Time for a second bridge?
The Detroit River International Cross project is one political trestle closer to reality after Canadian officials today approved moving forward on a second international bridge connecting Detroit to Windsor.
Transport Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and the Windsor Port Authority [...]
The working group tasked with putting together a new Freedom of Information Act policy for the city of Lansing in the wake of two incidents where private information was released in response to FOIA request is, as planned, meeting privately at Lansing City Hall at this moment. The press [...]
At the very end of David Shepardson’s story in today’s Detroit News about yesterday’s White House jobs meeting, the newspaper’s Washington Bureau chief relayed a revealing comment from Detroit Mayor Dave Bing.
Bing, who attended the meeting and made his case for the need for more federal funds, was apparently [...]
The Michigan gubernatorial race is getting national attention — not surprisingly since Michigan is viewed as a key battleground state between Republicans and Democrats and the midterm elections could have an effect on who wins the 2012 presidential elections. The National Journal has an article about it, out of [...]
DETROIT—Days after the Motor City won an award from a national public finance magazine for making a “Deal of the Year” that postponed payment on a $400 million bond, details of a year-late audit reveal what Detroit News reporter David Josar calls a “startling glimpses of how quickly [...]
The Michigan Department of Community Health said this week that a lack of resources has left it unable to process medical marijuana permit applications within the 15 day time frame specified under state law and they are asking users of the system for patience while they work out the [...]
With the Detroit Public Schools facing a deficit in the range of $300 million and losing an additional $38 million in state aid due to cuts in the recently passed state budget, the school system and the teacher’s union have reached an agreement to make significant concessions to save the [...]
After poisoning the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal two nights ago to kill off any Asian carp that might have breached the electrical barrier being shut down for maintenance, state and federal authorities have so far found a grand total of one specimen of the invasive species in the [...]
Reihan Salam makes a strained argument (you may disagree) in his Forbes magazine column today.
Salam’s We’re All Michiganders Now is not your standard Michigan-as-cautionary-tale stemming from the collapse of domestic manufacturing or even over-reliance on one too-big-to-fail industry. Instead, he argues that “high-end” states — states with governments that [...]
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing was on the road a lot this week. The newly re-elected mayor travelled from the State Capitol to the nation’s Capitol this week, first seeking financial help during a Lansing visit. Then he traveled to Washington, D.C. to attend a White House Economic Growth [...]
Yes, you read that headline correctly.
The same day the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announces that the Detroit metro area continues to lead the nation in ugly unemployment figures, Delta Airlines announces that direct flights to Honolulu are set to begin this summer.
Let [...]
As we reported yesterday, environmental officials began poisoning the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal last night in an attempt to prevent Asian carp from reaching Lake Michigan, where experts say they would all but destroy the native ecosystem and force many other species to go extinct. But authorities [...]
DETROIT—Less than a month after the Nov. 3 election, City Charter Revision Commissioners are getting to work on their three-year task of updating and revising the city’s governing document.
The nine-member commission was sworn in on Nov. 17 and held its first meeting on Monday. Commissioners are required to hold at [...]
Michigan native Erik Prince is apparently going to take a less active day to day role in running Blackwater (now known as Xe), the infamous private military contractor he founded. He announced the move through a spokesperson with more than just a hint of self-pity:
A spokeswoman for the [...]
A coalition of federal and state agencies will come together tonight to poison the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal in the hope of killing off any Asian carp that may have breached the electrical barrier and moved within a few miles of reaching Lake Michigan. The Detroit News reports:
[...]
A couple weeks ago we published a story about a Michigan boy whose insurance company was refusing to cover a prosthetic arm he needed. That story came from Danielle Ivory of the Huffington Post Investigative Fund, who now reports that the insurance company, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, [...]
As Michigan’s top lawyer, Attorney General Mike Cox should “vigorously pursue every legal means to prevent Asian carp from entering the Great Lakes,” Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Lt. Gov. John Cherry said in a joint release today.
DNA from the invasive fish has been detected beyond an electrical barrier designed [...]
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, urged the Obama administration not to surge U.S. troops before accelerating their Afghan counterparts. That used to be the perspective of Defense Secretary Robert Gates as well.
But, of course, President Obama did the opposite, with [...]
Apparently facing heavy criticism from the new board of directors, General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson has resigned only eight months after being picked by the Obama administration’s auto taskforce to take over that post from Rick Wagoner. The Lansing State Journal reports:
General Motors Co. CEO Fritz Henderson has [...]
