I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Wow, what a buzz kill! Last week chatter was strong after unnamed Democratic sources gave up Steve Rattner’s name to Jake Tapper at ABC as likely candidate for “car czar” for the incoming Obama administration. Rattner is one of the founding partners of Quadrangle Group, a private equity firm specializing in media and communications investments; he and his partners were all former bankers with investment bank Lazard Freres until 2000 when they quit to form Quadrangle. Rattner has no experience in the automotive industry, but is a long-time donor to Democratic candidates.
But chatter about Rattner dried up in a big way after the New York Post pointed out that Rattner’s firm has an odd relationship with Chrysler’s parent firm, Cerberus. As men’s mag Maxim so tidily explained,
Cerberus Capital Management LP, the current owner of Chrysler LLC, lent Rattner’s Quadrangle $125 million as part of the financing for the buyout of Maxim magazine and music publication Blender. As both titles limp through the drop in advertising revenue, Cerberus wants more capital invested to cover the debt levels, a request that Quadrangle has balked at. The two remain at loggerheads over the issue with Cerberus claiming the loans are technically in default.
Seems like Rattner should have recognized a possible conflict of interest and asked the Obama team not to publicize his potential candidacy for “car czar” until this mess was rectified.
Or was this a hint by some unnamed sources to get the situation resolved in a hurry? One wonders, after all, if Rattner was such a solid pick why unnamed sources were cited.
But then one might well wonder why a Democratic donor with no experience in the auto industry would be identified as “car czar.”
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