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 Michigan Farm Bureau announced yesterday that it supports maintaining adequate funding and staffing for the Dept. of Agriculture program that conducts inspections of housing provided to migrant and seasonal farm workers. The group warned that just four staff members are now responsible for inspecting housing units used by 22,000 workers.
The announcement came in response to a Michigan Department of Civil Rights report that found appalling conditions in many of the states farm labor camps.
In a statement the Farm Bureau said:
“Farmers believe that buildings inhabited by individuals should be inspected by the state to ensure they are up to code, and this includes housing units that agricultural employers build and maintain for migrant and seasonal farm workers. Agricultural employers offer this free or low-cost housing to attract workers and they want their workers to be assured the buildings meet inspection standards.
“Ideally, the housing units would be inspected pre- and mid-season, said Anderson, but currently the MDA budget barely has enough money and resources to conduct pre-season inspections. Looking ahead at the 2011 budget, there is fear that state funding for the program could be eliminated entirely.
“On average, MDA conducts over 1,000 inspections at 850 locations, including 4,000 living units used by more than 22,000 migrant farm workers and their families, yet the number of MDA inspectors has dwindled to just four.”
The Farm Bureau also said that the Civil Rights Dept. report gave a skewed assessment of the conditions on Michigan farms.
The Bureau pointed to a footnote in the report that states:
“It should be noted that the Commission did not intend this process to yield a statistically representative picture of all Michigan farms or farmworkers, nor do we now contend that it does…The conditions we observed may or may not be ‘typical,’ but they are certainly prevalent enough to demand action.”
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