Walking the Walk

I'm not really a big city person. I prefer the quiet of rural and semi-rural areas. Still, after having spent time in the hearts of New York City, Boston, Toronto, and now Philadelphia, I must admit there is a charm in what is often called a walkable downtown.

While we did have to move the rental car once on the Sunday we spent in Philadelphia last week, once parked we found several things to see within an easy walk. Granted, Philly is an old and historic city compared to Detroit (as are New York and Boston) but there sure seems to be more to see there than at home. What was most interesting was in how quickly things changed. We could be in a noisy, touristy area, then turn a corner to discover row houses which clearly date to the 1700 and 1800 hundreds nestled in quiet, narrow streets. It really did feel like stepping back in history.

There were museums and shops and outdoor activities all around. They tended towards pricey yet not terribly so, and there was free things to see and do just the same. We had our pictures taken by the Rocky statue near the Philadelphia Museum of Art, for example. 

I doubt that I could live too long in such tightly packed areas but I think I could do it for a year simply for the experience, these dense downtown areas. Perhaps it's familiarity, but I do not feel that for Detroit. C'est la vie.

Jury Service Service

Here comes another reason that I don't like nor trust government. I believe even the more liberal among my friends will agree with me on this one, though.

How difficult is it to remove a person's name from a list? In this computer age, how hard a task can it possibly be? So far as I can tell, all you need to do is highlight an area on a form, hit Control X, and Bob's Yer Uncle, information has been deleted. Gone in well less than 60 seconds.

Me eldest son has lived in Ohio, which, you may note, is not Detroit, Michigan by any stretch of reason or the imagination, for nearly ten years now. We're at the high end of a full decade of his becoming an, ugh, Buckeye (apologies, true friend Ohioans). Yet does that prevent the City of Detroit from sending him regular jury summons, uh, summonses? Summonsi? Whatever the plural is.

To answer that question straight, no. He routinely gets called for jury service, sends them the pertinent information clearly demonstrating his Ohio citizenship, and is granted an excuse from serving. Then, typically within two years, he is summoned anew, and the whole thing plays out once more. It recently happened again and he was excused again, but reminded that he may be randomly selected - again - in the future. 

These are the people who are going to save us from every tragedy known to man, friends. They can't delete a name from a file, but boy howdy, they know how to fix all the trouble in the world. Government, right? They can do it all...except for basic IT functions.

I'm everywhere and anywhere

While checking my personal e-mail a few minutes ago I noticed that AOL has me as being in New York, New York. I don't think I am.

The Weather Channel's website told me that I'm in Washington, DC. I'm not, though I probably should be. We'd be all better off if I were, right? Right?

Blogger quite rightly (so far as I know, reality being apparently subjective this morning) has me in good old Detroit, Michigan. Why is this?

I had to do a restart on my computer, so perhaps it's all simply that certain resets did not go through properly. You know how computers revert to previous settings; I have been to New York for example and perhaps AOL via my desktop reverted to when I was actually there. However things are, we all know where I really am today, don't we?

In your hearts.

Have a good Monday everybody.

I've been good

I've been good, I've been real good, I've been extraordinarily good. I've held my tongue now for three, maybe four years. Ever since a good friend of mine advised me, quite properly so I will readily admit, that I needed to back off my criticism of the Detroit Lions. I had gone on facebook one day and harangued against every play they ran during one long forgotten game, a steady stream of invective which admittedly served no purpose but to feed my ego. She was right; I needed to back off for the sake of mutual friends who were, like me, long suffering Lions fans. So I backed off. And where do I find myself today?

Watching the Detroit Lions recover a fumble to stall a Minnesota Vikings drive, only to fumble away a, a, fumble six?

The Detroit Pistons have won three National Basketball Association titles in my lifetime, and basketball so far as I am concerned is a play one minute game and assign the win sort of thing. The Detroit Red Wings, a premier original six club in the NHL, have four, count 'em, four Stanley Cups since 1997. My beloved Detroit Tigers, my favorite team of any sport, professional or collegiate, have four American League titles and two World Series wins to their credit as I have lived and breathed. The Lions?

They are as they have been. Same. Old. Lions.

Oh well. It's American football. The least important game on Earth. Especially in Detroit.

Presumption of guilt (an example of why I am conservative)

The City of Detroit has found me, or rather more specifically my business, in violation of Ordinance 22-2-61. I do not have a marked container for solid waste disposal at my Shop. If I don't contract with a private entity (or pay the City $450 per year) to remove my solid waste I could be subject to fines and costs up to a grand (and still have to get the serices anyway). So sayeth the city inspector who stopped by the Shop yesterday.

He was cordial so I was cordial. I explained to him that I have little solid waste to dispose of, maybe a thirty gallon trash bag a week, and that my neighbor allows (indeed he offered me the use of his refuse container on his own years ago) us to use his. On the occasions I have more than normal garbage, I take it two blocks and put it in with my own household trash. Boxes we reuse or recycle, scrap spring steel is picked up twice a week by a local scrap man, and other scrap material (non-spring steel, copper, and aluminum) we accumulate inside the Shop and take to the junk yard ourselves when we have a load. Why must I have my own container?, I asked him.

