Authorities in Chambers County, Texas say they have arrested 42 undocumented workers — likely the ones who left Michigan recently — on chartered buses in Winni, Texas, reports Fox 4 in Beaumont, Texas.
After firing off letters to the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency as well as the Secretary of Labor calling for an investigation into allegations a Calhoun county oil spill subcontractor was using undocumented workers to clean up oil, Rep. Mark Schauer gave the Michigan Messenger an earful of outrage over the situation.
Last week’s unexpected resignation by Justice Elizabeth Weaver, a Republican, and subsequent replacement by Justice Alton Thomas Davis, a Democrat, may not only reshape the Michigan Supreme Court, it could change the entire electoral map for the state for the next ten years.
Hallmark Industrial, the controversial subcontractor working on the Calhoun county oil spill clean up, has been fired by its contractor following an investigation by Michigan Messenger that found the company was busing in undocumented workers to work 12 to 14 hour days, seven days a week for $800 a week.
An oil spill cleanup contractor from Texas has been busing in possibly hundreds of undocumented workers to Battle Creek to work on the cleanup of the Calhoun County oil spill — and having them work nearly 100 hours a week in unsafe conditions, an investigation by Michigan Messenger has found.
As Enbridge pushes to restart the pipeline that burst, spilling a million gallons of crude oil into the Kalamazoo River, a legislative aide says their restart plan is still insufficient and federal officials say that restart could be months away, years away — or even never.
The race to replace Rep. Bart Stupak in Michigan’s District 1 is made more complex by third-party challengers from both right and left.
The hardship of raising the retirement age falls disproportionately on low-income workers who work in physically demanding professions, and have not shared in life-expectancy gains.
Republican candidate for Secretary of State Ruth Johnson has issued a statement denying support for lesbian, gays, bisexuals and transgender people and disavowing her 2002 endorsement by the statewide gay rights group Triangle PAC.
For the average worker who has lost her job since May 31, the cost of COBRA has tripled. And that’s likely to mean hundreds of thousands of families dropping out of health plans altogether.
The Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians have filed a motion to join Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Ohio in a federal case that charges the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is not doing enough to keep the invasive carp from migrating into the Great Lakes.
Uppermichiganssource.com reports that the tribe wants to join the lawsuit to intervene because of the central role that fishing has played in the spiritual and cultural framework of Native American life.
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Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said that initial weekly jobless claims declined slightly to 472,000. Initial claims need to fall into the 300,000s for the unemployment rate to decline, economists say. That means many economists expect the unemployment rate for August, due to be released tomorrow, will increase beyond the current rate of 9.5 percent. The BLS also revised last week’s claims up from 473,000 to 478,000.
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Saying that he may suffer from paranoid delusions and be mentally incompetent to stand trial, federal prosecutors in the Hutaree Christian militia case are asking the judge to order a psychiatric evaluation of defendant Jacob Ward, one of the four Hutaree members released on bail pending trial. The Detroit Free Press reports:
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That’s the question that Carl Weimer — executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit group that advocates for fuel transportation safety — sought to answer in going through records at the agency responsible for pipeline safety, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
Weimer came up with some interesting results. More than 70 percent of natural gas and hazardous liquid (including oil) pipelines were built before 1979. Only 9 percent of natural gas pipelines and 8 percent of hazardous liquid pipelines were built after 2000.
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Troy Reimink of the Grand Rapids Press notes a bit of irony, the fact that the state of Michigan is receiving subsidies to pay for the health care of early retirees — money authorized by the health care reform bill that Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox is suing to have struck down in federal court.
Secondary irony: The subsidies are also being received by Koch Industries, owned by conservative funders Charles and David Koch, who have bankrolled attempts to overturn or repeal the health care reform law.
After receiving $140 million in federal funds for the program, the state of Michigan is now accepting applications for health insurance from high-risk applicants with pre-existing conditions. But it won’t be cheap:
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The September domestic auto sales numbers are in and they’re pretty dismal for two of the three American automakers. Ford and General Motors both saw significant decreases over September 2009, when the cash for clunkers program was pushing sales to their highest levels of the year.
Ford’s sales declined 14 percent, while General Motors declined 25 percent. Chrysler, however, bucked the trend and showed a 7 percent increase in sales. Industry-wide, sales were down 21 percent, which means yearly domestic sales are now just 8 percent higher than 2009, which was the lowest since 1982.
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