You know that earlier this week Michigan’s governor Rick Snyder helped lead the shameful charge against accepting Syrian refugees that Republicans have cravenly engineered in order to stoke fears in the aftermath of terrorist attacks in Paris last week. Now we know that he called for a pause in the program for no clear reason. In an interview on NPR Thursday, the […]

Today, November 20th, is International Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR). TDOR was started by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998. The day is intended to bring awareness to the violence experienced by the transgender community on a daily basis. The trans community faces […]

Response to ACLU lawsuit demonstrates, once again, that Catholic hospitals put ideology above patient safety. When you show up at an emergency room in need of urgent medical care, you have a reasonable expectation that you’ll be given the treatment you need — that the staff will do everything they can to save your life and protect your health. In […]

In 2013, the U.S. Department of Justice reached a settlement with the giant mortgage bank JP Morgan Chase after they were found to have engaged in fraud that seriously harmed homeowners across the country, many of whom lost their homes entirely. Part of $13 billion settlement – and similar settlements with Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America – included […]

I hadn’t intended to write any more about Todd Courser but now that we have the 385-page Michigan State Police report, we have more detail about what actually transpired in the sordid, made-for-The Jerry Springer Show affair of Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat. As it turns out, Courser and Gamrat’s staffers Ben Graham, Josh Cline, and Keith Allard worked with […]

I have gotten quite a few complaints about the video ads that were being displayed on the site. Although I was promised they would have a very high CPM (“cost per thousand”, a measure of what they pay), that turned out not to be the case at all. The ads themselves were pretty intrusive, particularly on tablets and other mobile […]

Lawsuit seeks to make it easier for transgender people to change the gender marker on their state IDs. In a victory for fairness and anti-discrimination protections, on Monday a federal judge refused Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson’s motion to dismiss an ACLU lawsuit. The lawsuit challenges a state policy that makes it nearly impossible for transgender Michiganders to change […]

The Center for Public Integrity recently released a report called “State Integrity 2015” which looked at the level of transparency in the governments of all 50 states. The results were, well, horrific. Only three states received a grade about a D+. Michigan, however, stood out and not in a good way. Out of all 50 states, Michigan came in at […]

[This post has been updated below.] The flow of thousands upon thousands of Syrian refugees escaping violent extremism and war-like conditions in their country has been in the news for months. Many Michiganders were relieved to see Governor Rick Snyder extend the welcome mat to those escaping oppression and violence. However, after the recent terrorist attack in Paris, Gov. Snyder […]

The teaching profession is steadily being transformed into a “gig job” on the model of Uber, Lyft and AirBnB wherein customers are paired with independent providers via Smart Phone apps. The model grew out of human desperation during the bleakest days of the Great Recession. As teacher shortages roll out across the nation we can count on Republican legislatures to […]

Democrats have the people; Republicans have the power For much of this year, I’ve been working on answering the essential question of politics, “How do Republicans win?” How did a Tea Partier who’d never be elected to anything that didn’t involve a homecoming game become governor of Kentucky by a margin of 80,000 votes after promising to take health insurance […]