Gov. Gretchen Whitmer laid out her priorities for 2022 spending as the state moves on from a year dominated by job losses and other economic disruptions caused by lockdowns. While the budget is buoyed by a one-time influx of federal COVID relief dollars, the state can’t use that windfall as ...
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part two of a two-part series. Part one was published in the Feb. 13-14 weekend edition of The Mining Journal. I sat anxiously in the waiting room before my first surgery, clutching my mom’s hand as my tiny legs swayed under the chair, my toes unable to touch the ...
Michigan lawmakers anticipate record levels of Medicaid enrollment next fiscal year as the COVID-19 pandemic continues and the federal government sends an increasing amount of money to state coffers. While Medicaid has been a significant part of the state budget for many years — almost ...
Just a decade ago, a mandatory $15-per-hour minimum wage seemed like a pipe dream — even liberal economists and The New York Times warned of negative effects. But a few large cities started enforcing it, and then it became part of the Democratic Party platform. It now stands a real chance of ...
The people who hand out Emmy Awards should ask New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to return the one they gave him. Cuomo received an Emmy for what they called his “masterful” COVID-19 press briefings. The media lauded those performances, extolling his honesty and transparency. It now turns ...
WASHINGTON — Repeated tweets by Donald Trump calling for violence January 6 have strengthened the case for the ex-president’s impeachment, as House managers documented his personal pitch for protesters to turn out in droves. It overwhelmed an already conspicuously weak defense by Trump ...
It may be coincidence that the best policy idea to come out of the 117th Congress was offered by the one guy who has demonstrated the integrity to brave harassment and death threats to do what’s right vis a vis former President Donald Trump. Mitt Romney has an excellent plan to reduce child ...
If the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump were a play it would close after one performance. The plot is known, the outcome is certain, and the drama is contrived. If it were a film, it might be called “Fifty Angry Senate Democrats” (apologies to “12 Angry Men”), or the 2003 film ...
We’ve had fun. We sledded when we would’ve been chipping ice. We skied when we would’ve shoveled. We turned our faces to the sun multiple days in a row. The cynics among us said we’d have to pay the winter piper at some point. But we partied on in our 30-degree bliss. Now the ...
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part one of a two-part series. Part two will be published in the Feb. 20-21 weekend edition of The Mining Journal. I was born two months early, exactly on the date of my mother’s 25th birthday. As a premature baby I spent six weeks in the NICU enduring health ...
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer correctly noted in her State of the State address that “COVID exposed deep inequities in our education system.” Yet her latest K-12 funding proposal further tips the scales against students in certain public schools. In her address, the governor reiterated her desire ...
Budget forecasts show that the state is expected to remain in good fiscal condition through the end of the current year and into the next. These estimates reveal that the combination of substantial federal relief funds, better-than-forecasted state tax collections, and state spending cuts ...
The problem with free money is that it leads to an addiction much like an addition to drugs. In the case of the $1.9 trillion “relief” bill that has no Republican support, Congress is the supplier, while those on the receiving end become increasingly addicted to government and less ...
Pictures matter. Images convey truths — and falsehoods — with an emotional impact that can amplify and sometimes completely overwhelm the messages imparted by words. Consider the photo of the guy with the buffalo-horn headdress and naked midriff standing at the House speaker’s podium ...
WASHINGTON — No other Senate business is supposed to take place during the impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump. But that’s not stopping President Joe Biden from playing off it with a series of executive orders rolling back some of his predecessor’s most egregious decisions ...
So, now Mitch McConnell tells us that Marjorie Taylor Greene’s views are a “cancer” on the Republican Party and on the country. Odd that he neglected to make that point when one of his preferred candidates in the Georgia runoff, Kelly Loeffler, campaigned with Greene. McConnell is now ...
During the rebellious 1960s, the slogan “power to the people” became a mantra for the young to protest what they saw as oppression from their elders. Now comes a moment when significant numbers of Americans can exercise real power in ways that will improve the country. Most people will ...
For me, there’s no shortage of things to love about secondhand items. There’s the mysteries, the stories, the joyful coincidence of the perfect object somehow finding its way to you, the chance to give something another use, a new life. And whether an item comes from a thrift store, a yard ...
The debate over whether to hold Donald Trump accountable for his role in the events that led to the siege of the U.S. Capitol has slipped into partisan farce Let me say up front I think it’s an open-and-shut case that Trump committed numerous impeachable acts, and in a healthy republic, any ...
Second only to his fixation on “climate change” is President Biden’s focus on “systemic racism.” In addition to reinstating mandatory race theory training for federal employees, Biden proposes spending even more money we don’t have to fix a problem beyond the government’s reach. ...