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.
As winter approaches in this prosperous-looking northern Michigan city, it is clear the safety net has ripped. Thousands of households can’t afford to heat their homes and aid agencies predict many people will be forced to choose between eating and staying warm. Yet there are signs Republicans in Washington may be listening.
Rampant poverty, stigma and a state budget process that ignores the problem are all contributing to an HIV crisis in Mississippi where access to life-saving medical care and basic prevention services are delayed or non-existent.
Gilda Jacobs, former state senator and now president of the Michigan League for Human Services, had an op-ed in the Detroit Free Press over the weekend with some eye-opening numbers on poverty in the state of Michigan.
The 2010 Kids Count survey shows that the well-being of children is slipping as the state cuts social programs designed to support poor families.
In one of her first actions as director of the Michigan Dept. of Human Services, former state Supreme Court Justice Maura Corrigan has promised to speed up state payments to counties that have backlogs of dead poor people they can’t afford to bury.
200,000 people gathered on Saturday at the Lincoln Memorial for a rally with the theme “Jobs, Justice and Education,” calling for more help for the unemployed and the impoverished and for more government action to promote job growth.
This week, progressive House Democrats successfully managed to forestall a vote on sweeping child-nutrition legislation that used food stamps, now known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, as a pay-for. Senate Democrats made an approximately $2.2 billion cut to an additional benefit provided by the stimulus, and had already taken about $12 billion from [...]
Soon, the House plans to vote on a sweeping child-nutrition bill. The Senate passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, a deficit-neutral bill providing $4.5 billion to school lunch and other federal child-nutrition programs, in early August. If passed by the House and signed by President Obama, it will be the first time since 1973 that Congress [...]
A report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities analyzes the recent poverty numbers put out by the U.S. Census Bureau and concludes that unemployment benefits have kept millions more from joining the swelling ranks of the officially poor in America.
Matt Yglesias posts a good chart of the changing poverty demographics over the past forty years:
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