Michigan proposal shocker
Didn’t see this coming. According to WOOD TV, both Proposal 1 (medical marijuana) and Proposal 2 (embryonic stem cell research) have passed.
Key Michigan Demographics from fivethirtyeight.com
What if?
Are you SURE you’re registered?
Michiganders can check their voter registration status here and print a sample ballot.
McCain raises white flag in Michigan
Didn’t see this coming a month before Election Day: the McCain campaign is pulling TV ads here, and McCain has canceled a planned stop in Plymouth next week.
A Pair of Pundits in GR – Column of the Day
The WaPo’s George Will and E.J. Dionne dropped by yesterday to speak at separate events. Dionne examines the possibility of Michigan being this year’s equivalent of Florida in 2000.
Michigan as Battleground State
Time features the High Five State in this week’s issue, and leads with the following buzz kill facts:
Nearly 300,000 manufacturing jobs have disappeared in the past decade. Ford just posted the worst quarterly loss in its 105-year history, and GM announced it was closing or converting plants. More than 1 of every 20 mortgages is in or near foreclosure, and at 8.5%, Michigan’s unemployment rate is the highest in the nation.
Sadly (and not surprisingly), the article only covers the southeast side of the state. Where’s the West Michigan love, Time?
For U of M Fans
A little bit of fun at the expense of celebrities and the state of Ohio. Enjoy.
Why the Schools-as-Business Model Doesn’t Work
If schools have to compete like businesses, then they’ll have to improve in order to keep their customers. So goes the thinking behind schools-of-choice. But fans of choice (read: politicians who know very little about the educational process) forget one flaw with the schools-as-business analogy: the raw materials/students that go into each factory/school come from extremely diverse sources. In some cases, students find themselves having to move from school to school multiple times in one year. It’s no wonder why our urban schools struggle to keep pace while rural and suburban districts thrive. From today’s New York Times:
In some of Flint’s elementary schools, half or more of the students change in the course of a school year — in one school it reached 75 percent in 2003. The moves are usually linked to low, unstable incomes, inadequate housing and chaotic lives, and the recent rash of foreclosures on landlords is adding to the problem, forcing renters from their homes.
Michigan is trying to help by offering money to families to keep them in their current homes, neighborhoods, and schools. More on the effort can be found here.
