Michigan Enjoyer
@mich_enjoyer • 21,164 subscribers
Your guide to being alive in Michigan.
Shorts
Videos
Is El-Sayed's Campaign Funded by Elderly Fake Donors? ActBlue says an 88-year-old widow has given over $150k to Dems over the past five years, but she says that's not possible By Charlie LeDuff Charlie LeDuff Milan — Out in the country on a rutted dirt road lined with corn lives an old woman and her dog. Elizabeth Waffle, 88, was forced to move into a shabby trailer two years ago after her house burned down. She owns an old pickup truck but no computer. Nevertheless, Waffle, who lives on a modest pension, is a true believer in liberal causes and continues to make small political donations by way of ActBlue—the Democrat online fundraising platform. But somehow, those few dozen small donations she has made over the past five years have transmogrified into 14,696 donations totaling more than $150,000—the equivalent of eight donations a day, every day for the past five years, averaging $9.18. “One hundred and fifty thousand?” Waffle said with real surprise. “Hell no. I don’t have that kind of money.” She says she has contributed to Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Socialist running for Michigan’s U.S. Senate seat, but not 47 times spanning the last two years, as federal filings show. El-Sayed promises to get money out of politics. He makes a great show of refusing corporate PAC money. But that’s just wordplay. El-Sayed does take special interest money. He takes money from his father-in-law. Most concerning, he takes money from ActBlue. The subject of multiple investigations, the fundraising platform is accused of “rinsing” foreign money and massive private donations by using the stolen names and addresses of real, often elderly Americans to fabricate hundreds of small-dollar donations. Names like Elizabeth Waffle. ActBlue CEO Regina Wallace-Jones recently invoked her Fifth Amendment rights 22 times during a congressional hearing regarding foreign contributions. According to FEC campaign contributions compiled by Bob Cushman, ActBlue shows Waffle donating from her trailer, even though she has no computer and spotty internet access. It also shows her donating from an apartment she rented in town two years ago after her house burned down. Sometimes it shows Waffle donating from both the trailer and the apartment on the same day. It shows her donating to out-of-state candidates she’s never heard of. “This is very abnormal,” said Waffle, who sat in the trailer threshold looking over the paperwork I had brought. “I think it’s wrong, and I think there’s something in there that’s off.” El-Sayed’s campaign brags that he’s the top Michigan fundraiser off the ActBlue platform, having raised 10 times the money from small-dollar donors than his primary opponent, Haley Stevens. Stevens has also taken ActBlue money. As has Slotkin, Whitmer, Nessel, Benson, Gilchrist, and the entire Democrat gang. But it is Abdul who plays the sanctimony card. If he is really serious about getting corrupt money out of politics, then he ought to get off ActBlue and return the money. Anything else is elder abuse.
Michigan Enjoyer1,811,083 просмотров • 8 дней назад
Detroit Contractors Plastic-Wrapped a House to Keep Out Poisoned Dirt City officials heard we were documenting the incompetence and lurked around the block By Charlie LeDuff Charlie LeDuff Detroit — Sometimes the rumbling and bumbling of the Detroit City bureaucracy is so dumb-assed, you have to write about it. Who? A gaggle of officials creeping up and down an all but abandoned block in city vehicles, trying to conceal themselves. Why the cloak-and-dagger routine? Because they were trying to avoid the penetrating gaze of our camera lens. Where? 4554 25th Street, on the city’s west side near Warren Avenue. What? This is the site of the city’s most notorious demolition boondoggle. The hole where a house once stood was filled with dirt so contaminated with toxic chemicals and metals that the contractor is charging the city $93,000 to clean it out and refill it. It only cost $22,500 to tear down the house in the first place. The site is so sick—apparently—that the contractor was ordered by the city’s demolition department to completely wrap the neighboring house in heavy plastic to keep the poison particles from wafting inside. The problem is, the city never informed the owner of 4545 25th Street. The house was partially wrapped, but had to be unwrapped because no one from the city had bothered to ask the owner for permission. This turned out to be a good thing since workers weren’t sure if they had wrapped the homeowner inside. Fortunately, they had not. When the owner finally arrived home from work, the city had her sign a permission slip handwritten on loose-leaf paper. Only then was the house rewrapped, giving it the look