The show notes for Episode 22 are at http://www.eclectablog.com/2017/03/episode-22-living-in-america-under-the-new-rules-of-trumps-scandal-playbook-wsg-ronald-klain.html Chris Savage at Eclectablog: What Trump’s “good”, “strong”, and “protective” regulations mean for our nation’s fresh water supply is #SAD STAT OF THE WEEK: 12%. That’s the percentage of Americans who want to see Medicaid cut. Yet the GOP plan will cut Medicaid so that eliminate tens of millions including millions […]

Up until three years, the progressive watchdog group Progress Michigan, held an annual conference called “The Michigan Summit”. However, due a lack of participation and a lack of funding, they were discontinued. This year, thanks to the new progressive energy sparked by the ascension of Donald Trump to the Oval Office, the Michigan Summit is back. “Donald Trump has created […]

Anyone who has followed the state legislature in Michigan since Republicans assumed nearly total control in 2010 will tell you just how devastating their policies and laws have been to public education in our state. From stripping funding from schools to pay for enormous corporate tax cuts to taking away local control and handing it over to non-educator Emergency Managers […]

Champion for equality says Michigan Legislature should focus on real problems, urges Michiganders to voice opposition to bigoted bill. Never one to mince words, Congressman Dan Kildee (MI-05) is particularly blunt in his condemnation of the “bathroom bill” introduced by State Senator Tom Casperson. I spoke with Rep. Kildee the day after Senate Bill 993 was introduced in the Michigan […]

“Michigan Governor Rick Snyder Political Suicide” by DonkeyHotey This post has been updated to reflect that this is a legal complaint, not a lawsuit. The Michigan Legal Defense Fund Act requires that a legal defense fund be established for any elected official that receives contributions for “the purpose of defending an elected official in a criminal, civil, or administrative action […]

Citing a report putting Michigan dead last in terms of ethical transparency in state government, the progressive watchdog group Progress Michigan is launching a GoFundMe drive to raise funds for a variety of activities related to shining a light on the actions of our elected officials. Top on their list is to overturn Michigan’s disgusting law that allows the Governor […]

Just one day after Gov. Snyder released what he says are all of his emails from 2014 and 2015 regarding his administration’s poisoning of Flint’s drinking water along with the state government’s official timeline, evidence has already surfaced that it, at best, incomplete. Progress Michigan has discovered that his Chief of Staff met with Flint officials regarding lead contamination in […]

The Center for Public Integrity recently released a report called “State Integrity 2015” which looked at the level of transparency in the governments of all 50 states. The results were, well, horrific. Only three states received a grade about a D+. Michigan, however, stood out and not in a good way. Out of all 50 states, Michigan came in at […]

3,707. That’s how many reported issues were found relating to the for-profit private prison food vendor Aramark in just an 8-month period. A new report from Progress Michigan shows just how widespread the problems were and, just as important, the utter failure of the Snyder administration to correct them. After reviewing over 25,000 pages of emails between the Department of […]

The healthcare provider is under attack. Let’s rally the troops. Imagine someone who always looked out for you was getting beat up by the school bully, or was getting smeared by an enemy at work who was telling vicious lies about them. You’d leap to their defense, right? After all, if they’ve been there for you — no matter what […]

After scandal after scandal (after scandal after scandal), the Michigan Department of Corrections While the Detroit Free Press takes a victory lap for this development, the true heroes were Progress Michigan who tenaciously kept the story in the news including spending the money needed to procure thousands of pages of documents through Freedom of Information Act requests. Here’s Progress Michigan’s […]