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Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Oct. 16-18 and beyond
Check out what’s going on around the area this weekend and beyond.
Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Oct. 9-11 and beyond
Check out what’s happening this week.
Markel introduces chemical, oil, gas property cover
Markel Insurance, the insurance business of Markel Group, on Thursday launched a chemical, oil & gas-related energy property coverage for small to midsize, U.S.-domiciled businesses in the chemical…
Michael Douglas Corners Ana Navarro Over Her Politics on 'The View'
After fielding questions from the panel, the actor posed one of his own to the co-host.
State House candidates talk class size, vouchers, mental health in education forum
Candidates for three Tennessee House seats addressed voters at a candidate forum hosted by Clarksville Voices for Education this week.
Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Oct. 2-5 and beyond
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Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Sept. 25-27 and beyond
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Trump SBA to Extend Comment Period After Ranking Member Markey Leads Effort to Rescind SBA Policy that Reclassifies Billion-Dollar Businesses as “Small Businesses”
Trump admin policy would reclassify 114,000 larger businesses as “small” to access small business resources and win federal contracts meant for small businesses Letter (PDF) (Washington, September 23) – This week, the Small Business Administration (SBA) announced its plans to extend the deadline to submit comments on its controversial proposed rule regarding small business size standards until November 20. The Trump SBA’s announcement came shortly after Ranking Member Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), alongside 12 of his Senate colleagues, sent a letter to Administrator Kelly Loeffler demanding that the Trump SBA rescind a harmful policy that would dramatically redefine what a small business is. The Administration’s proposed policy would change the small business size standard to designate 114,000 larger companies some with annual revenue above $1 billion—as small businesses, giving these businesses access to small business resources and federal contracts typically set aside for actual small businesses. In the letter, Ranking Member Markey and the lawmakers emphasized that small businesses will be shut out of the federal contracting space as government agencies award contracts to larger businesses, causing small businesses to lose revenue, lay off workers, or close their businesses entirely. “For more than 70 years, SBA’s mission has been clear: promote and protect the interests and viability of small businesses. By proceeding with this proposed methodology and rule, SBA moves further away from its mission of facilitating healthy small business participation in the U.S. economy. We urge SBA to rescind these proposals, meet in earnest with small businesses across the country, and discuss the proposal and methodology with congressional committees of jurisdiction. SBA must be committed to developing measured increases to the size standards that do not reward large, billion-dollar companies but instead helps our small businesses survive, grow, and thrive.” The lawmakers highlighted the following points in their letter: Under the Trump SBA’s new size standards, the highest receipts-based standard would exceed $1 billion in annual revenue—more than 20 times the current $47 million maximum—and the highest employee-based standard would reach 3,600 employees—more than twice the current 1,500 employee maximum. Specific increases include an increase in size of nearly 492% for banks, 1,500% for law firms, and more than 2,051% for private equity firms. Of the 114,000 businesses that would be newly classified as small, more than 37,000 of these businesses have collectively won more than 100,000 federal contracts worth approximately $71 billion in Fiscal Year 2025 alone without a small business designation. If SBA included the awards won by these 37,000 businesses in its Fiscal Year 2025 analysis, small business contracts would have accounted for 38% of all federal contracts, instead of the 27% that SBA announced this summer. The letter was co-signed by Senators Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), Angela Alsobrooks (D-Md.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Christopher Coons (D-Dela.), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Mark Warner (D-Va.), and Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.). Ranking Member Markey is fighting to protect small businesses in Massachusetts and across the country from the Trump SBA’s harmful policies that put big businesses and billionaires over American small businesses, workers, and families. In August, Ranking Member Markey slammed the Trump SBA’s proposal to overhaul its small business size standards to benefit big businesses over small businesses. In July, Ranking Member Markey and House Small Business Committee Ranking Member Nydia M. Velázquez (D-NY-7) introduced a Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to rescind the Trump administration’s policy that bans green card holders from accessing essential Small Business Administration (SBA) loans to start and grow their businesses. Also in July, Ranking Member Markey and Senator Hirono submitted a comment letter to the Small Business Administration (SBA) opposing a proposed rule change by Trump’s SBA to the 8(a) Business Development Program that would harm underserved small business owners and entrepreneurs. In June, Ranking Member Markey released a new report highlighting Trump’s drastic reduction in federal contracting dollars awarded to American small businesses. ###
Business owner reacts to part of Bailey Street parking structure closing
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Retiring Michigan senator to lead USC politics center
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), who is retiring from the Senate at the end of this term, will join the University of Southern California (USC) as a professor and co-director of their politics program, …
Abdul El-Sayed takes on economy, affordability in Saginaw stop
At a town hall in Saginaw, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed said Mid-Michigan’s job security and economy require major public investment in manufacturing, education, health care and small
Michigan politicians float gas tax suspension amid 'bloodsucking' gas prices
Fuel prices continue to rise Friday, frustrating drivers across Mid-Michigan. At a gas station in Lansing, drivers were filling up their tank for 4.97 per gallon.
Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Sept. 18-20 and beyond
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Baby Gaga is here! Lady Gaga and fiancé Michael Polansky welcome first child
Lady Gaga is a mom! The pop star and fiancé Michael Polansky welcomed their first baby together.
Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Sept. 4-6 and beyond
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Bayern CEO shuts down Real Madrid-Michael Olise transfer rumors
Bayern Munich CEO says they never received an offer for their star player.
Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Sept. 4-6 and beyond
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The primary is over now come the primetime mistakes
Not every candidate is Deion Sanders at Primetime — Abdul El-Sayed and Darline Graham face questions about whether they're ready for the Senate.
47-Year Business Printing Plus Sold to New Minuteman Press Franchise Owner Hamed Dadgour in Mountlake Terrace, WA
MOUNTLAKE TERRACE, Wash., Sept. 01, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Hamed Dadgour is the new owner of Minuteman Press in Mountlake Terrace, WA. Hamed p...
Jake Reiner details call from sister Romy after parents’ murders
Jake Reiner recalled the morning his parents, Rob and Michele Reiner, were discovered dead, revealing that he declined a call from sister Romy.
Family-friendly fun, outdoor adventures and live entertainment: Weekend events across mid-Michigan
Whether you're looking for educational programs, outdoor experiences or evening entertainment, communities throughout Bay, Saginaw, Midland and Isabella counties are hosting events throughout the weekend.
Michigan Dem AG turns on El-Sayed over terror attack response, warns of mentality that 'bothers me a lot'
Dana Nessel says Abdul El-Sayed's response to the Temple Israel attack appeared to make excuses for domestic terrorism targeting Jewish worshippers.
MDARD announces funding for Saginaw townhome project, West Branch business
New investments announced by the Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Wednesday at the Upper Peninsula State Fair include grant funding for projects in mid-Michigan.
Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Aug. 14-16 and beyond
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The U.S. Healthcare System is Already Mostly Socialized
Now that Abdul El-Sayed is the Democratic nominee for Michigan’s open Senate seat, the outcome of this crucial race will depend mainly on two things: Whether Republicans succeed in demonizing El-Sayed because he’s brown and a Muslim, and whether they succeed in demonizing him as a left-wing radical. I will defer for the now the question of whether bigotry will be effective this year, although I will address it another day. What I want to address instead is El-Sayed’s signature issue — healthcare. Yes, El-Sayed advocates Medicare for All, a position the usual suspects denounce as “socialism.” I will get to the politics of his stance soon. Today, however, I want to talk about the substance. We should be clear that El-Sayed doesn’t even call himself a socialist. On the contrary, he explicitly disavows the label, saying “I’m a capitalist who just knows about capitalism”. In fact, as I explained in a previous post, the policies that El-Sayed advocates qualify him as a social democrat, not a socialist. Still, El-Sayed advocates a system under which the government would pay almost all medical expenses. Isn’t that socialism? Well, if that is the criterion then much of U.S. healthcare is already socialist. In fact, the government’s role is so large that U.S. healthcare is better described as partially privatized socialism than as anything resembling a free market. Let’s start with the raw numbers on health insurance, which pays the bulk of Americans’ medical expenses. Americans receive health insurance either from private companies or from public programs, overwhelmingly Medicare and Medicaid. Here’s what the breakdown of coverage and spending between private and public looked like in 2024: While a majority of Americans with health insurance get it from private companies, well over 100 million of us are covered by government programs instead. And these government programs pay more total dollars for medical bills than the private insurers do. Why do government programs that cover a minority of the population account for a majority of health insurers’ outlays? Mainly because Medicare covers seniors, and we’re expensive. Also, while Medicaid covers many younger Americans, disabled and elderly beneficiaries account for most of its spending. Even by the raw numbers, then, U.S. health insurance looks as much public as private. But that understates the government’s role: Private health insurance in the U.S. is both highly regulated and heavily subsidized. This is obviously true for the insurance coverage purchased by tens of millions of Americans through the exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act. But employment-based health insurance, which covers 161 million Americans, is far more of a government creation than most people realize. For employment-based insurance exists largely because of huge implicit government subsidies that come with major strings attached. Here’s how that works. If