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 Messenger’s investigative reporting, “Lose your house, lose your vote,” was the topic of discussion yesterday with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! You can catch the interview with our team members Eartha Jane Melzer and Jeff Morley at this link.
Disenfranchisement of “foreclosure voters” came up earlier in the week on Democracy Now! as well, in a discussion with Rev. Jesse Jackson:
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about this news headline we read about the Michigan Messenger reporting the chair of the Republican Party in Macomb County in Michigan planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of an effort to challenge some voters Election Day, planning to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments—of course, disproportionately African American, overwhelmingly Democratic voters. In Michigan, more than 60 percent of all subprime loans were made to African Americans.
REV. JESSE JACKSON: Well, they want to try to do what has worked. And the targeting worked in Florida, so the winner lost and the loser won in Florida. Ms. Harris literally took the prison rolls and used them to manipulate names off the rolls in Florida and would not allow students who had the rights and the residency to vote where they went to school, so they stole an election.
Then in Ohio in 2004, you had the owner of Diebold declaring the winner would be Bush, and the Secretary of State being his co-chair, “We will deliver our state.” So you had long lines of wet people, because it was raining all day, and dry machines. I mean, this kind of dishonesty undermines the integrity of the democratic process.
In the big game, if you will, for the sports fan, between Dallas and Philadelphia last night, there’s a winner and a loser, but there was no rancor after the game, and that’s because, Ms. Goodman, the playing field was even. The rules are public, and the goals are clear; you could live with the outcome. There’s now a scheme to set more dishonesty, and so Democrats and others who care about democracy must at least be alert that there are forces trying to use electronic voting and other such schemes to deny the count of one person, one vote.
Here’s a link to this earlier segment.
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