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.
“My hometown isn’t there anymore,” a returning Detroiter wrote in 1989, two decades before the hub of the city’s industry, the big three automotive producers, would face bankruptcy. Larry Livermore, who had lived in Detroit and was visiting after nearly ten years away from his hometown, was shocked at what he saw back then.
From 1978 to 1989 there were dramatic changes in Detroit, according to Livermore. He wrote in a letter published in Lookout magazine in 1989:
“It’s gone. What was once, as we proudly learned in elementary school, America’s fourth largest city, is hardly even there anymore. The great stores and office buildings, the bustling crowds and excitement of downtown, all gone. It would only be a slight exaggeration to say that you could roll a bowling ball down Woodward Avenue at high noon.
Today, at a chapter in Detroit’s history when the city faces a financial emergency, when the economic future is uncertain and the city is desperately selling its low rated bonds and municipal assets to plug a budget deficit that been estimated to be between 300 and 400 million, the letter from 1989 shows that — at least to one former Detroiter — the city has been in worse shape.
Livermore writes about Detroit’s current state:
“Since [1989], things have changed somewhat, both for the better. Some new construction has taken place and crime is not quite as out of control as it was then, but the city has lost another 100,000 residents and is facing bankruptcy.”
Although the 1989 article is hardly optimistic, calling Detroit “a tragic monument to the failures of unbridled industrialism,” the fact that the author of the 1989 letter sees improvements in crime and infrastructure is encouraging.
The letter, which renders vivid description of Detroit’s past can be found now be found on Livermore’s blog.
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