LOCAL/STATE The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, April 16, 2002 - 5A Blanchard makes most of gubernatorial LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Forner Gov. James Blanchard made the most money in 2001 among the six gubernatorial candidates, according to 2001 income tax returns released yesterday. Blanchard released a summary showing he and his wife, Janet, took in $581,418 in income last year and paid $162,630 in state and federal taxes. He also paid $26,050 in Canadian income taxes. Blanchard, of Beverly Hills, said his income came from his job as a partner in the Washington law firm of Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand; paid positions on corporate boards; and capital gains, dividends, interest and an annuity. Attorney General Jennifer Granholm of Northville said she and her husband, Daniel Mulhern, had a total income of $270,799 and paid $66,757 in state and federal 4axes. They also paid $1,649 in local taxes to the cities of Detroit and Lansing. Granholm earns $124,900 a year as attorney general. U.S. Rep. David Bonior of Mount Clemens said he and his wife, Judy, had $164,517 in income and paid $29,668 in state and federal taxes. Of the total, job income accounted for $139,855; most of the rest came from a pension or annuity. Granholm, Blanchard and Bonior are Democrats. Among Republicans, Lt. Gov. Dick Posthumus of Alto said income for he and his wife, Pam, totaled $146,571. The, bulk was from his $120,400 salary as lieutenant governor, with $2,745 from farm rental income and $2,175 from an education candidates IRA withdrawal. The couple paid $30,503 in state and local taxes. State Sen. John Schwarz said he had income of $242,000 and paid $65,060 in state and federal taxes. He made more than $150,000 from his Battle Creek medical practice and about $82,000 as a senator. Ed Hamilton, a Troy businessman, said he and his wife, Silvia, had $116,542 in total income, most of it from retirement income that qualified for tax breaks. Hamilton paid $18,374 in state and federal taxes. The candidates also reported their charitable giving. Schwarz gave $21,785 to charity; the Blanchards contributed more than $21,000; Granholm and her husband gave $24,419, including $5,290 carried over from the prior year; the Boniors gave $11,710; the Posthumus family gave $4,810; and the Hamiltons gave $3,000. Granholm and Bonior released full copies of their tax returns, while Posthumus and Blanchard released sum- maries and made their full returns available upon request. Hamilton and Schwarz gave the information in phone calls. Yesterday, Bonior challenged his opponents to fully report not only the earned and unearned income for their families, as they did in their tax returns, but to also release an accounting of their assets, financial transac- tions, gifts over $250, travel provided by outside groups, a complete list of positions and appointments, and pay- ments for speeches. AP PHOTO Ford Motor Company put a stop on all sales of the Focus SVT because of a problem with the cruise control, in which the cruise control cable could become caught on the throttle, forcing it to remain open. Ford stops Focus sale due to cruise control proble-ms, Big Game win less likely than being struck by lightening bolt ATLANTA (AP) - Consider the morbid math: A dreamer playing the $325 million Big Game lottery is 16 times more likely to be killed driving to the gas station to buy a ticket than to win the jackpot. But the near-impossible chances-have failed to deter thousands of frenzied lot- tery players rushing to snap up tickets for tonight's seven-state drawing. The odds of winning are 1 in 76 million. "It's greed. Greed clouds good judg- ment," said Les Krantz, a probability expert who was busy yesterday calcu- lating dozens of comparisons to show just how unlikely winning is - but who was holding a ticket himself. At stores in seven states - Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and Virginia - lotto hopefuls considered the long odds and plunked down money any- way, exchanging dollars for dreams. "If you don't have a ticket, your odds drop to zero;' reasoned Glenn Gosselin, who bought a ticket at Neighborhood Food Store in Springfield, Mass., where the Big Game line wound from the cash register to the door. Big Game organizers bumped up the jackpot up $25 million yesterday after strong sales over the weekend. By the drawing tonight, the prize could swell past the U.S. record of $363 million, split by two Big Game winners in 2000. A single winner could take the cash over 26 years or accept a one-time $174 million payout - with at least one-third taken out for taxes, of course. Players must pick the payout option when buying the ticket. Darryl Hutchinson