Borders Group announced on Sunday that it plans to delay paying some of its bills, which are due at the close of January, to help "maintain liquidity" while attempting to finish the restructuring of its debt.
Last week, Borders confirmed commitment for $550 million in financial assistance from General Electric Capital. The financing is subject to conditions that include securing $175 million from other lenders and resuming store closures.
The nation's second largest book chain laid off 45 employees, most of them at the company's headquarters. Last month, Borders delayed payments to publishers as it began seeking new financing. Compounding the situation, earlier this month the chain said payments would be delayed to "vendors, landlords and others."
Borders said in a statement on Sunday that the company "understands the impact of its decision on the affected parties, but ... is committed to working with its vendors and other business partners to achieve an outcome that is in the best interest of Borders and these parties for the long term."
Shedding light on the case is one St. Louis business attorney, "The company is taking some risky moves to become more financially solvent, which should provide a very interesting outcome."
The book chain has about 19,500 employees nationwide, mostly throughout 650 Borders and Waldenbooks stores. Borders has shown a loss of almost $800 million since 2006.
Bloomberg News reported that resources from GE does not factor out a possible bankruptcy reconstruction.
"They have a long way to go before seeing any major improvements" said a Salt Lake City business lawyer who is also following the case.
31 January 2011
21 January 2011
Meijer seeks settlement with insurance providers
After a court battle that revealed some of Meijer's secret payouts to Acme government officials, the Grand Rapids-based retailer has settled a lawsuit with its insurance providers.
Meijer solidified a settlement with American Home Assurance Co. out of New York - a company that sued in the summer of 2010. American Home Assurance said it was not responsible for more than $2.2 million of the $4.4 million in payments Meijer made to Acme officials that derived the retailer's illegal campaigning in Acme.
Insurance lawyers from both sides told the court judge that they need 30 days to finalize a mediation deal. The attorneys also declined to comment on any specifics of the settlement.
"The settlement is about as confidential as it can get" said one Oklahoma City insurance lawyer who has been tracking Meijer's legal issues from the beginning.
Last year, Meijer's top lawyers had mistakenly revealed the settlement amounts paid to Acme officials. The exposed legal documents revealed that Meijer paid the former Acme treasurer $2 million and another Acme supervisor $700,000.
New York's American Home argued that it was not responsible to pay for Meijer's public, $1.5 million settlement with five Acme commissioners and trustees because the retailer publicized "known false information" about the officials, failed to offer information about the lawsuit, and did not utilize it underlying coverage held by another entity.
As a response, Meijer counter-sued American Home Assurance as well as its insurance broker (Marsh U.S.A. Inc.)
"Meijer's legal disputes are panning out to be an interesting turn of events" said a Tucson insurance defense lawyer who is following the case.
The insurance claim dispute effectively resolved two lengthy mysteries in Meijer-Acme story: the 2007 legal settlement with the former Acme treasurer and the subsequent unannounced deal with the Acme supervisor.
Meijer later paid out $190,000 due to civil fines for violating State campaign finance regulations. The county prosecuting attorney awaits a state Supreme Court decision to see if he can prosecute unidentified individuals at Meijer who allowed the illegal activity.
Meijer solidified a settlement with American Home Assurance Co. out of New York - a company that sued in the summer of 2010. American Home Assurance said it was not responsible for more than $2.2 million of the $4.4 million in payments Meijer made to Acme officials that derived the retailer's illegal campaigning in Acme.
Insurance lawyers from both sides told the court judge that they need 30 days to finalize a mediation deal. The attorneys also declined to comment on any specifics of the settlement.
"The settlement is about as confidential as it can get" said one Oklahoma City insurance lawyer who has been tracking Meijer's legal issues from the beginning.
Last year, Meijer's top lawyers had mistakenly revealed the settlement amounts paid to Acme officials. The exposed legal documents revealed that Meijer paid the former Acme treasurer $2 million and another Acme supervisor $700,000.
New York's American Home argued that it was not responsible to pay for Meijer's public, $1.5 million settlement with five Acme commissioners and trustees because the retailer publicized "known false information" about the officials, failed to offer information about the lawsuit, and did not utilize it underlying coverage held by another entity.
As a response, Meijer counter-sued American Home Assurance as well as its insurance broker (Marsh U.S.A. Inc.)
"Meijer's legal disputes are panning out to be an interesting turn of events" said a Tucson insurance defense lawyer who is following the case.
The insurance claim dispute effectively resolved two lengthy mysteries in Meijer-Acme story: the 2007 legal settlement with the former Acme treasurer and the subsequent unannounced deal with the Acme supervisor.
Meijer later paid out $190,000 due to civil fines for violating State campaign finance regulations. The county prosecuting attorney awaits a state Supreme Court decision to see if he can prosecute unidentified individuals at Meijer who allowed the illegal activity.
11 November 2010
Chrysler CEO Says ‘Successful Transformation’ Is Under Way
Bloomberg
Chrysler Group LLC, the U.S. automaker operated by Fiat SpA, has laid the “groundwork for a successful transformation,” the companies’ chief executive officer said today.
Sergio Marchionne, CEO of both Chrysler and Fiat, addressed workers in a message obtained by Bloomberg on the day the U.S. automaker raised its operating profit forecast for the year and said its net loss narrowed to $84 million in the third quarter.
“The changes we are bringing about are beginning to enter into the DNA of the company,” Marchionne said in the message. “You can tell by how the language and tone of conversations have changed, by the long hours people are working, and by the way teams form and function.”
Shawn Morgan, a Chrysler spokeswoman, confirmed the memo was sent.
“We knew when we began this reconstruction process that the road back would be a long one,” Marchionne said. “We’ve hit some key milestone and we’ve made progress in important areas. We have laid the groundwork for a successful transformation. I ask you to continue to have faith in your leadership.”
Sergio Marchionne, CEO of both Chrysler and Fiat, addressed workers in a message obtained by Bloomberg on the day the U.S. automaker raised its operating profit forecast for the year and said its net loss narrowed to $84 million in the third quarter.
“The changes we are bringing about are beginning to enter into the DNA of the company,” Marchionne said in the message. “You can tell by how the language and tone of conversations have changed, by the long hours people are working, and by the way teams form and function.”
Shawn Morgan, a Chrysler spokeswoman, confirmed the memo was sent.
“We knew when we began this reconstruction process that the road back would be a long one,” Marchionne said. “We’ve hit some key milestone and we’ve made progress in important areas. We have laid the groundwork for a successful transformation. I ask you to continue to have faith in your leadership.”
10 November 2010
Inside a $4.5M Court Award: Lawsuit questions Blue Cross' Power
The Detroit Free Press
Therapy program fight raises red flags about giant's reach
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan -- a nonprofit created to keep health costs affordable -- has tried to derail physical therapy programs designed to save auto giants Ford and Chrysler millions of dollars annually, according to a review of hundreds of pages of e-mails and internal documents produced in a lawsuit against Blue Cross.Blue Cross, the state's largest health insurer, strongly denies the allegations.
Yet an Oakland County jury disagreed this summer, finding the insurer wrongfully interfered with physical therapy firm TheraMatrix's efforts to create a program for Chrysler. TheraMatrix was awarded $4.5 million. Blue Cross has appealed.
Now, antitrust investigators at the Michigan Attorney General's Office and the U.S. Justice Department are reviewing records in the case, along with other practices by the Blues. Competitors say Blue Cross is so powerful that it negotiates deals with hospitals others don't get -- driving up health costs to customers insured by other companies.
Together, these issues have put Michigan in a national spotlight.