of a giant bounce house. Workers wore hazmat gear and respirators. The homeowner smoked cigarettes. A young mother across the street was not notified about the removal of the poisoned dirt, either. Once informed, she demanded that her house, too, be wrapped. Her complaints only earned her some plastic sheeting taped across her windows. When contractors began excavating the super-toxic soil from the lot, they discovered an underground swamp due to a broken water pipe from a previous, adjacent city demolition. Contractors pumped the water out of the super-toxic swamp. Some of it spilled into the street. After 3 or 4 feet of the toxic soil was removed and carted away, the contractors stopped excavation work altogether. They left a gaping hole, even though the soil was so toxic that the house had to be entombed in plastic. To prevent the poison particles from going airborne, contractors then built a giant lean-to made of lumber and plastic wrap and placed it across the entire hole. The side facing the house, however, was left open. And when the wind blew, the plastic billowed like sheets on a clothesline before tearing loose from the lumber. The homeowner informed me that Stevie Wonder used to practice piano in the house where the hole now sits. That hole has now become a billboard of neglect and abuse so large that even a blind man can see it. We filmed the whole thing over three days. City Hall got wind that we were out there. They panicked. They held emergency meetings. Housing officials, health officials, demolition officials, building officials, and an old white hippy in a silver sedan were dispatched to the site. When they saw our camera, they would drive up the street, turn the corner, turn the next corner, turn the third corner, and then park at the end of the block from where they had originally come. Dumb.
Michigan Enjoyer20,178 просмотров • 1 день назад
Bright Ideas From the Dimmest Bulbs Will Ruin Us Everyday Michiganders go without power despite all the talk about "infrastructure modernization" By Charlie LeDuff Charlie LeDuff When the power goes out, the light bulb goes on and the political candidates scramble to make dumb videos. This proves, once again, that a fool and her money are soon elected. It rained a little bit last week, and more than a million Michiganders found themselves in the dark. What does Jocelyn Benson do? She makes a freakish selfie from a bluff at a lake house somewhere, commiserating with the hoi polloi who—yet again—were baking in the darkened streets of Detroit. “I have a plan to change these unfair profit driven rate hikes,” she said dressed in a black blazer in 95 degree heat accessorized with a splendid view of a lake and beach behind her. “But also ensuring we’re investing and modernizing our energy grid.” She said that last week, too, in different lame video about high-speed trains. Her buzzwords seem to be: “modernizing infrastructure.” But that’s exactly how DTE and Consumers make their profits. Investing in “modern infrastructure.” What the monopolies do not do is upkeep the current infrastructure. There’s no profit in it. What we really need is for the power companies to cut the trees and maintain the existing grid. Benson instructs us to go to her website to see the plan. Go to the website. There’s no plan at all. Dumb. Then there’s Perry Johnson. He’s got a video. He’s got lots of videos. One of my favorites is him standing in an open collar, remembering how a hundred years ago his parents used to be poor. That’s why the mega-millionaire wants to return $4,747 to our pockets. Nice number. Johnson says he’s going to do a mega-audit and find the waste to give us the money. But how do you settle on a dollar amount before you do an audit to find the money? Dumb. Haley Stevens wants to be your senator. So there she stands on the Detroit River, claiming that the Gordie Howe Bridge is being shanghaied by Matty Moroun, a corrupt billionaire crony of Donald J. Trump. Moroun, who owns the rival Ambassador Bridge, is Trump’s biggest contributor, she says in a cringy voice. Trouble is, Matty Moroun died six years ago. This proves once again that Stevens knows little about international affairs or Michigan. Again, dumb. “Doctor” Abdul El-Sayed—he of little professional accomplishment—can be found on Instagram, prancing about in a suburban cowboy costume. He wants to expand Obamacare into Medicare for All. The problem there is that Obamacare exploded medical costs and now there are more uninsured people than ever before. They’re not the poor. They’re the middle class. And the country is broke. Dumb. I like social media as much as the next guy. I can’t afford cable. Or health insurance. Or air-conditioning at peak hours. But it’s going to take more than some yard signs and lame videos to convince me they know what’s going on out here.
