Michigan Enjoyer
@mich_enjoyer • 17,894 subscribers
Your guide to being alive in Michigan.
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The Northland Dirt Scandal Keeps Getting Weirder They're building a soccer stadium on the site now, and the developer seems to have ties to the FBI By Charlie LeDuff Charlie LeDuff Southfield — Things are getting weird at the old Northland Mall site. Tough-guy tactics, a federal sting, dirty dirt, and a soccer terrordome. Workers for developers at the 114-acre plot in the middle of Southfield were picking cement blocks out of the mountains of dirt last week and then moving the dirt to the northern edge of the urban wasteland. Across the street are Providence Hospital, a day-care center, and a mega church. Previously, tons of this dirt made its way into Detroit’s demolition holes. Detroit officials had the “soil” tested and it’s shown to be excessively contaminated and suspiciously similar to highway junk. Like how bad? Like children-shouldn’t-play-near-it bad. Like long-term-cancer bad. My partner Ken and I went there last Friday to film the plumes of dust being kicked up by an excavator, a dump truck, and a bulldozer pushing dirt around the lot. That’s when a surly dude in a heavy-duty pick-up rolled up on us. He gave the stink-eye. The voodoo vibe. The grim peeper. He never rolled down his window and never said a word. He just idled for some time before driving away, only to cut a circle and do it all over again. The job was shut down for a good hour-and-a-half while this dude worked the phone. The FBI is on the case, which now sprawls across two counties in southeastern Michigan. Workers and subcontractors are spilling their guts. Mike Duggan was forced to fall on his sword and drop out of the governor’s race. And the city of Southfield can’t—or won’t—produce soil analytics. Weird. In the midst of all this, the Southfield city council last month approved a 120,000-square-foot sports dome on the site that will be home to the Detroit City FC South Oakland soccer team. When reached by telephone, the soccer club’s CEO Marcel Schmid said he had not seen soil analytics. “But it was discussed before the vote,” Schmid said. “If the city’s not concerned about it, then we’re not concerned about it.” Suit yourself, Marcel, but you’ll never see me at the concession stand. Why doesn’t the city of Southfield simply have the soil tested and post the results to the public? Where is the county in all this? The state? The feds? While the FBI is indeed investigating the environmental scandal, I don’t think much will come of this considering that the Northland developer—Contour Companies—may be a confidential source for the federal government. Consider: Contour Companies was involved in a major FBI public corruption sting in Jackson, Mississippi. In short, FBI agents posed as out-of-state developers, proposing a multi-million-dollar hotel project to the mayor there. The FBI straw company partnered with the real-life Contour Companies to create a bogus development scheme and then bribe local Jackson officials. In a scene straight out of “Donnie Brasco,” the mayor of Jackson was plied with booze and boobs before he was filmed on a yacht in Miami taking bags of cash from undercover agents. Why would a legitimate development company based in Michigan lend its name to an out-of-state FBI sting? That can’t be good for business. In the phony pitch to the mayor of Jackson, Contour claimed its $500 million Northland future city project—backstopped with millions of dollars in public subsidies —would be completed by the end of this calendar year. Fuhgeddaboudit. Meanwhile, the federal corruption trial of the mayor of Jackson begins next month.
Michigan Enjoyer19,579 views • 6 days ago
The Democrat Treasurer Allegedly Ripped Off an Old Lady. The Media Ignored the Scandal by Charlie LeDuff Charlie LeDuff Traci Kornak, the former treasurer of the Michigan Democratic Party, was hauled into probate court this week, suspected of embezzling from her ward, a brain-damaged elderly woman. I caught Kornak feasting on the woman’s finances nearly four years ago and have written many stories about it since. I’ve made TV appearances. I even lost my newspaper job over it. After my first story was published, Attorney General Dana Nessel, a close friend of Kornak, opened a superficial investigation that was no investigation at all. Her detectives made a few cursory phone calls before Nessel prodded them into shutting down the criminal case. And Kornak, it is alleged, continued to suck the old woman dry. At least that is what a special fiduciary attorney, Morgan Maul, believes. Using phrases like “significant discrepancies” and “missing assets” and “concerns about charges,” Maul asked Jolene Clearwater, the chief probate judge of Allegan County, for a six-month extension of his investigation into Kornak’s decade-long conservatorship over the woman’s finances. The old woman died last April, and now the judge wants to know what happened to her money. Her condominium? Her insurance settlement from the car accident? Her trust? Her estate plan? Who made debit card purchases on the day of her death? Not only did Clearwater agree to Maul’s request, she also ruled that Kornak—a slip-and-fall attorney by trade—must pay for Maul’s time. Kornak, for her part, said nothing in defense of herself. What began as a story about a simple insurance scam perpetrated by Kornak in the name of the old woman has morphed into a scandal implicating Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and threatening the impeachment of Dana Nessel. Kornak was a suspected embezzler, and Whitmer and Nessel knew about the allegations. Nevertheless, they allowed her to continue in her political position as treasurer of the state Democratic Party. In fact, Whitmer was planning to appoint Kornak to a judgeship as soon as the criminal investigation went away. But Kornak was never given a judicial robe, because I would not let the story die. After Nessel complained about a column I published in the Detroit News chronicling her unethical interference in the Kornak investigation, I replied to her on social media with the phrase “See You Next Tuesday”—a euphemism for female genitalia. My pearl-clutching colleagues at the News feigned outrage, tarred me as a misogynist, and I was forced to resign. Professional jealousy is an ugly thing. Not another word was written in the paper about the scandal, and I canceled my subscription. But I kept publishing. First online, and now with Michigan Enjoyer. And so here we are. Tuesday has arrived. The Kent County Sheriff’s Office has completed its own two-year investigation into Kornak’s stewardship of the old woman’s financial affairs. Among its recommendations are charges of felony embezzlement, which carries a 20-year prison term. That report now sits on the desk of Chris Becker, the Kent County prosecutor, who is considering charges. Most nauseating about this whole affair—beyond the alleged abuse of an elder who could not fend for herself —is that those in power knew all along. I called them. I shouted questions at them. I mocked them online, in print, and on TV. Who are THEY? THEY are those who were in a position to protect the old woman. The governor. The attorney general. The Democratic Party brass. The Attorney Grievance Commission. The Probate Court. The Media. THEY only proved themselves to be what THEY accused me of being—misogynists, abusers of women. Worse, THEY proved themselves to be cowards. There is a light in this dark story. Enjoyer has learned that the FBI has begun making inquiries into the sordid affair. If justice can prevail, then things might be better for the next old lady.