The tale of Pontiac-based TheraMatrix's efforts to carve out a cost-saving physical therapy program for some of the nation's largest employers raises larger questions about whether relationships between insurers and hospitals are inflating the cost of health care and stifling competition critical to controlling costs under the nation's new health law.
"It's really an exposure of the entire health care situation in this state," said Robert Whitton, TheraMatrix's CEO.
Inside a $4.5M court award
As health care costs soared nationwide, a small Michigan firm gave Ford a proposal to cut its physical therapy costs. The automaker signed up for an instate pilot program, which was so successful Ford expanded it last year to cover about 390,000 employees, retirees and their families nationwide.
Yet the cost-saving program created by Pontiac-based TheraMatrix has come under attack from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan.
Court records allege Blue Cross used its position as the state's dominant insurer to try to crush TheraMatrix as it worked also to sign up Chrysler and General Motors. A USA Today review of hundreds of pages of e-mails and internal documents that are part of a lawsuit TheraMatrix filed against Blue Cross indicates that TheraMatrix's efforts to carve out a niche market in managing outpatient physical therapy costs was seen as a threat by officials at Blue Cross and by some Michigan hospitals.
"They tried to destroy us," said Robert Whitton, a physical therapist who founded TheraMatrix in 1981. TheraMatrix has cut Ford's physical therapy costs by about half, Whitton says, saving millions of dollars annually. Under Blue Cross, Ford's costs averaged $745,000 a month just in Michigan, he said. "We shouldn't have been in this position for creating a program that helped save health care costs."
As health care costs soared nationwide, a small Michigan firm gave Ford a proposal to cut its physical therapy costs. The automaker signed up for an instate pilot program, which was so successful Ford expanded it last year to cover about 390,000 employees, retirees and their families nationwide.
Yet the cost-saving program created by Pontiac-based TheraMatrix has come under attack from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan.
Court records allege Blue Cross used its position as the state's dominant insurer to try to crush TheraMatrix as it worked also to sign up Chrysler and General Motors. A USA Today review of hundreds of pages of e-mails and internal documents that are part of a lawsuit TheraMatrix filed against Blue Cross indicates that TheraMatrix's efforts to carve out a niche market in managing outpatient physical therapy costs was seen as a threat by officials at Blue Cross and by some Michigan hospitals.
"They tried to destroy us," said Robert Whitton, a physical therapist who founded TheraMatrix in 1981. TheraMatrix has cut Ford's physical therapy costs by about half, Whitton says, saving millions of dollars annually. Under Blue Cross, Ford's costs averaged $745,000 a month just in Michigan, he said. "We shouldn't have been in this position for creating a program that helped save health care costs."
A different picture
Blue Cross denies trying to hurt TheraMatrix's business.
"The picture that they're trying to paint is the big whatever giant with a chainsaw in his hand coming down on the little guy," said Jeffrey Rumley, Blue Cross' general counsel. "I just don't buy into that too easily."
Court records depict Blue Cross -- a nonprofit created under Michigan law to provide affordable health care -- as working with a major hospital to stop expansion of TheraMatrix's program. They also reveal that Blue Cross barred TheraMatrix from the insurer's medical provider network, which covers most Michigan patients.
An Oakland County jury awarded TheraMatrix $4.5 million in July, finding that Blue Cross breached an agreement with TheraMatrix to process claims for its Ford program, then wrongfully interfered with TheraMatrix's efforts to launch a Chrysler program. Blue Cross has appealed.
Last month, the U.S. Justice Department sued Michigan's Blue Cross, accusing the insurer of a different kind of anticompetitive behavior: paying hospitals higher prices for medical care in exchange for a promise they would charge competing insurers as much as 40% more than they charge Blue Cross. Blue Cross says the suit is without merit.
Blue Cross denies trying to hurt TheraMatrix's business.
"The picture that they're trying to paint is the big whatever giant with a chainsaw in his hand coming down on the little guy," said Jeffrey Rumley, Blue Cross' general counsel. "I just don't buy into that too easily."
Court records depict Blue Cross -- a nonprofit created under Michigan law to provide affordable health care -- as working with a major hospital to stop expansion of TheraMatrix's program. They also reveal that Blue Cross barred TheraMatrix from the insurer's medical provider network, which covers most Michigan patients.
An Oakland County jury awarded TheraMatrix $4.5 million in July, finding that Blue Cross breached an agreement with TheraMatrix to process claims for its Ford program, then wrongfully interfered with TheraMatrix's efforts to launch a Chrysler program. Blue Cross has appealed.
Last month, the U.S. Justice Department sued Michigan's Blue Cross, accusing the insurer of a different kind of anticompetitive behavior: paying hospitals higher prices for medical care in exchange for a promise they would charge competing insurers as much as 40% more than they charge Blue Cross. Blue Cross says the suit is without merit.
A battle over business
TheraMatrix's battles with Blue Cross go back to 2005. That's when Ford decided to try to save money by carving out physical therapy benefits from an employee health plan administered by Blue Cross. That February, Ford hired TheraMatrix to manage that aspect for its Michigan employees.
At the time, physical therapy spending for all Michigan Blue Cross customers was increasing by almost 17% a year, an internal Blue Cross report shows.
TheraMatrix saved Ford money by creating a network of physical therapists willing to accept $68 per visit --significantly less than what Ford had been paying under Blue Cross. TheraMatrix also reviews treatment plans so patients don't get too many or too few visits.
But the project nearly was derailed when Blue Cross said it couldn't process claims for TheraMatrix, records show. About the same time, TheraMatrix alleges, Blue Cross decided to create its own discount physical therapy network.
Ford kept TheraMatrix; the program began in August 2005.
Michigan hospitals, which provide outpatient physical therapy, weren't happy about the lost business, records indicate.
TheraMatrix's battles with Blue Cross go back to 2005. That's when Ford decided to try to save money by carving out physical therapy benefits from an employee health plan administered by Blue Cross. That February, Ford hired TheraMatrix to manage that aspect for its Michigan employees.
At the time, physical therapy spending for all Michigan Blue Cross customers was increasing by almost 17% a year, an internal Blue Cross report shows.
TheraMatrix saved Ford money by creating a network of physical therapists willing to accept $68 per visit --significantly less than what Ford had been paying under Blue Cross. TheraMatrix also reviews treatment plans so patients don't get too many or too few visits.
But the project nearly was derailed when Blue Cross said it couldn't process claims for TheraMatrix, records show. About the same time, TheraMatrix alleges, Blue Cross decided to create its own discount physical therapy network.
Ford kept TheraMatrix; the program began in August 2005.
Michigan hospitals, which provide outpatient physical therapy, weren't happy about the lost business, records indicate.
A string of urgent e-mails
By early 2006, Chrysler, which also used Blue Cross to administer its health plan, was looking to hire TheraMatrix. This set off a series of urgent e-mails among top Blue Cross executives, court records show.
David Kee, head of Blue Cross' Chrysler account, warned: "we need to do something fast and dramatic." His strategy included showing that Chrysler could lose its hospital discounts if it went with TheraMatrix. "I think a carefully worded document, perhaps from the hospitals themselves, could be valuable," he wrote.
About a week later, e-mails show, such a letter was being offered by Beaumont Hospitals Vice President Mark Johnson -- who had been a Blue Cross vice president before joining the metro Detroit hospital system in 2004.
Blue Cross Vice President Kim Sorget said in reply that Kee could "use the letter as leverage with his customer to not proceed with the carve out."
In August, after the TheraMatrix trial, Blue Cross rehired Johnson as a vice president. Blue Cross said Johnson, Kee and Sorget were unavailable for comment.
Beaumont spokesman Mike Killian said the hospital system had a financial duty as a nonprofit to stop honoring the discounts if necessary. When Ford went with TheraMatrix, it cost Beaumont $400,000 a year, Johnson testified at trial. Beaumont facilities would have lost $2 million a year if Chrysler and GM had followed suit, he said.
