Oil well in Saline, Michigan. CC image credit: Dwight Burdette | Wikimedia Commons A standing room-only crowd of more than 300 Scio Township residents packed a recent hearing at the Washtenaw Intermediate School District headquarters last Thursday to speak out about a proposal to drill for oil near the border with Ann Arbor. The hearing was hosted and moderated by […]

Mosaica, the for-profit charter group that has been running Muskegon Heights schools has agreed to end their contract with the school district. Why? They couldn’t make a profit: “To be brutally honest – they had to be brutally honest to themselves as well with us – in their model as a for profit company, their profit was not there,” Weatherspoon […]

“Politics is all about power for them. Politics should always be about people for us.” Michigan Democrats took over the newly-renovated Cobo Hall in Detroit last night in a show of forceful solidarity unlike anything I’ve seen in the recent past. A sold out crowd of over 2,200 packed the venue, over 700 more than attended the event in 2012 […]

The one simple sentence that can change everything The political momentum continued to shift away from Republicans this week as conservatives took shrapnel from the Bundy implosion, polls continued to show Obamacare is far more popular than repeal even in red states and Democrats have found ways to embrace the law as Republicans continue to fail to win “the big argument.” […]

Monday, April 28th, 2014 is Workers Memorial Day, a day to remember the men and women in our country who have given their lives for their jobs. Millions of people are impacted every year, either through job-related illness or death. On that day, the Michigan AFL-CIO is holding a silent vigil followed by a march to commemorate those who have […]

We’ve had a great response to our call for sponsors for the Eclectablog 10-year “Blogaversary” party that’s happening on May 1st, 7-9 p.m. at the Arbor Brewing Company Microbrewery (formerly the Corner Brewery) in Ypsilanti. Here’s the latest list: GOLD LEVEL SPONSORS Michigan Democratic Party AFSCME SILVER LEVEL SPONSOR Michigan Nurses Association Michigan AFL-CIO BRONZE LEVEL SPONSOR Planned Parenthood Advocates […]

Dodgy or dumb? When Republican candidates won’t talk about the issues, it’s tough to tell the difference. What is it with Republican candidates refusing to talk about their positions on the issues? Maybe they’re afraid voters won’t like what they have to say. Or maybe they don’t know the answers. In the case of David Trott, who is running for […]

Republicans are terrified of the Raise the Wage proposal. They know that, if it gets on the 2014 ballot, Democrats will turn out in droves. They are counting on Democrats staying home during a midterm election so that they can retain the governship so the idea of heavy Dem turnout gives them the howling fantods. Republican Rick Jones, however, has […]

Republican House Jase Bolger is on what appears to be a one-man effort to extort money from Detroit labor unions. He recently laid down a new condition for state support of the so-called “grand bargain” in Detroit, a carefully-crafted and complex agreement that would protect the priceless art collection held by the Detroit Institute of Arts and dramatically minimize the […]

Although I was unable to attend the Senate Democrats’ hearing on expansion of the Education Achievement Authority earlier this week, I was allowed to submit written testimony. Since it allowed me to sum up my impressions based on nearly 20 interviews with former and current EAA teachers and an administrator, I am reprinting it here. April 22, 2014 Chris Savage […]

Rand Paul, the man who has dedicated himself to wooing African Americans back to the Republican Party, even in Detroit, defended Cliven Bundy, the self-proclaimed American “patriot”, deadbeat rancher, and domestic terrorist, by saying the federal government is to blame for his lawless squatting on federal land in Nevada because they are “violating the law”. When people wonder why we […]