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.
It’s not very often that a drop in sales from the previous year would be greeted as good news, but when the drop is only 10.7% compared to a trend of 30-40% decreases in recent months, that’s going to cause some cheering at Ford headquarters. The automaker’s sales dropped from 173,462 in June, 2008, to 154,873 last month, its smallest decline in 16 months.
Ford is the first of the major automakers to announce their June sales, so it’s too early to tell whether this is the result of an overall spike in auto sales or whether Ford is gaining market share from Chrysler and GM because those companies were in bankruptcy in the last month. We’ll have an update as those sales figures are released.
Automotive News does report that American auto sales would begin to rebound last month with a sales rate of 10 million cars per year.
Update: The GM and Chrysler sales figures have been released. Chrysler saw a drop of 41.9% from June of last year, while GM declined by 33.4%. Those drops are pretty much in line with recent months, though higher than May’s figures. Toyota also took a steep decline of 31.9% and Honda dropped by 29.5%, so it appears that Ford benefited at least to some degree from the bankruptcies of GM and Chrysler, but the overall figures suggest that we have seen the bottom of the auto market. With the cash for clunkers legislation becoming active in late July, we could see July and August figures that are relatively flat compared to last year.
Do you know where to vote on Election Day? Do you know what to bring with you? Get comprehensive voter information for your state here.
Sign up for our email newsletter