In spring 2006, Chrysler and the UAW agreed TheraMatrix would start managing physical therapy for the automaker around July 1.
Two weeks later, Blue Cross kicked TheraMatrix out of the insurer's provider network, which meant a huge loss of patients and doctor referrals.
"It was devastating," said TheraMatrix President Bob Read. Blue Cross controls more than 60% of Michigan's insurance market, covering nine times as many people as its closest competitor.
Blue Cross refused for more than a year to let TheraMatrix back into its provider network, and the Chrysler program became critical to TheraMatrix's survival, Whitton said.
Beaumont Hospitals gave Blue Cross the letter about potentially canceling discounts for Chrysler and Ford on June 26, 2006.
The next month, Chrysler decided not to go forward with the program. Chrysler spokesman Michael Palese said the company had no comment.
Blue Cross, in court records, contends TheraMatrix hasn't proven the insurer's actions influenced Chrysler's decision.
Blue Cross let TheraMatrix back into its provider network in August 2007, but a year later was again threatening to kick it out. The offense: TheraMatrix was discussing a potential program with GM, a letter sent to TheraMatrix shows.
Whitton said that's when TheraMatrix sued Blue Cross.
Neither Chrysler nor GM went ahead with a TheraMatrix program.
The U.S. Justice Department also is reviewing records, a June e-mail to TheraMatrix shows.
Both agencies said they can neither confirm nor deny any possible investigation.
By early 2006, Chrysler, which also used Blue Cross to administer its health plan, was looking to hire TheraMatrix. This set off a series of urgent e-mails among top Blue Cross executives, court records show.
David Kee, head of Blue Cross' Chrysler account, warned: "we need to do something fast and dramatic." His strategy included showing that Chrysler could lose its hospital discounts if it went with TheraMatrix. "I think a carefully worded document, perhaps from the hospitals themselves, could be valuable," he wrote.
About a week later, e-mails show, such a letter was being offered by Beaumont Hospitals Vice President Mark Johnson -- who had been a Blue Cross vice president before joining the metro Detroit hospital system in 2004.
Blue Cross Vice President Kim Sorget said in reply that Kee could "use the letter as leverage with his customer to not proceed with the carve out."
In August, after the TheraMatrix trial, Blue Cross rehired Johnson as a vice president. Blue Cross said Johnson, Kee and Sorget were unavailable for comment.
Beaumont spokesman Mike Killian said the hospital system had a financial duty as a nonprofit to stop honoring the discounts if necessary. When Ford went with TheraMatrix, it cost Beaumont $400,000 a year, Johnson testified at trial. Beaumont facilities would have lost $2 million a year if Chrysler and GM had followed suit, he said.
In spring 2006, Chrysler and the UAW agreed TheraMatrix would start managing physical therapy for the automaker around July 1.
Two weeks later, Blue Cross kicked TheraMatrix out of the insurer's provider network, which meant a huge loss of patients and doctor referrals.
"It was devastating," said TheraMatrix President Bob Read. Blue Cross controls more than 60% of Michigan's insurance market, covering nine times as many people as its closest competitor.
Blue Cross refused for more than a year to let TheraMatrix back into its provider network, and the Chrysler program became critical to TheraMatrix's survival, Whitton said.
Beaumont Hospitals gave Blue Cross the letter about potentially canceling discounts for Chrysler and Ford on June 26, 2006.
The next month, Chrysler decided not to go forward with the program. Chrysler spokesman Michael Palese said the company had no comment.
Blue Cross, in court records, contends TheraMatrix hasn't proven the insurer's actions influenced Chrysler's decision.
Blue Cross let TheraMatrix back into its provider network in August 2007, but a year later was again threatening to kick it out. The offense: TheraMatrix was discussing a potential program with GM, a letter sent to TheraMatrix shows.
Whitton said that's when TheraMatrix sued Blue Cross.
Neither Chrysler nor GM went ahead with a TheraMatrix program.
The U.S. Justice Department also is reviewing records, a June e-mail to TheraMatrix shows.
Both agencies said they can neither confirm nor deny any possible investigation.
09 November 2010
Cox fires Andrew Shirvell, Says he used State Resources in Attack on Gay Student
The Detroit Free Press
Behavior wasn't appropriate, former assistant attorney general is told
Andrew Shirvell, the assistant attorney general under fire for his attacks on a University of Michigan student, has been fired.
Shirvell had been criticized for his blog in which he calls Chris Armstrong, the president of the Michigan Student Assembly, a radical homosexual, a Nazi and Satan’s representative on the assembly. Philip Thomas, Shirvell's attorney, had said his client is expressing his free-speech rights.
The firing was confirmed in a statement this afternoon from AG Mike Cox, who said Shirvell was fired for conduct unbecoming a state employee, especially that of an assistant attorney general.
“To be clear, I refuse to fire anyone for exercising their First Amendment rights, regardless of how popular or unpopular their positions might be. However, Shirvell repeatedly violated office policies, engaged in borderline stalking behavior, and inappropriately used state resources, our investigation showed.”
Among the examples cited by Cox in the statement:
• Showed up at the home of a private citizen three times, including once at 1:30 a.m. That incident is especially telling because it clearly was about harassing Mr. Armstrong, not engaging in free speech.
• Further engaged in behavior that, while not perhaps sufficient to charge criminal stalking, was harassing, uninvited and showed a pattern that was in the everyday sense, stalking.
• Harassing Armstrong's friends as they were socializing in Ann Arbor;
• Numerous calls to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office, Armstrong's employer, in an attempt to slander Armstrong — and ultimately attempting to cause Pelosi to fire Armstrong;
• Attempting to "out" Armstrong's friends as homosexual — several of whom were not gay.
Cox said Shirvell engaged in his campaign against Shirvell on company time and posted attacks on Armstrong on the Internet while at work.
“Finally, Shirvell lied to investigating assistant attorneys general on several occasions during his disciplinary hearing.”
A hearing that was supposed to be held Tuesday was moved up to this afternoon. Thomas, Shirvell's attorney, said he showed up for the meeting and was read one sentence.
“They said essentially that as a result of Andrew’s conduct, it’s become impossible for him to carry out his duties as an attorney general.”
Thomas said the attorney general’s office left a message on his office voice mail Saturday morning, telling him the hearing had been moved to this afternoon. He didn’t get the message until this morning.
Thomas said he is shocked and confused, saying he doesn’t know what could have happened between Friday afternoon, when the hearing began, and Saturday afternoon.
“This smells political to me,” Thomas said.
He said Shirvell has received excellent performance reviews from his bosses, and that his employers knew of Shirvell’s off-work activities.
“There’s been a tremendous piling on against Andrew. The liberal media started this tempest in a teapot.”
“Andrew’s reaction is that he’s devastated over the loss of his employment,” Thomas said.
Armstrong’s attorney, Deborah Gordon, issued a statement this afternoon in which she said the AG’s office made the correct decision. Gordon and Armstrong have filed complaints with the Michigan Grievance Commission, asking it to investigate Shirvell and possibly disbar him.
“The next step must be a complete retraction of all the malicious lies and fabrications by Mr. Shirvell, and a public apology to Chris Armstrong, his family and the others Mr. Shirvell has slandered.”
Gordon went on to say it’s time for Shirvell to realize there are consequences to his “reckless, outrageous statements and actions and that he is solely responsible for those consequences.”
Shirvell had been criticized for his blog in which he calls Chris Armstrong, the president of the Michigan Student Assembly, a radical homosexual, a Nazi and Satan’s representative on the assembly. Philip Thomas, Shirvell's attorney, had said his client is expressing his free-speech rights.