Michigan Enjoyer158,877 просмотров • 22 дней назад
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 Enjoyer375,165 просмотров • 6 месяцев назад
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 просмотров • 7 месяцев назад
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Charlie LeDuff DENIED entrance into the Mackinac Policy Conference! Charlie LeDuff
Michigan Enjoyer83,556 просмотров • 2 месяцев назад
One tower was built out of spite! Lottie Moorehouse
Michigan Enjoyer19,925 просмотров • 13 дней назад
Abdul El-Sayed Is a Paper Doctor With an Empty Résumé The people's champ has never treated a patient, and the little work he has done hasn't improved health in Detroit By Charlie LeDuff Charlie LeDuff A cop told me recently that he got a call from a rich white man complaining about a suspicious black man roaming his neighborhood. Cops hate those kinds of calls. It puts them in a bad spot. But cops have to respond to calls. So he did. Turned out, the black man was an Amazon driver. And naturally, the white man had a sign in his yard that read “Black Lives Matter.” Now, there’s a new sign on the white man’s lawn: “Abdul for U.S. Senate.” Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is running on a platform of good union jobs, money out of politics, and Medicare for All. I don’t understand the attraction. It’s doubtful the rich white man ever worked in a factory or has to worry about medical bills. Let’s call it virtue signaling for virtue’s sake. It takes the sting out of white privilege. For you workday humps who’d like to know something about the candidate beyond slick 30-second commercials, it’s worth noting that El-Sayed never worked in a factory, and aside from some part-time gigs at various colleges, his resume is thin. Very thin. The first thing you need to know is that El-Sayed is a paper doctor. He’s never treated a patient, is not licensed in Michigan, and never passed the board examinations. He can’t so much as dispense aspirin from an ambulance. The second thing you need to know is that El-Sayed, 41, has worked just two real jobs in his adult life, totaling less than four years, according to his resume. This from a guy who wants to be senator for life. What’s troubling is where he worked and what he actually accomplished: He was appointed as the top public health official in Detroit and then Wayne County. Both departments are an historical quagmire of corruption and incompetence. Believe me, I know, I helped put one director behind bars for, among other things, embezzling public health dollars to pay for hair plugs. For his part, El-Sayed was appointed as Detroit’s health director in 2015 by then-Mayor Mike Duggan. At that time, as the city was emerging from its historic bankruptcy, El-Sayed’s health department was funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars into a pet program run by Duggan’s mistress. The program was supposed to lower infant mortality rates in the city. After just 17 months on the job, El-Sayed resigned to run for governor. Then Mistress-gate scandal exploded and infant mortality skyrocketed. Nothing changed. To El-Sayed’s credit, before resigning as health director, he commissioned a report that showed Duggan’s demolition blitz was poisoning the city’s children. That program is now the subject of a sprawling FBI investigation. However, El-Sayed the candidate has said little about it. A couple years and cups of coffee later, El-Sayed was appointed in 2023 as the medical chief of Wayne County. According to his own campaign commercial, El-Sayed’s biggest accomplishment was a partnership with a nonprofit that supplied 16,000 eye glasses to needy children. What the commercial does not tell you is that the nonprofit existed for a decade beforehand and the county’s portion was funded primarily by Biden’s Covid bucks. One-time inflationary federal dollars is no solution to a health crisis. All the while, life expectancy in Detroit continues to crater from pre-pandemic levels, hovering around 70 years old. That’s hardly an effective record. There are also serious questions about El-Sayed’s campaigns finance problems, including indications of straw donors, actual contributors blowing past legal limits, and a Super PAC committed to spending millions of dollars on his behalf. Then there are the disturbing questions regarding the mental fitness of those he surrounds himself with, including a former staffer charged with terrorism, a current staffer who says all white women are racist (ironically, that staffer herself is a white woman), and a prominent podcaster who once said America deserved 9/11. And can we get a timeline of when he actually lived in Michigan? But those are stories for another day. Go ahead and plant your yard signs rich white guy. That's your right. Just remember, you reap what you sow.
