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 CEO of a private security company that plans to locate its national response center in northern Michigan will respond to citizen concerns at a meeting on Tuesday.
In August Sovereign Deed, a company that offers private catastrophe response services, announced that it would build its national response center at the Pellston Airport in Emmet County.
The decision came after northern Michigan lawmaker, State Senator Jason Allen (R-Traverse City), successfully amended the plant rehabilitation and industrial development act to allow a “strategic response center” to quality for tax abatements. An analysis by the Senate fiscal agency noted that the bill would allow McKinley township to offer the company five million dollars in additional tax abatements and that Sovereign Deed is likely to bring 40 jobs to the area.
Continued -The tax breaks are among the issues raised by citizens from Cheboygan, Emmet, and Charlevoix counties who have founded a group called, “Do We Need Sovereign Deed?”
In a set of questions prepared for the Tuesday meeting by retired anthropology professor, David Dwyer, DWNSD asks, “Is disaster relief for all citizens a public (governmental) function?”
The group argues that because the Michigan Constitution states that all political power is inherent in the people and that Government is instituted or their equal benefit, security and protection, spending public funds for private security is improper.
The group also wants to know whether the company will warehouse weapons in northern Michigan and whether it plans to mine water.
DWNSD notes that Sovereign Deed founder, Barrett Moore, also founded Triple Canopy — a private security contractor found by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to have fired first in 30 separate clashes in Iraq.
The group asks whether Sovereign Deed’s request for public expenditure should be put on hold, “in view of Triple Canopy’s complicity in the disastrous and criminal mercenary war-profiteering in Iraq.”
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