The Ann Arbor Independent Editorial Team 2257 posts 224 comments

by P.D. Lesko The public speaker, an older woman who rides the bus regularly, recounted a conversation with a friend who lives outside of Ann Arbor: "My friend said to me that she wished the AATA buses would run near her house so she could…

by P.D. Lesko MoveOn.org sent out a mass email this afternoon to thousands of members of the group's Ann Arbor email list. The first sentence of the email reads: "If you were mayor of Ann Arbor, what would be the first thing you'd do? Make…

by P.D. Lesko Third Ward Council member Stephen Kunselman has been a pain in John Hieftje's butter dish ever since Kunselman knocked off Leigh Greden in the 2009 stunner of a primary election. While Kunselman won by a 6 vote margin, Greden…

by Chris Savage Michigan Rising, the group formerly known as the Committee to Recall Rick Snyder (CRRS), was unsuccessful in its bid to recall Michigan's governor last year. The challenges the group faced, discussed in my previous piece,…

by P.D. Lesko In September 2011, former Ann Arbor News reporter Tom Gantert did what he does best: published the truth. In point of fact, writing for Michigan Capitol Confidential, Gantert published information about the pay of staffers at…

by P.D. Lesko Fifth Ward Council member Mike Anglin sent out an email on January 15, 2012 in which he urged Ann Arbor residents to vocally oppose John Hieftje's proposal that Ann Arbor enter into a regional transportation agreement under…

by P.D. Lesko In 2004, the Ann Arbor News Editorial Board published an endorsement of Hieftje's mayoral opponent that included this zinger, preserved for posterity by Google: “Hieftje’s largest failure is not one of vision, but leadership.…

by Nick Leshi Entertainment Weekly had a cool little article about movies that were produced full of potential to become huge franchises, but plans for sequels fizzled with their miniscule box-office performance.  It lists Dune, …

by Sophia van Buren For the past eight years, I’ve adopted and grown into both the idea and reality of being a role reversal model of the mother as the non-custodial parent, but if current trends continue, the percentage of non-custodial…

by Chris Savage I have been following and writing about Public Act 4, the Emergency Manager law, since it was passed in March of 2011. The first impacts of the changes made by this law hit in Benton Harbor, Michigan. A tiny town on the…