Michigan Enjoyer374,933 views • 5 months ago
Tommy “Hitman” Hearns Is Missing The boxing champ earned $40 million in prize money, but fraudsters and grifters sapped his wealth as his health declined By Charlie LeDuff Charlie LeDuff Southfield — Tommy Hearns was once the greatest prize fighter in the world. Today, his family worries. Where in the world has the Champ gone? Tommy Hearns is missing. Hearns, 67, saw his Southfield estate foreclosed upon in April due to unpaid property taxes. The estate was then auctioned off to an investment company in September. Hearns was served eviction papers and told to get out by November. The problem is that Hearns isn’t aware of any of this, according to his daughter Natasha Hearns-Barnes. “He’s not doing well,” she told me. “You tell him something one day and he understands what you’re saying. But the next day it goes unremembered what you told him.” For the past number of years, according to his daughter, Hearns’s affairs have been handled by his son, also named Thomas Hearns. She says her half-brother may have spirited their father away to some unknown location. Attempts to reach the younger Hearns proved fruitless. Phone calls and knocks on doors at affiliated addresses went unanswered. Hearns-Barnes showed me recent photographs chronicling the squalid conditions her father was living in before he disappeared. The refrigerator was nearly empty except for some bottled water and stale pizza slices. The basement was coated in black mold. I paid a visit to the Champ’s former home. Through the cracked and dirty windows, I could see that the ceilings were collapsing and many of Hearns’s possessions had been abandoned. His daughter filed for guardianship, citing mental deficiency, physical disability, and concern that her father’s property would vanish without proper management. But the Oakland County Probate Court, itself embroiled in scandal and incompetence, failed to protect the boxing legend. The court rejected her application via email due to a missing ZIP code. Tommy Hearns, who grew up in Detroit, won world titles in five different weight classes, making history as the first prize fighter to accomplish the feat. His bouts with Sugar Ray Leonard, Marvin Haggler, and Roberto Duran are remembered as some of the greatest and most savage fights ever. Hearns’s blinding speed and raw power earned him the sobriquets “Hit Man” and “Motor City Cobra.” Over the course of his 30-year career, Hearns earned more than $40 million in prize money. But relatives, hangers-on, and poor investments sapped Hearns of his wealth. In 2010, he was forced to auction off his robes, gloves, and classic cars to satisfy a $450,000 federal tax-lien. The Champ attended the auction and watched as his life was sold to the highest bidder. But he still had the 8,700 square-foot estate in Southfield sitting on two acres surrounded by woods. The mortgage was paid in full in 2020. So what happened? How did he lose a home he owned outright? A deep dive into the property tax records show that the elderly and dissipated Tommy Hearns may be an unwitting victim of fraud. In early January 2014, a second mortgage was filed against Hearns’s home, which was worth more than $1 million at the time. Less than 10 months later, that same mortgage was foreclosed upon. The amount of that mortgage? Just $90,000. A company called C & S Management filed a claim to the home. The man who controlled C & S Management is also the man who issued the mortgage. He then foreclosed on the mortgage and even drafted the business paper work on Tommy Hearns’s behalf. His name is Jack Wolfe. Wolfe is currently serving time in the state penitentiary for forging dead people’s signatures, creating fake deeds and property documents to steal people’s homes. Following the 2014 “mortgage” foreclosure, there were a flurry of transactions between Wolfe’s shell corporations and the Hearns estate with no apparent purpose other than to squeeze equity from the home. The last transaction involving a Wolfe shell company and Hearns’s Southfield home was in October 2019, in which the younger Tommy Hearns was deeded a percentage of his father’s home. The scams Wolfe perpetrated against Hearn’ came to an end in 2020 when Wolfe was busted by television reporter Rob Wolchek of Fox 2 News. That’s the same year when the true mortgage issuer—CitiBank—discharged the loan to Hearns, making him the outright homeowner. That’s also the last year that property taxes were paid for Tommy Hearns’s estate. There is a ray of hope in all of this. The county auctioned off Hearns’s home for $226,000. But the tax arrearage was only $100,000. By law, Hearns is entitled to the remaining proceeds, which would be $126,000. According to property records, it does not appear that the money was ever collected. The legal time window to collect that money has closed. But according to a probate lawyer who has offered to represent the Champ’s interests pro bono, there is a chance he could at least collect that money. At most, he might be able to get his home back. The problem is Tommy Hearns has gone missing. Where are you Champ? We’re here and want to help you.
