Bridge Magazine reports on disparities in health between neighboring Washtenaw and Wayne counties: “The health gap is best summed up in one piece of data: The average Wayne County resident dies at a younger age than residents of any other county in the state. Washtenaw men live an entire U.S. Senate term – six years — longer than Wayne men; the average Washtenaw woman lives 2.7 years longer than her counterpart to the east.” [Source]
An article on Salon reports that Eden Foods, an organic company headquartered south of Ann Arbor, has filed a lawsuit seeking exemption from the federal mandate to cover contraception for its employees under the Affordable Care Act. The company is represented by Ann Arbor-based Thomas More Law Center. From the report: “Eden Foods, which did not respond to a request for comment, says in its filing that the company believes of birth control that ‘these procedures almost always involve immoral and unnatural practices.’” [Source]
Editor’s note: Nelson’s “In it for the Money” column appears regularly in The Chronicle, roughly around the third Wednesday of the month.
David Erik Nelson
Mitt Romney and I went to the same high school – three decades apart. This would be immaterial, except the Washington Post just published a fascinating 5,500-word remembrance of Mitt Romney’s hijinks at Cranbrook, a high-pressure prep school in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
I attended this same school in the 1990s; it’s an architectural gem, the staff is excellent, the program an academic crucible. Later, as a University of Michigan student, I shared a broken-down house with three fellow Cranbrook alums. One was in a sociology class, and we were delighted when he revealed that his textbook listed Cranbrook as “one of the last vestiges of American aristocracy.”
Because Mitt and I attended Cranbrook exactly 30 years apart, we ended up standing back-to-back on a balmy June evening in 2005 – the same year Mitt received the school’s 2005 Distinguished Alumni Award. The governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and I stood together at the lip of a deep, inset fountain, which gurgled contentedly, almost as though it was whispering ♪♫Daaaaave, I would be an excellent place for a GOP splaaashdown!♫ [Full Story]
