Back in June I reported on legislation – Senate Bill 250 which would cut the minimum wage for 18 and 19 year olds to 85% of the level for everyone else. In defending it, the sponsor, Margaret O’Brien, claimed that it was necessary because “Most of the employers I’ve talked to in my community do not have a youth training […]

“A budget is moral document” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Yesterday, the group Priorities Michigan held a press conference to highlight the faces of real people who are victims of callous, unfair Republican budgets. Intent on diminishing the size and scope of government, Republicans have shrunk our state budget by giving billions of dollars of tax breaks to corporations. […]

The following is a guest post by Paul Clements, the Democratic candidate for Michigan’s 6th Congressional District seat now held by Big Oil puppet Fred Upton. Clements ran for this seat in 2014. Though he was ultimately unsuccessful, he received a huge boost from the Mayday PAC which spent $1.5 million to support his candidacy. I interviewed him then (HERE). […]

Republicans in Michigan, including Governor Rick Snyder are bragging to anyone who will listen to them about Michigan’s low unemployment rate. And it’s true. Our 5% unemployment rate is below the national average and at its lowest level since the summer of 2000. What they don’t mention, of course, is that the wages of our workers is perilously low. In […]

After legislation to ban straight-ticket voting passed out of the Senate Elections Committee yesterday, the full Senate quickly took it up and passed it last evening. As I mentioned yesterday, voters in Michigan have already shot down the same ban in 2002 when a ballot referendum overturned a Republican law to stop straight-ticket voting. In my piece, I predicted that […]

This morning the Michigan Senate Elections Committee voted to advance a Republican-sponsored bill – S.B. 13 – that will eliminate straight-ticket voting in our state. If it becomes law, you will no longer have the convenience of simply pulling one lever, filling in one oval, or punching one chad to vote for all the candidates in your preferred party. The […]

The road repair “plan” passed by the Michigan legislature this week has been touted as raising $452 million in the first year with the full $1.2 billion not kicking in until 2021. However, that “first year” is actually not until 2017. And, according to some great reporting by Chad Livengood at The Detroit News, we now know that, as soon […]

House Speaker Kevin Cotter took to the House floor last night to tell us all that they have kicked the can down the road too far on road funding and, by golly, it’s time to get this done. Then he said something that is the most blatant exhibition Orwellian Newspeak that I’ve seen in some time: This is a plan […]

Wouldn’t it be nice if Michigan got mentioned on The Rachel Maddow Show just once for some cool thing that’s happening here? Sadly, once again it’s because of the complete Fail Whale that is the Michigan Republican Party and the clowns who inhabit it. Yup, Rachel Maddow finally picked up the Courser/Gamrate debacle. Ugh:

The picture above is a screenshot of a Detroit Free Press article published yesterday. In the article, Gov. Snyder paints on an optimistic smile and says he’s confident that there is “strong momentum” for something getting done on road funding, despite a half decade of failed efforts on his part and on the part of his Republican colleagues in the […]

“Only the Michigan GOP could look at crumbling roads, underfunded schools and struggling communities and think, ‘You know what? We need LESS revenue’.” That quote from Progress Michigan executive director Lonnie Scott sums up what happened last night in the state legislature perfectly. After more than two and a half years of wrangling to find $1.2 billion annually that experts […]