Michigan Enjoyer311,675 views • 6 months ago
We're Not Allowed in the Ren Cen Anymore GM moved out, keeping a skeleton crew at the new Hudson's building, while Dan Gilbert and GM angle for $350 million in public money to redevelop the complex By Charlie LeDuff Charlie LeDuff Detroit — One of my favorite things to do in Detroit on a drizzly spring afternoon is to drop into the food court at the Renaissance Center. Normally, I will shake off the cold and relieve myself before ordering a cup of coffee and a moist cinnamon bun dripping with glaze and watch the fishermen troll for walleye along the river. So imagine my surprise earlier this week to find that the Renaissance Center is now completely closed to the public. Locked in perpetuity. The cafe is gone. The Burger King. The tables. The napkins. The salt shakers. General Motors has removed its name plate from the facade, and its rotating display of classic cars has been towed away. “Where you going?” barked a sleepy-eyed security guard. “It’s closed. Can’t you read the signs? Unless you’re going to the hotel or Joe Muer’s, but they’re not open yet.” “How about the Italian consulate?” I said somewhat hopefully. The remaining tenants in the Renaissance Center, besides the Marriott and three restaurants, are the Italian and Japanese diplomatic attachés. Apparently, no one told the Italians and the Japanese that the war was over. “Okay, but you can’t take no professional video,” he warned. We ignored him. The cultural impact of an icon abandoned in the middle of the night simply required documentation. Imagine walking up on the Empire State Building or the St. Louis Arch and being told to pound cement. It’s no secret that the building’s owner, General Motors, beat it out of its five towered headquarters on the Detroit River. With much fanfare, the 117-year-old automobile company announced last month that it had moved its world headquarters into a veritable broom closet of suites in Dan Gilbert’s half-finished, publicly financed Hudson’s Tower complex just a few blocks up on Woodward. GM has all but turned its back on the Motor City. The company has collected billions of dollars over the years from the state to keep its employees in Michigan. To smother the criticism, General Motors is keeping a skeleton crew of a few hundred employees downtown so the locals don’t feel disrespected. Executives with General Motors and Gilbert’s development team have convinced the public that they are going to transform the 5 million-square-foot riverfront property into condominiums, retail space and open parkland just as long as the public kicks in $350 million. Gilbert and GM are lobbying Lansing hard for the cash and prizes but a spokesman for Matt Hall, the speaker of the Michigan House who holds the dice in this game of Municipal Monopoly, was surprised to learn the public has been locked out of the building. “That’s the first we’re hearing of it,” the spokesman said. Representatives for General Motors did not immediately respond to questions. The Renaissance Center, financed with private money, took four years to build and opened in 1977. The public was always welcome to ride the 700-foot outdoor elevator. As a comparison, the Hudson two-tower complex—financed in part with public money—broke ground nine years ago. Even so, the main 49-story tower still lacks pipes and walls. The shorter block, where GM now rents four floors, is closed to the public. Unable to get an audience with either Consul General, we left the Renaissance Center with security tailing us at a respectful distance. Over at the GM headquarters, a security guard snapped our photograph through the plate glass window.
Michigan Enjoyer138,954 views • 3 months ago
Looks like the Southfield mayor is afraid… should he be? Charlie LeDuff
Michigan Enjoyer75,896 views • 2 months ago
Detroit Got Poisoned, But They're Opening a Case Against Me No one went to jail for the Flint Water Crisis, and so far only this journalist has caught a case over Duggan's poisoned dirt By Charlie LeDuff Charlie LeDuff Southfield — Flint got poisoned, but nobody did a single day in jail. People got sick—and some died—from water fed to them from a river famously polluted with car batteries and corpses. And the hogs responsible for that calamity? They're laughing it up somewhere over a Porterhouse and a glass of Bordeaux. Now it’s the people of Southfield who may be the latest victims of a mass poisoning. This time it’s toxic dirt. Will anyone get charged for that? So far, I seem to be the only person who has caught a case. It’s no secret that the FBI has opened a book on former Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and his demolition program. Authorities allege that Duggan’s handpicked contractor was allowed to run wild, throwing contaminated soil too toxic for human touch into holes where houses once stood and charging big bucks for it. Where did Duggan’s contractor get this dirt? Investigators say that least some of it came from Southfield. Specifically, from the old Northland Mall site that has been under redevelopment for the better part of a decade. The dirt there was supposed to go to a landfill. Instead, it was used to fill people’s pockets. No one seems to be digging into the Southfield side of things. Not as far as I know. Not the feds. Not the EPA. Not the attorney general. Not the state environmental regulators. Not even the newspapers, even though Northland site still has mountains of dirt blowing all over the community. I called the Southfield Police Department to check up on the status of the complaint I filed a few weeks ago—for crimes against humanity. That case is going nowhere, a detective told me. I was informed, however, that a case has been opened up on me. Trespassing. The police department even put two detectives on the case. According to the complaint filed by the developer “there has been ongoing trespassing issues with Charlie LeDuff… one of which he recorded a YouTube video while on the property.” The developer, Contour Companies Vice President Dave Dedvukaj, further stated: “It is unknown where LeDuff is making his entry.” Simple. Through the open gates near the unfinished offices of the unfinished condominium block where a curious member of the public might inquire about purchasing an unfinished condo surrounded by contaminated dirt. Imagine that. We are a year into this scandal, and I’m the only one who’s caught some legal paperwork. The whole episode is so cockamamie that I brought along Joe Demarco to the Southfield Police Department this week to act as my representative as I surrendered myself to the authorities. Demarco does not have a law degree, but he does own a shabby chicken costume and possesses a certificate of completion from the Specs Howard School of Media Arts. I figure this at least qualifies Demarco as a legitimate alternative to the current mayor of Southfield, Ken Siver. I promised the detective I would keep myself to the sidewalk. But also I promise the people of Detroit and Southfield I'll get to the bottom of things. The people of Flint deserve my apology. I didn't do enough. That won't happen again.
