Commentary
Rick Haglund: Tesla settlement means more changes for Michigan’s auto industry
The settlement of a long-running lawsuit between Tesla and the state of Michigan this week cleverly allows the California-based automaker to sell vehicles directly to consumers, sidestepping the state’s dealer franchise laws. But that doesn’t mean auto dealers, whose business model has been protected by state law since cars and trucks started rolling off assembly […]
Column: How undoing Obamacare would harm more than the health of Americans
The Affordable Care Act remains on life support after a panel of federal judges ruled on Dec. 18, 2019, that the law’s individual mandate requiring people to buy health insurance is unconstitutional. The decision hobbles the law in ways that are hard to predict politically, particularly in the upcoming election year. It also raises questions […]
Column: For a greener future, we must accept there’s nothing inherently sustainable about going digital
Digital technologies are often put forward as a solution to environmental dilemmas. The spread of the internet came with claims of a huge reduction in printing, and by replacing paper with bytes, we thought we’d reduce our negative environmental impact. But this early promise of solving environmental problems may not be delivering because digital devices, […]
Susan J. Demas: In the Trump era, the GOP silence on Sen. Lucido’s degrading sexism has been deafening
It’s a safe bet that if a Republican lawmaker told a female reporter that a group of schoolboys could “have a lot of fun with you” before 2016, a significant number of his GOP colleagues would have felt pressure to denounce him and call for his resignation. But there’s been only a few statements from […]
Column: Black Americans mostly left behind by progress since Dr. King’s death
On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn., while assisting striking sanitation workers. Back then, over a half century ago, the wholesale racial integration required by the 1964 Civil Rights Act was just beginning to chip away at discrimination in education, jobs and public facilities. Black voters had only […]
Column: Help us with this ’10-year challenge’ and #CountAllKids in the 2020 census
A lot can change in a decade — as anyone who has seen the “10-year challenge” on social media knows. Children grow from toddlers to pre-teens, teenagers “glow-up” into twenty-somethings. As kids throughout Michigan grow over the next 10 years, they’ll need schools and libraries to learn, clinics and hospitals to keep them healthy, and […]
Susan J. Demas: Michigan Sen. Lucido must be held accountable for his vile sexist remarks
By now, I hope you have read the first-person story by Advance reporter Allison Donahue in which she thoroughly details the belittling and sexist remarks made to her by state Sen. Peter Lucido (R-Shelby Twp.) — some of which were in front of a group of Catholic schoolboys. What Lucido did to Allison was needlessly […]
I tried to interview Sen. Peter Lucido. He told me a group of schoolboys ‘could have a lot of fun’ with me.
I waited outside the Michigan Senate chamber to ask Sen. Peter Lucido (R-Shelby Twp.) on Tuesday for a comment about the Detroit Metro Times’ story reporting that he was a member of a violent, anti-Gov. Gretchen Whitmer Facebook group, which has since been deleted. What was meant to be an opportunity for Lucido to respond […]
Rick Haglund: Whitmer should address Michigan worker pay in her State of the State speech
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will have plenty of topics to tackle in her second State of the State speech on Jan. 29. We’ll no doubt hear about a new road funding plan after the Republican-controlled Legislature refused to raise even a single penny toward her request for a 45-cent hike in the gas tax last year. […]
Alex Rossman: CREC yourself before you wreck yourself: A revenue estimating conference playlist.
I have been making bad puns and dad jokes well before actually becoming a dad, and I’m particularly into reworking songs to fit my circumstances and situations. And for the roughly 14 years I’ve known about “CREC,” I’ve tried to make “CREC yourself before you wreck yourself” a thing. But with the January CREC slated […]
Column: EPA’s proposed ‘secret science’ rule directly threatens children’s health
The Trump administration is working to weaken U.S. environmental regulations in many areas, from water and air pollution to energy development and land conservation. One of its most controversial proposals is known as the “secret science” rule because it would require scientists to disclose all of their raw data, including confidential medical records, in order […]
Column: Climate change threat doesn’t get the Y2K urgency
Take a moment to think back to simpler times, to a long-gone era exactly 20 years ago this week, when we celebrated the dawn of a new millennium under the shadow cast by Y2K. Remember all that? Y2K was a universal computer glitch that threatened to shut down power grids, paralyze banking systems and incapacitate […]