Special enrollment period through April 30 is available for people who learned of penalties on their 2014 tax return. It shouldn’t have been news to anyone that if you don’t have health insurance, you’ll have to pay a penalty unless your income is so low you can’t afford coverage. But since 2014 was the first year the Affordable Care Act […]

Ultra far right wing conservatives Todd Courser and Gary Glenn took steps this week that show beyond a shadow of a doubt that their views on education have more to do with people in the 18th Century than they do with any modern views on education today. In a Facebook post this week that he has since deleted, Courser describes […]

This past week, the corporatist front group and bill mill for corporate America, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), held a breakfast gathering for Michigan state legislators. Our friends at Progress Michigan were there and reported that only SIX legislators actually attended. Here is the all-Republican list of attendees: Rep. Aric Nesbitt (R-Lawton) Rep. Peter Pettalia (R-Presque Isle) Rep. Triston […]

My post yesterday, “Anti-trans* woman uses Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to sue Planet Fitness for terminating her membership” (which I cross-posted at Daily Kos) provoked a response from the so-called “Christians” at RenewAmerica.com today. The piece is written by Ellis Washington, a founding board member of Salt and Light Global, and is titled “Salt and Light Global targeted for […]

Last week Ted Cruz showed us why we need another season of Cosmos. On Late Night with Seth Meyers, he was presented with a chance to explain why the world is on fire but it isn’t getting hotter — and he took it. It was as if the world’s greatest internet commenter had crawled into the news and started spraying […]

“Don’t tell me what you value, show me your budget and I will tell you what you value.” – Joe Biden Michigan Republicans put forth their proposed education budget yesterday and, as you would expect, it shows just how little the value education in our state. After slashing education funding for years, they are back this year with a paltry […]

Instead of being tied to a job for the insurance benefits, Americans have the freedom to pursue their dreams. Ever since he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 10, Shawn Dhanak says he worried about what he was going to do when he was no longer covered by his parents’ insurance. He remembers his grandmother telling him, “You […]

Earlier this month I wrote about a woman in Midland who had her Planet Fitness membership cancelled because she spent her days in their gym warning anyone who would listen that Planet Fitness had a “No Judgment Zone” policy that permitted a transgender woman to enter the women’s locker room. Keep in mind that their locker rooms have private changing […]

Today’s guest post was written by my new friend Sally Tyler. Sally lives in Washington, DC. and is a public policy analyst for a national labor union, who spent time in Wisconsin in 2011, and who occasionally reads poetry. She writes today about Philip Levine, a U.S. Poet Laureate who died last month. Levine is best known for his poems […]

These are only five of the millions of Americans whose lives have been changed for the better thanks to the ACA. Call it Obamacare, call it the Affordable Care Act or the ACA. Whatever you call it, you have to call it a success — because it is. March 23, 2015, marks the fifth anniversary of President Obama signing the […]

Back when Pete Hoekstra was running against Rick Snyder for governor, Ben Padnos registered PeteHoekstra.com and proceeded to use it to support Hoekstra’s opponents in his gubernatorial and Senate campaigns. Padnos explained why he was doing it in January of 2010: Here’s the ranking Republican Member of the House Intelligence Committee failing to do something as simple as registering his […]