President Obama’s nomination of the moderate federal appeals court judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court is, perhaps, his most blatant trolling of Republicans during his entire presidency. Make no mistake, Garland is eminently qualified. Not only that, he’s liked by Democrats and Republicans alike. NPR’s SCOTUS-watcher Nina Totenberg described Garland as a “gentle individual” and pointed out that Republican […]

Presidents generally get too much or too little credit for job creation. “In general, presidents and their policies matter much less for the economy’s performance than most people imagine,” Paul Krugman recently wrote then noted: The point, however, is that politicians and pundits, especially on the right, constantly insist that presidential policies matter a lot. And Mr. Obama, in particular, […]

President Obama now has less than a year left in his final term in office. But that hasn’t stopped the drumbeat of calls for his impeachment among the most fervent haters of the country’s first African American POTUS. This past week, the Michigan 7th Congressional District Republicans passed a resolution asking Congressman Tim Walberg to introduce articles of impeachment. In […]

Elections Matter: The Fiduciary Standard Edition You’ve probably haven’t heard anything about it but the “most, intensive coordinated lobbying effort that Capitol Hill has ever seen is going on right now,” according to lawyer, financial planner and academic Ron Rhoades. You should listen Bloomberg’s Barry Ritholtz interview Rhoades about this now. Billions of dollars of inflated fees are at stake, […]

Anne and I were fortunate enough to attend President Obama’s first inauguration seven years ago today. Her photomosaic poster of Barack Obama, “Out of Many, We Are One”, had appeared in TIME magazine, had sold well and was being given out as a gift at the Michigan Ball. We also miraculously got tickets to the inauguration itself. Not only that, […]

Dear President Obama, I wanted to explain to you why I did what I did. I’m afraid I had to take your ’08 bumper sticker off my car. Actually, it was starting to fall off. It’s not like I washed my car very often so it didn’t really get disturbed much. Plus I park my car in a garage so […]

When Irving, Texas police arrested 14-year old Muslim science nerd Ahmed Mohamed on Monday, it appeared that bigotry had won and that all it takes to be branded a terrorist is to have brown skin and an Arabic-sounding name. Police were called in after his teacher and principal assumed he was going to bomb the school with his oh-so-cool digital […]

“Obamacare savings may be short-lived”! shouts the headline of an editorial in today’s edition of The Detroit News. They are referring to Medicaid expansion in our state, a program that is fully funded by the federal government until 2017 and funded at a level of 90% after that, all while giving an additional 600,000 working poor Michiganders health care coverage […]

This past week the Obama administration announced sweeping new regulations that will reduce carbon emissions from our nation’s power plants by 32 percent by 2030. “With this Clean Power Plan, by 2030, carbon pollution from our power plants will be 32 percent lower than it was a decade ago,” President Obama said when he announced the new plan. “The nerdier […]

Remember what happened in the House on Thursday when the GOP nominee releases in ad in Spanish next September that drops all the “secure the border” pablum that got him the nomination and vows to reform the immigration system in a way Democrats haven’t. House Republicans voted to remove language that would have instructed the secretary of defense to consider […]

Earlier this week, President Obama issued a proclamation regarding National Teacher Appreciation Week which runs from May 3rd through May 9th. In his proclamation, he wrote: “On National Teacher Appreciation Day and during National Teacher Appreciation Week, we honor America’s outstanding teachers and the vital role they play in the lives of our children and the success of our country. […]