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.
Faced with a staggering decline in tax revenue due to the collapse of the auto industry and rising unemployment in other industries as well, the state Senate is preparing to make drastic cuts in Michigan’s programs to help students go to college. The Detroit News reports:
Thousands of college students counting on state merit scholarships this fall may be in for a surprise, as lawmakers are poised to gut the state’s financial aid budget.
A Senate Appropriations subcommittee will likely take the first step in that direction today when it takes up a bill to eliminate the Michigan Promise Scholarship and slash the budget for need-based grant programs.
If the House, the full Senate and the governor sign off on the plan, its impact would be immediate, forcing colleges to redo financial aid packages and families to scrape up the cash or loans.
“It’s not going to be popular and it’s not going to be pretty,” Matt Marsden, spokesman for Sen. Majority Leader Mike Bishop, R-Rochester, said of the magnitude of financial aid cuts that need to be made.
The fact is that any cut is going to be controversial, including this one. But Michigan has a balanced budget requirement in the state constitution, so there are really only two options: Make the cuts or raise taxes. Neither is a particularly good option at a time when the economy is in such bad shape.
Unfortunately, neither party is willing to touch one issue that would save the state a really significant amount of money – decriminalizing marijuana. More people are arrested in this country for marijuana possession than for all violent crimes combined. We spend an enormous portion of our law enforcement resources on just marijuana possession cases, most of it at the state and local levels.
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