Curtis Hertel, Jr., the Ingham County Register of Deeds, and Branch County Registrar Nancy Hutchins filed the suit, which alleges that the company and numerous banks failed to pay property transfer taxes when the title to the company was transferred to another owner in the MERS system.

“MERS created a shadow registry system that has made it very difficult for the public and for government offices like mine to keep track of who owns what mortgage,” Hertel said. “They have also stated they were created to avoid fees in my office. When we began the investigation into robo-signing I asked my attorneys to research MERS foreclosures to see if there were patterns of irregularity. This lawsuit is a direct result of that investigation. I believe there has been a systematic attempt to avoid paying taxes by MERS and the banks that use MERS.”

Hertel alleges the company has created a “shell game” designed to dodge taxes.

“MERS has transformed the entire mortgage industry into a giant shell game”, said Hertel. “The current servicer of a mortgage is no longer a matter of public record, and once a property is foreclosed, the real games begin, as deeds and other paperwork are filed in such a way to avoid transfer taxes at every step. Property ownership is clouded, and the simple task of collecting transfer tax has been turned into this legal battle, largely because of the involvement of MERS.”

The lawsuit also targets three foreclosure attorneys — Marshall Isaacs from Orlans Associations and Ellen Coon and Jeanne Kivi of Trott and Trott. Both Orlans and Trott and Trott have come under fire in recent months for participating in robo-signing. Both organizations are also significant Republican donors in Michigan.

Also of interest, David Trott’s Attorney’s Title company is named as a defendant. Trott owns what is considered the largerst foreclosure law firm in the state. Linda Orlans’ title agency eTitle is also named. Orlans’ runs Orlans Associates.

“I am seeking repayment of both state and county transfer tax. Without discovery it’s hard to tell you an exact number,” Hertel said. “I am positive its in the millions of dollars for both of them.”

This is not the first lawsuit Hertel has filed in relation to recovering millions of dollars of unpaid taxes arising from the title transfers. Earlier this year he sued Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and numerous banks over what he alleges is an improper claim to an exemption thus requiring the entities to pay millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.

“I hope everything we are doing gives the banks, MERS and foreclosure firms pause,” Hertel said. “We could avoid a lot of these situations if they just worked with individual citizens instead of pushing people into the foreclosure process.”

Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) says Michigan’s economic woes are rooted in socialist policies, and she blames labor unions, taxes and regulations for the tough economic climate in the state.

Bachmann made the comments on the Steve Deace Show in Iowa before the Nov. 9 debate in the Wolverine State. Deace had asked Bachmann about the “pro-active, positive solution that is the alternative to socialism” in Michigan.

“It’s the fruition of all of the policies of the left which really have their origin in socialism,” Bachmann said of Michigan’s struggling economy. “If there’s anything we should have learned by now it’s that socialism doesn’t work and it’s principles don’t work.”

She also attacked other GOP presidential candidates for supporting the auto bailout, calling it the latest example of socialism in the state and saying “you won’t find any surprises with me.”

“You will find in me a core conviction,” she said, providing a nod to the title of her new book. “I’ve been the only consistent conservative in this race.”

The solution to Michigan’s unemployment problem is reducing union influence by making it a right to work state, which would allow companies to cut back on wages and benefits and be more competitive, she said.

She praised Iowa, which has a law prohibiting union membership or payment of union dues as a condition of employment. About half the states in the U.S. have a similar law; Michigan does not.

“When you have a right to work state then you can have companies adjust wages so they can open up shops to more and more hires and more employees,” Bachmann said.

She said then as more companies opened up, shop wages would eventually increase as businesses work to attract the best talent, especially if taxes and regulations are slashed at the same time.

“If we can have the tax burden lower and if we can have the regulatory burden lower then employers can afford to pay more to bid up wages and bid up benefits and then everybody succeeds,” she said.

The actual wage disparities between right to work states and those that aren’t has been a hotly contested topic for decades — or at least since most of the nation’s 22 right to work states passed their laws in the 1940s and 1950s following the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, which was enacted as a response to (and amended) the Wagner Act of 1935. The latter lays out the rights of workers to unionize, while the former addressed what was then described as too much power by the unions.

Right to work essentially allows all workers at a business where a union has organized to be represented by the union, bound by the union-negotiated contract and use the union as a bargaining agent without ever having to pay union due or join the union.

In 2001 by Lawrence Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute found that “the most important aspect of right-to-work law is its effect on wages.”