The firing was confirmed in a statement this afternoon from AG Mike Cox, who said Shirvell was fired for conduct unbecoming a state employee, especially that of an assistant attorney general.
“To be clear, I refuse to fire anyone for exercising their First Amendment rights, regardless of how popular or unpopular their positions might be. However, Shirvell repeatedly violated office policies, engaged in borderline stalking behavior, and inappropriately used state resources, our investigation showed.”
Among the examples cited by Cox in the statement:
• Showed up at the home of a private citizen three times, including once at 1:30 a.m. That incident is especially telling because it clearly was about harassing Mr. Armstrong, not engaging in free speech.
• Further engaged in behavior that, while not perhaps sufficient to charge criminal stalking, was harassing, uninvited and showed a pattern that was in the everyday sense, stalking.
• Harassing Armstrong's friends as they were socializing in Ann Arbor;
• Numerous calls to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office, Armstrong's employer, in an attempt to slander Armstrong — and ultimately attempting to cause Pelosi to fire Armstrong;
• Attempting to "out" Armstrong's friends as homosexual — several of whom were not gay.
Cox said Shirvell engaged in his campaign against Shirvell on company time and posted attacks on Armstrong on the Internet while at work.
“Finally, Shirvell lied to investigating assistant attorneys general on several occasions during his disciplinary hearing.”
A hearing that was supposed to be held Tuesday was moved up to this afternoon. Thomas, Shirvell's attorney, said he showed up for the meeting and was read one sentence.
“They said essentially that as a result of Andrew’s conduct, it’s become impossible for him to carry out his duties as an attorney general.”
Thomas said the attorney general’s office left a message on his office voice mail Saturday morning, telling him the hearing had been moved to this afternoon. He didn’t get the message until this morning.
Thomas said he is shocked and confused, saying he doesn’t know what could have happened between Friday afternoon, when the hearing began, and Saturday afternoon.
“This smells political to me,” Thomas said.
He said Shirvell has received excellent performance reviews from his bosses, and that his employers knew of Shirvell’s off-work activities.
“There’s been a tremendous piling on against Andrew. The liberal media started this tempest in a teapot.”
“Andrew’s reaction is that he’s devastated over the loss of his employment,” Thomas said.
Armstrong’s attorney, Deborah Gordon, issued a statement this afternoon in which she said the AG’s office made the correct decision. Gordon and Armstrong have filed complaints with the Michigan Grievance Commission, asking it to investigate Shirvell and possibly disbar him.
“The next step must be a complete retraction of all the malicious lies and fabrications by Mr. Shirvell, and a public apology to Chris Armstrong, his family and the others Mr. Shirvell has slandered.”
Gordon went on to say it’s time for Shirvell to realize there are consequences to his “reckless, outrageous statements and actions and that he is solely responsible for those consequences.”
Other actions
Until now, Shirvell has won battles. Armstrong dropped a request for a personal protection order in Washtenaw court. The Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s office declined to file a stalking charge against Shirvell, saying that while Shirvell’s comments “are offensive and mean spirited,” they don’t meet the definition of harassment under Michigan’s stalking statute.
The University of Michigan also essentially lifted Shirvell’s ban from campus, allowing Shirvell on campus but requiring him to stay away from Armstrong.
Until now, Shirvell has won battles. Armstrong dropped a request for a personal protection order in Washtenaw court. The Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s office declined to file a stalking charge against Shirvell, saying that while Shirvell’s comments “are offensive and mean spirited,” they don’t meet the definition of harassment under Michigan’s stalking statute.
The University of Michigan also essentially lifted Shirvell’s ban from campus, allowing Shirvell on campus but requiring him to stay away from Armstrong.
08 November 2010
GM Said to Have Disagreed With Treasury Over IPO Price Range
Bloomberg
General Motors Co. and its government owners disagreed over the price for the automaker’s initial public offering before settling on a range between $26 and $29 a share, according to eight people familiar with the matter.
The U.S. Treasury was seeking a split-adjusted price of $30 a share, referred to as the “Obama number” by officials in the administration, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks were private. At that price, the government could say it recovered all the money spent on GM’s bailout under President Barack Obama, though not what his predecessor put in.
GM and its bankers for weeks had pushed for an IPO price in the low-to-mid $20s to help ensure demand and a significant gain on the first day of trading, the people said. The United Auto Workers retiree health-care trust and the Canadian government, which are also shareholders, sought a $30 offer price as well to maximize their return.
“If you’re a seller, you don’t want to leave money on the table,” said Maryann Keller, president of Maryann Keller & Associates in Stamford, Connecticut. “The Treasury would look stupid if they priced it at $20 and the first day of trading it closed at $29.”
Over the past month, Detroit-based GM and its bankers agreed to a higher offering price range as they watched rival Ford Motor Co.’s shares rise, said two people familiar with the matter. At a meeting in mid-October, the parties settled on $25 to $29 a share. As Ford shares climbed, they boosted the bottom of the range.
Ford Rising
Ford advanced to a six-year high yesterday after saying its U.S. vehicle sales rose 15 percent in October. The shares gained 75 cents, or 5.2 percent, to $15.18 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, bringing the increase for the year to 52 percent. The Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker’s market capitalization has reached $52 billion.
At the midpoint price of $27.50 each, GM would have a market value of $41.25 billion, based on 1.5 billion shares that will be outstanding after the offering, according to the company’s filing and data compiled by Bloomberg.
President Barack Obama wants to recover as much of the taxpayer’s $80 billion investment in the auto industry as possible, two of the people said. The Treasury department cut its expected losses to $17 billion in August from an estimate of $28.2 billion a year ago.
“You now have all those U.S. auto companies showing a profit,” Obama said in an interview on the ABC-TV program “The View” in July. “They’ve rehired 55,000 workers. We are going to get all the money back that we invested in those car companies.”
Obama’s Money
Obama was referring only to the money his administration spent rescuing the auto industry, not the $13.4 billion in aid granted under President George W. Bush, according to the White House.
With a 3-for-1 share split, the U.S. government needs an average share price of almost $44 to get back all of the $49.5 billion it put into the automaker under Bush and Obama. That is based on the $131 a share breakeven level cited by a person familiar with the matter in September.
Including the repurchase of the Treasury’s preferred shares after the IPO, taxpayers will have received $9.5 billion in repayments, interest and dividends from GM since the automaker emerged from bankruptcy in July 2009, according to the Treasury.
Take away those payments and the money invested under Bush, and the Obama administration’s figure drops to $26.6 billion. With 912.4 million shares that Treasury currently owns, it can cover that if it gets an average of $29.15 a share. It plans to sell 263.5 million shares in the IPO.
A Treasury spokesman, Mark Paustenbach, and Noreen Pratscher, a GM spokeswoman, declined to comment about the pricing decision.
Market Value
GM’s underwriters, including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc., pushed in meetings over several weeks for a lower price that would ensure the offering would be oversubscribed and value GM at a lower level relative to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, also called Ebitda, than Ford, said six of the people.
After weeks of negotiations, the Treasury, the UAW and the Canadian government settled with GM and its underwriters on a price that was between what the two sides wanted, said the people.
The Treasury department agreed that it would be beneficial to start with a lower price so the shares would rise on the first day, creating good publicity for the offering, two of the people said. The Canadian government and the UAW health-care trust, which own 11.7 percent and 17.5 percent of GM, respectively, sided with the U.S. Treasury, five people said.
CEO Gap
GM’s underwriters argued that the automaker will trade for some time at a lower Ebitda multiple than Ford, said these people, because investors would favor the experience of Ford’s Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally, who has been with the company since 2006. GM CEO Dan Akerson took over three months ago after serving a year on the automaker’s board.
