A new political definition of insanity: Thoughts for the Day June 17, 2026
Izzo is angry. He should be.
Insanity
Per the Associated Press, Rick Jackson’s campaign spent more than $100 million, largely out of his own pocket, to defeat Trump-endorsed Burt Jones in the Republican runoff for Georgia governor on Tuesday.
The leads to my Question of the Day: Why would someone spend $100 million to be elected governor of any state?
This question can be applied to most national offices or governorships. It is a question that has baffled me for many years. My heart wants to believe the motive is altruistic. My brain says otherwise. Experience shows that most people leave public office at the national level much wealthier than when they started and much wealthier than their salary would suggest.
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A perfect example
From Bridge Michigan. The wife of former Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield has pleaded guilty to embezzling from a political nonprofit, more than two years after both were charged as part of a wide-ranging corruption probe.
Stephanie Chatfield had faced two counts of embezzling and conspiring to embezzle up to $20,000 from a nonprofit, each of which was punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $15,000 fine.
Under an agreement revealed Tuesday, Stephanie Chatfield will face no jail time. Instead, she’ll get probation after pleading guilty to embezzling between $200 and $1,000 from the nonprofit.
Lee Chatfield still faces 13 felony counts, including allegedly “conducting a criminal enterprise,” which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty.
While leading the state House in 2019 and 2020, Lee Chatfield raised millions of dollars.
At a preliminary examination in 2025, a forensic accountant testified that the Chatfields had used the nonprofit Peninsula Fund to pay off $152,000 in personal credit card debts.
Of that, nearly $21,700 was for allegedly improper expenses, including tickets to Universal Studios in Florida, a $1,353 dinner at Ocean Prime in Naples, Florida, nearly $1,000 in dry cleaning and more than $650 from the Vineyard Vines clothing company.
Authorities began investigating Lee Chatfield more than three years ago when his sister-in-law, Rebekah Chatfield, accused him of sexually assaulting and manipulating her for more than a decade, beginning in the early 2010s when she was a teenage student at the Christian school where he taught.
She first shared her account publicly with Bridge Michigan. Nessel, the state’s attorney general, previously said the probe failed to yield conclusive evidence of sexual assault, and Lee Chatfield characterized it as a consensual affair.
The investigation also shed light on the opaque world of nonprofit account fundraising in Michigan politics, where many elected officials have so-called “dark money” accounts which have little oversight of their fundraising and spending.
The case against Lee Chatfield and others is a long time coming and is more complicated than “conducting a criminal enterprise”. Two of Chatfield’s associates have taken plea deals in exchange for their testimony against Lee Chatfield.
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Izzo is upset and he should be
Per the Detroit News, Tom Izzo is ashamed. Disgusted. Hurt, he said. And it has nothing to do with a performance on the basketball court. Instead, it’s the state of Michigan State leadership.
Izzo sounded off on the loss of Athletic Director J Batt to Kentucky and the impending departure of President Kevin Guskiewicz to Clemson University in a Monday morning interview with reporters. He called the departures “self-inflicted,” and he can’t stand what is happening to the university he’s given 31 years as a head basketball coach.
“I’ve had it. This is self-inflicted,” Izzo said. “We just lost the best president that may have ever been here, maybe. One of the best. And there are other dominoes that get affected when things go wrong like that.
“I’m very upset about it. And I’m sick of it. And I’ll go into why when I decide to say something in the near future, how’s that?”
Izzo said he’s keeping his full comments withheld as the situation unfolds, but he did give marching orders to Michigan State alumni who are watching the scene unfold. He may only be a stakeholder, but he wants to see alumni in action.
“If there’s ever a time that we need to rally together, it’s now. And that’s all 600,000,” Izzo said. “... I’m gonna ask the alums to stand up, because what happened with our president is ridiculous. And he said it, we know the reasons, and I’m ashamed and disgusted. Hurt. But we’ll see what the Spartan Nation feels. Spartan Nation better stand up. All 600,000 of them.”
MSU Board of Regents get my Onion of the Day. Izzo gets my Orchid of the Day for speaking up. More to come on this story.
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MHSAA has a Private School Problem
As a high school sports official, the recently released information by the MHSAA showing that private schools tend to dominate the major boys’ and girls’ sports is not surprising. Here are key facts released by the MHSAA for boys’ and girls’ soccer, girls’ volleyball, boys’ football, boys’ and girls’ basketball, boys’ baseball, and girls’ softball.
