On Equal Pay Day, Congressman Dan Kildee and Senator Gary Peters are standing with women, who still earn an average of 78 cents on the dollar compared to men. Imagine if your year was more than 15 months long. Sounds exhausting, doesn’t it? Well, that’s the reality for too many American women who still do not earn the same salary […]

Tomorrow is Tax Day and the group FightFor15.org is holding rallies across the country demanding a living wage for low-wage workers like those in the fast food industry. Here in Michigan, there will be a rally on the campus of the University of Michigan at noon to demand that U of M begin paying its employees and those who work […]

I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who came through in such a profound way for this quarter’s fundraiser. Thanks to your generosity we have enough in the coffer to keep paying our writers and even bring on a new one (who I will be announcing soon.) In particular, the response to Anne’s Facebook post was nothing short […]

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette is our state’s top lawyer. He bragged about his legal acumen during his 2014 campaign. He also has over 100 Assistant Attorneys General on his staff. So, as Schuette prepares to defend our state’s ban on same-sex marriages before the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), you would assume that he would be well-positioned […]

On Friday, Rand Paul blasted President Obama’s plan to make tuition to community college free. He offered an alternative, “Let’s make college tuition entirely deductible.” “So that the children of rich people can finally get some advantages in life?” Vox’s Marry Yglesias tweeted. Paul’s idea directly contradicts his flat tax plan — which would explode the deficit and likely cut […]

Earlier this week, I was feeling pretty low. It was Day Two of our quarterly fundraiser and we had gotten a single donation of ten dollars. Usually by the second day we have a couple hundred, at least. It seemed like we were headed for a disastrous week and, with my business checking account nearly drained, there would be no […]

While we work toward a better America for everyone, we must act “as if.” Progress takes time. Consider that the first President to propose universal health insurance was Teddy Roosevelt, but the first major step toward that kind of health reform didn’t happen until Barack Obama’s presidency. But the Affordable Care Act did become law because Democrats and progressives never […]

The privatization of prison food services to the for-profit group Aramark has generated a seemingly endless litany of scandals and more are likely to come as Progress Michigan plows through the results of their exhaustive FOIA request. The scandals so far have been thoroughly documented here at Eclectablog. Although this collosal failure at privatization would lead most good leaders to […]

Throughout the course of my work as a broadcaster, blogger, activist and advocate I often wonder where I would be without Eclectablog. What if, as I shudder, Eclectablog didn’t exist? What then? I asked Chris Savage, the founder and editor of this great blog, how does he do what he does? How is he so plugged in? (and I am […]

After a Department of Justice investigation, Ferguson City Court Clerk Mary Ann Twitty, was fired after 19 years on the job for using her city government email to send racist emails. One email showed a photo of Ronald Reagan feeding a bottle to a chimpanzee with the caption “Rare photo of Ronald Reagan babysitting Barack Obama in 1962.” Another said […]

If you’ve ever spent time at Michigan State University, it’s hard to miss the twin smokestacks of the T.B. Simon Power Plant on the south side of campus. And it’s also hard to miss the gigantic piles of coal next to the plant or the hundreds of coal-carrying train cars that feed the maw of the behemoth. Starting in 2016, […]