… On average, men in RTW states earn 7.8 percent less than their counterparts in non-RTW states; women in RTW states earn 6.8 percent less. … [W]e find that, even after controlling for regional costs of living, workers in right-to-work states earn less per hour. Particularly interesting is the affect on workers living in cities that are stretch across state line, placing it in both a right-to-work state and a non-RTW state. Seventeen out of 433 metropolitan areas in our sample (nearly 4 percent) spill over from a right-to-work state to a non-RTW state. Our analysis indicates that, in areas where a pure RTW state effect exists (i.e., no spill-over effect), the right-to-work penalty is larger. In fact, we find that living near a non-RTW state helps raise workers’ wages. …

But instead of focusing on individual wages, those that support right-to-work laws often point to a state’s overall economic situation — a similar argument to the one Bachmann made. For instance, the conservative Public Institute at Iowa Wesleyan College (now known as the Public Interest Institute), in a 2000 paper defending Iowa’s right-to-work law, noted a 1998 study that “Iowa outperformed most of its neighboring closed-shop states.”

… Four closed shop states border Iowa: Missouri, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Illinois. From 1947-1992, Iowa’s rate of manufacturing growth was equal to that of Missouri, slightly ahead of Wisconsin, 1.5 times higher than Minnesota, and over 5.5 times higher than Illinois. This is strong evidence that Iowa has done much better economically since enacting its right-to-work law. …

In an online campaign launched last week, Taxpayers for Common Sense urged voters to lobby supercommittee members against giving subsidies to energy companies.

According to the group’s Subsidy Gusher analysis, oil and gas companies are expected to get $78 billion in subsidies over the next five years.

Oil companies are resilient, the group argues, and made record profits even during the recent recesssion and despite major environmental disasters like the BP Gulf oil spill. They don’t need special suppot.

Taxpayers for Common Sense spokesman Mike Serresco said that his group, along with Friends of the Earth, Public Citizen and even the Heartland Institute, a libertarian organization that denies climate change, are pushing cuts to energy company entitlements.

“If we had our way we would cut all energy subsidies,” he said. “Solyndra is a good example. The government is just a bad venture capitalist. You should let the private market do that kind of financing. In the case of oil and gas, which gets by far more in subsidies than renewables, those subsidies are just bolstering profits. They are put in place a century ago for reasons that are no longer valid.”

The Intangible Drilling Costs tax credit, for example, established in 1918, allows oil companies to deduct most of the expenses of drilling. With oil prices near $116 a barrel, it’s hard to argue that ending this deduction with impede exploration, yet this benefit is expected to cost $8.9 billion over the next five years.

Some of the other tax benefits designed for energy companies include:

Ultra-deepwater and Unconventional Natural Gas and other Petroleum Resources R&D

Cut: $190 million

Expensing of Exploration and Development Costs

Cut: $270 million

Percentage Depletion Allowance (Gas & Oil) (Excess of percentage of cost depletion)

Cut: $10.8 billion

Percentage Depletion Allowance (Coal)

Cut: $1.3 billion

Capital Gains Treatment for Royalties on Coal

Cut: $630 million

Domestic Manufacturing Deduction for Hard Mineral Fossil Fuels

Cut: $2.3 billion

Manufacturing Tax Deduction for Oil and Gas Companies (IRC Sec 199)

Cut: $15.9 billion

Geological and Geophysical Amortization

Cut: $1 million

Because these benefits are part of the tax code, any attempt to change them risks devolving into a politically difficult ideological battle over raising taxes, and the groups that are arguing to end these breaks must compete with the energy lobbyists that are defending them.

Exxon Mobil — the biggest U.S. oil company — has spent more than $10 million lobbying Congress so far this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Though energy companies have vastly more money to devote to framing the discussion on their tax breaks, they have been forced into a defensive position.

The oil lobby has ramped up television ads in the home districts of supercommittee members in which they frame ending their tax breaks as the creation of “job-crushing new energy taxes.”

In an interview on CNN on Sunday, American Petroleum Institute lobbyist Marty Durbin even claimed that oil companies don’t get any special treatment.

“There are no loopholes,” he said when asked to justify billions in tax breaks for oil companies that are showing record profits. “These are basic tax deductions that every industry is allowed to use.”

Newt Gingrich

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich leveled particularly harsh criticism at Obama, saying he’s personally hurt the economy by attacking job creators.

“This country has been maniacally anti-jobs,” Gingrich said. “Obama is a left-wing radical who believes in class warfare and then he’s surprised that everybody who he’s attacking doesn’t create jobs.”

Gingrich then asked, “what did he think was going to happen?”

“You can’t go around the country and blame everybody who creates jobs and then say now gee, why didn’t you go out and take risk with your capital and spend the next five years of your lives creating jobs so I can attack you even more?” Gingrich said.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry offered a similar evaluation, saying people have lost confidence in the federal government and are not willing to risk capital to invest in potential job-creating ventures.

