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.
Beginning next year Detroit’s city government will begin using incentives to get people to leave the city’s emptiest neighborhoods and move into seven to nine population centers that will receive investment, the Bing administration announced this week.
The city has not yet announced which neighborhoods will be targeted for investment and it has warned that people in blighted neighborhoods should not expect cash incentives to move.
In an interview with the Detroit Free Press Bing said that no one will be forced to move but he warned that those who chose to stay in the largely depopulated neighborhoods, “need to understand that they’re not going to get the kind of services they require.”
“That sounds more like extortion than incentive,” Mlive blogger Jeff Wattrick writes in a post that recommends Bing radically reassess his communications strategy.
Re-writing the master plan and downsizing the city shouldn’t happen overnight and it shouldn’t happen because a mayor sends a message down from on high that everyone will move into designated “population centers” at his command.
If Bing’s communications team is incapable of advising him to do that, then they should hit the unemployment line.
This is not exactly the first time this administration has dropped the public relations ball. From mayoral control of the school to selecting a chief of police to whether or not Bing will reside in the Manoogian Mansion, this mayor has been perceived as inconsistent and aloof. Even when his ideas are possibly right, his message seems so hopelessly wrong.
More than a third of Detroit is now vacant.
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