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.
A bill to allow bankruptcy judges to rewrite mortgages for people facing foreclosure was approved by the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday.
In introducing the legislation bill sponsor Democratic Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Detroit said:
Detroit has had more than 100,000 foreclosures over the last three years. And they are continuing at the rate of 126 each day. We have block after block of “for sale” and foreclosure signs – feeding off each other, driving down home values, uprooting families, decimating communities – and causing local tax revenue that pays for police and firefighters to plummet.
We don’t have the luxury of worrying about theoretical future moral lessons, we need to stop the actual bleeding today…If we can spend 700 billion dollars to bail out the brokers on Wall Street, it seems the very least we can do is allow working families, willing to repay their debts as best they can, under court supervision, the dignity of being able to stay in their home.
The legislation would allow judges to reset the interest rate, the principal owed and the payment period for home loans.
Citigroup, one of the nation’s largest lenders, announced support for the bill earlier this month after lawmakers agreed to limit bankruptcy renegotiation to existing loans and to require that distressed homeowners try to work out a deal with their lenders before filing for bankruptcy.
Congressional Democrats had hoped to attach bankruptcy reform legislation to the stimulus package but at President Obama’s urging have reportedly agreed to advance the bill separately. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has vowed swift action on bankruptcy reform.
“We want this desperately.” Carrie Guzman, of Michigan Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), “It just isn’t fair that if you are rich and own a yacht they can cut down the debt, but not on your first home.”
“A lot of the people that I’ve seen over the last few weeks are GM families on lay off. They want to keep their jobs, and expect to be called back.”
The drop in housing values, combined with layoffs, means many are in homes they can’t afford and can’t sell Guzman said, and she’s seeing people give up on houses that they might’ve been able to save if they had been able to rewrite the mortgage.
“This would have save homes, families and neighborhoods,” she said.
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