Rina Miller

The Republican-led Michigan House has passed a bill that would ban public employers from allowing paycheck deductions for political contributions.

It would reinforce a state Supreme Court decision made earlier this year.

Supporters say the legislation isn't anti-union. They say it’s about using government resources fairly.

State Rep. Mike Shirkey (R-Clark Lake) says there's "a long list of private, politically oriented organizations who would love to have the elegance and access to employee deductions of public workers.”

Toyota has sharply downgraded its expectations for what it will earn in the fiscal year that ends in March.

Toyota expects a net profit of $2.3 billion for the fiscal year. That’s less than half the profit it predicted in August.

The automaker is blaming a strong yen, which makes its vehicles less competitive on prices, outside of Japan.

It’s also blaming recent heavy flooding in Thailand, which disrupted the distribution of auto parts.

Ford has issued a recall for two of its models because of wheel problems. The recall includes more than 128,000 Ford Fusion and Mercury Milan models from 2010 and 2011. Ford says only cars with 17-inch steel wheels are affected by recall.

Michigan store owners say shoppers who don’t pay sales tax on Internet purchases are cheating the state and themselves.                                

There’s already a state law that requires a six percent sales tax on online purchases.

Shoppers are supposed to keep track of what they buy and pay the tax on next year’s tax return.

But there’s no real enforcement.

Jim Hallan is president of the Michigan Retailers Association.

He says the state’s brick-and-mortar stores can’t compete and he says that hurts everybody.

A fire at a Detroit bus facility destroyed eight newer buses Wednesday morning.

The fire was more bad news for a city that’s been struggling with a fleet of broken buses. Many passengers have complained about hours-long waits at bus stops.

Steve Serkaian  is the city’s communications director.

He says the fire started under a bus in a storage bay.

Serkaian denies reports that the facility’s sprinkler system didn’t work.

Debtor's Prison

When you step into a Michigan courtroom, crime is supposed to be crime, regardless of social class. But whether you go home or go to jail  sometimes depends on whether you have money.

Let’s say you’re one of the many thousands of people in Michigan who’s unemployed. Or, you’re working in a job that doesn’t cover your bills. Like your rent or mortgage. Or, like child support.

And if you don’t have the money to pay those bills,  you might end up in court. Selesa Likine did. Her husband divorced her. He got custody of the kids.  She lost her home. Likine, who had worked as a realtor, was ordered to pay $1,100 a month in child support. She couldn’t pay it  and the court was not allowed to hear why. So she spent 43 days in the Oakland County Jail.

“The jury in the case never heard that during the period when she wasn’t paying the child support, she was institutionalized with schizo-affective disorder, was declared totally disabled by the Social Security Administration, lost her realtors’ license, was unable to work, and was subsisting on disability income,” says David Moran, co-director of the Michigan Innocence Clinic.

Moran took over Likine’s Case. In October, Moran and the American Civil Liberties Union asked the Michigan Supreme Court for a new trial. They say what happened to Likine is no different than a debtor’s prison – sort of like Dickensian days, when poor people who owed money were thrown into jail.

Likine, who’s in her 40s, lives with her mother now. She takes medicine for her mental illness and says she's stable. But she’s not optimistic about her future. She doesn’t think anyone will want to hire her because she’s a felon.

The lights went out at Michigan Stadium Saturday morning, just an hour before game time with Nebraska.

An isolated power outage at the Big House left the facility without a P.A. system, scoreboard or countdown clocks.

But the game started anyway.

Jeff Arnold is a reporter with CBSsports.com.

He said things got a little complicated.

“It’s wreaked havoc for at least one of the offenses doing down toward the west end of the stadium, where the 25-second play clock is inoperable,” Arnold said.

Power was gradually restored to parts of the stadium, but reporters in the press box had to scramble as laptop batteries ran out of juice.

The national broadcast of the game was uninterrupted because the network had a backup generator.

The cause of the power outage hasn’t been revealed.

The Wolverines beat the Huskers, 45-17.

Michigan’s farmers have an advantage over many other property owners in the state: Their land is rising in value.  

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago says farmland values in Michigan jumped by 16 percent over the past year.

Jim Hilker is a marketing economist at Michigan State University.

He said corn, wheat and soybean prices are up and that’s boosting farmland prices.

But Hilker also said not a lot of farmland  is trading hands because it stays in families.

"If that land comes up for sale, it may not come up for sale for another 30 years -- another person's career," Hilker said. "So if it's land near you, you overpay for it in one sense. You have other land that can help you pay for it and it's only going to be there one time."

