Banks being stingy with small business loans are choking off America’s economic recovery, argues blogger Matt Yglesias at his new home at slate.com. He is reporting on new research that purports to show that small businesses that just want to do business and need some bank money for investment have been hurt disproportionately during the […]
Michigan Democratic Party
Posted inPhil's Column
Two movements, one core
To most observers, the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movements could not be more different. The right-of-center Tea Party tends to be tightly focused on taxes and the size and intrusiveness of government. And it has been steadily growing in power, driving its parent Republican Party to the right. It’s a movement with […]
Posted inPhil's Column
Parties play to extremes; voters left stranded
(Originally published July 20, 2011) The coverage of Betty Ford’s funeral last week pushed my thoughts back to the mid-1960s, when I ran the Capitol Hill congressional office of Rep. Paul Todd, Jr., D-Kalamazoo. Those were days when Rep. Gerry Ford, R-Grand Rapids, was on his way up in a career that would ultimately take […]
Posted inMichigan Government
Redistricting: How political map-making leaves voters with uncompetitive, pre-determined elections
(Originally published Feb. 10, 2011) In the past decade, voters decided 664 races for seats in the Michigan Legislature. The majority of those races were never in question. Millions of votes didn’t really matter. Districts for many state representatives and senators are not competitive. Many seats are engineered for partisan advantage. A consequence is the […]