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.
Pam Solo, president of the Civil Society Institute, a nonprofit group that advocates for practical environmental solutions, has an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle proposing that any rescue of the auto industry be conditioned on the car manufacturers’ dropping their lawsuits in four states against laws designed to respond to global warming:
Congress will decide this week whether or not to infuse Detroit automakers with $25 billion in additional loan guarantees. It appears such a bailout is likely to go through, so the question remains: What reasonable conditions should Washington impose on its investment?
If Washington is going to give yet another loan-guarantee bailout to Detroit automakers, then the price should include requiring the car manufacturers to drop their four-year-long legal assault against global warming laws in California and three other states (Vermont, Rhode Island and New Mexico), as well as a requirement to develop and deliver hybrids, clean diesels and other highly fuel-efficient vehicles.
As an investor gambling with billions in increasingly scarce taxpayer dollars, Congress is well within its rights to insist that every penny of the $25 billion in new loan guarantees that Detroit is seeking be targeted to building the cars of tomorrow, not the gas-guzzling dinosaurs of yesterday.
The lawsuits, filed by the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group representing all the major automakers, seek to invalidate laws passed in several states that include tighter emission standards for cars and light trucks. The auto industry argues that such laws violate the Clean Air Act by setting a tougher standard for emission than required by federal law.
Solo notes, however, “Under the federal Clean Air Act, California is entitled to set more stringent pollution regulations on motor vehicles than the federal Environmental Protection Agency so long as California receives a waiver from EPA.”
The industry managed to get the Bush Environmental Protection Agency to deny that waiver, but California is now suing in federal court to force the granting of the waiver. The Civil Society Institute is urging President-elect Barack Obama to reverse that denial once in office and urging Congress to require the auto manufacturers to drop their attempts to squash those regulations as a condition of receiving any federal funds.
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