· 68.1%-the winning percentage of private schools against public schools in the eight sports
· 11.9%-the percentage of private schools versus public schools
· 47.0%-the percent of state championships won by private schools.
This issue is not unique to Michigan. Most public schools are restricted by location as to who can attend their schools, while private schools have no such restrictions. This allows private schools to recruit students, an advantage not available to most public schools. Private schools can also offer scholarships to students which can be used to reduce the cost of the private schools’ tuition. This problem will only get worse as NIL money is expanded to MHSAA student athletes.
MHSAA is working to develop a solution that will make it a level playing field for public and private schools. More to come on this.
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Quick Thoughts
· Detainees from Florida’s notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration jail have been relocated to other facilities, according to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The detention facility in the remote Everglades attracted headlines for the brutal treatment of detainees after opening last year. It is about time.
· Per Heather Cox Richardoson, Sarah Blaskey and Jonathan O’Connell of the Washington Post reported today that even as Trump was assuring the American public that private donors would pay for his ballroom, the White House had already approved tens of millions of taxpayer money for the contractor building the addition. With access to project summaries, the journalists were able to show that “internal cost estimates have been significantly higher than administration officials have acknowledged in public comments or court filings. They also show that the work was projected to rely heavily on taxpayer dollars from the moment it was announced.”
· More from Heather. In Chicago, a case against six protesters for interfering with a federal agent and conspiring to interfere with a federal agent at a detention facility protest fell apart in May when the judge discovered that prosecutors had talked to individual grand jurors outside the courtroom and removed those jurors who refused to indict, as well as apparently overstating the strength of the evidence against the defendants. Then the prosecutors tried to hide evidence of their misconduct by redacting the transcripts from the grand jury. As Julie Bosman of the New York Times reported, U.S. District Judge April Perry dismissed the case against the “Broadview Six,” saying: “I have read hundreds—if not thousands—of grand jury transcripts involving prosecutors who are the most junior of prosecutors to several U.S. attorneys who appeared before the grand jury. I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.” This is my Quote of the Day
· I continue to be amazed how the Trump administration continues to state that we have a peace deal with Iran. The Trump administration is selling a 60-day memorandum of understanding as a permanent peace deal, which couldn’t be further from the truth. The amazing part is that the memorandum of understanding allegedly only states that the Iran and the U.S. will begin negotiations on a potential nuclear agreement. This is amazing because in June of 2025 we were told by President Trump, Iran’s nuclear capabilities had been annihilated. Recently, President Trump said that Iran’s nuclear reserves were worth less than $500,000. What are we to believe? He provides one contradiction after another. Truth is an afterthought.
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My Blog
Summer is here. It stays light until 10PM in Petoskey at this time of year and I have a hard time getting motivated to write my blog when the sun is still shining at 8:30PM. Thus, I will be limiting my blog to Wednesdays until Labor Day. After Labor Day, I will be back on my Monday and Wednesday schedule.
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Contact your Congressperson
Contact your congressman by following these easy steps This can be done in a few easy steps
Step 1: find your congressman by clicking on this link, Find Your Representative | house.gov
Step 2: Put your zip code in the proper space.
Step 3: Click the button “find your representative””
Step 4: In the new page that comes up you will see a picture of your congressman. Click on your congressman’s name under the picture.
Step 5: In the new page that comes up, Click on Contact Me at the top of the page and then click on Email me.
Step 6: Fill out the information as required.
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Quote of the Day: U.S. District Judge April Perry dismissed the case against the “Broadview Six,” saying: “I have read hundreds—if not thousands—of grand jury transcripts involving prosecutors who are the most junior of prosecutors to several U.S. attorneys who appeared before the grand jury. I have never seen the types of prosecutorial behavior before a grand jury that I saw in those transcripts.”
Orchid of the Day: Tom Izzo, for speaking up about the dysfunction with the MSU Board of Regents
Onion of the Day: MSU Board of Regents. The dysfunction has been going on for decades.
Question of the Day: Why would someone spend $100 million to be elected governor of any state?
Lyrics of the Day: Where there is desire, there is gonna be a flame
Where there is a flame, someone’s bound to get burned
But just because it burns doesn’t mean you’re gonna die
You’ve gotta get up and try, try, try
Lyrics of the Day for June 15, 2026. When Doves Cry by Prince
Image of the Day: Leah asked me to put this in my blog. I have learned to do what Leah asks me to do.