The Detroit Free Press has joined the fight to fix the constitutional crisis in Michigan’s public defender system with an editorial calling for legislative action. Noting that Michigan currently ranks 44th in the nation in spending on indigent defense, the editorial rightly declares, “Even in tough times, upholding constitutional [...]
As many Americans countdown to President Obama’s address tonight on an expected troop surge in Afghanistan, TIME correspondent Steven Gray pivots to another war — a very different war — in a post on the national outlet’s Detroit Blog published earlier today.
Which war would that be? The [...]
Outspoken political consultant Sam Riddle refused his last chance at two plea deals Monday and will be the first figure accused of being involved in Detroit and Southfield bribery scandals to go to trial.
FBI officials allege that Riddle negotiated and arranged bribes for convicted Detroit City councilwoman Monica Conyers [...]
A sharply divided Michigan Supreme Court voted 4-3 to adopt new recusal rules for justices in cases where they may have an ethical conflict of interest. The changes were prompted by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that found a violation of rights for parties before a state supreme [...]
The Center for Media and Democracy is criticizing the Lansing State Journal for publishing an interview in which Greenpeace director-turned-nuclear-energy-advocate Patrick Moore was given a platform to present positive statements about nuclear power. The media watchdog said that LSJ should have mentioned that Moore is paid to do [...]
Michigan teenagers continue to become infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, at an alarming rate, Michigan health officials say.
From a press release from the Michigan Department of Community Health in advance of Tuesday’s World AIDS Day events:
The rate of new diagnoses among 13 to [...]
American Municipal Power Inc., an Ohio-based wholesale electricity provider that supplies power to several Michigan communities, abandoned plans for a new coal-fired power plant last week after learning that the cost of emissions control technology increased the price of the project by 37 percent.
Marc Gerken, AMP President/CEO said in [...]
DETROIT—Former Michigan Vice President of Synagro Technologies James Rosendall was sentenced to 11 months in prison and $200,000 in fines this afternoon for approving at least $6,000 in bribes to former city councilwoman Monica Conyers in exchange for a favorable vote on a $1.2 billion sludge disposal contract with Synagro, [...]
According to an Associated Press story published a few hours ago — with a Stockholm dateline — company officials from Saab Automobile AB traveling with officials from the Swedish government are in Detroit today in what the AP describes as “a final attempt to [...]
Only 24 hours after denying an interest in running for governor in 2010, Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero is apparently now exploring the possibility. As Eric at Michigan Liberal notes, MIRS is reporting that Bernero told them he is “seriously considering” throwing his hat into the ring and taking [...]
Dave Bing
In an in-depth interview published Sunday in the Detroit Free Press, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing touched on issues ranging from the city’s budget deficit to transit to the new mix of personalities on the city council.
And befitting the ex-NBA star, Bing talked [...]
A Fenton Township woman is accusing a well known Flint doctor of performing a forced abortion on her.
The Flint Journal reported Sunday that 20-year-old Cailtin Bruce accuses Abraham Hodari and an assistant of holding her down while they removed her fetus in April of 2008. Hodari contends Bruce expressed [...]
The New York Times had an article on Saturday about the Med Grow Cannabis College, a new school in Southfield that promises to teach state residents the ins and outs of growing marijuana within the confines of Michigan’s new medical marijuana laws.
“This state needs jobs, and [...]
A group of messianic Jews commonly called Jews for Jesus has filed a lawsuit against the city of Pontiac alleging that the city police department violated their right to free speech and freedom of religion by preventing them from handing out literature during an annual music festival. The Oakland Press [...]
The fallout from the failure of the state legislature to provide adequate funding for schools continues. Several local school districts are now considering adding furlough days to the remainder of the school year, the Lansing State Journal reports:
At least two local school districts — DeWitt and East Lansing [...]
Happy Thanksgiving from the Michigan Messenger staff to all of our readers, for whom we are all very thankful. We’ll be celebrating Thanksgiving in the Michigan tradition — eating way too much and falling asleep on the couch while watching the Lions lose — so expect a light schedule of [...]
On Monday, Oakland County Judge Edward Sosnick ruled that the bargain basement sale of the former home of the Detroit Lions — $583,000 for a stadium that cost $55.7 million to build 35 years ago — should proceed despite the efforts of a rival buyer to have an injunction placed [...]
In a commentary published by the Grand Rapids Press today, state Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, lays out his vision for how Michigan should go about qualifying for a potential $400 million pot of federal education funds.
Invoking the Obama administration’s new Race to the Top initiative — [...]
