Last week, a vicious fight broke out between two students at the Education Achievement Authority’s Pershing High School. With a non-functional walkie-talkie and no other adults around to help, teacher Tiffani Eaton had to act fast as the two brawling boys thrashed around the room, punching each other, and knocking over desks. She grabbed a broom handle and whacked one […]

Or possibly ever The Associated Press reports on a little-known benefit of the Affordable Care Act for low-income pregnant women: Lower-income women who signed up for a private policy in the new insurance exchanges will have access to additional coverage from their state’s Medicaid program if they get pregnant. Some women could save hundreds of dollars on their share of […]

Without Obamacare to demonize, their agenda is to find an agenda Likely Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate in Michigan, Terri Lynn Land’s debuted two new ads on Friday. Both were about the Keystone pipeline. This sudden shift of focus is reminiscent of Republican Gabriel Gomez’s failed attempt to win the Senate seat vacated by Secretary of State John Kerry […]

When Republicans passed their odious “rape insurance” law, they did it on the basis that women should have to pay for their own abortions. It was a faux argument because there was nothing about insurance companies offering abortion coverage that forced anyone to pay for someone else’s abortion. But that, of course, didn’t stop them from making the argument. Now […]

Focus on values and make the other side defend

There has been lots of great Obamacare news over the last few weeks. But public opinion of the law hasn’t improved. The Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has been tracking this issue since 2009, before the bill passed. Their most recent poll, conducted at the end of April, found 36% saying the law is a good idea, consistent with the range in the mid to high 30s that they have seen the whole time (link is PDF).

Other pollsters, asking somewhat different questions, show higher or lower support for the law, but the same consistency over time. Why so little movement?

“Here are some crumbs. Don’t eat them all at once.” Senate Republicans seem to be on a mission to outdo each other on making meaningless and insulting gestures toward lifting the working poor in our state out of poverty. First we had Rick Jones who proposed raising the minimum wage to a paltry $8.15 an hour and giving full-time waiters […]

Nobody in Michigan would argue that we don’t need to take drastic measures to fix our crumbling roads. In some places, gravel roads would be an improvement over what the roads look like right now. One proposal being floated is to change the gas tax from a flat 19 cents per gallon to a percentage of the wholesale cost. This […]

This guest post is by Julia Morrissey, RN, a nurse in Ann Arbor and a member of the Michigan Nurses Association. It is cross-posted with permission from the Progress Michigan blog in honor of National Nurses Week. It’s not that I don’t appreciate the pizza, pens, and little pink teddy bears with signs like, “Nurses are Heroes!” that employers give […]

But Benghazi One of the biggest faux memes being perpetrated by Obamacare opponents is that people who signed up for it wouldn’t actually PAY for it. Charles Gaba over at ACAsignups.net got earsful of it. We even see it here at Eclectablog. Turns out it it’s a complete lie. Three large health insurers including WellPoint Inc. (WLP) and Aetna Inc. […]

Although we held our 10-year Blogaversary party last Thursday on May Day, today is the actual anniversary of my very first blog post. Yup, that’s me. With hair. My first blog was on a site called Modblog and you can view my very first, utterly lame post HERE. If this doesn’t get your attention, I could … … just… … […]

And Obamacare is having its best week since it became law Despite predictions that the Affordable Care Act would slow the economy, job creation has spiked to a five-year high, with an estimated 288,000 jobs created in April. Despite predictions that it would bankrupt the country, the deficit is at a five-year low. Despite predictions that cancellations would dull the […]