Can you hear us yet? The Obama adminstration took further actions in sanctioning the Iranian government yesterday, freezing their financial assets. From his message to Congress: I have determined that additional sanctions are warranted, particularly in light of the deceptive practices of the Central Bank of Iran and other Iranian banks to conceal transactions of sanctioned parties, the deficiencies in […]

Emergency Manager law under the microscope Tonight, a community forum will be held in Ann Arbor on the subject of Public Act 4, the Emergency Manager law. On Monday, February 6, from 6 to 8pm in the Eldersveld Room in the Department of Political Science (Haven Hall 5th Floor), the Undergraduate Political Science Association will host: “A Debate on the […]

Trevor Thomas mulls throwing his hat into the ring in MI-03 There is no question that Congressman Justin Amash of Michigan’s 3rd Congressional District is vulnerable. As a self-identified tea partyer and with the popularity of the failed tea party agenda dwindling more every day, Amash’s own popularity is sinking as well. Enter Trevor Thomas. Born and raised on the […]

Who thought THAT was a good idea? [NOTE: I have posted updates to this ongoing story HERE.] “Twitter Pete” Hoekstra, the man who wasn’t even smart enough to buy his own domain during his run for Governor of Michigan, ran an ad during this year’s Super Bowl that was so blatantly racist and offensive to Asians that even GOP consultants […]

Superbowl, schmuperbowl This is what we’ll be watching this afternoon: This year: live tweets!

Zemke showing strong support in redistricted MI-55 Last November, I broke the news that Adam Zemke had announced his candidacy for Michigan’s 55th state House district. This district was recently reconfigured and is now strongly Democratic-leaning – it is considered to be an easy pick-up for Dems. Zemke has only one Democratic opponent at this point, Bob Davidow. This week, […]

Let’s try that again, shall we? I posted this yesterday but got some pertinent facts wrong, not once, but twice. So, I pulled the post until I could get my facts straight. In my defense, the situation surrounding the fight to save Jean Klock Park is very confusing – unnecessarily confusing, in my opinion. In a city with less than […]

Fighting back against Republican dirty tricks In early January, I broke the news that Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer would be asking the state committee to bypass enforcing rules against Democrats voting in both the Democratic caucus and in the primary. I have spoken with Michigan Democratic Chair Mark Brewer to ensure that this information is correct. He told […]

Tut, tut, Mike When I last wrote about Right to Work (for less) cheerleader State Rep. Mike Shirkey, it was it was discovered he took federal Stimulus dollars for his company and then laid people off. Michigan state Representative and advocate for making Michigan a Right to Work for Less state, Mike Shirkey, has been busted for showing higher than […]

Oops Yesterday in my Emergency Manager news round-up, I linked to reporting by WXYZ saying that a Lansing judge had “ruled” that meetings by financial review teams, in a lead up to imposing an Emergency Manager on a school or municipality, violated the Open Meetings Act. Turns out that WXYZ had it quite wrong and Judge Collette made no such […]

The GOP finally finds a good tax: on the poor As bad as things are right now in Michigan, they are about to get so much worse that I fear there is a genuine risk of the types of riots we haven’t seen since the 60s & 70s in my state. If you think we have too many failing schools […]