The area around Wolverine Power Cooperative’s planned coal plant in Rogers City features unique limestone geology with sinkholes and unpredictable groundwater flow. State officials and environmental professionals have warned that this leaky limestone geology makes landfills especially dangerous.
Glenn Puit of the Great Lakes Environmental News Service reports [...]
Macomb County Prosecutor Eric Smith is so incensed at the Macomb County Board of Commissioners over cuts to his office made necessary by a county budget deficit of nearly $16 million that he is considering filing a lawsuit against his own county to have those cuts overturned. The Detroit News [...]
In the latest roadblock thrown in the way of GM’s shedding of its niche brands, Swedish automaker Koenigsegg Group AB withdrew from a deal struck last year to purchase Saab from America’s largest car company. The Detroit News reports:
“We’re obviously very disappointed with the decision to pull out [...]
Since summer time, Detroit’s home values have apparently been rising — slightly — as the temperature has been dropping.
According to the S&P/Case-Shiller home price indices released earlier today, home prices in and around Michigan’s largest city rose by 1.8 percent compared with where they were in August. The same [...]
The Department of Environmental Quality says that amidst declining resources its Water Bureau is trying to meet its most critical obligations by prioritizing five goals and spelling out how to measure whether they are achieved.
The Water Bureau’s “Measures of Success” document, released this month, describes the top goals [...]
As the Michigan Department of Community Health announced that 54 Michigan deaths have been attributed to infection with the H1N1 virus, Attorney General Mike Cox released the results of a price comparison of the anti-viral medication Tamiflu, which is effective in combating the infection.
The results of the [...]
ANN ARBOR — Researchers at the University of Michigan have published two articles about how a collection of spread out peptides on the surface of sperm cells are able to assist HIV in being more effective in infecting other cells, the university says.
The peptide tangles, discovered in 2007, are [...]
Schools across the state are making headlines as they prepare to ax millions of dollars half way through their 2009-2010 budget year. The cuts are necessitated by a state budget passed in Oct. which resulted in significant cuts to the school aid funding allowance, as well as a line item [...]
As the state prepares for its first real blast of winter over the Thanksgiving holiday, Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed into law a series of bills that provides increased protection for Michigan residents against having their gas or electric shut off during the coldest months. A press release from the [...]
After nearly ten years in prison, a man convicted of murder in 2000 has been freed from prison and the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office is likely to dismiss all the charges against him. Dwayne Provience was convicted on the word of a single eyewitness who has since recanted his testimony [...]
A new auto industry forecast by Fitch Ratings, an automobile market analysis firm, predicts that a slow recovery for the economy and resulting slow turnaround for the auto industry may prevent GM and Chrysler from making an initial public offering of stock in the newly restructured auto companies. The Detroit [...]
Even though Synagro Technologies has been tied to a bribery scandal that may land two company representatives, consultant Rayford Jackson and former Michigan executive James Rosendall, in prison, the Texas-based waste disposal company is in the running for a new contract with the city.
When bribery charges [...]
In case you missed this late last week, ex-Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz has waded into the debate over whether or not Guantanamo Bay detainees should be relocated to a prison facility in Standish, Michigan.
But, the mini-documentary released on Friday by Keep America Safe — slickly [...]
The latest poll from Denno-Noor on the 2010 governor’s race shows Rep. Pete Hoekstra has jumped into the lead. The poll of 950 likely voters in the state of Michigan found Hoekstra leading current Attorney General Mike Cox and Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard by a fairly healthy margin. [...]
An AIDS service organization in Flint, Wellness AIDS Services, is asking Flint leaders to back a proposal which would allow them to create a needle exchange. The exchange, they argue, will reduce the incidents of intravenous drug user infections with HIV, as well as Hepatitis B and C.
But local [...]
The chair of the state agency directed to work with home owners facing default is himself in default to the tune of millions of dollars, reports the Detroit News.
Bernard Glieberman, chairman of the Michigan State Housing Development Authority, has defaulted on millions of dollars in loans [...]
Facing some of the most staggering foreclosure rates in the nation, the city of Detroit has a new program to keep people in homes after they’ve been foreclosed upon — at least temporarily. Tom Walsh of the Detroit Free Press has the details:
The so-called ROOF (for Retaining Occupancy [...]
Chris Christoff of the Detroit Free Press has an entirely unsurprising article about how state offices that handle unemployment, food stamps and Medicaid are being overrun with new clients as Michigan continues to lead the nation in unemployment and the Department of Human services has been cut to the [...]