The Treasury and GM’s banks project that the shares will quickly climb above the $30 level, said the people, because the automaker has more business than Ford in some of the world’s fastest growing economies from China to Brazil.
GM and Ford yesterday reported U.S. sales increases that topped analysts’ estimates in the best month yet this year. GM’s deliveries climbed 3.5 percent to 183,759, when the average of three analysts’ forecasts was for a 6.3 percent decline, while sales at Ford increased 15 percent to 157,935, topping the 14 percent average of six analysts’ estimates.
The U.S. Treasury was seeking a split-adjusted price of $30 a share, referred to as the “Obama number” by officials in the administration, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks were private. At that price, the government could say it recovered all the money spent on GM’s bailout under President Barack Obama, though not what his predecessor put in.
GM and its bankers for weeks had pushed for an IPO price in the low-to-mid $20s to help ensure demand and a significant gain on the first day of trading, the people said. The United Auto Workers retiree health-care trust and the Canadian government, which are also shareholders, sought a $30 offer price as well to maximize their return.
“If you’re a seller, you don’t want to leave money on the table,” said Maryann Keller, president of Maryann Keller & Associates in Stamford, Connecticut. “The Treasury would look stupid if they priced it at $20 and the first day of trading it closed at $29.”
Over the past month, Detroit-based GM and its bankers agreed to a higher offering price range as they watched rival Ford Motor Co.’s shares rise, said two people familiar with the matter. At a meeting in mid-October, the parties settled on $25 to $29 a share. As Ford shares climbed, they boosted the bottom of the range.
Ford Rising
Ford advanced to a six-year high yesterday after saying its U.S. vehicle sales rose 15 percent in October. The shares gained 75 cents, or 5.2 percent, to $15.18 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, bringing the increase for the year to 52 percent. The Dearborn, Michigan-based automaker’s market capitalization has reached $52 billion.
At the midpoint price of $27.50 each, GM would have a market value of $41.25 billion, based on 1.5 billion shares that will be outstanding after the offering, according to the company’s filing and data compiled by Bloomberg.
President Barack Obama wants to recover as much of the taxpayer’s $80 billion investment in the auto industry as possible, two of the people said. The Treasury department cut its expected losses to $17 billion in August from an estimate of $28.2 billion a year ago.
“You now have all those U.S. auto companies showing a profit,” Obama said in an interview on the ABC-TV program “The View” in July. “They’ve rehired 55,000 workers. We are going to get all the money back that we invested in those car companies.”
Obama’s Money
Obama was referring only to the money his administration spent rescuing the auto industry, not the $13.4 billion in aid granted under President George W. Bush, according to the White House.
With a 3-for-1 share split, the U.S. government needs an average share price of almost $44 to get back all of the $49.5 billion it put into the automaker under Bush and Obama. That is based on the $131 a share breakeven level cited by a person familiar with the matter in September.
Including the repurchase of the Treasury’s preferred shares after the IPO, taxpayers will have received $9.5 billion in repayments, interest and dividends from GM since the automaker emerged from bankruptcy in July 2009, according to the Treasury.
Take away those payments and the money invested under Bush, and the Obama administration’s figure drops to $26.6 billion. With 912.4 million shares that Treasury currently owns, it can cover that if it gets an average of $29.15 a share. It plans to sell 263.5 million shares in the IPO.
A Treasury spokesman, Mark Paustenbach, and Noreen Pratscher, a GM spokeswoman, declined to comment about the pricing decision.
Market Value
GM’s underwriters, including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co., Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc., pushed in meetings over several weeks for a lower price that would ensure the offering would be oversubscribed and value GM at a lower level relative to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, also called Ebitda, than Ford, said six of the people.
After weeks of negotiations, the Treasury, the UAW and the Canadian government settled with GM and its underwriters on a price that was between what the two sides wanted, said the people.
The Treasury department agreed that it would be beneficial to start with a lower price so the shares would rise on the first day, creating good publicity for the offering, two of the people said. The Canadian government and the UAW health-care trust, which own 11.7 percent and 17.5 percent of GM, respectively, sided with the U.S. Treasury, five people said.
CEO Gap
GM’s underwriters argued that the automaker will trade for some time at a lower Ebitda multiple than Ford, said these people, because investors would favor the experience of Ford’s Chief Executive Officer Alan Mulally, who has been with the company since 2006. GM CEO Dan Akerson took over three months ago after serving a year on the automaker’s board.
The Treasury and GM’s banks project that the shares will quickly climb above the $30 level, said the people, because the automaker has more business than Ford in some of the world’s fastest growing economies from China to Brazil.
GM and Ford yesterday reported U.S. sales increases that topped analysts’ estimates in the best month yet this year. GM’s deliveries climbed 3.5 percent to 183,759, when the average of three analysts’ forecasts was for a 6.3 percent decline, while sales at Ford increased 15 percent to 157,935, topping the 14 percent average of six analysts’ estimates.
Technology a Blessing, a Curse for remote Island
Associated Press
Muggs Bass doesn't own a computer. She's pretty much dead set against e-mail. Anyone who calls her home on Michigan's remote Beaver Island should be prepared for a busy signal, if she's on her land-line phone. She has no cell.
"When you don't have it, you don't miss it. That's what I say," says the spunky 70-year-old grandmother, who's as comfortable telling jokes at the local pub as she is attending Mass each morning.
Technology isn't really her thing. So, it's a small miracle when Bass drives, once a month, to her island's rural health center to sit down in front of a wide-screen television. There, she and a handful of other islanders connect by video conference with a similar group in Charlevoix, Mich., a two-hour ferry ride to the south and east.
They chat. They laugh. They cry together.
All of them have, or have had, cancer, Bass included. Hers started with a lump in her breast and has since metastasized to her bones, making her cancer treatable, but incurable, her doctors tell her.
Her own grandmother died of the same disease and went off the island for occasional treatments, as Bass does every few weeks. But that grandmother could hardly have imagined a day when islanders talked openly about their cancer, face-to-face with people in a support group miles away.
It's just one of many ways technology is making this rugged place less remote than it once was and, some would say, more livable for more people.
It also gives islanders hope for new jobs that could attract residents to this island in northern Lake Michigan where the year-round population is about 650 people, give or take a few dozen.
"In the last few years, technology has sprung," says Joe Moore, a retired teacher who's known as one of the geeks on the island who helps keep computers running.
Not that the change has come quickly, or that technology always works perfectly.
That's just how it is on an island where a popular bumper sticker reads "Slow Down! This Ain't The Mainland." It's aimed at anyone who's in too big a hurry, including lead-footed tourists who kick up dust on the many dirt roads or who panic when cell phone service drops.
That's life on wired - or at least, semi-wired - Beaver Island.
___
So, where is Beaver Island, anyway?
Some Michiganders would show you by holding up their right hands, palms up, and pointing just above the tip of their ring fingers - in other words, just off the far northwest tip of the state's lower peninsula. But that's if even THEY know where it is.
While Michigan's Mackinac Island is well known, Beaver Island - much of its 54 square miles covered in lush hardwood forests, sand dunes or pristine inland lakes - is not.
That's partly because it is more difficult to get to, especially in the off season. Ferry service runs from Charlevoix, from April through mid-December. Quick flights in small propeller planes are available year-round, weather permitting. In winter, it's not unusual for islanders to be physically cut off from the mainland, unless an emergency sends the U.S. Coast Guard to their rescue.
So when high-speed Internet service became available to most of the island last spring, this was more than just a convenience. For many, it was a godsend - even if having the service simply meant being able to shop online for just about anything, to play an online game or to watch a newly released movie. For others, it meant being able to stay on the island longer because they had a more reliable connection to do work.
