After I wrote about tea partier Cindy Gamrat being tossed out of the Republican caucus last week, MIRS new service posted a piece that quoted a Republican source saying that Gamrat’s Facebook post wasn’t the only reason she got the boot. “There’s been a whole series of issues with Rep. Gamrat that have got Republican members complaining to leadership and […]

The numbers reflect the growing popularity of the ACA and the success of outreach efforts. Due in large part to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, America’s uninsured rate has dropped to 11.9 percent, the lowest level since Gallup and Healthways began tracking it in 2008. More Americans under age 65 now have self-funded insurance – in fact, nearly […]

This past week, as we celebrated Pay Equity Day, the day that women would have to work through in 2015 to make the same as men for doing the same job they both worked in 2014, Michigan Republicans made a laughable attempt to convince their followers that it’s Democrats – and Hillary Clinton, in particular – who are against wage […]

Yesterday, I wrote about a diatribe posted to Facebook by tea partier Todd Courser where he referred to subsidized daycare as “gubmint child’s care centers” & “government re-engineering centers”. In that same bizarre screed, he also said this: It takes you…Calling all true pro-lifers! Lots of reasons to vote against this coming budget, it cuts road funding (you heard me […]

A new report from the Urban Institute details what every honest adult already knows: Obamacare is the most successful new government program since Medicare and Medicaid. In states that have fully implemented the law, the uninsured population has been cut in half. Tens of millions of Americans have been covered and about 14 million of them were uninsured before. Health […]

Lapeer-area State Representative Todd Courser is a member of the State House Education Committee which oversees legislation pertaining to schools in our state. It’s an interesting assignment for him since he homeschools his own kids and regularly disparages public education. On his Facebook page today, as part of an anti-Planned Parenthood rant, Courser refers to child care providers as – […]

That button there on the right belonged to my mother. She was an ardent feminist and, in fact, took me to my very first political protest when I was in high school; an 85,000-person strong march in Chicago in 1980 demanding passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. 59¢ cents was how much women made for the same job a man […]

NOTE FROM CHRIS: Today is the soft-launch of our newest Eclectablogger Judy Matlock. As “judyms9”, Judy has been the most prolific commenter on Eclectablog for two years running according to our WordPress stats. And she’s not just prolific; her comments are insightful, often getting to the heart of the matter and bringing in angles that the author of the post […]

Who are Republicans worried about on tax day? The millions of Americans who haven’t had a raise in 15 years? Nope. The richest .2 percent of Americans who will leave more than $5.4 million dollars to their kids. They want to cut these taxes on the inheritances of theses extraordinarily rich people — none of whom are family farmers, as […]

Do you ever feel like you never seem to be able to get ahead? That you work your whole life but, at the end of the month, the end of the year, you aren’t any further ahead than you were last month or last year? This one chart goes a long way toward explaining exactly why that is: As the […]

Package of legislation is intended to close the wage gap between what women and men earn for equal work. On Equal Pay Day 2015, Michigan’s Progressive Women’s Legislative Caucus introduced a new wage discrimination policy agenda that offers comprehensive solutions to combat Michigan’s wage gap. The legislation would empower workers to negotiate for equal pay, strengthen support and create strong […]