[grellis]

On my street??! FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK...immediately south of me are TWO abandoned, repo'd houses. One recently sold at auction for $22K. In November of 2006 the very same home sold for $110K. The second repo was on the market for two years, listed for $139K. It is now in foreclosure, asking $44K. The house I share my drive with sold out of foreclosure last spring for $77K. The previous owner had bought it for $122K. House next to that is on the market for $239K. It's a beautiful home, and the asking price is far less than what the house is worth, but the market won't even pay half of that now. Owner is a retiree trying to live off of a shrinking pension.

I never look in the Help Wanted section because I stopped getting the paper years ago. Look it up online, lsj.com. Any jobs listed are going to have a healthy dozen applicants each, at the very least, since GM is about to layoff half of its Lansing workforce. Look for all of the local suppliers to go belly up by spring of next year. But don't get me wrong--A bailout for the Big 3 would be nothing short of more disaster for Michigan. You really don't get what Net and I have been saying: We don't want anyone's stinking help, we aren't asking for that. We do for ours. We're sick of people acting like they understand the situation here in MI. You have to live here to get it, or you at least have to try and understand a basic fact: The recession in Michigan started THREE YEARS AGO. Y'all are just playing catch up.

Have fun with that.

[netmilsmom]

Like I said, Utica is 2.2 miles. Much of it is part of Lakeside Mall.

We have 60 houses on the market.

But when our economy spreads out of the midwest and into their communities, OH the gnashing of teeth!

And FEMA isn’t coming to give us any low interest loans either. We don’t want them. We’ll do it ourselves.