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.
Mayor Dave Bing is going to ask the Detroit City Council to approve a debt reduction plan that includes selling $250 million worth of bonds to pay down some of the city’s $300 million in already existing debt. The Detroit Free Press reports:
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing is expected to ask City Council today to approve the sale of a $250-million bond that would help reduce the city’s accumulated debt.
“A deficit elimination plan will be submitted to council that is inclusive of a $250-million deficit-elimination bond,” Karen Dumas, Bing’s director of communications told the Free Press.
Those who have taken a basic math class may be wondering how you reduce a $300 million debt by adding a new $250 million debt and pondering analogies like filling up a hole with more dirt from that same hole. That would be a very reasonable question, and one that the bond rating agencies — which already have Detroit’s securities rated at junk bond status — will undoubtedly be asking.
Theoretically, of course, this could work. It’s like using the equity in one’s house to pay off their credit card debts, thus spreading out the payment of the short-term debt over a longer period of time. But it only works if you don’t run the credit card balances back up again, something that will be difficult to avoid in Detroit — especially with the recent cuts in state revenue sharing costing the city $38 million next year.
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