Michigan Enjoyer47,109 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
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 Enjoyer139,583 просмотров • 4 месяцев назад
Why Canada Gets to Dump Its Trash in Michigan Michigan is a cheap place to dump and Nafta made waste not subject to tariffs By Charlie LeDuff Charlie LeDuff It’s the Canadians, again. They’re literally dumping on us. Millions of tons of industrial waste pour into Michigan’s landfills every year from Canada. Enough to build two Empire State Buildings of garbage. We can’t stop it. And it’s all the fault of Nafta and the U.S. Constitution. That notorious trade deal provided the legal framework that prevents Michigan from stopping Toronto’s detritus from passing through Detroit. Under the compact, solid waste is legally classified as a “commodity.” And because that commodity—garbage—is entirely “manufactured” in North America, it avoids a tariff. Man in shirt points at Canadian garbage truck highlighting cross-border waste disposal issues Michigan’s dumping fees are cheap—about half the cost of Ontario’s. It’s so cheap neighboring states also dump on us. We’re surrounded by more garbage per person than any state in the Union. New York recently tried hauling in nuclear waste from the World War II-era Manhattan Project. Ohio attempted to truck in toxic phosgene dregs from the East Palestine train disaster. Phosgene is a substance so deadly that it’s banned by the Geneva Convention. Intense local opposition stopped both Ohio and New York’s poison from being buried here, but their highways, byways, and baby diapers still pour in every day and there’s not much we can do about it. But then there’s Canada: a nation of environmental moralizers who live in a vast expanse but can’t seem to find a place to put their garbage besides their neighbor’s lawn. Person waves at passing truck near stop sign as Canadian waste haulers transport garbage to Michigan landfills The Constitution’s commerce clause forbids Michigan from charging out-of-state and international garbage haulers a higher price than we pay ourselves. That can only be done by an act of Congress. And you know Michigan’s unserious Congressional delegation. So we in the Great Lakes State are stuck with mountains of foreign shit, the stench of methane and rot, and hundreds of Canadian trucks busting up our roads each day. There is too much division in Michigan between the red-hatters and the green-thumbers. But I’ve got an idea I think we can all agree upon. Tariff their garbage. Big beautiful tariffs. The best tariffs probably in the history of the world. The president has sweeping executive powers. Put a 100% tariff on Canadian garbage, and we can stop the flow altogether. And after that, maybe we can talk about opening the new bridge.
Michigan Enjoyer47,952 просмотров • 1 месяц назад
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 просмотров • 1 год назад
Looks like the Southfield mayor is afraid… should he be? Charlie LeDuff
Michigan Enjoyer76,914 просмотров • 3 месяцев назад
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 Enjoyer182,939 просмотров • 10 месяцев назад
Is Northland Selling Poisoned Dirt as Topsoil? The feds are digging in, and one of the companies that dumped contaminated dirt into the city is now responsible for part of the cleanup By Charlie LeDuff Charlie LeDuff There are so many scoundrels involved in the potential mass poisoning of Metro Detroit that it was right for the Detroit Police to turn their case over to the FBI. The conflicts of interest are obvious. The tendrils of this scandal reach to the highest levels of Detroit and Southfield city halls, where the leaders continue to claim they know nothing. And the feds are digging. The case is widening, according to sources. And the case is starting reveal the tell-tale signs of an organized racket. In the meantime, the ding-dongs of the public bureaucracy bury their heads and hide behind rule books and claims of jurisdiction. All the while, tests have shown that the dirt in hundreds of holes contains toxins and heavy metals so pernicious they can permeate cell walls and lead to cancer and cognitive impairment. The Michigan Department of Environment Great Lakes and Energy will not involve itself, preferring to pass jurisdiction to city leaders who are subjects of the federal investigation themselves. The Center for Disease Control told me two weeks ago that the data the city of Detroit collected on 77 poisoned holes last year is useless because the city did not test the topsoil—an industry standard. Moreover, no new results have been publicly posted since last November. The Michigan Department of Transportation does not sufficiently track where its highway slag is being dumped (hint: in Detroit's demolition holes). The Michigan Economic Development Corporation doles out graft to pay for $4,500 coffee makers but can’t supply soil analytics for brownfield redevelopment projects. The City of Detroit itself has handpicked 650 sites for testing. How? By what criteria? Why so few? To date, just 175 of those 650 have been tested. About 145 have come back hot. That’s more than 80%. Back in 2019, Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield wrote to Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib asking for a federal investigation into the poisoned dirt. A couple months later, Sheffield flew off to Miami for an Easter weekend with Brian McKinney, the founder of Gayanga Co. who is now in the federal crosshairs for dumping the poisoned dirt. In turn, Tlaib called for a federal investigation. Nothing came of it then. And today Tlaib stands mute while running for re-election as a protector of the people and the environment. Meanwhile, a company named SC Environmental won contracts from the City of Detroit to clean up some of Gayanga’s poisoned holes. But SC Environmental has been found to have been involved in at least 25 poisoned holes itself. Gayanga was suspended from the demolition program. SC Environmental continues to work. Why was Gayanga suspended and SC Environmental wasn’t? Further adding to the plot is that SC Environmental was kicked out of the program back in 2022 for using unsourced dirt, leaving demo holes open, and not abating asbestos. Calls to the company were not returned. Then there’s this: Dirt at the old Northland Mall redevelopment site is being sifted and sold for top soil, sources say. Northland is the very place the Detroit Office of Inspector General believes to be the source for at least some of Gayanga’s killer dirt. Southfield Mayor Ken Siver and his bureaucrats promised interviews, and then canceled. Health bureaucracies refuse to step in. I leave it to you to suppose why. But the question remains: How big is this? Hundreds of holes. Thousands? Tens of thousands? We may never know. And that’s precisely the game being played here by the government. Collective stupidity and amnesia. Bury your head and hope it all goes away. The old saying goes you can’t fight city hall. But the FBI can. I wish Johnny Fed all the luck. He’s the only hope we have.