Michigan Enjoyer29,400 views • 27 days ago
I Got a Suspected Terrorist Captured A Hezbollah-linked financier crossed the Southern border in 2021, Biden let him move to Dearborn, and I’ve been hounding ICE to act for three years By Charlie LeDuff (Charlie LeDuff) They finally got him. After three years of doing whatever he pleased, Issam Bazzi, the first person ever allowed entry into the U.S. despite being designated as a “Known or Suspected Terrorist,” was apprehended in Dearborn during a routine traffic stop. The 54-year-old Venezuelan was pulled over last week on the I-94 entrance ramp at Michigan Avenue by undercover ICE agents who had been surveilling him for weeks. Bazzi was served with an arrest warrant and taken into custody. Apparently, he was on his way to work at an Ypsilanti diner. Workers at the diner confirmed that Bazzi was indeed an employee but was off for the day. When informed that Bazzi would never be coming back to work—ever—the owner of the restaurant questioned this reporter’s sexuality, said unsociable things about his mother, and invited him to vacate the premises with a wave of a middle finger. Bazzi’s father also confirmed his arrest by immigration officials but insisted the authorities have the wrong idea about his son. “Issam good, good, good, good,” he said pointing skyward. “God.” That may be so, but when immigration officials in Texas arrested Bazzi on the banks of the Rio Grande in December 2021, he was flagged on the FBI’s terror watchlist as person who was a “Category 5 Group Member” of an unspecified terrorist organization with “substantive high side derogatory information.” While Bazzi’s Dearborn relatives described him as a mild-mannered clothing-store owner, Joseph Humire, the current deputy assistant secretary of defense, described him to Congress as something more ominous. “In Venezuela, Bazzi owned luxury apartments, yachts, and helped finance a commercial building with ties to the Venezuelan government,” Humire testified. “Notably with… the family of Tareck El Aissami, a former Venezuelan vice president and minister accused of corruption, money laundering, with alleged ties to Hezbollah and is on the ICE Most Wanted List. Only weeks prior to making his trip to the U.S. Southwest border, Bazzi reportedly attended the funeral of relatives of Tareck El Aissami. “Bazzi’s profile fits more as a logistical financier rather than a potential asylum seeker.” Immigration agents recognized Bazzi as a flight risk and recommended his continued detention. Normally, a person on the terror watchlist would be detained, interrogated, and then summarily deported. Inexplicably, officials in Biden’s Department of Homeland Security in Washington, D.C., ordered that Bazzi be released because he was overweight and thus susceptible to Covid, according to highly sensitive documents obtained by Michigan Enjoyer. Despite concerns about Bazzi’s comorbidities, U.S. officials did not require Bazzi to accept a Covid vaccination shot as a precondition to entry. Instead, he was given a one-way ticket to Dearborn. Once in Michigan and living at his brother’s house, Bazzi was awarded permission to work, given a social security number, and issued a driver’s license. At some point during his American odyssey, Bazzi’s claim for asylum was denied and he was ordered deported by an immigration judge. Bazzi currently is appealing his deportation order and now faces one of two choices: Wait for years in jail at the “Lake County Leavenworth” in Baldwin for his day in court, or take Trump’s offer of $1,000 and deport himself. Either way, adios.
Michigan Enjoyer243,730 views • 10 months ago
Whitmer Can Make Jobs in the Carolinas but Not Michigan Jay Murray (JZ DeLorean)
Michigan Enjoyer12,508 views • 11 days ago
The Gordie Howe Bridge Was a Giant Mistake The state could have just allowed the expansion of the Ambassador Bridge at no cost to taxpayers, but that would’ve been too simple By Charlie LeDuff (Charlie LeDuff) Detroit — Someone suddenly flipped on the lights at the still unfinished Gordie Howe International Bridge last week, and the town went berserk! And why not? We’ve been kept in the dark about almost everything else on the multi-billion-dollar boondoggle. The bridge is a joint-venture between the state of Michigan and the Canadian government. Canada fronted all the money to build it and will collect all the tolls until it recoups its investment. Only then will Michigan share in the proceeds. When the deal was first announced back in 2012, the estimated cost was $2 billion. Then it was $4 billion. Then it was $4.8 billion. Then it was $5.7 billion. It was supposed to be completed last year at a cost of $6.4 billion. It’s still not done, and the smart money puts the final costs north of $7 billion. (This does not include the unspecified millions the U.S. will shell out for customs and border inspections each year.) Traffic across the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel has fallen by nearly 60% since the year 2000 as auto manufacturing has shifted to the Southern U.S. and Mexico. At that rate, according to an independent study from 2018, the Gordie Howe Bridge will never pay for itself. Never. That means Canada’s grandchildren will get all the debt, and Michigan’s grandchildren will get all the smog. Oh, Canada! To date, no one has clearly explained how the bidding process worked. How could a consortium of companies win the design, construction, and maintenance contracts when it includes a Spanish firm that has paid more than $100 million in fines for fraud and bid-rigging? Canada is our neighbor. Spain isn’t. Doesn’t that present a security risk? And where did the steel for the bridge come from? Was it made in the U.S.? Canada? China? A mix of Canada and China? Again, we haven’t been told. Isn’t that what the tariff war is all about? And how did Justin Trudeau’s infrastructure minister get his job overseeing construction of the 1.5-mile, six-lane span across the Detroit River? The man—a former bus driver—had no college degree, no construction experience, and spent nearly two years in an Indian prison for suspected ties to terrorism. Why wasn’t the Moroun family, who owns the Ambassador Bridge, allowed to build a new span with private money as they had offered? Taxpayers wouldn’t have paid a nickel. Americans would have had jobs. It’s all so absolutely Michigan. When will government learn to get out of the way? Whitmer tried throwing billions at multinational corporations, and all we got were parking lots. The bright side here? At least we get some tasteful LED lighting twinkling on the Detroit River.