your employer pays you $10,000, that’s taxable income. But if your employer pays $10,000 toward a company health insurance plan that meets certain criteria, it isn’t taxable. That’s a huge effective subsidy, running at more than $300 billion a year. Take that subsidy into account, along with the more than $100 billion per year spent subsidizing policies purchased under the ACA, as well as the outlays on Medicare and Medicaid, and net effect is that the government pays for more than two-thirds of Americans’ health insurance. Granted, there are strings attached. Roughly speaking, employment-based health plans can’t discriminate based on medical history — that is, they can’t deny coverage to employees with pre-existing conditions — and they also can’t offer the plans only to highly compensated employees — a health plan that is only for the C-suite is considered taxable income. So given the restrictions of the federal tax code, employer-based health insurance is a lot like Obamacare, which also prohibits discrimination based on medical history and provides subsidies to make insurance affordable to lower-paid workers. The fact is that virtually all of private healthcare insurance is already well under some form of government control through regulation and tax subsidies. How should we think about this system? First of all, is Medicare socialist? Don’t tell anyone, but the way Medicare operates — it covers every senior’s medical expenses, whatever they turn out to be, while being funded by taxes that depend on one’s income — could be summarized by the old Marxist slogan “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” And back in 1961, when Ronald Reagan was the face of a last-ditch effort by the American Medical Association to block the creation of Medicare, he denounced Medicare as “socialized medicine” and warned that it would destroy our freedom. In reality, American freedom survived until Jan. 20, 2025, while Medicare is immensely popular, with an 82 percent favorable rating in the most recent KFF survey. Medicaid, government health insurance for lower-income Americans, comes in at 73 percent. This is in sharp contrast to public views about private insurers, who are widely disliked if not hated and accused of denying essential care. Furthermore, if Medicare is socialism, then the whole U.S. health insurance system, with the government paying most of the bills and placing conditions on private insurers, is almost equally socialist. If you insist on calling any program the government pays for and regulates socialist, then U.S. healthcare would best be described as a partially privatized form of socialism. And one must ask, what is the point of the part that is privatized? Do private insurers add anything positive? Or are they simply parasites, skimming off money that could have been paying for care? The case for viewing insurers as parasites is strong. Many Medicare benefits are now delivered via Medicare Advantage, that is, plans paid for by the government but run through insurance companies. MedPAC, an independent advisory commission, estimates that last year Medicare Advantage plans were overpaid by $84 billion, thanks to practices such as “upcoding,” in which patients’ health problems are overstated to get larger sums from Medicare. Assessing the waste from employer-based insurance is harder, but most evidence suggests that private insurers have substantially higher administrative costs than Medicare does. Furthermore, the complexity of private insurance, with multiple payers all trying to deny care when they can, is a huge burden both on providers — doctors, nurses, and hospitals — and on patients. What do private insurers offer to compensate for these costs? One must go through intellectual contortions to avoid the conclusion that they are, in fact, parasites. Which brings me back to El-Sayed. In supporting Medicare for All, he’s basically calling for an end to the partial, parasitic privatization of a healthcare system that is already hugely dependent on public funding. When one looks at it that way, it’s not at all a radical proposal. Admittedly, the political lift requires overcoming the opposition to higher taxes to pay for Medicare for All. Political realism rather than economics was the reason I and many other progressives supported Obamacare, with all its complexities, rather than demanding an immediate move to Medicare for All. But the political calculus may very well have shifted since the 2000s, as Americans are fed up with a system of unaffordable premiums, rampant claim denials, and byzantine claim administration. Moreover, funding healthcare insurance through taxation would allow for a much more progressive distribution of the cost. That is, compared to the present system, middle-income households would pay less as high-income households would pay more. And the U.S. would stop wasting large sums on pointless administrative costs. So let’s be clear: El-Sayed’s healthcare platform is perfectly reasonable on the merits of cost, fairness and health efficacy. And with private insurers never more hated, while millions of Americans are losing their health insurance, 2026 may be its time. MUSICAL CODA
Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Aug. 7-9 and beyond
Check out what’s happening around town this weekend.
