Published: 11/11/2009
Two months ago Belva Davis looked at 125 or so neighbors, activists and others outside of her endangered house and said she felt like David against Goliath. Goliath, in this case, was the tag team of Wachovia Bank (which had written her subprime mortgage in 2003) and Ocwen Financial (the mortgage se...[MORE]
Published: 11/11/2009
News Hits doesn't usually run announcements about upcoming TV shows, but we're making an exception this week because there's an exceptional documentary set to make its U.S. broadcast debut on Detroit's public television station. We're talking about The Water Front, a deeply moving and incisive film...[MORE]
Published: 11/4/2009
For some, downtown Royal Oak's proposed 10-screen theater and bowling alley, with its already-approved liquor license, is the harbinger of suburban ruin. To them it promises parking woes, unwanted traffic and a "big box" operation that will be out of character with the walkable downtown an...[MORE]
Published: 10/21/2009
The 2007 inspection report released last week finding the Ambassador Bridge in "fair condition" was mostly unremarkable, save for a few descriptions of the "poor condition" of certain sections outside of the primary structural parts. The color photos of cracks and missing bolts ...[MORE]
Published: 9/23/2009
Has your job been shipped of to foreign shores or your workplace been sold to faraway profiteers with a bottom-line-only mentality? The Detroit Community-Based Business Week presents an alternative vision of cooperative economic development as we struggle to recover from recession and battered local...[MORE]
Published: 9/16/2009
Using his authority as Pontiac's emergency financial manager, Fred Leeb is selling the Silverdome his way: an auction with no minimum bids to be completed by the end of this year. "We have to sell it now," says Leeb, appointed in March by Gov. Jennifer Granholm because of years of unresol...[MORE]
Published: 9/16/2009
Two guys with a truck got Belva Davis into her three-bedroom bungalow on Bishop Street in Detroit's East English Village back in 2003. On Saturday, 125 or so folks — neighbors, anti-foreclosure activists, politicians and others — gathered outside her house in an effort to keep her there...[MORE]
Published: 9/9/2009
For a quarter-century, Carol Zimmerman has lived in her ranch house on Blaine Avenue on Pontiac's north side. The General Motors retiree used to know her neighbors. They were people like her. They owned their homes and took care of them, she says. Now the property on the northeast side of Zimmerman...[MORE]
Published: 9/9/2009
Working hard not to jump up and start screaming, News Hits sat in Detroit's 36th District Court last week, growing more and more disturbed every time lawyers for the Detroit International Bridge Co. raised the specter of terrorism, and how it's fallen upon the company to protect this vital economic ...[MORE]
Published: 8/26/2009
Manuel J. "Matty" Moroun is an 82-year-old billionaire, one of the richest people in the world, according to Forbes Magazine's annual ranking. He lives in Grosse Pointe, and owns, among other things, the Ambassador Bridge, the hulking ruin of Michigan Central Station, and vast trucking ope...[MORE]
By Curt Guyette
Published: 8/19/2009
It's not always easy knowing for certain what's local and what's not. Part of it depends on how you want to define the term. In reality, there's a spectrum of what qualifies as local, with the purest light coming from those companies that are locally owned with local manufacturing facilities. Then t...[MORE]
Published: 8/19/2009
HSBC, one of the biggest banks on the planet, has taken to calling itself "the world's local bank." Winn-Dixie, a 500-outlet supermarket chain, recently launched a new ad campaign under the tagline, "Local flavor since 1956." The International Council of Shopping Centers, a globa...[MORE]
Published: 7/22/2009
That's the idea of ARISE Detroit's Neighborhood Day, planned for Saturday. Throughout Detroit, nonprofits, churches, community groups and corporate sponsors have organized nearly 200 neighborhood cleanups, home buildings, health fairs, health screenings, anti-crime rallies, youth concerts and other ...[MORE]
Published: 7/15/2009
So they celebrated the birth of the "new" General Motors last week, which emerged from bankruptcy in a mere 40 days, precisely as long as Jesus is said to have spent stomping around in the wilderness. According to the Bible, that experience purified the young man from Nazareth, who showed...[MORE]
Published: 7/8/2009
Years ago, back during the Vietnam War, I talked to a spokesman for the New Left who came to my campus. "You are going to see the United States and the Soviet Union becoming more and more like each other," he said. "They are going to get color television. We are going to get secret p...[MORE]
Published: 6/24/2009