Michigan Enjoyer182,545 views • 8 months ago
Inside the Think Tank That Whitewashed Whitmer's Nursing Home Deaths CHRT, whose office was still closed for Covid when we visited, helped coordinate the glowing PR campaign By Charlie LeDuff Charlie LeDuff Ann Arbor — The Whitmer administration hired an “outside, independent non-profit” to conduct a nursing home response study back in 2020. That “independent” analysis ultimately claimed that Whitmer’s strategy of placing Covid-infected people inside nursing homes was a great success. The study was released to the Michigan media who took it as gospel, and the swirling questions about what was really happening behind closed doors came to an abrupt end. Now, Michigan Enjoyer has unearthed 50,000 pages of internal health department documents that throw the validity and independence of that study into question. We called the nonprofit’s office a dozen times. The recorded message was the same: “You have reached CHRT — the Center for Health and Research Transformation. Our office hours are Monday through Friday 8:30 am to 4:30 pm Monday through Friday. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, our office space is not open to visitors.” What in the world? Apparently, no one had informed the so-called experts that Biden had officially ended the pandemic three years ago. We left messages. None were returned. So we drove out to Ann Arbor to their office space. Damn their Covid restrictions. A security guard escorted us up to their second-floor suite and key-swiped us in. The place brought to mind an empty appliance box. The lights were on, but there were no people. There were eight cubicles with computer monitors but no computers. No photographs. No stacks of paperwork. Just dust and a moldering coffee pot. The security guard was discombobulated. “I’m just confused,” she said. “Me, too.” I said. Whitmer was facing tremendous pressure over her nursing home policy in the summer of 2020. She and her health experts had co-opted the practice of commingling the sick and healthy from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. But Cuomo had abandoned the practice 40 days into the pandemic under withering criticism from family members of people who had died in nursing homes. Whitmer, inexplicably, continued with the practice. And with the criticism mounting, she needed to show it worked. So her Health Department hired the Center for Health & Research Transformation through another nonprofit whose board of directors is controlled by Whitmer. CHRT was then headed by Marianne Udow-Phillips, a former Blue Cross Blue Shield executive and former director of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services under Gov. Jennifer Granholm. The documents show that Udow-Phillips, a supposedly independent outsider, was actually an insider who was actively communicating with health officials while conducting the study. And they were planning a public relations push before the report was finalized. “We had a productive call with Marianne this afternoon,” a bureaucrat wrote to then Director of the Department of Human Services Robert Gordon. “They plan to issue a press release in conjunction with the report and we discussed the idea of doing a virtual press briefing together.” “Yes they are putting a chart into their report that is very powerful and we should widely disseminate,” Gordon wrote back. “From my perspective, the main points are: CHRT evidence shows the core of our policy, hubs, was reasonable and effective.” The problem with all of this is that Michigan health officials knew the death data in the federally funded nursing homes was comically flawed. Yet the nonprofit took that data at face value, anyhow. A few months before the release of the nursing home report, the director of CHRT emailed HHS officials looking for direction about what to feed the media. “(A reporter) is doing another article on the lack of data in Michigan nursing home cases and deaths from Covid,” wrote Udow-Phillips. “I’m hoping to better understand the data limitations were currently facing and what’s being done to address them. Thanks so much!” In the end, Michigan’s final nursing home death count is at least 25% lower than the final tallies of both the Auditor General of Michigan and the federal government. Udow-Phillips, who also worked as an intermediary between the Health Department and the Michigan press corps, declined an interview. Gordon, who left the Michigan health department in January 2021 with a $155,506.05 severance package and a non-disclosure agreement with Gov. Whitmer, went on to serve as a Biden Asst. Secretary of Health and Human Resources. According to his LinkedIn profile, Gordon is now the vice president of a nonprofit think tank leading efforts to modernize state-level administration systems. Efforts to contact him proved fruitless. His nonprofit has no centralized office and no publicly listed phone number.
