Word: michigan
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Here in the area of Michigan where I live, big artificial support payments for sugar beets are ruining the family farm. The foreign-owned sugar plants give contracts to a certain few corporate farms, paying them enormous sums per acre. Small and midsize family farms are disappearing at an alarming rate as land rents and property taxes skyrocket and the few corporate farms fight over every acre. The megafarms are pushing the fast-disappearing topsoil to the absolute limit. All this while the local sugar plant locked out longtime employees to force wage cuts. Here too we have spent millions...
Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, who in January will become the ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, called for hearings on the GAO's findings. "Are major U.S. banks, wittingly or unwittingly, helping criminals move funds to safe harbors around the world?" Levin asked. "If the answer to that question is yes, then the Congress had better close down the loopholes that allow it." Already this week federal regulators will issue new rules requiring banks to confirm the identities of their customers and the sources of large fund transfers...
...Jack Kevorkian finally got what he wanted on Wednesday. A Michigan district judge ordered the infamous Dr. Death to stand trial on charges of first-degree murder for last month's televised euthanasia of Thomas Youk. Kevorkian, who had dared prosecutors to charge him, will have to defend himself on murder, assisted suicide and controlled substance charges for the lethal injection of Youk, which was broadcast on "60 Minutes...
...murder," he says. "Kevorkian wants to challenge the law by pursuing jury nullification," says Cohen -- that is, the doctor hopes the jury will refuse to convict even in the face of overwhelming evidence. Not that an acquittal would overturn the law -- only the legislature can do that. But if Michigan jurors send a signal to state law enforcement that they don't want euthanasia cases prosecuted, Kevorkian -- and anyone else -- would be free to help terminally ill residents end their lives. Even when the TV cameras aren't watching...
Austrian immigrant Bluhdorn took a run-down Michigan auto-parts distributor and built it into Gulf & Western Industries, a $2 billion marvel whose activities ranged from mining (New Jersey Zinc) to movies (Paramount Studios). By 1969, the former $15-a-week clerk was worth $50 million...