“Let’s quit penalizing Americans for making money, quit fighting this fight that we’re fighting on divisions between those that have money and those that don’t,” he said. “I want everybody to have more money.”

Rick Santorum

And Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) also stuck the country’s economic woes on Obama, saying repealing federal health care reform legislation he championed would be a major step toward recovery.

“I think one of the biggest things we can do is repeal Obamacare,” he said. “That is a job crusher that is creating all sorts of uncertainty.”

Santorum called for eliminating the corporate income tax and allowing for tax-free repatriation of corporate profits being held overseas – estimated at more than $1 trillion – if the money is used to invest in job creation.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) also called for no taxes on repatriated profits, but said companies should be able to use them however they want.

Bachmann said the biggest problem businesses have right now is uncertainty. She wants a moratorium on regulations, and to see health care reform repealed.

“That’s the biggest problem business has right now,” Bachmann said. “They have no idea what’s going to come out of Washington, D.C. when they wake up in the morning. And that’s why we need to have an immediate moratorium on regulations. It’s killing us.”

Ron Paul

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said he’d like to see no taxes on repatriated profits and a 15 percent corporate tax rate.

“I want it very low because in many ways, they think…if you lower corporate taxes only the executive is going to benefit,” Paul said. “But the consumer benefits too. Corporate taxes are a form of a sales tax, and if they’re competitive they have to pass this on.”

But Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee, says the Republican candidates have it wrong. The group claims Obama has worked hard to get rid of undue regulations, and the regulations that have been put in place are meant to protect taxpayers and close loopholes.

A recent review from Bloomberg found Obama has put in place fewer regulations than former President George W. Bush had at this point in his tenure.

National frontrunners Herman Cain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney did not attend the forum, held in Pella.

In Nov. 2010, in fact, Obama grilled Energy Secretary Steven Chu on the subject, challenging him to document how many jobs his agency’s stimulus spending had created — only five weeks after writing the last of ten letters to Chu asking for funding for solar and other energy projects in Michigan, arguing that those projects would create some 5,000 jobs in the state.

But Upton is hardly alone in this regard. Those letters were signed by all of the members of the Michigan congressional delegation, including several others who have argued that the stimulus bill has not created any jobs. Rep. Mike Rogers, for example, has claimed that stimulus spending only created one job in his district and very few in the state of Michigan.

Then-Rep. Pete Hoekstra, now running for the Republican nomination to challenge for Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s seat, went on CNN and said that the stimulus spending “has not helped my community or helped the state.” But he signed all of those letters arguing that spending on Michigan stimulus projects would create thousands of jobs.

Rep. Candice Miller likewise has said that the stimulus bill “has failed to provide the promised jobs.” Rep. Dave Camp has made the same claim:

“Michigan, which consistently has the nation’s highest unemployment rate, has been particularly hard-hit by the failings of the stimulus plan,” said Camp. “It is clear from today’s jobs report that stimulus has failed to do what it promised and failed to create jobs for American workers. Eight months after the President signed the stimulus bill, we are all still asking: where are the jobs?”

Rep. Thad McCotter gave a speech on the House floor asking, “Where are the jobs?”

It seems that every one of these legislators firmly believe that stimulus spending will create jobs in Michigan, which would be good for them politically, but somehow creates a negative number of jobs everywhere else. And Republican legislators in every other state seem to think the same thing of their state.

In an article published in The Bridge today Jeff Alexander writes that Michigan could raise $400 million in revenue from Kennecott’s UP nickel and copper mine if it charged an 8 percent tax on solid minerals extracted from the ground as Florida does.

“The severance tax would compensate for the loss of state resources,” State Dept. of Environmental Quality Director Dan Wyant told Alexander. “It would be a new source of revenue — the question is how significant a source.”

Severance taxes differ from local property taxes and royalties that companies pay the state in exchange for permission to remove oil, natural gas and minerals from state land. Severance taxes are assessed on commodities such as oil, natural gas, timber and minerals when those resources are “severed” from the ground. The taxes are designed to offset the loss of taxable resources and provide revenue for public services, such as new roads and police and fire protection, according to the Public Sector Consultants study.

The lack of a severance tax on high-grade metallic mines could leave communities footing the bill for roads and other public services needed to support new mines that could sprout across the U.P.

Last month Kennecott Eagle Minerals began blasting its nickel sulfide mine west of Marquette. The company is a subsidiary of the British/Australian mining company Rio Tinto.

“Chase Bank is one of the abusive lending institutions responsible for the sputtering economy,” said Ian Eberhart, one of the Oct. 18 spokespersons. “The company took $25 billion in tax payer bail out cash, yet they continue to refuse to issue payroll credit to small businesses in Michigan. On top of that, they have avoided paying tens of millions of dollars in state and local title transfer taxes, robbing local communities of vital fire, police and other services.”

