The Michigan Messenger

Top Stories

The Michigan Messenger going forward

By Staff Report | 11.16.11

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 [...]

Colorado-based abstinence program provided false and misleading information to Michigan students

HIV-AIDS-small
By Todd A. Heywood | 11.16.11

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.

Class action lawsuit filed against MERS over unpaid taxes

foreclosure
By Todd A. Heywood | 11.15.11

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.

Schuette fights important mercury regulations

epa_logo
By Eartha Jane Melzer | 11.14.11

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.

budget cuts
 

Budget eliminates funding to assist poor in burying the dead

By Todd A. Heywood | 05.23.11 | 4:46 pm

Poor residents of the state of Michigan who lose a family member will lose an assistance program to help pay funeral costs.
 
The state spent $4.1 million in the last 12 month helping low income residents bury a close relative, reports Michigan Radio. The program, which is designed to assist in covering funeral costs that average $7,000, has seen cuts over the last several years.

As recently as ten years ago, the average payment to help a family bury a loved one was $1290. The state reduced the rate over the years. Since 2007, the maximum the state would pay is $700. Last year the average payment was $569.

Phil Douma, executive director of the Michigan Funeral Home Directors Association, tells MR’s Lester Graham that the budget will help pay for unclaimed bodies. That has been an issue in Wayne County, reported the Wall Street Journal. In fact, that plight drove Department of Human Services Director Maura Corrigan to pledge to cut the backlog in freeing up cash for the hundreds of bodies awaiting burial assistance. This new budget would only pay for unclaimed bodies, MPR reports.

And that’s what the new state budget does. State dollars will only be used to bury or cremate unclaimed bodies. In other states where that’s happened, the number of unclaimed bodies increased because families could not afford the cost of burying their loved ones. They simply walked away. No funeral. No goodbye.

This is another example of budget cuts impacting the working poor in Michigan — from proposals to force foster kids to purchase only used clothing to a proposal to cut the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit.

The foster children proposal was changed after a national outcry.

The credit has been salvaged, to a point, but it was seriously cut. That move was made, advocates say, to cover the $1.7 billion cut to the state’s Michigan Business Tax and Surcharge.

Comments

  • Anonymous

    “another example of budget cuts impacting the working poor”

    ssshhhhh, todd.

    you know what happens if you talk about a ‘class war’….

    “Its existence is the greatest kept secret of our civilization. Naming it is the first act of rebellion, the first step towards claiming control of our own lives.

    Because to acknowledge the existence of a war waged against us is to admit that we are combatants, at which point one must decide to fight back, or to surrender”

    ~ anon

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Chip-Livingstone/100001706539089 Chip Livingstone

    Well, that really says something about the mentality, doesn’t it? Apparently, the less fortunate don’t even deserve a proper burial anymore?

  • Anonymous

    This is a nation that is as cold as its pavements. Not a nation at all in fact but a corporation where real Life is only valued as a commodity and material poverty is viewed as a crime that they can exploit in the prison-industrial complex. Do they think they honor themselves by humiliating the poor? Some information on the idea and existence of Potter’s Fields:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potter’s_field

  • Anonymous

    Fight back!!

  • Anonymous

    People, you can do something about this! Fire Rich Snyder! http://www.firericksnyder.org

    We need to get 1.1 million signatures in 90 days.

  • Anonymous

    A grim look at ourselves as a nation in this historic piece on NYC Potter’s Field by Thomas Bahde: www.common-place.org/vol-06/no-04/bahde/

  • http://profiles.google.com/wattervilleh Henry Waterville

    Part of the problem is the high cost of funerals. The story claims that the average funeral costs $7,000. Why so much? We are getting robbed by those undertakers.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Consuelo-Hannan/100000864906566 Consuelo Hannan

    why not follow the monty python the holy grail’s lead. write a” bring out your dead” bill. when medicare and medicaid are gone we will need it more than ever. the repugs could invest in crematoriums and the gov can pay then to clean up the mess.

  • Anonymous

    This is outrageously mean spirited. CEOs make more on bonus’ then a mere $4 Million a year. I hope those dead bodies show up for burial on the steps of the capital building in Lansing.

  • Anonymous

    These type of ultra-conservative Republicans stopped being Christian a long, long, long time ago. What they’ve become is anyone’s guess, but they definitely threw the teachings of Jesus Christ out the window, but especially the Good Samaritan parable, along with that silly (at least to arch-conservative Republicans) new commandant of Jesus: “love thy neighbor as thyself.” Lately, it’s as if when a conservative Republican sees a poor person (or someone in the middle class) they exclaim, in unison, “What neighbor? Our neighbors are only the ones that live next door to us in our gated community with a certain wealth threshold, rich, rich, rich.”

  • Anonymous

    Break out the shovels for Potter’s Field.http://welcomebacktopottersville.blogspot.com/

  • Anonymous

    Break out the shovels for Potter’s Field.http://welcomebacktopottersville.blogspot.com/

blog comments powered by Disqus