michigan

Pranksters with too much time on the hands are alleviating their boredom by scavaging around Detroit’s ample supply of abandoned and vacant properties, The Wall Street Journal reports. A staff  videographer even documented a group of perpetrators in the act of pushing a dump truck out a fourth-floor window of an old Packard plant. Click [...]

Over at WalletPop, they’ve looked closer into a big recent auction of foreclosed properties in Detroit, and it’s an even bleaker situation than first reported.
The Wayne County auction of some 9,000 repossessed properties last week resulted in more than 80 percent of them failing to draw a single bid. And that’s even with the minimum [...]

The Michigan Messenger’s Todd Heywood reports:
While the state is coming down from its second temporary shut down in two years, ever increasing unemployment and unresolved budget issues, Michigan House Republicans this week introduced legislation to amend the state constitution to define life as beginning at fertilization.
The resolution to amend the constitution was introduced by Democratic [...]

From The Michigan Messenger:
Rep. Bart Stupak [D-Mich.] has reconsidered earlier legislation that would have given several acres of Coast Guard property in Cheboygan [Mich.] to a Christian school free of charge after constitutional law scholars pointed out that the land transfer would violate the First Amendment separation between church and state.

I ran into Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.), the fourth-ranking member of the House Republican leadership, before this morning’s Big Government press conference — he had intended to speak, but had to run out early. McCotter is one of the relatively few House Republicans who’s come out for GOP candidate Dede Scozzafava in the NY-23 special [...]

The Michigan Messenger’s Todd Heywood reports:
The Standish City Council unanimously approved a resolution targeting President Barack Obama and federal authorities with one message: Send us your prisoners.

There will be no cloture vote on a $245 billion proposal to prevent pay cuts to Medicare doctors, according to the office of Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), who sponsored the bill.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) filed a motion yesterday to hold a cloture vote on the bill Monday — the procedural move required to [...]

The Michigan Messenger reports that Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D-Mich.) temporarily laid off state workers at midnight after the state legislature failed to pass a budget for fiscal year 2010. However, two hours later, Granholm signed a resolution passed by the Senate allowing the government to continue operating for 30 days while lawmakers continued to negotiate [...]

The Michigan Messenger reports that Gov. Jennifer Granholm (D-Mich.) has notified state employees that they will be temporarily laid off at the stroke of midnight if the legislature does not pass a budget by the end of the day. Follow events as they develop here.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) has rejected a written request, penned on Sept. 18, by his fellow armed-services-committee senators John McCain (R-Ariz.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to compel testimony from Gen. Stanley McChrystal on Afghanistan ahead of President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy. Here’s Levin’s letter, sent early this evening: