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.
Michigan ranked near the bottom of all the states in terms of the average increase in mpg gained from swapping older cars for newer ones during the cash for clunkers program earlier this year. The Detroit News reports that disappointing news:
According to a Detroit News analysis, Michiganians who swapped old vehicles for vouchers worth up to $4,500 toward the purchase of a more fuel-sipping model, averaged a gain of 8.27 mpg, compared with 9.2 mpg nationally.
Michigan ranked 50th in fuel-efficiency improvement among all states and the District of Columbia — in part because Michiganians were less likely than other Americans to swap a pickup or SUV for a passenger car. Only Louisiana, where the average improvement was 7.9 mpg, ranked lower…
Nationally, buyers swapped vehicles averaging 15.8 mpg for new vehicles averaging 25 mpg. In Michigan, however, the clunkers averaged 15.7 mpg and the new vehicles 23.9 mpg.
That’s still a pretty significant increase in fuel efficiency for 700,000 cars on the road, however. The final version of the program only required that the new car have a fuel efficiency of four miles per gallon above that of the old car being turned in, but even in the worst of the states doubled that number. And the study noted that Michigan’s low ranking was due to brand loyalty to American-made cars:
Domestic brand loyalty was among the factors contributing to Michigan’s low ranking in fuel-efficiency gains. Michiganians buy domestic vehicles in higher numbers than consumers in other states, and cars and trucks built by Detroit’s Big Three are heavier and less efficient, in total, than their foreign rivals.
For example: 81.1 percent of Michiganians who turned in a domestic vehicle replaced it with another model from a Detroit automaker, compared to 42.8 percent in the rest of the nation, according to an analysis of data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
More than 57 percent of Americans who traded in a domestic vehicle through the program — which supporters also hoped would boost sales of domestic brands — bought a foreign make. In Michigan, however, less than 19 percent fell into this category.
Of course, being a foreign brand does not necessarily mean the car wasn’t made in the United States by American workers.
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