One evening last month, the mayor of Detroit, Dave Bing, took to the podium at a downtown theater. The occasion was the state of the city address, and despite the mayor’s best effort to project optimism, the truths facing America’s 11th largest city are grim. The budget deficit is at least $85 million. The police [...]
Well, the facts are now being made public in this weekend’s militia bust in the Midwest, and it isn’t pretty: Six Michigan residents, two Ohio residents and an Indiana resident have been indicted on charges of attempted use of weapons of mass destruction in connection with their membership in a Lenawee County Christian militia group. Members of [...]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYyViHExL1c[/youtube] The FBI yesterday raided a home said to be inhabited by members of the Michigan Militia in Washenaw County, near Ann Arbor, MI, and at several other area locations. ADRIAN, Mich. — The FBI confirmed to Local 4 that there were several law enforcement activities in the Lenawee/Washtenaw County area late Saturday night. “The [...]
As of last week, nearly 21,000 Michiganders had applied to be approved medical marijuana patients or caregivers, the Department of Community Health said. As a temporary card, a copy of the application can “serve as a valid registry identification” if the actual card isn’t available after 20 days, the state’s Web site says. But dozens [...]
Republicans in Washington complained today of an “apparent back-room deal” worth $726,000 to three airports in U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak’s district, suggesting the funding may have somehow swayed his vote for health care reform legislation. via Did ‘backroom deal’ sway Stupak? He blasts GOP claim | freep.com | Detroit Free Press. Also completely debunked here.
A Battle Creek man fired from Walmart for using medical marijuana is gaining some national support. The national Marijuana Policy Project contacted Joseph Casias after learning about his story on WZZM 13. Casias is 29 years old and survived sinus cancer. He also suffers from an inoperable brain tumor. He has legal permission through the State of [...]
During the glory days of the 1950s, Detroit was a booming metropolis of approximately 2 million people, but now young people have left in droves and the current population is less than a million. The true unemployment rate for those still living in Detroit is estimated to be somewhere around 45 to 50 percent, and [...]
Is this the face of justice in America, I ask myself. Not my America, I retort, not the America of Ann Arbor, Michigan with its ivory towers, nor the America of Brooklyn, New York where I grew up, the child of Pakistani immigrants, benefiting from the best public schools, taught to keep an open mind, [...]
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
State Senate Michelle McManus (R-Lake Leelanau), a candidate for Michigan Secretary of State, has introduced legislation that would make it harder for people to get divorced. McManus is the sole sponsor of SB 1127 which would eliminate ‘no fault divorce’ for couples with children or where one member does not consent to the divorce. Since 1972 Michigan’s [...]
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Even before the latest pummeling, Washington had recorded 45 inches of snow this winter, including two of the heaviest storms ever to batter the city. Wednesday’s storm — with some six inches recorded already, and snow falling at a rate of as much as two inches per hour at mid-morning — is poised to shatter [...]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfq5b1bppJQ[/youtube] Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm wants to push nearly 40,000 veteran teachers into retirement to eliminate their hefty salaries from the state’s 2011 budget. The plan, introduced to state lawmakers last Friday and discussed in her final State of the State speech yesterday, would save an estimated $230 million a year, but it would also leave students [...]
Thursday, February 4, 2010
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz7oguguIZE[/youtube] Let me be clear: Our world has changed, utterly. The old Michigan economy is gone. Anyone who believed that Michigan would just naturally rebound without making deep and lasting change had a rendezvous with reality in 2009. The year that just ended was a dividing line — the finale of what Time magazine has [...]
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Two young entrepreneurs have launched an online community where college journalists are sharing ideas on technology, leadership, news judgment and content. Kelsey A. Schnell and Brandon Martinez built CollegeNewsroom.org in Big Rapids, Mich., the home of Ferris State University. via Poynter Online – Ask the Recruiter.
You might not have heard, because almost nobody reported it, but new clean-energy projects attracted more global funding in 2008 than fossil-fuel projects did. For the first time ever, investors put more money in solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower than in fuels that must be burned, according to a U.N. report. And when venture-capital funding [...]
Saturday, January 30, 2010
New unemployment figures are out and unfortunately it shows a significant increase for Upper Michigan. In December, the U.P. unemployment rate was 14.5 percent; that’s up from 12.9 percent in November. All 15 Upper Michigan counties posted jobless rate increases. Most of the increases were seasonal with job losses in tourism and construction. But Ontonagon [...]
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Michigan’s inability to raise enough money to match federal transportation dollars forced the state’s Transportation Commission Thursday to delay hundreds of road and bridge projects scheduled for the next five years. The state stands to go from spending roughly $1.4 billion on roads this year with the help of federal stimulus money to around $600 [...]
5 areas of the country have the population and geography to support high-speed rail now. But each route poses unique challenges. [...] The US hopes to have high-speed lines operational within the next decade. Sound impossible? It’s not. Other nations have shown the way. In 1990, Spain’s rail network was in even worse shape than [...]
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Perhaps I spent too much time with developers and real estate people in my architectural career, but Hartz has said it all in Fortune, from his first comment about sopping up excess land and creating scarcity to his last quote about buying a penthouse in New York. This sure sounds like a classic real estate [...]
Filed in Green Living, News Blurbs
|
Also tagged Agriculture, Detroit, Farming, Gardening, Green Jobs, Green Living, John Hantz, Permaculture, Real Estate, Sustainability, Urban Agriculture
|
The urban agricultural movement has grown nationwide in recent years, as recession-fueled worries prompted people to raise fruits and vegetables to feed their families and perhaps sell at local farmers’ markets. Large gardens and small farms — usually 10 acres or less — have cropped up in thriving cities such as Berkeley, where land is [...]
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
With a philosophy seemingly diametrically opposed to that of elected law enforcement officials in Los Angeles, the attorney general of Colorado, John Suthers (a Republican), has advised the governor of that state that medical marijuana sales should be regulated and taxed like alcohol and tobacco (and not tax- exempt like pharmaceuticals are, as medical cannabis [...]
Thursday, November 12, 2009
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKI2j1zezCw[/youtube] MSNBC host Rachel Maddow accused Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), the ranking minority member on the House Intelligence Committee and current gubernatorial candidate, of leaking sensitive intelligence information to the press. Hoekstra told the Washington Post this week that Maj. Nidal M. Hasan had e-mail conversations with a radical Yemeni cleric, Anwar al-Aulaqi. Maddow excoriated [...]
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Med Grow Cannabis College, located in the Detroit suburb of Southfield, is set to graduate its first class of students later this month. Its co-founder and president, Nick Tennant, the 24-year-old son of a General Motors Corp. employee, said he sees a significant opportunity to teach standards and safety in an industry that can eventually [...]
The amendment, offered by anti-choice Reps. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and Joe Pitts (R-Penn.), was adopted late tonight by a margin of 240-194. The Stupak-Pitts amendment makes it virtually impossible for private insurance companies that participate in the new system to offer abortion coverage to women. This would have the effect of denying women the right [...]
Filed in News Blurbs
|
Also tagged Anti-Choice, Bart Stupak, Congress, Democrats, Fundamentalist Christians, Health Insurance, Joe Pitts, Pennsylvania, Privacy, Stupak-Pitts Amendment, The Family, The Fellowship, The Fellowship Foundation, Theocracy, Women
|
Listening To
