Alright! Now THIS is more like it! Michigan’s unemployment rate fell by eight-tenths of a percentage point last month to 9.8 percent. This is the first time since November of 2008 that Michigan’s jobless rate has dropped below 10 percent. The national November unemployment rate is 8.6 percent. The jobless rate fell by eight-tenths of a percentage point in November. […]

There is a very good reason that people that watch Fox News are more stupid than their non-Fox watching counterparts: Fox actually lies to them. Check this out. When the unemployment rate numbers came out last week showing that we had dropped below 9% for the first time in forever, here’s the chart that Fox used: Check that out. The […]

A couple of weeks ago, I spent about 20 quality minutes in the Green Room of Fox News Detroit with Nolan Finley, the Editorial Page Editor of the Detroit News. In that short time, I got to listen to him debate charter schools with another guest. His main and emphatic argument, one echoed by most charter school proponents, is that […]

Oh, my. Who could ever have thought that Republican members of Congress would turn out to be hypocrites about earmarks? At the beginning of the 112th Congress, a wave of Republicans swept into control of the U.S. House of Representatives, pledging fiscal restraint. One of the first policy changes instituted by the new Republican majority was to institute a moratorium […]

Today the Michigan Senate Government Operations passed an S-1 substitute bill to SB 0865 on to the full Senate. The bill creates a transition team that will be assigned to municipalities and school districts under the control of an Emergency Manager. From the Senate summary: The bill would create a new act to do the following, with respect to a […]

Since his election last year, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder has played the good cop/bad cop game to perfection. While he stays above the fray and issues calming and non-threatening platitudes, his Republican colleagues in the legislature enact a conservative agenda with a rapidity that Democrats can only marvel at. Time and time again, Snyder has talked about how a particular […]

Howzabout a little Monday Morning Meta? So, you may have noticed a couple of new ads on Eclectablog this past week. The first one over there on the left is for an Ann Arbor-area electrician, Dan Del Zoppo. Up there at the top is one for We Are The People Michigan. These two ads have something in common: they were […]

I’ve been to two Netroots Nation conferences so far and, wow, what a rush. But, there is one thing about it that bothers me and I am not the only one: it’s pretty much all white people. Seriously. We are a lily white group of progressive conference attendees. There is an effort afoot to help fix that and without spending […]

In late November of this year, the Michigan Supreme Court issued a tersely worded order (pdf) that said simply this: On order of the Court, the application for leave to appeal the July 19, 2011 judgment of the Court of Appeals is considered, and it is DENIED, because we are not persuaded that the questions presented should be reviewed by […]

I realize you have probably seen this all over the innernetz and I apologize. However, I am contractually obligated as a progressive liberal blogger to have it on my blog. I give you: Rick Perry, Brokeback Texan. Yes, the jacket Rick Perry wore in his anti-gay, homophobic, anti-Obama campaign ad was the exact same one as Heath Ledger wore in […]

With the news that Michigan Republicans are already writing legislation to replace the Emergency Manager law if it is stopped by the referendum petition drive being conducted by Michigan Forward, many of us are concerned that they will put an appropriation into the bill. If this is done, it will make the law “referendum-proof” because Michigan law prohibits referendums on […]