Democrat U.S. senate candidate Stevens campaigns at Detroit church
U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., campaigns for the U.S. Senate seat on the. eve of the primary election at Wendell Anthony's church in Detroit, Sunday.
Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of July 31 to Aug. 2 and beyond
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Dem supported 'Green New Deal' after receiving nearly $60k from energy groups, now wants Congressional seat
Democrat Sean McCann's energy contributions from DTE Energy resurface as he campaigns to unseat Rep. Bill Huizenga in Michigan's 4th district.
Wildfire smoke raises health concerns for Mid-Michigan outdoor workers
Smoke from Canadian wildfires is moving into Michigan, creating air quality concerns for people who spend long hours outside.
Elissa Slotkin picks side in Democratic primary for her former seat in Congress
U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin endorsed a former Navy SEAL in the swing district Democratic primary for her former U.S. House seat in mid-Michigan.
Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of July 10-12 and beyond
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Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of July 3-5 and beyond
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Trump's FISA threat is like 'cutting off your nose to spite your face,' says Sen. Slotkin
Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., says Trump's threat to block FISA reauthorization is like "cutting off your nose to spite your face."
RFK Jr. pans processed food during visit to Charlotte's Country Mill
Secretary of Health and Human Services visited mid-Michigan on Tuesday, June 16, to tout Trump administration policies that require more fresh foods to be offered through food subsidy programs.
Qualifying results: Henry Ford Health 200 at Michigan International Speedway
Here are the complete qualifying results for the Henry Ford Health 200 at Michigan International Speedway on Friday afternoon.
Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of May 29 and beyond
Here is a look at what’s going on in the region.
UM Health-Sparrow celebrates “517 Day” with special onesies for newborns
Mid-Michigan celebrated its 517 area code Sunday, and University of Michigan Health-Sparrow marked the occasion by honoring babies born on May 17.
Mid-Michigan business briefs highlight merger, branch
Zolton Law Offices and the Weiler Law Group are proud to announce their merger, effective May 1, becoming Weiler Zolton Law Group.
Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of May 8-10 and beyond
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Girls Math and Science Day Inspires Future STEM Leaders in Mid-Michigan
Girls Math and Science Day was held March 14 and saw more than 150 participants.
Michigan congressman in the crosshairs of gas price politics
In 2023, Tom Barrett used $4-a-gallon gas to win a mid-Michigan seat in Congress. Now he's playing defense amid high gas prices under GOP leadership.
Mid-Michigan Matters: Celebrating science and improving scientific literacy
Throughout April, Michigan State University will be holding its Science Festival.
Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of April 3-5 and beyond
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Girls in Math and Science Day welcomes young scientists with unique STEM experiences
The Mid-Michigan Graduate Women in Science chapter and campus RSO hosted a Girls in Math and Science Day on March 14. This year’s event had the highest attendance since the pandemic, with an estimated 150 kids, 150 volunteers and 80 parents in attendance.
UM Health-Sparrow Mobile Health Clinic Bridges Care Gaps
The University of Michigan (UM) Health- Sparrow Mobile Health Clinic delivers critical, no-cost medical services directly to communities in need across Mid-Michigan.
Michigan Voices: Seeking understanding after Trump's SOTU|Opinion
During the State of the Union Address, bad blood boiled over. Trump called Democrats “crazy.” Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan, wore a \
Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Feb. 6-8 and beyond
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Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Jan. 30 to Feb. 1 and beyond
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Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Jan. 23-25 and beyond
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Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Jan. 16-18 and beyond
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Sports Powerhouse Fanatics Pushes Into Entertainment With Launch of Fanatics Studios
The joint venture with OBB Media is launching with a Tom Brady docuseries, a deal to produce the ESPY Awards and deals with LA28, MLB and the WWE.
Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Jan. 9-11 and beyond
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Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Jan. 2-4 and beyond
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Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Dec. 26-28 and beyond
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Mid-Michigan entertainment for the weekend of Dec. 12-14 and beyond
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