A big boost in gun and ammunition sales in the last year could amount to millions of dollars more for Michigan. Those items are taxed federally. That money is then redistributed to states.
Michigan is on track to collect more of this tax money than ever, maybe as much as $17 million, according to the DNR's budget officer.
That would be about $6 million more than last year.
"We've been here about 13 months now. Very busy," said Kirk Richardson.
The doors open at Cobo. This photo by Daniel Mears of the Detroit News is part of a slide show available here. If you think the economic crisis is easing, watch the slide show.How bad is the Michigan economy when Flint residents drive to Detroit to get help? Charlie LeDuff of the Detroit News reports on the chaos that ensued when desperate crowds gathered at Cobo Center to get applications for rent and utility bill help from the Fed:
Luis Irizarry, 35, drove from Flint for the chance he could get assistance. He later found out only Detroit residents are eligible. He said it was a shock to see this many people in need.
"This is ridiculous," Irizarry said about the thousands who showed up.
Susan Saulny and Monica Davey of The New York Times report on just how bad the economy is in Michigan:
"Around the state, home foreclosures are commonplace, the trust fund that pays unemployment benefits is millions of dollars in debt, food banks are struggling and health agencies are reporting an uptick in people with symptoms like anxiety and depression. Suicides were up in recent years, although officials caution against drawing any direct links between deaths and the economy.
"In one sign of distress, in the first nine months of this year, some 130,000 Michigan residents who had lost their jobs remained out of work so long that they ran out of regular unemployment benefits. By the middle of this month, 63,000 people (who had already run out of their ordinary maximum benefit — as many as 26 weeks, at as much as $362 a week) also ran out of an extension authorized by Congress."
"Government statistics show that 67,000 factories of various sizes were shuttered in China in the first half of the year, said Cao Jianhai, an industrial economics researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. By year’s end, he said, more than 100,000 plants will have closed," reports Don Lee of the Los Angeles Times."As more factories in China shut down, stories of bosses running away have become familiar, multiplying the damage of China’s worst manufacturing decline in at least a decade.
"Even before the global financial crisis, factory owners in China were straining under soaring labor and raw-material costs, an appreciating Chinese currency and tougher legal, tax and environmental requirements. When the credit crunch took hold — prompting Western businesses to slash orders for Chinese goods and bankers to curtail loans to factories — many operations were pushed over the edge."
"For starters, Cerberus has to open up Chrysler’s books and the rest of its finances to government inspection to make sure taxpayer money isn’t just funneled elsewhere in the opaque private equity firm. Ford and General Motors don’t pay dividends these days. We don’t know if Chrysler does. They should all be barred from paying dividends until they repay any taxpayer money they get.
"The money should also come with limits on executive pay and golden parachutes. The top executives of the car companies should be required to step down; taxpayer money should not be used to underwrite proven managerial incompetence."
"A dire new forecast for global vehicle sales battered the shares of auto companies on Thursday, particularly General Motors, whose stock plunged more than 31 percent and was the hardest hit of the 30 companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average," reports Bill Vlasic of The New York Times.As Flint Expatriate Rich Frost told me recently, a share of GM stock wouldn't get you a combo meal at Burger King. The fortunes of GM prompted this joke from Eugene Cappuccio: "Now that General Motors has become a $5 stock, its board members met in emergency session, but could not come up with a better plan than to call it Corporal Motors.""G.M. lost $15.5 billion in the second quarter and ended the quarter with $21 billion in cash. However, the company is burning through more than $1 billion a month and has been unable to tap the debt market to raise additional money.
"The credit-rating agency Standard & Poor’s put G.M. on “watch with negative implications” on Thursday, and one industry expert said the company was running dangerously low on cash.
"'I would have to say there is a possibility of bankruptcy, but the probability is low,' said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich."
Bill Vlasic of The New York Times asks the obvious question: Will Ford and G.M. survive?
"Neither company appears in immediate danger of failure. But analysts say Detroit is in a race against time.
“Things are pretty bad, and the river is getting deeper, faster and wider,” said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich. “The question is, can they get to other side before the cash runs out?”
American automakers have decided — critics would say, belatedly — to shift production from trucks and sport utility vehicles to smaller, more gas-efficient cars, including hybrids. But it takes time to switch equipment for production. And it is unclear whether the automakers have sufficient cash to remain solvent until their new vehicle lines are ready for customers."
"We've got overpopulation. We've got a bad economy, and the majority of pit people are in the bad economy," said Edith Campbell, who works with Last Chance Rescue.Perhaps they could be used for security at the new casino.