The proverbial mudslinging got literal this week in disputes involving the Ambassador Bridge Gateway Project and proposed second spans there and further downriver in southwest Detroit. Speaking for the bridge owner, the Detroit International Bridge Company's president, Dan Stamper, accused the Mic...[MORE]
Published: 6/17/2009
News Hits spent a little time with the residents of the roughly 20-tent city that's popped up in Detroit's Grand Circus Park to protest the economic summit at the RenCen, where bankrupt General Motors has its world headquarters. After morning speeches and discussions, more than 100 people marched d...[MORE]
Published: 6/17/2009
Are you going to believe those lying eyes of yours, or are you going to trust Manuel "Matty" Moroun and his minions at the Detroit International Bridge Co.? That's the question in the wake of a stunning letter the U.S. Coast Guard sent the company Monday, informing it that the permitting ...[MORE]
By Curt Guyette
Published: 6/10/2009
Taking a reporter on a tour of the area around the American side of the Ambassador Bridge, state Rep. Rashida Tlaib expresses a mixture of outrage and disbelief at the audacity of the span's owner. Steering her dark gray Buick Rendezvous through the southwest Detroit neighborhood she represents, th...[MORE]
Published: 6/10/2009
Manuel J. "Matty" Moroun isn't shy about making campaign contributions — and his enthusiasm has been infectious. His wife, son and daughter-in-law also give generously, as do some of his top employees and at least one of their spouses. They often reach the highest limits for contribu...[MORE]
By Andy Cook
Published: 6/3/2009
Earlier this year, 26-year-old photographer Andy Cook drove away from his home in suburban Baltimore on a quest to match faces to the big story of the day: our economic meltdown. Having lost his own job at a media company the previous fall, he'd begun close to home, taking pictures of metropolitan B...[MORE]
Published: 5/27/2009
Usually, this column, in my sweet and gentle way, screams at you to pay attention to one or more of the many messes in our city, state and nation. But not all is gloom and doom, and there are a few glimmers of hope to keep in mind, even as the evictors carry your mattress out to the pavement. ...[MORE]
By Curt Guyette
Published: 5/20/2009
At the end of March, President Barack Obama gave a speech intended to reassure consumers worried about buying vehicles from a U.S. automaker facing the possibility of bankruptcy. "Let me say this as plainly as I can. If you buy a car from Chrysler or General Motors, you will be able to get your...[MORE]
Published: 5/6/2009
When I say el zocalo, I'm not talking about the restaurant on the southwest side of Detroit, although I have eaten there and enjoyed the food. However, I am talking about something Latino residents in the area may well remember from back home.The zocalo is a sort of a combination park and town s...[MORE]
By Curt Guyette
Published: 4/29/2009
Kim Hodge wasn't looking for a way to deal with hard economic times when she decided to start a "time bank" in Lathrup Village. It was January of 2008, months before America's financial mess hit the crisis point, and Hodge was merely searching for a way to better connect with others in this Oa...[MORE]
Published: 4/29/2009
Everyone — conservatives, liberals, head-bangers and even columnists — needs to get pretty real, pretty fast. By the time you read this, Chrysler will have likely decided to merge with Fiat, to declare bankruptcy, or quite possibly, decided to do both. General Motors has signaled ...[MORE]
Published: 4/15/2009
While doing some research for this week's cover package about surviving the New Depression, News Hits has been paging through Hard Times, Studs Terkel's marvelous oral history of the Great Depression. And one of the things that's jumped off the pages is how much the economic collapse that bega...[MORE]
By Curt Guyette
Published: 4/15/2009
The way architect Christina Snyder sees it, the future is green. By that she means energy prices, particularly petroleum-based fuels, though down from their peak of a few years ago, are eventually going to rise again. And the people who prepare for that now by seeking energy-efficiency are going...[MORE]
Published: 4/15/2009
I usually feel a little theological the week after Easter, especially when it arrives at the same time as Passover. This may have to do with the aftereffects of all those ritual hamster sacrifices I perform in the backyard. But this all got me thinking about the nature of evil and, not coincid...[MORE]
By Curt Guyette
Published: 4/15/2009
OK, so maybe it's unfair of us to call what's going on now the "New Depression." Hell, it wasn't that long ago that George W. Bush was sidestepping the issue of whether it technically qualified as a recession. (It does). And, as bleak as things are today, our national situation really doesn't ...[MORE]
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