be able to ) and How Democrats Can Stop Them”.

It’s all there, waiting for you, after the jump.

Aye, aye, aye…

By now, most my readers know that the Republicans in Michigan have carved roughly $1 billion out of our state education budget and are ready to reduce the per-pupil funding by another $150/student this year. But what you probably don’t know that things have gotten so bad in our state’s schools that some of them don’t even have toilet paper for our kids to use when they go to school.

I’m not kidding. Follow me over the jump.

This ought to get VERY interesting

Are you grumpy with (or even angry at) the leadership of the Michigan Democratic Party? If so, there may be a chance to do something about it but you must be a registered member of the MDP no later than today to do so. You can do that HERE. This will allow you to vote at next month’s 2012 State Convention at Cobo Hall in Detroit.

Current party Chair Mark Brewer no longer has the support of the UAW, the Teamsters, or of several major Democrats including Congressman Sander Levin. Gongwer and MIRS both report that Bob King of the UAW and James Hoffa of the Teamsters have told Brewer he no longer has their support. Brewer is determined to run anyway.

The battle has already gotten nasty with MIRS reporting that a party insider is calling King’s move “the temper-tantrum school of politics,” saying that he seems “more than happy being in a minority, a shrinking minority, than growing the Democratic Party.”

Yeeouch.

Much more after the jump.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s 2013…

The button shown above is the actual one that was worn by my mother when she marched, with me at her side, with 85,000 others in Chicago, during a rally for the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) in 1980. 59¢ was how much women in 1980 earned for every dollar a man made for the same job.

Today that number is 77¢. In 33 years, women have only gained 18¢ in their struggle for paycheck fairness. At that rate, to paraphrase Laurie Anderson, it will be the year 2055 before they make a buck. That is, unless Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski and Connecticut Congresswoman Rose DeLauro have anything to say about it.

Much, much more after the jump.