Little Red Hen
by Tim Skubick
March 19, 2010
Many lawmakers proudly profess that education is their top priority. If so, why is there serious talk about slicing the K-12 school aid budget by almost $400 per pupil and higher education by 3 percent, which will most assuredly result in tuition increases above 5 percent?
To help understand the [...]

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Stupid Administration Tricks
by John Lindstrom
Gongwer News Service
March 19, 2010
One could forgive Governor Jennifer Granholm if she were seen about the halls of the governor’s residence this week muttering to herself, “With friends like these…”
Not since former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick publicly stabbed her in the back on the issue of charter schools during her first [...]

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Fireside Chat
by Jack Lessenberry
March 19, 2010
The poor, philosophers used to say, will always be with us. Michigan has two problems that have gotten worse, and seem unlikely to disappear anytime soon: the plight of the Detroit public schools, and the state’s enduring financial crisis.
Robert Bobb, the emergency financial manager who now runs the schools, is [...]

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Clearing the Air
How the Smoking Ban Was Won
by Peter Ruddell and Emily Gerkin Palsrok
March 16, 2010

Chapters 1 & 2 | Chapters 3 & 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapters 6, 7 & 8
Chapter 1: The Campaign for Smokefree Air
April 2005
[...]

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Clearing the Air

Chapters 1 & 2 | Chapters 3 & 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapters 6, 7 & 8
Chapter 3: The 2006 Elections
A monumental event in the fight for smokefree air occurred prior to the 2006 elections, when U. S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona issued his landmark report The [...]

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Clearing the Air

Chapters 1 & 2 | Chapters 3 & 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapters 6, 7 & 8
Chapter 6: Headed to Conference
We were given the choice by House leadership to either ping-pong HB 4163 back and forth between the Senate and House in hopes of achieving concurrence, or to send [...]

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Clearing the Air

Chapters 1 & 2 | Chapters 3 & 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapters 6, 7 & 8
Chapter 5: Gamechanger
With the fight now in the Republican-controlled Senate, we needed new angles to exploit. Our previous polling consistently demonstrated this was not a partisan issue, with identical support from Republican and [...]

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Smokefree Sausage
by T. Scott
March 16, 2010
Throw barbs at this Michigan Legislature if you will (and must, because it’s usually justified), but don’t overlook the fact that last December it did produce one of its most important pieces of work in many years.
Whether it was luck (give an infinite number of lawmakers…), divine intervention by a [...]

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Trapped from Moving Forward
by John Lindstrom
Gongwer News Service
March 12, 2010
It is March, of course, but close enough to spring to quote T.S. Eliot, particularly when his lines have so much meaning: “April is the cruelest month, breeding/ Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/ Memory and desire, stirring/ Dull roots with spring rain.”
These weeks have [...]

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Truth in Advertising
by Tim Skubick
February 26, 2010
When the Snyder for Guv guys were fact-checking their notorious Nerd commercial, they missed one huge error. The announcer claimed that business guy Snyder had a Ten-Point Plan that the typical career politician would not understand.
Turns out, every politician will understand. That’s because much of the Snyder blueprint contains [...]

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