Hamtramck_Guy

Louis Aguilar/ The Detroit News

The small-scale food industry is sprouting so quickly that the nearly year-old state law created to nurture it might be stunting its growth, critics say.

Michigan’s cottage food law, which took effect in July 2010, permits individuals to make certain nonhazardous food items in their homes — rather than in commercial kitchen space — and sell it directly to the public.

The law was intended to ease hurdles for small-scale food producers who offer wares such as homemade jams, jellies, baked goods, fruit pies, dried herb mixes, granola, flavored vinegars, popcorn, coated nuts and candy………………………………………… More >

ONONDAGA, N.Y. (AP) — Police say a motorcyclist participating in a protest ride against helmet laws in upstate New York died after he flipped over the bike’s handlebars and hit his head on the pavement.

The accident happened Saturday afternoon in the town of Onondaga, in central New York near Syracuse.

State troopers tell The Post-Standard of Syracuse that 55-year-old Philip A. Contos of Parish, N.Y., was driving a 1983 Harley Davidson with a group of bikers who were protesting helmet laws by not wearing helmets……………. More >

he American Axle plant near the company’s Detroit headquarters at Holbrook and I-75 will close in February, the company announced today.

Approximately 300 hourly and salaried employees work there. Company spokesman Chris Son declined to comment on what will happen to them. The current labor agreement ends Feb. 25, 2012.

The facility produces steering linkages and front and rear axles………………………. More >

Livonia Seeing Largest Black Population Ever

NEW YORK — A catastrophic flood emptied New Orleans of much of its black youth. Powerful social forces may be doing a similar thing to places like Harlem and Chicago’s South Side. Over the past decade, the inner-city neighborhoods that have served for generations as citadels of African-American life and culture have been steadily draining of black children. Last year’s census found that the number of black, non-Hispanic children living in New York City had fallen by 22.4 percent in 10 years.

In raw numbers, that meant 127,058 fewer black kids living in the city of Jay Z and Spike Lee, even as the number of black adults grew slightly. The same pattern has repeated from coast to coast. Los Angeles saw a 31.8 percent decline in its population of black children, far surpassing the 6.9 percent drop in black adults. The number of black children in Atlanta fell by 27 percent………………………….. More >

Flogging someone with a cane causes intense pain and permanent bodily damage. An Australian who was flogged for drug trafficking in Malaysia in the 1970s recalled that the cane “chewed hungrily through layers of” his “skin and soft tissue” and “left furrows” on him that were “bloody pulp.”

It’s tough stuff and generally considered a barbaric punishment that the 21st century Western world would and should never consider. That makes it a bit startling to find a new book by a serious U.S. academic arguing that the U.S. should start flogging criminals. Peter Moskos’ In Defense of Flogging might seem like a satire — akin to Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” an essay advocating the eating of children — but it is as serious as a wooden stick lashing into a blood-splattered back. …………………………………………… More >