How Michigan ‘Moderates’ Foiled Progressive Legislative Agenda. Controlled all three branches of government, but watered down agenda for electoral reasons. Then lost:
Michigan Democrats led all branches of government for the past two years, for the first time in about four decades, and they started with a multibillion-dollar budget surplus to boot. But the trifecta was lost after Republicans won back the state House in the fall. And, during the chaotic final session of the year, Democrats accomplished little on what Whitmer once presented as the most significant issues facing the state.
Among the bills not acted upon: ones to bring more transparency to the governor’s office and Legislature, which are now exempt from public record requests. Also dead were efforts to repeal Michigan’s controversial emergency manager law and to charge royalties to bottled water companies for extracting groundwater and invest it in infrastructure and other programs, an idea similar to what Whitmer herself once suggested. The Legislature also took no substantive action to “fix the damn roads,” as Whitmer’s famous 2018 campaign slogan put it.
Overall, Michigan Democrats followed an active first year in leadership with a markedly more stunted one, tempered by internal conflicts and moderate policies that seemed tailored to shoring up electoral prospects. (The governor has consistently demurred when asked about her interest in running for president.)
“I’m across-the-board mad,” said Lisa McGraw, public affairs manager of the Michigan Press Association, which has lobbied for years to expand the state’s Freedom of Information Act.
Somewhere, Bud Freel nods his head in approval.
…you know the answer, even if you don’t know the answer:
For Lucca Baila’s third birthday, his mother, Morgan, knew that he didn’t want balloons or cake or streamers. He wanted Lamb Chop, a stuffed-animal version of the white-and-red puppet from a popular 1960s TV show, and he wanted lots of them. Morgan, a 32-year-old from New York, bought eight small Lamb Chops and turned her apartment into a DIY–Lamb Chop station.
Lucca, a fluffy brown mop of a dog, was then presented with new versions of the toy, one by one. No matter how many times a new Lamb Chop appeared in front of him, his reaction was the same: bouncing, hardwood-floor-scuttling excitement as he accepted each into his mouth and collected them in a pile. Not only did he pose for photos with his new puppet posse, but his “girlfriend”—a jumbo-size Lamb Chop he carries with him everywhere—was also in attendance.
Ask any random dog owner and there’s a good chance they’ll tell you: Lamb Chop is their dog’s favorite toy. They’ll say it with the confidence of having heard it directly from the dog itself. After witnessing my sister’s dog’s dedication to the toy, I spoke with more than 10 dog owners, all of whom were quick to send me pictures, videos, and anecdotes about their own dogs’ seemingly inexplicable Lamby love. One person told me she routinely finds Lamb Chops that her dog has stolen from other dogs’ homes. This adoration is also a common subject on social media. “Why is no one talking about the dog cult?” the content creator Meredith Lynch asks her followers in a TikTok video before pointing to an image of Lamb Chop. “And this is their leader.”
It’s true with our dog. At any time, there are generally three Lamb Chops in our house, each in various stages of mutilation. When one is completely stuffingless, out it goes and a new one takes its place, and the cycle of destruction continues apace.
Read the article and find out why people, professionals even, with nothing better to do explain why Lamb Chop’s popularity with canines is so universal. Here’s one psychobabulous theory:
In other words, we can’t know for sure that dogs really love Lamb Chop, but we like to think they do—and that might be enough. When we hand a dog the toy, our face may betray a belief that we’re giving the dog something enjoyable, a belief that’s affirmed when the dog sees our excitement and gets excited too. “It ends up being a kind of positive-feedback loop,” Blazina said, “where they get happy and we get happy and then they get happy and then it just keeps going.”
From Positive-Feedback Loop To Doom Loop. As in the Washington Post:
The flight from the Post is part of the ongoing fallout from owner Jeff Bezos’s decision to pull the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris last fall, which led to 250,000 subscription cancellations from readers who bought into the Post’s resistance-era identity as a bastion of democracy. But it’s not just that staff members have lost faith in the Post’s journalistic mission. They are also deeply concerned about the paper’s business strategy, which, combined with the existential questions surrounding its coverage of Donald Trump, has made the Post a fertile poaching ground for its competitors.
In addition to seeing some of its most respected writers and editors scooped up, this week the Post let go of 4 percent of its workforce on the business side. While shake-ups at news organizations are common, and sometimes necessary, there is a sense that the Post is in danger of falling into a cycle from which it may not be able to recover.
It was almost a year ago when CEO Will Lewis debuted his “Fix it, build it, scale it” strategy, and the Post’s current business model seems just as formless as it did then. Last year, even before the endorsement debacle, the paper was on track to lose at least as much money as it’d lost the year prior: $77 million. “It’s one thing to be in a newsroom that’s breaking even or losing a little bit. I don’t want to be in a newsroom that’s depending on Jeff Bezos because he’s one of the only people who can afford $100 million a year,” said one Post staffer. “We need to fix that. Is Will Lewis the person to fix that? I’m waiting to see the evidence.”
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Matt Meyer Chooses Four More Cabinet Nominees:
Gov.-elect Matt Meyer announced another round of Cabinet nominations Thursday, with the latest selections featuring both incumbent secretaries and new potential leaders.
The Carney administration secretaries tapped for reconfirmation are Gregory Lane as the chief information officer for the state and Terra Taylor as commissioner of the Department of Correction.
Drawing from his time as New Castle County executive, Gov.-elect Meyer’s new Cabinet picks are former county economic development director C.J. Bell for the director of the Division of Small Business and Yvonne Anders Gordon, the county’s previous general manager of public works, as Department of Human Resources secretary.
I understand that there are basically no editors anymore. Hence “Del. larmakers will again consider creating Inspector General’s Office”:
“At a time when confidence in government is low, I cannot stress enough how important it is that we have an independent and nonpartisan investigative entity that can watch over our state government,” (Chief sponsor Sen. Laura) Sturgeon said. “I believe that Delawareans deserve a state government that holds itself to the highest ethical standards, fully adheres to the letter of the law, and never wavers in its commitment to uphold the public’s trust.”
“A responsible government is an accountable government. We must do all we can to ensure public officials and government agencies are held to the high standard that all Delawareans expect,” Senate Minority Whip Brian Pettyjohn, R- Georgetown said. “Creating the Office of the Inspector General would do just that. Having an official and agency free from electoral politics to help keep the government in check is necessary and long overdue.”
What do you want to talk about?