Ingham County Register of Deeds Curtis Hertel, Jr. filed suit earlier this year against Chase and other banking institutions to recoup title transfer taxes. Those taxes, Hertel argues in his filings, were avoided by transferring titles through the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS). MERS facilitated transfers which in turn allowed banks to sell mortgages on the market. Many of those mortgages and titles were transferred hundreds of times.

But that is not all the protesters are upset about.

“In addition to the bail outs and tax dodging, Chase manipulates accounts in order to cause excessive overdraft fees for customers,” said Nick Cooper, the other Oct. 18 spokesperson, who is a former Chase account holder. “Then to add insult to injury, this tax evading company is cavorting with mortgage foreclosure companies who have knowingly filed fraudulent foreclosure documents in order to steal the homes of hard working men and women in this country and state.”

Protesters also noted that Linda Orlans, the owner of Orlans Associates, recently held a fundraiser for Republican Secretary of State Ruth Johnson. Marshall Isaacs, an attorney at Orlans, has been accused in a national robo-signing scandal.

In addition to the protest from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m., protesters say Hertel will join them at Reutter Park to educate them on the foreclosure process and abuses.

Highland Park is a small city that is surrounded by the city of Detroit.

Detroit News reports that 14,000 light poles have been removed and locals are complaining that schools and businesses have been targeted by burglars since the city went dark.

[DTE Spokesman Len Singer] said the utility is under no obligation to maintain service to communities that don’t pay their bills. “But obviously, we wanted to work with the city to provide some lighting for their residents and businesses,” he said.

DTE began removing the light poles in August, rather than just cutting off the power, to avoid lawsuits and confusion, he said.

“Mostly, it was a liability issue; we didn’t want to have poles there that were de-energized, and likely won’t ever be energized again,” Singer said. “Also, we wanted to avoid the confusion of having lights up that don’t work. In the end, we figured it was better to just take them out.”

Some cities own their street poles and pay DTE for the electricity. “But we own the lights in Highland Park,” Singer said.

Highland Park is having a hard time paying for other services, too.

The state Treasury Department recently ordered a review of the finances of the city’s school system, a step that could lead to a takeover of the schools, as has already happened in Detroit.

Under Michigan’s contested Emergency Manager law the governor can appoint people to take over financially-troubled local governments and schools and fire elected officials, break contracts, privatize services or even dissolve municipalities.

The REC in March estimated a similar increase in general fund revenue for the current fiscal year: $309.6 million, pushing total revenues from $5.8 billion to $6.12 billion.

Year-to-date receipts are up in many areas:

• Personal income tax (positive $32.6 million, 4.4 percent)
• Sales/use tax (positive $13.1 million, 2.2 percent)
• Corporate tax (positive $5.6 million, 6.9 percent)

Total receipts are down $43.5 million or 3 percent so far in fiscal year 2012, largely due to a 2011 law that changed the destination of $106 million in cigarette and tobacco revenue. That money now goes into the Health Care Trust Fund rather than the general fund.

The next REC meeting is Oct. 14.

According to The Columbus Dispatch, about 75 protesters weathered low temperatures and a driving rain on Thursday to greet Kasich and other supporters of the Senate Bill 5 as they arrived in their Sunday-best at a Toledo, Ohio, concert hall for the event.

The difference between the two sides was striking, the Dispatch reported:

About 150 GOP supporters, many of them in ties and jackets, filed into the bar where AC/DC, Journey and Motley Crue cover bands play on weekends, to hear Kasich speak — many of them jeered by the drenched union crowd as they walked into the building.

It was the exact contrast that Kasich and the Republicans are trying to avoid in this fall’s fight over Senate Bill 5: the working class pitted against the elite.

The social divide, however, was not nearly as wide as the disconnect between Kasich’s words and the facts surrounding the union-busting legislation.

During his speech, he claimed that SB5, the anti-union bill, is about forcing public employees to pick up a larger percentage of their health care and pension costs.

That can be done through the normal bargaining process, though, as evidenced by the fact that in 2008 alone, Ohio public workers made concessions totaling $250 million in savings for the state and local governments.

Kasich claimed union leaders across the state are unwilling to negotiate contracts that require public employees to contribute anything toward their pensions or health care premiums.

This point, which Kasich has raised in the past, was rated “Mostly False” by PolitiFact Ohio in August.

During the speech, it appears that Kasich ignored other aspects of the legislation. SB5 will bar firefighters and police officers across the state from bargaining for staffing levels, which is likely to increase response times in emergencies. SB5 also strips teachers of the ability to negotiate for smaller class sizes and professional development time.

SB5 will receive a final public airing on the November ballot via a voter referendum, known as Issue 2.