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.
The September unemployment stats for Michigan came out this week and they are high — as expected.
Mlive.com highlighted the statistics on a municipal level, showing the five cities with the highest jobless rates are all over 25 percent. The cities of Highland Park and Pontiac, which leaned heavily on auto-related employment, had the highest unemployment with 35.2 percent of residents reportedly jobless. Both cities have declared bankruptcy in the recent past. Highland Park recently emerged from state receivership and Pontiac just slipped under state control last year.
While the overall state’s unemployment rate is the highest in the nation at 15.3 percent, the top five hardest hit cities in the state are all former automobile production hubs.
According to Mlive.com:
1.Highland Park 35.2%
1. Pontiac 35.2%
3. Detroit 27.9%
4. Flint 26.3%
5. Port Huron 25.7%
What do these statistics mean for residents in these cities? Many are packing up and heading out of state to find work, like one Detroiter who went as far as creating a website and a PayPal account seeking donations to help him leave the city.
The former Detroiter wrote on his “Help me leave Detroit” page, which features photos of crime and drug houses in his neighborhood:
“I live in Detroit. I am a skilled pipefitter, yet I am unemployed. Detroit’s unemployment rate is at a record 28.7 percent. 1/3 of Detroiters live at or below the poverty line. Crime is rampant. My house has been burglarized 9 times. My car window was bust by a thief who I caught breaking into the house down the street.
The blogging plumber is not alone. In April the Detroit News reported that every 12 minutes Michigan loses a family seeking work. The article noted that approximately 109,000 more people left Michigan in 2008 than moved in.
This state exodus is not helping the situation any. Detroit News’ Ron French writes:
“The families who are leaving — young, well-educated high-income earners — are the people the state desperately needs to rebuild.
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