Michigan Enjoyer34,871 views • 1 month ago
Donuts don’t go with poisoned dirt too well… Charlie LeDuff
Michigan Enjoyer30,816 views • 1 month ago
Whitmer Gave Us Fake Nursing Home Death Counts Her policy was to commingle the sick and the healthy in nursing homes during Covid, and new documents reveal her administration never gathered the data to find out how many died By Charlie LeDuff Charlie LeDuff Governor Gretchen Whitmer finally said the quiet part out loud about her deadly and disastrous response to Covid-19. “Listen,” she said to popular podcast host Caleb Hammer last November when pushed on her pandemic lockdown orders. “None of us wants to go back and relive that. We were doing the best we could with very little or very bad information.” Very little or very bad information is the least of it. When it came to the admission of infected people into the state’s nursing homes, Whitmer and her health officials were working with no data at all. They allowed the nursing homes to simply make it up. According to an initial search of 15,000 pages of unredacted documents obtained by Michigan Enjoyer, Michigan health officials had no grasp of the number of dead within the state's long-term care facilities. And when pushed by the federal government to supply the data by June 2020, the Whitmer administration simply turned to the nursing homes with a wink and a nod. From March through June—the height of the pandemic—Michigan was among the last states to report nursing home deaths. State health officials had attempted a half-dozen times to tabulate the death count and came up with a half-dozen conflicting numbers. The feds required a death be counted as a nursing home death regardless of whether it occurred in the facility or at the hospital. But by the end of June 2020, only two-thirds of nursing homes had even reported to state health officials. According to health department spreadsheets, the total deaths reported by the homes was a mere 255. (As a comparison, New York State reported nearly 7,000 in the same time frame.) Despite the federal guidelines, a team of bean counters in Lansing was removing hospital deaths, anyhow. Their total was just 99 victims. Caught in a legal and public relations vice, state officials circled back to the nursing homes and asked them to simply self-report a raw number. No name. No age. No data of death. No social security number. It was a simple “take their word for it" arrangement. By mid-June, the Whitmer administration was reporting just 1,947 deaths. Those original nursing home reports sent by nursing home administrators have since been deleted. And a year later, Whitmer’s claim that mixing the sick with the healthy in the same building had lead to fewer deaths would be totally debunked. In August 2020, as the nursing home scandal was enveloping New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, officials in Whitmer’s circle began to panic. On August 14, a blizzard of emails passed between Whitmer health officials and state epidemiologists asking if an update on the true nursing home death toll had been tabulated. “This is of great interest to the governor’s office,” a health department official wrote to an epidemiologist. “May I get an ETA of when this (data) could be refined?” This “refinement” never happened. Instead, a study was published in September by the Center for Health and Research Transformation, an independent consulting firm attached to the University of Michigan. Using the state’s flawed and phony data, the CHRT report claimed that Michigan’s nursing home Covid deaths were well below the national average. CHRT’s findings were taken as gospel among the facile media and the professional fact-checkers. But documents obtained by Michigan Enjoyer reveal a chummy relationship between the CHRT group and state health officials. A few months before the release of its report, the executive director of CHRT was contacted by a reporter who rightly asked why Michigan was among the last states in the union to publish its nursing home death count. Before responding to the reporter, the executive director of CHRT emailed two senior HHS officials looking for direction. “(The reporter) is doing another article on the lack of data in Michigan nursing home cases and deaths from Covid,” wrote Marianne Udow-Phillips. “I’m hoping to better understand the data limitations we’re currently facing and what’s being done to address them. Thanks so much!” It must be noted that the CHRT’s study was funded by the Michigan Health Endowment, a state-created nonprofit whose nine board governors are appointed by the governor. What these communications expose is a feedback loop of cognitive dissonance. The media provided questions to the think tank. The think tank, in turn, asked the government to provide it with a response. This was considered independent, scientific confirmation of Whitmer’s devastating strategy. Udow-Phillips did not respond to request for comment. The phone message at CHRT headquarters, last week, said the office is closed due to the Covid pandemic. CHRT’s findings were eventually debunked by the Auditor General of Michigan in January 2022. The auditor found the death toll in the first 17 months of the pandemic alone to be 42% higher than Whitmer was reporting to the public. Whitmer’s health director testified before the House Oversight Committee that its death number was accurate because the Health Department accurately reported what the nursing homes had told them. Adding to the outrage is a slew of peer-reviewed studies showing that nursing homes that commingled the infected with the healthy across the country had a death rate 72% higher than those that facilities that did not. “There are some actions that are so foolish and so consequential that they beg for outrage,” wrote Dr. James Goodwin of the University of Texas in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “No individual with the slightest knowledge of nursing homes could have forced nursing home to admit patients with COVID-19. The majority of nursing homes were totally unprepared to quarantine patients with COVID-19.” So what is the true death count in Michigan’s long-term care facilities? Remember, Michigan continued to commingle the sick and the healthy in the same buildings throughout the pandemic. New York ended the practice after 40 days. The auditor general counted at least 8,051 dead between March 2020 and July 2021. But Michigan never corrected its total and stopped counting long-term care facility Covid deaths altogether by May 2022. To this day, the Whitmer administration claims total long-term facility total deaths were just 7,324. The true number of dead in the Great Lakes State may be as high as 14,000. We won’t know without an investigation. But Attorney General Dana Nessel refuses to conduct one. And Whitmer? She continues to prop the proverbial folder over her face. “None of us wants to go back and relive that,” she said. “We were doing the best we could with very little or very bad information.” Many of us do want to go back. We remember every time we pray in memory of your loved ones. This isn’t over. We have thousands of documents to go.
