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.
Multiple media outlets are reporting now that the U.S. House of Representatives has approved an offshore drilling bill. The bill comes in response to pressure from conservatives for more domestic oil production, and in the wake of President Bush’s lifting of a moratorium on offshore drilling.
The moratorium originated in 1990, put in place by President Bush’s father in response to the damage caused to Alaskan waters and shoreline by the oil-shipping vessel the Exxon Valdez. President Clinton had extended the moratorium to 2012, but Bush lifted the moratorium in July when gasoline prices reached their highest point this year to date.
The offshore drilling bill lifts a legislative ban on offshore drilling, but requires that states’ legislatures must opt in, and that drilling must be done 50 or miles offshore. Tax credits for oil companies are also decreased by the legislation.
No word yet as to how Michigan’s congressional delegation voted on this bill, although it’s assumed that there will be a likely divide along party lines, and that the delegation members wouldn’t have supported similar drilling in their own back yards in the Great Lakes.
Another interesting facet of the political wrangling leading up to Tuesday evening’s passage of the bill has been the ironic pleas of key Republicans. Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, complained earlier on Tuesday,
“When a bill gets filed at 9:45 the night before and then it’s announced it’s going to come to the floor the next morning as the first bill up, a bill that no one has read, written in the dark of night that won’t do a damn thing about American energy. Enough is enough!
This is eerily reminiscent of the complaints that Democratic members of Congress made during the 108th and 109th sessions of Congress, although in scope and scale this single offshore drilling bill does not match other pieces of legislation that were hustled through deep in the night by earlier Republican majorities.
With the price of gasoline dropping rapidly, coincidentally after the lifting of the executive moratorium, and analysts now speculating that gas will reach $3.00 a gallon before year’s end, it’s not apparent why the pressure by Congress on offshore drilling continued at all, resulting in the passage of the bill.
Weekly U.S. Retail Gasoline Prices, Regular Grade (source: EIA.DOE.GOV)
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