Either way, the outside world was even more readily available, at least virtually.
Schoolchildren on the island were ahead of this curve: The main public school knew how valuable it would be for them to be technologically savvy, especially when students headed to college. In the last decade, those students have been encouraged to take language and advanced-placement classes online. Some in high school also take college courses. They learn how to download and evaluate statistics using palmtop computers.
Connie Boyle, a teacher at the school, helped implement the technology program. She had a vested interest in it, partly because she and her husband decided to raise their daughter on the island after moving here from Chicago 25 years ago.
"We were worried - 'How do you bring up a kid on very tiny Beaver Island?'" Boyle says. An answer came when their daughter, now a freshman at Michigan State University, called recently about her computer class.
"Mom, I don't get it," she said. "I'm helping everybody here. We did all this in high school."
___
Today's state-of-the-art Beaver Island school is quite different from the one Muggs Bass attended. For her, books were the only real window to the mainland, especially in elementary school.
Like many who settled on Beaver Island, her great-grandparents and a grandmother had come from Ireland, to farm, fish and find a better life. Her own father was a dairy farmer. Born Mary Margaret but called "Muggs" as long as she can remember, Bass went to a small school across the field from the family farmhouse.
Until her school combined with another in the island's main town, St. James, she didn't even know some of her own cousins on the island. Other than a trip to the doctor when she was a young child, she didn't go to the mainland of Michigan - "across," as the islanders like to say - until she visited an aunt in Detroit when she was 12 years old.
"It was big and noisy," she recalls.
She didn't mind that her family didn't have a television until she was a teenager. For a long time, the closest thing she had to a technological device was the family radio, which she sat beside with her father to listen to boxing matches.
Her world was small in those days. That's how she liked it.
But after she graduated from high school, she left the island to find work and she ended up living in other parts of Michigan and then Illinois, where she met her husband. They then moved to northern Indiana, where they raised their son and his children from a previous marriage. Always, she longed to return to the island one day.
___
It's not the kind of life that appeals to just anyone.
Donna Kubic, a registered nurse who heads the island's rural health center, gets that. She tells the story of a young woman who came to the island to apply for a job at the health center. The woman had planned to stay for a week, but left after staying just one night in a lakeside cottage.
It was too dark out there with no street lights, she told Kubic. Too solitary.
This is, indeed, a place where one doesn't take modern convenience for granted. There is one grocery store, a couple of gas stations, a handful of restaurants and bars but no movie theater. There is no full-time doctor on the island, though two visit from the mainland twice a month. Critical patients are airlifted off the island, by the Coast Guard if weather shuts down other options.
As recently as two years ago, if someone needed an X-ray, the films had to be flown to the Charlevoix hospital so a radiologist there could read them. Depending on weather, it could take days.
Kubic knew there was a better way. She persuaded the hospital to help her apply for a grant that recently helped her purchase digital X-ray equipment for the health center. Now images can be transmitted in a matter of minutes.
Next came video conferencing, connecting the island's nurse practitioner and physician's assistant to the mainland hospital's emergency room. It's the same technology that allows Bass and the other islanders to take part in the "Circle of Strength" cancer support group.
"Without it, we'd be out here, in the lake, without a lot of support," Kubic says. Eventually, she hopes that primary care doctors and specialists - even mental health care providers - will be more willing to offer their services to islanders (though so far, she says, they've been reluctant).
"I think it's just education, saying the technology is there, getting the docs used to it," she says.
___
When Muggs Bass moved back to the island 12 years ago, she had no idea that she'd soon be dealing with a serious health issue.
A year after she'd been there, she traveled to the mainland for her annual mammogram, which revealed cancerous tissue. She had surgery to remove a breast.
"Then I went along fine for 10 years," she says, until she got a cough she couldn't shake. One morning, she got up and said to her husband, "I need to go across, to the doctor."
Her lung was filling with fluid. The cancer had spread to her bones.
So for the past 18 months, she has traveled to the mainland every six weeks for an infusion of a drug that keeps her bones from fracturing, and also takes a daily pill to slow the cancer's growth. The goal is to extend her life as much as possible.
"I'm going to hold to this until I reach something else," Bass recently told her support group. "And then I'll have to make another decision."
The group in Charlevoix includes an 80-year-old woman with lung and colon cancer, as well as younger mothers who've survived breast cancer and those who are in the thick of the battle. They talk about infections and drainage tubes, mammograms and mastectomies. They somehow manage to find humor in topics such as constipation.
One of the moms, introduced to the Beaver Island group through video conference, thanked Bass for sending her a card and a prayer.
"I read it every day," the woman, who has 11- and 16-year-old children, told Bass. "I'm in it for the long term fight. I'm prayin' hard, too."
"That's what you do," Bass said, as she grabbed a tissue to dab her eyes.
Diane Gorkiewicz, who began the Charlevoix "Circle of Strength" six years ago, marvels at the intimacy that has developed so quickly between her group and the islanders.
"The only thing you're missing are all the hugs and stuff," Gorkiewicz told the islanders during a recent video conference.
"And the food," Bass said, teasing the Charlevoix group that they need to share the treats they bring to their meetings.
___
Joe and Phyllis Moore understand the dynamic.
Earlier this year, the longtime islanders were able to "attend" their youngest granddaughter's first birthday party via Skype. Guests at the party in Washington state sat at a computer to introduce themselves. The Moores saw the cake. They gave real-time wishes to the birthday girl.
"Just thinking about it, it almost brings tears to my eyes," Joe Moore says.
It's not ideal, but the best they can do - better than they could've hoped for, really. The hard reality is that the cost of getting off the island can be prohibitive.
Most islanders have to "wear many hats" just to get by, Moore says. In addition to his computer work, he's one of the island medics and also runs a local website that provides video footage of township meetings, as well as the school's soccer and volleyball games.
Phyllis Moore is now the assistant librarian, but when she moved back to the island after college, she and Joe ran a vacation lodge while he did his student teaching.
"Like most graduates, I was going to get off this rock and never look back," says Phyllis Moore, now 62. "And look where I am now."
Many young people who live here say technology - social networking and their cell phones included - make life on the island better for them, too. But in the end, they face the same dilemma as everyone else: How do you make a living here? And what if there's really no place for the kind of work you want to do?
Brontae Cole, a 17-year-old high school senior, will be heading to college next year and wants to become a homicide detective.
"There's one cop here, two in the summer if we get lucky," Cole says. She grins. "And not a lot of dead people."
Jewell Gillespie-Cushman, a 14-year-old freshman, also wonders where he'll land. His late grandfather, an island icon for whom he was named, was born on Beaver Island and lived here his entire life. Gillespie-Cushman isn't sure he could do the same, even with more contact with the outside world than his grandpa had.
"I'm still debating whether to stay here, or move over there," he says.
___
Like Muggs Bass, though, a growing number of people want to find a way ONTO Beaver Island - many of them among the thousands who visit each summer and would like to make it home. For many of them, technology is the key.
Jeff Stone and his wife, Sarah Rohner, were able to start spending more time on the island in 2006, when a satellite-based service began offering an Internet connection that was about two-thirds as fast as the newest service, and much faster than the sluggish dial-up service that had been the only option.
The satellite option enabled Stone to quit his real estate job in the Chicago area to start a website design business that he and his wife run from the island much of the year, though not without some initial glitches.
He recalls how snow from a huge storm covered their satellite dish, cutting off their Internet service just as they were about to launch their site.
"We ended up going out in the back yard and throwing snow balls at the dish," he says. That knocked off enough snow to get the Internet working, and they were back in business. But it's not always that easy, or quick.