Michigan Enjoyer58,028 views • 3 months ago
Disgraced Demo Contractor Blames Duggan for Detroit's Poisoning I was invited for an exclusive interview with Lover Boy, but he chickened out, so here's what I would have asked him By Charlie LeDuff Charlie LeDuff Lover Boy left me standing in a monsoon. I had been invited to his press conference for an exclusive interview to hear former Gayanga CEO Brian McKinney’s side of things regarding the mass poisoning of Detroit. Then, thinking better of it, Lover Boy had me put out on the street. I was standing on Jefferson when the heavens opened. The bums at the bus stop scattered. My papers got drenched. But that’s okay. I had the subject matter memorized. Good thing I'd brought a bullhorn. I shouted my questions over the howling winds while Lover Boy was six floors up, spinning the media with tales of woe and done-me-wrong. I hoped they could hear me up there. McKinney, the former consort of Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield, is being investigated by a host of law enforcement agencies—including the FBI—for faking receipts for clean dirt, charging the city top dollar for it, and then dumping the toxic garbage into the neighborhoods when it should have gone to a landfill. This bad dirt could cause cancer. McKinney agrees that the city has been poisoned. But he blames former Mayor Mike Duggan and his cronies for supplying him with the toxic dirt. The clean up could cost more than $100 million and send the city spiraling back into bankruptcy. And $100 million is exactly the amount McKinney is suing the Detroit Inspector General for. He claims the Inspector defamed him for inspecting his work. That’s like O.J. Simpson suing the LAPD for investigating a break-in. There’s little doubt O.J. did it. But I don’t know if McKinney did. I’ll leave that to Johnny Lawman and the courts. Sheffield, Duggan, and the City Council are all hiding in their badger holes, leaving concerned citizens in the dark. So in the interest of public health, I shouted what I thought were a few important questions through the purifying rains. - Did McKinney remember Mike? Mike was his former foreman in charge of writing up the questionable dirt receipts. Mike reached out to me last week claiming the receipts were forgeries. Mike sent me copies of tickets written in his own hand, showing truck drivers allegedly being in two different places collecting dirt at the same time. Was McKinney aware of this? Mike claims he was. - Or what about McKinney’s former bookkeeper who alleges there was a forgery mill going on in the back office? - Or what about the Northland redevelopment job in Southfield, where the contaminated dirt allegedly came from that went into Gayanga’s demolition holes? Does McKinney know that the prominent contractor on that site is cooperating with the authorities? - Did he discuss business with then-city councilwoman Sheffield while they were “getting to know each other” at a Miami hotel underneath 350-thread count sheets? Sheffield told the public last fall that she never voted on a contract for Gayanga while she was canoodling with McKinney. But that turned out to be a lie. - How did McKinney meet Mayor Mike Duggan? How did he become Hizzoner’s preferred minority demo contractor? Why was he allowed to work without construction insurance? Did Duggan appoint him to the Detroit Institute of Arts board of directors? - What about the millions of dollars subcontractors claim McKinney owes them? Who’s going to pay them? Who’s going pay for this massive clean-up? - And how did McKinney link up with Bobby Ferguson’s old crew? While Bobby was doing time in federal prison for Kwame-related things, McKinney became business partners with Bobby’s ex-wife. He hired Bobby’s cousin. He used Bobby’s equipment and staging yard. I had more questions, but the tropical winds were really buffeting by then. Dirt was blowing in my eyes. No telling where it had come from.
Michigan Enjoyer14,963 views • 20 days ago
Are the Dirt Heaps at the Northland Mall Poisoned? The Detroit Inspector General said toxic dirt came from Southfield, but local politicians haven't admitted there's a problem yet By Charlie LeDuff Charlie LeDuff Southfield — I filed a complaint with the Southfield Police Department this week, requesting an investigation into potential crimes against humanity. Are the citizens of Southfield—like the people of neighboring Detroit—the unwitting victims of a mass poisoning? If there is a benign explanation, we’d love to hear it. But officials from the city of Southfield, the county of Oakland, the state of Michigan, and U.S. federal authorities have not provided one. Thus, we found ourselves at the Southfield PD. It is no secret that there is a sprawling criminal investigation into the origins of dirt used to fill holes in Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan’s decade-long demolition blitz. The Detroit Office of the Inspector General alleges that at least one unscrupulous contractor, Brian McKinney (a man with close ties to Duggan and Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield), diverted contaminated soil into Detroit and used it to fill holes where houses once stood. The IG has had some holes excavated. Tests reveal soil so toxic that it is unsafe for human contact. So where did the sickening soil come from? The IG alleges that at least some of it came from the old Northland Mall site just across 8 Mile Road, in Southfield, a city that bills itself as “The Center of It All.” The question here is obvious: If the people of Detroit have been poisoned, then what about the people of Southfield? Their city leaders, fancying themselves high-end developers, purchased the 100 acres of buildings and parking lots that comprised the iconic, and abandoned, Northland Mall. While demolition was ongoing, Mayor Ken Siver encouraged contractors from around the region to bring him dirt. Mountains of it. “Stockpiling clean dirt for free and storing it on site because we have the space,” Siver told Fox 2 back in 2017. Free, clean dirt? Really? Remember, this was the same time Detroit was caught up in a federal grand jury investigation, suspected of using contaminated highway slag because no clean, affordable dirt could be found. The soil from Southfield that was dumped into Detroit has tested positive for excessive levels of mercury, lead, chromium, and PAH—contamination consistent with roadways and industrial slag. Southfield found itself buried in heavy losses in 2021 and sold the site to a private developer with the promise of up to $200 million in public incentives if he built “a city within a city.” Five years later, there are some half-built condos missing windows and wiring and walls. The developer began excavating the mountain of contaminated dirt to the area's landfills. Eventually, the IG claims, the poisoned dirt made its way to Detroit. But not all of it. Huge mounds of the stuff can be seen today all the way from 9 Mile Road. The tops of the slag heaps have been flattened over the years by whipping winds, giving them the look of the grand mesas of the Colorado Plateau. Seagulls wade in lagoons of brackish water that flow into the sewers and streets. The vista gives one the sickening feeling of staring into a Super Fund site. And Enjoyer has learned that the development company was fined last year for performing work without first removing asbestos. “You know, it’s been here so long, I just sort of got used to it,” said a man working on his building directly across Greenfield Road. “Nobody’s told us a thing about it. We deserve that much. We all got children.” The city that calls itself “The Center of It All” has indeed become the center of it all… all the wrong things. The center of a potential mass poisoning. The center of wasted tax dollars. The center of incompetent political leadership that prefers to bury its head than dig itself out of the problem. The center of a growing environmental scandal. How bad is it? Who knows? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind.
