The Ann Arbor Independent - A locally owned newspaper in Ann Arbor

by Steve Rosenfeld SECRETARY OF Defense Chuck Hagel unveiled his 2015 Pentagon budget in a detailed speech where he proposed spending $496 billion—about $45 billion less than the White House, retiring a tank-shooting aircraft and spy…

by J.H. Mae THE OTHER DAY I saw an author on TV promoting a book he wrote about how we’ve all been lied to about the health benefits of drinking milk. I guess I’m supposed to bow down to this man – he’s clearly more educated than me –…

The Koch brothers, billionaires, have created a tangled web of 17 nonprofits, PACs and businesses through which they funneled over $400 million dollars in 2012 aimed at influencing national and state politics. Most companies doing business…

by Amanda Whiting WHEN HE WAS nine, he wrote poems that made me weep. When he was ten, I found pornography in his room. When he was twelve, the fistfights began. His grades dropped precipitously. He spent most of his time at school…

Washtenaw County’s former Head Start Director Patricia McGee was put on leave weeks before she retired in December 2011. A county official told a reporter in December 2011 that Ms. McGee was being investigated due to unspecified…

ON MARCH 17 Ms. Josie Parker, Director of the Ann Arbor District Library, spoke before Ann Arbor City Council and confessed that “over the past 36 months” there have been “five heroin overdoses” at the main branch of the public library. The…

FOR FOODIES, Ann Arbor has as many grocery store choices as there are potholes in our roads.  More good news—if you are organically focused you will be able to find options in almost grocery store in the area. But are all organic offerings…

THE MAJORITY OF Michigan voters say Governor Rick Snyder has decreased funding for K-12 schools in the last three years, according to a new Inside Michigan Politics/Lambert, Edwards & Associates/Denno Research poll. By an almost 3:1…

THE PEW RESEARCH Center released a long anticipated “typology” of Americans and their library use. Calling it “the first of its kind,” Pew officials said the report, drawn from data gathered in a recent survey, “sheds light on broader…

by P.D. Lesko THIS NEWSPAPER, UNLIKE  many in the United States, has a regular column that deals with the issues of hunger, homelessness and poverty in our city, state and nation. “Urban Exile” is not fluffy feel-good journalism. The…