Laurel Vietzen, a college professor, also from the Chicago area, who now spends several months a year on the island, remembers a violent summer thunderstorm two years ago that left much of the island without Internet and phones. "We had a daughter at the University of Iowa and we were hearing about terrible flooding in Iowa City," she says. "It was three days before we could reach her!"
Now that Internet service on the island is more reliable, many islanders say cell phone service is the big hurdle. One mobile provider's service works well here, though only on the upper third of the island - and outages happen more frequently than most would like.
Even those who reap the benefits of technology feel torn, though. They worry that it infringes on one of the very things they love about the island - its inherent, blissful peacefulness.
Technology is, at once, their blessing and their curse.
On a summer night, it's not unusual to see more than a dozen people sitting outside the library's memorial garden, on picnic tables and in their cars, tapping into the free wireless that's left on 24 hours a day.
At the same time, islanders and summer residents alike regularly complain about all the people who now walk around the main streets of St. James, staring at a smart phone screen or iPad instead of their beautiful surroundings.
"The technology is wonderful, but ... ," Phyllis Moore says. She raises her eyebrows, noting how, on a nice day, she isn't opposed to kicking kids out of the library after they reach their 30-minute time limit on the computers there.
Meanwhile, it used to be the joke that, by St. Patrick's Day, anyone who lived here year round couldn't stand the sight of anyone else. In many ways, communicating with the outside world helps with that, but not always.
"I don't think it's eliminated cabin fever or getting at each other's throats," Joe Moore says, chuckling. "Sometimes, I think it makes it worse because they can communicate more and get on each others' nerves even more."
___
Muggs Bass knows about the squabbles and the way a rumor can take on a life of its own, computer or no computer. She wasn't too happy, for instance, when she heard that some islanders were calling her cancer "inoperable." She didn't like the sound of it - wished they'd just ask her directly.
But that was nothing, she says, compared with the support she's gotten from her tiny island community.
"We joke. We kid. We take care of each other," she says. "I can't imagine living anyplace else."
When she got her latest diagnosis, islanders organized a "50/50 raffle" for her, where the winner is supposed to take half the donations. Instead, the winner gave his portion to Bass, a common outcome on Beaver Island. All up, she received nearly $9,000 to help with flights to the mainland and other expenses related to her illness.
"You talk about emotional," Bass says, tearing up again.
She recalls sitting down after that to pray and, as she might say, have a chat with God.
"I thanked Him, and thanked Him, and thanked Him. I was so grateful that I was able to come back and live here, and for holding me up at this time in my life," she says.
The support group and her new friends on the mainland are part of that.
For her, technology - at least her little slice of it - has allowed the best of both worlds.
"When you don't have it, you don't miss it. That's what I say," says the spunky 70-year-old grandmother, who's as comfortable telling jokes at the local pub as she is attending Mass each morning.
Technology isn't really her thing. So, it's a small miracle when Bass drives, once a month, to her island's rural health center to sit down in front of a wide-screen television. There, she and a handful of other islanders connect by video conference with a similar group in Charlevoix, Mich., a two-hour ferry ride to the south and east.
They chat. They laugh. They cry together.
All of them have, or have had, cancer, Bass included. Hers started with a lump in her breast and has since metastasized to her bones, making her cancer treatable, but incurable, her doctors tell her.
Her own grandmother died of the same disease and went off the island for occasional treatments, as Bass does every few weeks. But that grandmother could hardly have imagined a day when islanders talked openly about their cancer, face-to-face with people in a support group miles away.
It's just one of many ways technology is making this rugged place less remote than it once was and, some would say, more livable for more people.
It also gives islanders hope for new jobs that could attract residents to this island in northern Lake Michigan where the year-round population is about 650 people, give or take a few dozen.
"In the last few years, technology has sprung," says Joe Moore, a retired teacher who's known as one of the geeks on the island who helps keep computers running.
Not that the change has come quickly, or that technology always works perfectly.
That's just how it is on an island where a popular bumper sticker reads "Slow Down! This Ain't The Mainland." It's aimed at anyone who's in too big a hurry, including lead-footed tourists who kick up dust on the many dirt roads or who panic when cell phone service drops.
That's life on wired - or at least, semi-wired - Beaver Island.
___
So, where is Beaver Island, anyway?
Some Michiganders would show you by holding up their right hands, palms up, and pointing just above the tip of their ring fingers - in other words, just off the far northwest tip of the state's lower peninsula. But that's if even THEY know where it is.
While Michigan's Mackinac Island is well known, Beaver Island - much of its 54 square miles covered in lush hardwood forests, sand dunes or pristine inland lakes - is not.
That's partly because it is more difficult to get to, especially in the off season. Ferry service runs from Charlevoix, from April through mid-December. Quick flights in small propeller planes are available year-round, weather permitting. In winter, it's not unusual for islanders to be physically cut off from the mainland, unless an emergency sends the U.S. Coast Guard to their rescue.
So when high-speed Internet service became available to most of the island last spring, this was more than just a convenience. For many, it was a godsend - even if having the service simply meant being able to shop online for just about anything, to play an online game or to watch a newly released movie. For others, it meant being able to stay on the island longer because they had a more reliable connection to do work.
Either way, the outside world was even more readily available, at least virtually.
Schoolchildren on the island were ahead of this curve: The main public school knew how valuable it would be for them to be technologically savvy, especially when students headed to college. In the last decade, those students have been encouraged to take language and advanced-placement classes online. Some in high school also take college courses. They learn how to download and evaluate statistics using palmtop computers.
Connie Boyle, a teacher at the school, helped implement the technology program. She had a vested interest in it, partly because she and her husband decided to raise their daughter on the island after moving here from Chicago 25 years ago.
"We were worried - 'How do you bring up a kid on very tiny Beaver Island?'" Boyle says. An answer came when their daughter, now a freshman at Michigan State University, called recently about her computer class.
"Mom, I don't get it," she said. "I'm helping everybody here. We did all this in high school."
___
Today's state-of-the-art Beaver Island school is quite different from the one Muggs Bass attended. For her, books were the only real window to the mainland, especially in elementary school.
Like many who settled on Beaver Island, her great-grandparents and a grandmother had come from Ireland, to farm, fish and find a better life. Her own father was a dairy farmer. Born Mary Margaret but called "Muggs" as long as she can remember, Bass went to a small school across the field from the family farmhouse.
Until her school combined with another in the island's main town, St. James, she didn't even know some of her own cousins on the island. Other than a trip to the doctor when she was a young child, she didn't go to the mainland of Michigan - "across," as the islanders like to say - until she visited an aunt in Detroit when she was 12 years old.
"It was big and noisy," she recalls.
She didn't mind that her family didn't have a television until she was a teenager. For a long time, the closest thing she had to a technological device was the family radio, which she sat beside with her father to listen to boxing matches.
Her world was small in those days. That's how she liked it.
But after she graduated from high school, she left the island to find work and she ended up living in other parts of Michigan and then Illinois, where she met her husband. They then moved to northern Indiana, where they raised their son and his children from a previous marriage. Always, she longed to return to the island one day.
___
It's not the kind of life that appeals to just anyone.
Donna Kubic, a registered nurse who heads the island's rural health center, gets that. She tells the story of a young woman who came to the island to apply for a job at the health center. The woman had planned to stay for a week, but left after staying just one night in a lakeside cottage.
It was too dark out there with no street lights, she told Kubic. Too solitary.
This is, indeed, a place where one doesn't take modern convenience for granted. There is one grocery store, a couple of gas stations, a handful of restaurants and bars but no movie theater. There is no full-time doctor on the island, though two visit from the mainland twice a month. Critical patients are airlifted off the island, by the Coast Guard if weather shuts down other options.