was pondering the decision as he prepared to buy 10 tickets at a gas station in Roanoke, Va. "I don't know if I'll take the annuity or the lump sum," he said. "I'd retire. I'd buy a house and maybe a fishing boat." Never mind that the odds are bet- ter - thousands of times better, according to Krantz - that the Earth will be destroyed by a meteorite than that one of Hutchinson's tickets will be a winner. "They just see this impossibly huge amount of money out there, not the impossibly long odds against them," said W. Scott Wood, who teaches a class at Drake University on the psy- chology of gambling. "They're pur- chasing a daydream." More perspective: A person's chance of being hit by lightning in a lifetime is 1 in 9,100 - more than 8,000 times more likely than being the next Big Game winner, Krantz said. But don't tell that to Dave Swiders- ki, a financial planner from Cherry Hill, N.J., who bought seven Big Game tickets yesterday at the News Nook in nearby Merchantville. "Sure," he said. "You can't get struck by lightning either." At a newsstand in Grand Rapids, Mich., sales were strong yesterday, and, the store is bracing for even more cus- tomers today. Jon Purdy of Ada snapped up $10 in tickets. DETROIT (AP) - Ford Motor Co. says its notice to dealers to stop deliv- ering Focus SVT cars because of a cruise control problem is not a sign the automaker's quality problems are returning. An attorney working with a safety consultant, however, says the automak- er's systems are dangerously flawed. The problem with the cruise control cable was discovered during an inter- nal quality audit at the Hermosillo, Mexico, assembly plant where the cars are built, Ford spokesman Todd Nissen said yesterday. "We take quality seriously. That's why we do these quality audits at plants to try to avoid these things," he said. The "stop sale" order involves 569 Focus SVT cars, a "small number" of which have been delivered to cus- tomers, Nissen said. The cable could become caught on part of the throttle body assembly, causing the throttle to become stuck open. No accidents or injuries have been reported as a result of the problem, Nissen said. Delivery of cars to dealers is being delayed a few weeks while the problem is fixed at the plant. Most of the vehi- cles affected were built from early March to early April. Customers who have taken delivery will be able to have their cars retrofit- ted with the new parts as they come in, Nissen said. An attorney working with Safetyfo- rum.com, an Arlington, Va.-based safety consulting organization, said problems with malfunctioning cruise control mechanisms on Ford vehicles have resulted in at least one death and several crashes. In those cases, the throttle stuck open and drivers could not stop their vehicles, said the attorney, Hike Heiskell. "There is a huge and growing body of evidence that the electronics of these systems pick up signals from other engine components and random signals from airport transmitters, caus- ing sensors to believe the driver is put- ting in a higher speed command," Heiskell said. The automaker has denied there are any problems with its cruise control systems. "Our data shows there is no issue with speed control design,"Nissen said. Ford has suffered through several rocky launches in the last few years, and its rating in industry quality stud- ies has stagnated. The company has made quality improvement a priority as part of the restructuring plan it announced in January. John Tewes, a spokesman for J.D. Power and Associates, which publishes the widely followed annual Initial Quality Study, said the fact that Ford caught the problem before too many vehicles reached customers is a sign "Ford has really tightened quality checks, and apparently it's working." Over the last two years, Ford has raised its quality standing in the premi- um compact segment, which the Focus SVT occupies, but is still slightly below industry average, Tewes said. The next Initial Quality Study will be released at the end of May. The automaker is in the midst of the launch of the much higher volume and profitable redesigned Ford Expedition and is readying the summer launch of the redesigned Lincoln Navigator. One analyst said the problem in the much smaller volume - and less expensive - Focus SVT may just be a' case of Ford taking its eye off the ball while making sure more important launches are trouble-free. "They've got to make sure the risk is as low as possible on a super-high-vol- ume vehicle like the Expedition;" said Jim Hall, vice president of AutoPacific. Ford says there have been no glitch- es so far in the launch of the new Expedition. 4 Need an apartment in NYC? WE SOLD BACK ALL OUR BOOKS IN COLLEGE. 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