Eclectablog, while often focusing on national issues, has a Michigan-centric component as regular readers know. That’s largely because we are the testing ground, the beta testers for what Republicans want to achieve nationally. Republicans here control the governor’s office. Our Lt. Governor is a Republican. Our Secretary of State is a Republican. Our Attorney General is a Republican. Our state […]

The following guest post was penned by Nick Wallace, a freelance writer/data journalist who lives in Ypsilanti. Enjoy. Arguments that credit individual politicians with ongoing macroeconomic trends should always be treated with skepticism. It is the rare elected official who can cause a recession or reduce the unemployment rate. This is particularly true of state and local leaders; governors, mayors, […]

The dashing young man in the photo above is Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Charles S. Kettles. LTC Kettles, who lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan, was awarded the Medal of Honor yesterday at a White House ceremony. His story is extraordinary. Here’s an excerpt from President Obama’s remarks: May 15, 1967, started as a hot Monday morning. Soldiers from the 101st Airborne were […]

House Bill 5674 is grounded in medical science and puts patient safety above religious ideology. A medical emergency is a dire situation, no matter who you are or what you believe. But when a patient shows up in the emergency room of a Catholic-affiliated hospital, she doesn’t know whether she’ll be treated based on established medical standards of care or […]

In an interview with the Associated Press last week, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder pointed to Michigan’s economy as heading in the right direction. Gov. Rick Snyder on Wednesday said people should be mindful of Michigan’s continued economic resurgence even as the state grapples with lead in Flint’s drinking water and enormous debt in Detroit’s public school district. The Republican governor, […]

Today’s guest post is by Laura Packard, a partner at PowerThru Consulting, a growing national progressive digital consulting shop. Enjoy. Now that Snyder has effectively ruined our state brand, we should be thinking about what it is we DO want to be known for. We’ll have the chance to replace him in 2018 (or maybe even sooner, if he steps […]

Today’s guest post is by Laura Packard, a partner at PowerThru Consulting, a growing national progressive digital consulting shop. Enjoy. With both the GOP and Democratic presidential candidates coming to Michigan this week for their respective debates, I hope some of the larger issues that Michigan (and the country) faces will finally be addressed. Michigan state government has been broken […]

In comments here at Eclectablog and in many other media spaces around the globe, people are clamoring for the resignation of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder. For Michigan residents, that call has been ringing in the halls of this great state almost from the moment he was sworn into office for his first term. If we get into the “Way Back […]

Laws and regulations imposed on clinics have nothing to do with patient care — and everything to do with limiting abortion access. In part one of this two-part series, I wrote about TRAP laws in Texas and across the country. The question of whether these sneaky, dangerous laws are Constitutional is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, because they restrict […]

One of the reasons I have written about Emergency Management in Michigan ad nauseum is because I contend that we are the testing ground for this anti-democratic move in state governments, the “beta testers”, if you will. With the evidence now in and showing it to be a colossal failure, other states are still moving forward with it. Indiana was […]

As LOLGOP wrote about Friday, Gov. Rick Snyder, who was the first governor in the USA to say he wouldn’t allow Syrian refugees to come to our state, said he wants a “pause” in providing a safe harbor for the refugees until “an appropriate review” can be done to ensure our screening processes are adequate. When NPR correspondent Steve Inskeep […]