As recently as two years ago, if someone needed an X-ray, the films had to be flown to the Charlevoix hospital so a radiologist there could read them. Depending on weather, it could take days.
Kubic knew there was a better way. She persuaded the hospital to help her apply for a grant that recently helped her purchase digital X-ray equipment for the health center. Now images can be transmitted in a matter of minutes.
Next came video conferencing, connecting the island's nurse practitioner and physician's assistant to the mainland hospital's emergency room. It's the same technology that allows Bass and the other islanders to take part in the "Circle of Strength" cancer support group.
"Without it, we'd be out here, in the lake, without a lot of support," Kubic says. Eventually, she hopes that primary care doctors and specialists - even mental health care providers - will be more willing to offer their services to islanders (though so far, she says, they've been reluctant).
"I think it's just education, saying the technology is there, getting the docs used to it," she says.
___
When Muggs Bass moved back to the island 12 years ago, she had no idea that she'd soon be dealing with a serious health issue.
A year after she'd been there, she traveled to the mainland for her annual mammogram, which revealed cancerous tissue. She had surgery to remove a breast.
"Then I went along fine for 10 years," she says, until she got a cough she couldn't shake. One morning, she got up and said to her husband, "I need to go across, to the doctor."
Her lung was filling with fluid. The cancer had spread to her bones.
So for the past 18 months, she has traveled to the mainland every six weeks for an infusion of a drug that keeps her bones from fracturing, and also takes a daily pill to slow the cancer's growth. The goal is to extend her life as much as possible.
"I'm going to hold to this until I reach something else," Bass recently told her support group. "And then I'll have to make another decision."
The group in Charlevoix includes an 80-year-old woman with lung and colon cancer, as well as younger mothers who've survived breast cancer and those who are in the thick of the battle. They talk about infections and drainage tubes, mammograms and mastectomies. They somehow manage to find humor in topics such as constipation.
One of the moms, introduced to the Beaver Island group through video conference, thanked Bass for sending her a card and a prayer.
"I read it every day," the woman, who has 11- and 16-year-old children, told Bass. "I'm in it for the long term fight. I'm prayin' hard, too."
"That's what you do," Bass said, as she grabbed a tissue to dab her eyes.
Diane Gorkiewicz, who began the Charlevoix "Circle of Strength" six years ago, marvels at the intimacy that has developed so quickly between her group and the islanders.
"The only thing you're missing are all the hugs and stuff," Gorkiewicz told the islanders during a recent video conference.
"And the food," Bass said, teasing the Charlevoix group that they need to share the treats they bring to their meetings.
___
Joe and Phyllis Moore understand the dynamic.
Earlier this year, the longtime islanders were able to "attend" their youngest granddaughter's first birthday party via Skype. Guests at the party in Washington state sat at a computer to introduce themselves. The Moores saw the cake. They gave real-time wishes to the birthday girl.
"Just thinking about it, it almost brings tears to my eyes," Joe Moore says.
It's not ideal, but the best they can do - better than they could've hoped for, really. The hard reality is that the cost of getting off the island can be prohibitive.
Most islanders have to "wear many hats" just to get by, Moore says. In addition to his computer work, he's one of the island medics and also runs a local website that provides video footage of township meetings, as well as the school's soccer and volleyball games.
Phyllis Moore is now the assistant librarian, but when she moved back to the island after college, she and Joe ran a vacation lodge while he did his student teaching.
"Like most graduates, I was going to get off this rock and never look back," says Phyllis Moore, now 62. "And look where I am now."
Many young people who live here say technology - social networking and their cell phones included - make life on the island better for them, too. But in the end, they face the same dilemma as everyone else: How do you make a living here? And what if there's really no place for the kind of work you want to do?
Brontae Cole, a 17-year-old high school senior, will be heading to college next year and wants to become a homicide detective.
"There's one cop here, two in the summer if we get lucky," Cole says. She grins. "And not a lot of dead people."
Jewell Gillespie-Cushman, a 14-year-old freshman, also wonders where he'll land. His late grandfather, an island icon for whom he was named, was born on Beaver Island and lived here his entire life. Gillespie-Cushman isn't sure he could do the same, even with more contact with the outside world than his grandpa had.
"I'm still debating whether to stay here, or move over there," he says.
___
Like Muggs Bass, though, a growing number of people want to find a way ONTO Beaver Island - many of them among the thousands who visit each summer and would like to make it home. For many of them, technology is the key.
Jeff Stone and his wife, Sarah Rohner, were able to start spending more time on the island in 2006, when a satellite-based service began offering an Internet connection that was about two-thirds as fast as the newest service, and much faster than the sluggish dial-up service that had been the only option.
The satellite option enabled Stone to quit his real estate job in the Chicago area to start a website design business that he and his wife run from the island much of the year, though not without some initial glitches.
He recalls how snow from a huge storm covered their satellite dish, cutting off their Internet service just as they were about to launch their site.
"We ended up going out in the back yard and throwing snow balls at the dish," he says. That knocked off enough snow to get the Internet working, and they were back in business. But it's not always that easy, or quick.
Laurel Vietzen, a college professor, also from the Chicago area, who now spends several months a year on the island, remembers a violent summer thunderstorm two years ago that left much of the island without Internet and phones. "We had a daughter at the University of Iowa and we were hearing about terrible flooding in Iowa City," she says. "It was three days before we could reach her!"
Now that Internet service on the island is more reliable, many islanders say cell phone service is the big hurdle. One mobile provider's service works well here, though only on the upper third of the island - and outages happen more frequently than most would like.
Even those who reap the benefits of technology feel torn, though. They worry that it infringes on one of the very things they love about the island - its inherent, blissful peacefulness.
Technology is, at once, their blessing and their curse.
On a summer night, it's not unusual to see more than a dozen people sitting outside the library's memorial garden, on picnic tables and in their cars, tapping into the free wireless that's left on 24 hours a day.
At the same time, islanders and summer residents alike regularly complain about all the people who now walk around the main streets of St. James, staring at a smart phone screen or iPad instead of their beautiful surroundings.
"The technology is wonderful, but ... ," Phyllis Moore says. She raises her eyebrows, noting how, on a nice day, she isn't opposed to kicking kids out of the library after they reach their 30-minute time limit on the computers there.
Meanwhile, it used to be the joke that, by St. Patrick's Day, anyone who lived here year round couldn't stand the sight of anyone else. In many ways, communicating with the outside world helps with that, but not always.
"I don't think it's eliminated cabin fever or getting at each other's throats," Joe Moore says, chuckling. "Sometimes, I think it makes it worse because they can communicate more and get on each others' nerves even more."
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Muggs Bass knows about the squabbles and the way a rumor can take on a life of its own, computer or no computer. She wasn't too happy, for instance, when she heard that some islanders were calling her cancer "inoperable." She didn't like the sound of it - wished they'd just ask her directly.
But that was nothing, she says, compared with the support she's gotten from her tiny island community.
"We joke. We kid. We take care of each other," she says. "I can't imagine living anyplace else."
When she got her latest diagnosis, islanders organized a "50/50 raffle" for her, where the winner is supposed to take half the donations. Instead, the winner gave his portion to Bass, a common outcome on Beaver Island. All up, she received nearly $9,000 to help with flights to the mainland and other expenses related to her illness.
"You talk about emotional," Bass says, tearing up again.
She recalls sitting down after that to pray and, as she might say, have a chat with God.
"I thanked Him, and thanked Him, and thanked Him. I was so grateful that I was able to come back and live here, and for holding me up at this time in my life," she says.
The support group and her new friends on the mainland are part of that.
For her, technology - at least her little slice of it - has allowed the best of both worlds.
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