Free Republic

Michigan drivers and taxpayers have been complaining about road and highway conditions for years. But the solutions policymakers have recently proposed ranged from the politically impossible, like raising the gas tax 45 cents per gallon, to financially-risky short-term fixes like borrowing billions in bonds to pay for teacher pension contributions so that money could be shifted to funding for roads. But it seems like Michigan lawmakers may be warming up to a long-term, sustainable, users-pay solution to achieving better roads: tolling. Lansing's interest in tolling has gone back decades but this year the state Legislature and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's administration...

When the battleship USS Oklahoma turned over just 15 minutes after being hit by the first Japanese torpedo on 7 December 1941, 429 sailors and Marines were either already dead -- or soon would be. Men that somehow survived the initial nightmare of torpedoes, bombs, shrapnel, bullets, and fire had to swim through another level of hell to reach the relative safety of land. Those that remained inside the flooding ship would spend days in pitch-black darkness with no food, water, and what breathable air they had was being slowly used up while they hoped for rescue. 78 years later,...

“I sit in my seat and I immediately smell something, and I thought, ‘Not another flight that smells bad,’” Matthew Meehan of Bay City, Michigan, told Yahoo Lifestyle of last Thursday’s flight from hell. “I realized the person next to me also had their nose covered,” he continued. “And then I went to take my charger out, bent down completely to charge my phone and realized it’s not just a smell, it’s actually feces and it’s all over the back of my legs, it’s all over the floor, all over the wall of the plane.” He and the fellow flier rushed over...

... Battle Creek’s Lindsey, an African-American, felt the pain too. “NAFTA just ripped us apart,” she said. And though she voted for Obama both times, Trump got her support in 2016. She said she’ll continue to vote Republican. Lindsey was among Kellogg Co. workers who lost their job because the company had moved work to Mexico following passage of the NAFTA, the U.S. Department of Labor later concluded. Trump’s message was tailor-made to those workers: His first campaign stop in his 2016 candidacy was to Birch Run, a village in nearby Saginaw County (which also flipped from Obama to Trump),...

BAY CITY, MI Shortly after a Bay City man proposed to his girlfriend at Walmart, the pair shoplifted jewelry and sex toys, police say, leading the newly engaged couple to spend their New Year's Eve in jail. About 6:14 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 30, Bay County sheriff's deputies responded to the Spencer's Gifts store inside the Bay City Mall at 4101 E. Wilder Road in Bangor Township for a shoplifting complaint involving a man and a woman. Both suspects fled the area prior to deputies' arrival, but deputies found the woman walking between Bob Evans and Taco Bell, followed by a...

MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. (AP) -- A man was charged Friday with assaulting a 4-year-old boy weeks earlier, a day after the missing child's body was found under the porch at the youngster's home on a mid-Michigan Indian reservation. Anthony Bennett, 20, was charged in a federal criminal complaint in Bay City, where he was expected to appear in court. He is not charged in the death of Carnel Chamberlain, but the complaint details the reported physical abuse of the child.

Right-to-work legislation has been introduced in Indiana and may actually win Gov. Mitch Daniels’ signature by the time Super Bowl Sunday arrives on Feb. 5. The Great Lake State may need to follow suit to compete economically. Before it does, however, the people of Michigan should note that one city — Bay City —leapt headlong into the labor fray Monday night. Its city commission voted to amend the city’s prevailing wage ordinance to exempt contracts under $100,000 in value. The previous threshold was only $10,000. It also — quite significantly — eliminates the prevailing wage mandate when Bay City shares...

State regulators on Wednesday proposed emergency rules to keep more people from losing electricity or heat in the winter and to ban the use of power-limiting devices, weeks after a 93-year-old man froze to death in a home with a similar gadget.

Democrats sue to allow provisional ballots cast in wrong precinct 9/28/2004, 5:20 p.m. ET By AMY F. BAILEY The Associated Press LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Democrats in Michigan sued the state's highest-ranking election official on Tuesday, arguing that voters who show up at the wrong polling place on Nov. 2 but are in the right city, village or township can cast a provisional ballot. The state party and the Bay City Democratic Party filed a federal lawsuit in Bay City against Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, a Republican. They say she is refusing to count provisional ballots of voters...

Bush, Kerry focus on values in scramble for voters By RON FOURNIER The Associated Press 7/13/2004, 5:42 p.m. ET SAGINAW, Mich. (AP) — President Bush and John Kerry are trying to define and dominate the debate on gay marriage, abortion, gun rights and other values in a more virtuous-than-thou scramble for voters like blue-collar Democrat Carolyn Brooks. The 61-year-old clerk opposes abortion, even to save a woman's life, and gay marriage, even if it requires amending the Constitution. But there's a value she places above all others: Honesty. "And Bush, with his war on Iraq, has failed on that note,"...

Marlinga Indicted Macomb prosecutor accused of trading favors for donations; feds charge state Sen. Barcia with campaign violations By Tony Manolatos and David Shepardson / The Detroit News Macomb County Prosecutor Carl Marlinga was indicted Thursday on charges that he traded legal favors for campaign contributions. State Sen. James Barcia, D-Bay City, and Warren Realtor Ralph Roberts also were named in the federal indictment that rattles the Democratic Party and suggests justice was for sale in Michigan’s third-largest county. “This case represents part of our efforts to uphold the public’s trust in their elected officials,” said U.S Attorney Jeffrey G....

Editor moves political signFriday, July 26, 2002THE ASSOCIATED PRESS BAY CITY -- An editor at The Bay City Times returned to work Thursday after her husband agreed to remove a banner from their yard advertising his candidacy for county commissioner. Jalene Jameson, assistant metro editor for features at The Times, went on unpaid leave July 18 after the paper's editor told her she could not work there while a campaign sign was posted in her yard. The Times prohibits its journalists from political activity, including running for office, working on campaigns, making political donations or displaying campaign bumper stickers or...