Hilker said farmland with good soil in the Thumb and near Toledo is very marketable right now.

Another chapter has been added to a case of a Michigan man fighting the death penalty.

A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected a decision made last August by a three-judge panel to overturn the 2002 death sentence of Marvin Gabrion.

The panel said the jury should have been told about Michigan’s longstanding ban on capital punishment.

According Donald A. Davis, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan, the federal court vacated the panel’s opinion and redocketed Gabrion’s case, which means the death penalty stands.

Michigan’s fight to control invasive species in the Great Lakes could be weakened by a bill passed by the U.S. House this week.

Michigan put a ballast water law into effect in 2007 to keep ships from releasing new invasive species into the Great Lakes.

But the standard would be lowered by a Coast Guard funding bill that’s on its way to the U.S. Senate.

Patty Birkholz is director of Michigan’s Office of the Great Lakes. She says the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Coast Guard had plenty of time to come up with recommendations, but failed to do so.

Now, Birkholz  says, Michigan has the most to lose.

"We know the dangers that we're under with invasive species, both from water and land, and we have to protect ourselves even if the federal government won't standup to the invasive threat out there," Birkholz says.

Birkholz says no new invasive species have been found since Michigan tightened its ballast water standards.

The U.S. House bill also allows the SS Badger car ferry in Ludington to continue dumping coal ash into Lake Michigan. The operator says it can’t yet afford to convert to natural gas.

The Obama Administration plans to nearly double the fuel efficiency requirements for light-duty vehicles by 2025. 

The administration says requiring an average of 54.5 mpg will help drivers save money, reduce U.S. dependence on oil and keep the environment cleaner.

Sean McAlinden is chief economist with the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor.

He says the plan calls for too much, too soon and could be bad for the still-recovering auto industry.

"The same government that did so much to save our domestic industry is laying the groundwork for destroying the industry again, destroying its market, by forcing it to build cars that  people can't afford and may not even want."

McAlinden expects the new standards will increase the cost of a vehicle by so much that people will simply keep their old cars longer. He says drivers already keep their cars for an average of 11 years.

He says it would make more sense to aim for around 42 mpg by 2025.

People in Michigan who use a specific drug to treat attention deficit disorder are having trouble getting it because of a national shortage.

Adderall is a prescription medicine used by children and adults. It’s an amphetamine that helps people who have attention deficit disorder control their symptoms, such as lack of focus.

Caroline Holsonbeck is an Ann Arbor pharmacist.

She said she noticed a shortage of Adderall about a year ago.

Holsonbeck said while there are similar medications, they don’t work for everyone.

"If it was substitutable, we would substitute it. It's not substitutable. It is a highly controlled medication, so the doctor would have to write for something in the same therapeutic category," she said.

The Food and Drug Administration’s Web site shows most manufacturers can’t keep up with demand for Adderall.

The drug is sometimes called “the study drug” by students.

It’s also commonly illegally sold on the street.

The Michigan Supreme Court will not intervene in the fight over a settlement awarded to female prisoners. 

More than 800 women inmates said they were repeatedly raped and abused while in prison.

In 1996, they brought a class action suit against the Michigan Department of Corrections.

In 2009, they were awarded a $100 million settlement.

But Oakland County wanted to know the names of the inmates so it could divert some of the money to crime victims.

Michigan school children would be required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance under a bill passed by the state Senate today.

Students can opt out if they, their parent or legal guardians object.

State Senator Hoon-Yung Hopgood voted against the bill. He believes patriotism doesn’t come from a mandate.

"One of the things I said is that I love my country, not because I say the pledge, but I say the pledge because I love my country," Hopgood says.

Hopgood  unsuccessfully introduced an amendment to protect students who decline to recite the pledge from retaliation by school employees.

The bill  also requires a flag to be displayed in each K-12 classroom in Michigan’s public schools. It does not provide funding to buy the flags.

The measure is supported by the state department of education; it now moves on to the House.

Nurses at the University of Michigan Hospital have ratified a contract that includes wage increases over the next three years.

The Michigan Nurses Association represents the 4,000 nurses at the Ann Arbor hospital.

The union says nurses will have a stronger voice in staffing and technology issues.

An MNA statement says charge nurses will have a say in determining whether more staffing is needed to meet specific patient needs.

Some nurses could see pay increases of $5 to $10 per hour in the last year of the contract.