The Michigan Court of Appeals has ruled that Meijer can be prosecuted criminally for violations of state campaign laws, overturning a lower court ruling to the contrary. This is the latest development in a complex series of court cases involving the retail giant’s illegal and secret backing of a [...]
Journalist Diane Bukowski, who was convicted in May of two felonies related to police obstruction, got one step closer to getting a her conviction overturned this morning when a judge granted her a new hearing of her case.
Wayne County Circuit Judge Michael Hathaway at first said he wasn’t [...]
Last week’s bargain basement auction of the Pontiac Silverdome is far from the end of the story.
After the 80,000-seat arena was sold for $583,000 — about 1 percent of what it cost to build the stadium in the early 1970s — a [...]
Rio Tinto, the global mining company whose subsidiary Kennecott Eagle Minerals has sought to develop a nickel sulfide mine near Marquette, has withdrawn a request to prospect for minerals on public forest land in the western Upper Peninsula, the Lake Superior Mining News reports.
On Nov. 6 Rio Tinto [...]
The Detroit Free Press reports that there is evidence that the invasive Asian carp may have already breached an electrical barrier set up in a shipping canal in Chicago in order to keep the incredibly aggressive species from reaching the Great Lakes, where they would likely destroy the ecosystem [...]
A new report from the University of Michigan’s Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics concludes that while we may be nearing the end of the worst decline, job growth in Michigan will continue to be virtually non-existent until 2011 — and it won’t exactly be going like gangbusters after that. The [...]
Blogging for Michigan quotes a Gongwer report (subscription only) on a new study by the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) that concludes that Michigan is among the states with the most regressive tax structures, resulting in the poor and the middle class paying a much higher [...]
FERNDALE– Charles Pugh, the recently elected Detroit City Council President, says he won’t back cuts to police or fire programs, public transportation or cuts to the city’s health department programs dealing with HIV/AIDS.
“Everything else is on the table,” Pugh said.
He said moves to cut services from public safety [...]
Rick Jones
LANSING — Former Eaton County sheriff and Republican State Rep. Rick Jones says even after the death of a 30-year-old Matthew Bolick following a taser incident with East Grand Rapids Public Safety officers, he will [...]HIV activists from the group Michigan Positive Action Coalition have issued a press statement encouraging people with infectious diseases, including H1N1, HIV or the common cold, to call the Macomb County prosecutor and “voluntarily turn themselves in” to be charged with terrorism.
In the statement issued by Mark Peterson, a [...]
As part of an ongoing investigation into questionable real estate transactions, Detroit Public Schools Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb announced Thursday that he plans to ask a judge to force testimony from those unwilling to cooperate with public hearings on the matter.
Bobb said he wants a judge to compel Board [...]
Time Inc.’s Assignment Detroit, as you may already know, is promoting a contest that has several of Detroit’s most prominent ad agencies competing to create the best “Selling Detroit” ad campaign.
The idea is to see what the best, local advertising gurus can [...]
A Bay City man will spend the next nine months in jail for having unprotected sexual intercourse with a 16-year-old Midland girl.
The Midland Daily News reports 21-year-old Isaiah Jacob Diaz pleaded guilty under Michigan’s felony disclosure law. Under that law, any person who is HIV positive must [...]
The Detroit News reports that the Michigan Economic Growth Authority approved $2.6 million in additional tax breaks for General Motors as an incentive to keep at least 2,500 workers at the Renaissance Center.
The most high-profile project addressed by the MEGA board Tuesday involved additional tax incentives to help [...]
As the court hearings continue over former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his required restitution payments, some very interesting tidbits have come to light. It had already been revealed that a group of prominent Detroit businessmen — Peter Karmanos, Dan Gilbert, Roger Penske and James Nicholson — had given Kilpatrick [...]
Much attention has been paid to Sen. John McCain’s comment the other day at a Nascar event that Chrysler is unlikely to survive, but that isn’t the only thing he said at the time. He also claimed — falsely — that the bailout happened because the unions refused to negotiate [...]
Last week the City of Detroit’s Department of Transportation switched transit services for the disabled passengers by halting further payments to Veolia transportation, the company that runs the Metro Lift service for passengers in Detroit with disabilities that prevent them from taking the bus.
Instead of one unified transit service [...]
An Israeli wastewater treatment company will locate a pilot project in Oakland County, Lt. Governor John Cherry announced this week from Tel Aviv, one of the stops on an economic development mission to the Middle East.
EPC Ltd. Onsite Wastewater Solutions (EPC) is a developer of waste water treatment systems [...]