Michigan Enjoyer13,159 просмотров • 15 дней назад
Expensive mistake, Ford… Jay Murray (JZ DeLorean)
Michigan Enjoyer109,508 просмотров • 7 месяцев назад
Do you know where the most beautiful beach in Michigan is? Buddy Moorehouse
Michigan Enjoyer11,348 просмотров • 16 дней назад
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 просмотров • 4 месяцев назад
The Best Cliff Jumping Spot in Michigan If you can't jump into Lake Superior from Blackrocks in Marquette, you probably couldn't last a winter in the U.P. By Jack Ducote Hemlock Hobo Marquette — In the Upper Peninsula, summer moves fast. While the rest of the state deals with bad weather, winter in the U.P. is a different beast. That means Yoopers try to make the most of the limited summer they have. They excel at cramming as much activity as possible into three beautiful months before the cold comes calling again. And they are tough! When you live in a place where there can be blizzards in May and snow piles 6 feet high, you either toughen up or leave. Both factors come together 5 minutes north of Marquette at Presque Isle Park. It’s a little outcrop of rocks and forest that juts into Lake Superior. You know you’re close when you pass the super tankers loading up with iron ore. It’s a gorgeous place to picnic or go for a run, but the real attraction is the Blackrocks, exposed slabs of rock surrounded by deep, clear water. In a state that is relatively flat, it’s one of the best cliff jumping spots you can find. If you’ve been cliff jumping before, the Blackrocks aren't much of a challenge. At its highest point, it’s maybe 20 feet from the top to the water. It’s an easy jump that is easily conquerable by the ordinary Joe. It only gets difficult when you hit the water and realize it’s 45 degrees. Lake Superior is cold year-round, but in early June, when I jumped, the water was freezing because the ice only melted two months ago. Hitting the water felt like taking an ice bath. The swim to shore is way longer than it looks from the cliff and can be pretty dangerous if you aren’t prepared. One local told me he liked to snorkel and rock hound in the water around the cliffs, and he was decked out in a full wetsuit to keep the cold at bay. He often has to pull tourists out of the water who jump in and can’t handle the cold. Blackrocks is more than just a tourist spot. For locals, it’s something more. Every town has a must-see place and for Marquette, that’s Blackrocks. It’s a perfect distillation of the Marquette experience. You’re surrounded by a lake so vast it feels like an ocean. In the summer, the cliffs are prettier than anywhere in the U.P. And yet the cold water lurks below, just like how the winter is on everyone’s mind, even during the brightest and hottest summer days. If you can’t jump from here, then you aren’t going to make it in Marquette. Jumping proves you’re tough enough to handle the cold, that you have the fortitude necessary to handle all the extremes the Upper Peninsula can throw at you. But it also proves that you know how to let loose and enjoy the moment. Marquette is a weird city, and I mean that as a complement. It’s full of crystal stores, secondhand clothing shops, and fusion restaurants. There are normal people living normal lives to be sure, but most people don’t move there just to work a 9-5. There are better places to live in Michigan for that. Marquette’s remote, it’s cold, it’s relatively small. The people who move to Marquette are different. They want that remoteness. They want that space to be themselves. They know how to have fun when it’s time to have fun. Jumping off the cliff is the ultimate shit test. If you won’t even jump, then you aren’t going to fit in. So, if you go to Marquette, head to Blackrocks, just to prove you have it in you.
Michigan Enjoyer13,124 просмотров • 24 дней назад