Michigan Enjoyer46,241 views • 2 months ago
Is Petoskey Becoming Traverse City 2.0? A housing development full of condos costing over $1.8 million is sure to only bring the worst sort of people to town By O.W. Root O.W. Root Petoskey — Whenever a new residential building goes up in a Northern town, the reaction from the locals is almost always the same. Squinted eyes and skepticism. The orange cones, the overturned soil, the trucks, the trees coming down, and the mini billboard out front designed to give everyone a little taste of what’s to come. It’s all viewed as a worrying harbinger of unwanted change. That sounds like fuddy-duddy-ism, I know. But it isn’t entirely. The towns on the lake Up North are quaint, beautiful, old, and almost every new build is the exact opposite. True, a new build can’t be an old house. But a new place can be designed to blend naturally with its surroundings. Curiously, they almost never are. The new buildings are almost always ugly eyesores sullying villages that remind us of more human times. New builds also mean more people are coming, and that’s not always a good thing. Yes, we need tourists in the summer, and a certain in-flow of new arrivals every so often is good and natural for a town. It means a place is attractive and desirable. But look at what’s happened to Traverse City. I hate to say it, but I hate going to Traverse City. It’s not a lake town anymore. It’s something much worse. In Petoskey, there’s a lot of construction going on, and it’s not all exactly encouraging. There are more buildings going up right now than any time in the past five years. Driving by some of these sites gives me somewhat of a sick feeling. It feels a little like an early stage Traverse City 2.0. Not all these new builds are equally worrying. The story is a little more complex. There is an actual housing shortage on Little Traverse Bay, and it’s not related to new arrivals who want to buy $750,000 homes. Reasonably priced housing is missing. A common complaint for many business owners is staff shortages. Simply put, normal working people can’t afford to live here, so there aren’t enough workers for the businesses here. That’s a real problem if you want your town to thrive. What we are seeing right now in Petoskey are two kinds of new buildings going up. The difference between them and their potential impacts are stark. Some are critical for the life of the town, and some will most likely attract the worst kind of people. Let us take a look at an example of each type of new build currently going up in Petoskey. The Block at Petoskey The Block at Petoskey is a brand new apartment complex on Standish Avenue, just west of Bear Creek River. It’s in a slow part of town, right at the edge where the houses trickle off and into the more commercial area approaching Meijer. Across the street are a tanning salon and an auto repair shop. The Block at Petoskey is set to include a gym, walking trails, a yoga studio, and a clubhouse. To be honest, The Block at Petoskey has nicer amenities than any apartment complex I’ve ever lived in. It includes just about everything you might want with a 2 bed-2 bath unit going for $1,724 per month. Aesthetically, the Block at Petoskey is okay. It’s not great, but it’s not terrible. It’s just fine. It’s not real bonafide cheap, but it’s not crazy either, and it’s certainly not luxury pricing. It’s built and priced for people who work for a living. It’s a needed development which will benefit the town. The Summit Over Bay Harbor The Summit Over Bay Harbor is an absurd development set to tower over US-31, just north of Bay Harbor. Based on the highly produced sleek simulations found on their website, the units might best be described as modern luxury. They are quite frankly, soulless expensive Lego slop. They have absolutely nothing in common with any of the traditional architecture of the area. They say Northern Michigan about as much as a cactus does. They start at—yes, start at—$1.8 million. Based on their map, they are planning almost 75 units. It’s a very nice area up here, but is it nice enough for 75 $1.8 million units? Eh, I don’t know about that. I’m not sure there is enough capital here to support 75 year-round residents who want to shell out $1.8 million for what amounts to a modern condo overlooking 31 and Bay Harbor. The traditional type of Northern resident (seasonal or year-round) who wants to spend $1.8 million will generally seek out a historical home or build something more culturally in-line with the area. Say what you want about Bay Harbor, but at least they try. There is something a little off about it there only because it’s impossible to build something new that also feels organic and old. But the spirit and direction is right. The hope is correct at Bay Harbor. At least the homes feel like they are attempting some kind of organic integration into the historical architecture and general spirit of the area. The Summit Over Bay Harbor is most likely not going to be for the traditional kinds of residents of Little Traverse Bay. I very much doubt that the majority of the units will be lived in year-round. Most will be short-term rentals. I suspect the units will function more as investments for people who don’t live here. There will be no positive cultural impact. Keeping the lake towns as the lake towns we love is an extremely delicate operation. Balancing new arrivals, housing, jobs, local culture, trying to remain vital while not destroying the reason we want to be here in the first place is like balancing on a tightrope. It needs to be done very carefully. Petoskey needs apartments like The Block at Petoskey. These more reasonably priced places will certainly help to keep working residents here and the town alive year-round. Petoskey doesn’t need the soulless investment units of The Summit over Bay Harbor unless we want to become Traverse City 2.0. And we certainly don’t.
Michigan Enjoyer19,489 views • 1 month ago