Like die-hard U2 fans camping out overnight for coveted concert tickets the moment they go on sale, some of Sara Palin’s Michigan die-hards showed up last night — with chairs and sleeping bags — at the Barnes and Noble just outside Grand Rapids prepared to pull an all-nighter.
They were [...]
Gov. Jennifer Granholm said today that new unemployment figures expected to be released today will show that Michigan’s unemployment rate dropped slightly from 15.3 percent to 15.1 percent. Not exactly the roaring 20s again, but every little bit helps amid the doom and gloom of the last couple years.
[...]Longtime capitol reporter Tim Skubick, who is generally reticent about crossing the line to become a commentator, has a clearly angry post on his blog about the state legislature going on a hunting vacation rather than staying and working on Michigan’s budget crisis. He writes:
For time in memoriam [...]
U.S. Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, had an op-ed column in the Detroit Free Press on Tuesday calling for the financial industry to be re-regulated in the wake of multiple scandals and trillions of taxpayer dollars being used to keep banking and investment [...]
Public defender systems around the nation are not in good shape, but Michigan’s system is so underfunded and unguided that one study earlier this year called it a “constitutional crisis.” Michigan’s cases of failed public legal representation are so shocking that they caught the attention of U.S. Attorney General [...]
Rick Snyder, the businessman from Ann Arbor who is seeking the GOP nomination for governor of Michigan, has some stern words of warning for Republican National Committee Chair Michael Steele, and any other GOP member who might conflate GM’s bankruptcy woes with President Barack Obama’s agenda: Cut it out. [...]
Chrysler's PT Cruiser
OK, this is somewhat predictable, but still interesting.
On Sunday, ex-GOP presidential nominee John McCain was doing his duty as grand marshal of a NASCAR race at the Phoenix International Raceway, and he made the following quip about what he clearly sees' [...]
The now-infamous C Street house in Washington D.C., owned by a mysterious Christian group called the Family or the Fellowship and home to numerous members of Congress including U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, is no longer tax exempt. The house, which was formerly a convent, has long been [...]
LANSING — The Michigan legislature is getting ready to head out for a two week holiday, and that has education advocates fuming.
The legislature has until Nov. 21 to override Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s line item veto of J-20 funding. In addition, the Senate has yet to act on a bill [...]
Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, one of Michigan’s most high-profile elected Republicans, told an audience earlier today that he’s planning on seeking another term in 2012.
Barely through the first-year of his current four-year term — his fifth term overall — [...]
A 30-year-old man East Grand Rapids Police officials say was arrested for assaulting officers has died in police custody. In order to subdue the man, police say they had to taser him.
The Grand Rapids Press reports the tasering incident has not been officially tied to the man’s death.
[...]
The Dept. of Energy’s $243 million allocation for weatherization assistance in Michigan had fixed up just seven houses as of Sept. 30, according to a status report issued this month by the state Economic Recovery Office.
The weatherization program, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, is managed by [...]
The Detroit News reports on perhaps the most unsurprising study since the Rand Corporation famously determined that water is, in fact, wet. This study concludes that the state of Michigan is unprepared to handle a flood of residents newly in need of Medicaid, food stamps and other social services.
[...]
Saying that he saw “signs of progress and signs of stability,” General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson announced on Monday that the nation’s largest automaker had lost $1.15 billion in the third quarter of the year. That amount was less than half the loss from the same quarter in 2008 and [...]
Michigan’s Democratic Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow are part of a new push to dilute the climate change bills that are moving through Congress, my colleague Mike Lillis at The Washington Independent reports.
Last week Levin and Stabenow joined a dozen other Senate Democrats in asking their party [...]
DETROIT—Two weeks ago, Mayor Dave Bing got job security — at least for the next four years — when he emerged victorious in the municipal election. Now, two weeks into his first full term leading the city, Bing has sold the auto supply company he founded 29 years ago.
Last [...]
While it may have gone virtually unnoticed beyond the county’s borders earlier this month, Macomb County will have a new, streamlined government structure in place next year.
The county’s current 26-member board of commissioners will be cut in half and a county executive will be added as a result of [...]
U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow said in a speech on Monday that she does not favor the so-called employer mandate that would require employers to extend health care benefits to employees or else face penalties.
Instead, Michigan’s junior senator, according to Crain’s Detroit [...]
Ed Brayton, David Alire Garcia, Todd A. Heywood, Eartha Jane Melzer, Mike Lillis, Minehaha Forman, Spencer Ackerman, David Weigel, Mary Kane
