DETROIT — A new winter misery index confirms what many Americans in the Midwest and East know in their all-too-chilled bones: This has been one of the harshest winters of our lifetimes.
Just something I want remembered before we get another spate of global warming stories.
And nowhere has been hit harder, relatively, than Detroit.
Detroit is slogging through the most extreme winter it has had since Harry Truman was president, according to an index created by a National Weather Service meteorologist, Barbara Mayes Boustead.
The index is based on cold temperatures and snowfall. And so far Detroit has had more than 6½ feet of snow and 100 days when the thermometer plunged below the freezing mark. Of two dozen cities studied, Detroit alone is in the middle of its harshest winter since 1950.
Boustead uses daily high and low temperatures and daily and accumulated snowfall to come up with a winter index. Officially, it is called the Accumulated Winter Season Severity Index.
‘‘I personally would call this a misery index,’’ said Boustead.
Portland, Maine, was the only city in New England to rank as ‘‘severe,’’ one notch below ‘‘extreme.’’
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And it is not just the winter:
"Detroit offers plan to escape bankruptcy; Pensions to be cut; creditors to get only 20 percent" by Monica Davey and Mary Williams Walsh | New York Times February 22, 2014
DETROIT — Although pensions would be reduced, retired police officers and firefighters “would likely receive in excess of 90 percent of their earned pensions after elimination of cost of living allowances.” Other municipal retirees “would likely receive in excess of 70 percent.”
Related: Detroit Bankruptcy Means Government Can Break Promises
Little different than the hot air they spew during election years.
Governor Rick Snyder, a Republican, said, “Detroit’s comeback is underway” and urged all involved in the city’s case to use the new plan as a “call to action” for pushing along voluntary settlements in the bankruptcy.
Also see: Detroit Dreaming
“The state’s focus,” he said, “is on protecting and minimizing the impact on retirees — especially those on fixed, limited incomes — restoring and improving essential services for all 700,000 Detroit residents, and building a foundation for the city’s long-term financial stability and economic growth.”
The filing is a crucial step forward in Detroit’s efforts to complete its municipal bankruptcy case, the nation’s largest. But by no means will it answer all questions or resolve complex political, financial, and social issues, any of which could thwart Detroit’s hopes for emerging as swiftly from bankruptcy as state and city officials insist it will....
The plan submitted Friday confirms the direction of early drafts, which showed that Detroit would reduce the pensions of retired city workers — a prospect that thousands of retirees have feared for months and that they say the state constitution prohibits — but that creditors would do less well.
Some creditors have complained that the plan improperly favors Main Street over Wall Street, something that could chill lending to other cities, especially those with troubled pension plans.
The money junkies never stop complaining.
Detroit’s plan for emerging from bankruptcy depends on a series of outcomes that are still unknown. Will Michigan lawmakers agree to send state money to help Detroit?
Related: Obama's Dictatorship On Display in Detroit
No help there, not even in the form of an executive order.
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Time to get out of Michigan:
"Michigan man sentenced in road attacks" by Corey Williams | Associated Press February 05, 2014
PONTIAC, Mich. — A man who opened fire on other motorists in a series of attacks that terrified southeastern Michigan in October 2012 was sentenced Tuesday to more than six years in prison in the first of two related cases.
Judge Denise Langford Morris sentenced Raulie Casteel to serve from six years and eight months to 10 years in prison on multiple assault charges, as well as two years for weapons charges. The sentences will run concurrently.
Casteel, a 44-year-old geologist from Wixom, faced up to 12 years in prison after pleading no contest but mentally ill last year to those charges. He faces up to life in prison in a related Livingston County case in which he was convicted last week of terrorism....
During the Livingston County trial, Casteel testified that he shot at the other motorists near the busy Interstate 96 corridor between Lansing and Detroit over a three-day period in October 2012. He said he did so impulsively and because of wild, uncontrolled delusions and paranoia, believing the other drivers were part of a government conspiracy against him.
Is this guy even real, or is this another staged and scripted psyop?
The nearly two-dozen shootings, which took place in four counties, terrified the region for weeks. No one was seriously hurt.
I think my question has been answered.
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"Woman who faked cancer sentenced to 1-year term" by ED WHITE | Associated Press February 20, 2014
SANDUSKY, Mich. — A judge sentenced a Michigan woman to a year behind bars Wednesday for an ‘‘almost mind-boggling’’ scam that tricked an insurance company and swindled people in small communities who believed she was dying of cancer.
Authorities said it was all an extraordinary lie: No doctor has ever stepped forward to even suggest that Sara Ylen had cancer.
Ylen, 38, already is serving a minimum five-year prison sentence in another case of deceit, and the one-year punishment for fraud will run at the same time.
Ylen accepted thousands of dollars from supporters who for years regularly read of her plight in the Port Huron Times Herald. She repeatedly forged medical records, including documents that bore the letterhead of cancer specialists at the University of Michigan.
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FLASHBACK:
"Mich. woman gets 5-year sentence for false rape report" by Ed White | Associated Press, January 18, 2014
PORT HURON, Mich. — A judge sentenced a ‘‘tormented and disturbed’’ Michigan woman to at least five years in prison Friday for falsely accusing two men of rape, a punishment that came after she pleaded no contest to a cancer scam in a separate case that also challenged her credibility....
In December, Sara Ylen, 38, was convicted of making up a story about two men attacking her at her Lexington home, 80 miles northeast of Detroit.
Only government and newspapers can do that.
The jury also convicted her of tampering with evidence by using makeup to create what looked like bruises.
Only government can do that.
Ylen’s integrity has been shattered after years of being considered a sympathetic figure in eastern Michigan.
She accepted thousands of dollars from supporters and was treated by a hospice service for two years after claiming to have end-stage cervical cancer that had spread throughout her body....
No evidence confirming cancer.
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Only government and newspapers can do that.
The jury also convicted her of tampering with evidence by using makeup to create what looked like bruises.
Only government can do that.
Ylen’s integrity has been shattered after years of being considered a sympathetic figure in eastern Michigan.
She accepted thousands of dollars from supporters and was treated by a hospice service for two years after claiming to have end-stage cervical cancer that had spread throughout her body....
No evidence confirming cancer.
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