He explained that the purpose of the ordinance is to prevent commercial businesses from illegal dumping.

That trips my trigger. I stayed cordial to the man (no point in going off on him) as he handed me a citation and then left. But what upsets me, deeply and profoundly angers me in fact, is the presumption that as a commercial business I will illegally dump without my own dumpster. It is an affront to my dignity and I resent it.

I have not dumped my trash. The City of Detroit has no evidence nor compelling reason to believe I have. I simply have little and was seeing to its disposal in other proper ways and manners. I should not be made to either contract a waste disposal business or pay Detroit 450 bucks a year simply because the powers that be want me to. As it is, this is nothing but legal extortion under the guise of protecting Detroit and her residents.

And this is one small reason why I am a political conservative. So very many regulations presume guilt, which is wrong by itself and often is not there anyway. In this case I have been a good and responsible citizen. Yet that's not enough for the City of Detroit. I have to prove it at the figurative point of a gun. It is morally wrong for the government to treat me that way.

Snyder: Give Detroit what it Needs

Get on with it, Governor Snyder. Put an Emergency manager in charge of Detroit. You will never win the hearts or minds of the overwhelmingly Democratic city. But the longer you wait, the weaker you'll seem to everyone else. Just do it and get it over with.

Detroit is a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. Detroit leaders appear to think that Detroit is Michigan. That may have been the case at one point. It isn't anymore.

There are about 700,000 residents where there used to be 2,000,000. That's something in the area of seven percent of the population of the entire state. Detroit does not, or at least should not, have the clout it once had. The only real thing the city has going for it is political: the situation can be painted as David and Goliath, of Democrat against Republican; of plain old racism, even.

None of which is fair. Detroit got herself into her mess and is essentially refusing to get herself out of it. Someone else must. That someone is you, Governor Snyder. You wanted to be governor; you wanted to run the state like a business. So, do it. Maybe you won't be a hero to Detroit, but that was never going to happen anyway. Go on and be a hero to Michigan. Detroit may actually learn a lesson from that.

Act Locally

One of the most basic axioms a conservative should have in his arsenal is known as the Principle of Subsidiarity. Plainly stated, it says that things should be done on the most local level possible. Why? Because that it the surest way to get necessary things accomplished in the most efficient manner.

The closer we are to a problem the better we ought to be able to understand it. We will see it more clearly, and indeed, particularly with issues and events nearby, we will likely have a greater interest in it. Schools, for example, should by and large be run within the local community because it is the locals who have the greatest interest in the education of their kids. Their kids are the ones who are generally going to hang around and run things when the current generation cannot anymore.

As a rule, the closer to a problem the less money which must be spend alleviating it. This is in part due to localized control, again as issues should be seen more clearly but also as there would be no added layers of bureaucracy which would otherwise have to be paid for by the electorate. Perhaps this is why, try as she might, Washington cannot get a grip on poverty: too much money which is supposed to help the poor in fact keeps bureaucrats at a desk.

There are of course many factors to consider when deciding what job should be done where in a national scheme. A nation as a whole must take up the defense of its people: could Detroit reasonably be expected to ward off an attack by a large foreign power on its own? If we were to leave Detroit to its own devices (a prospect many folks out there may not mind, but let's set aside jokes right now) we would hardly be a nation in the best sense of the word.

As a rule, conservatives would argue that few powers would be nationwide in scope. Military protection, the necessary and proper federal judicial arrangements, coinage, and issues of commerce (to varying degrees) come first to mind. State power would be wider than that of municipalities, perhaps, while communities would see to the bulk of day in and day out tasks: police and fire protection, trash pickup, and to the schools, among other chores.

We could go on all day discussing particulars, but you get the point. Local control is the best remedy for most ills. It is a point which should be discussed, if you'll excuse the irony, on a wider scale.

Insult to Injury?

In one of those rather bizarre news stories, it turns out that the underwear bomber who attempted to destroy an airplane in Detroit at Christmas in 2009 chose our fair city because it was a cheap destination. Really.

It is a tale which kind of adds insult to injury, in light of the city's recent Census borne woes. We weren't even a target for any of the reasons which one might expect of terrorists: a dense population, perhaps to harm manufacturing, maybe even bring the war on terror to a center of Arab Americans for whatever insane purpose. But no, Detroit was chosen because it offered a better price.

Not that that makes the incident any less heinous, of course, nor any less a threat. Indeed, the approach has been interpreted by some analysts as a reason that the Yemen based branch of Al-Qaida has become more of a threat to the US in general than the presumed big boys in Afghanistan. It makes the entire war seem more random, more directly aimed at the American people than towards mere symbols of Americana.

Still, because there were cheap flights here? It would be downright comical if it wasn't so dangerous. And that's the salient factor which must be kept in mind. They want to bring the war right into the heart of our nation. By any means necessary.

That is why this war will be so difficult to fight. Al-Qaida and the like rely on the unknown and unexpected. They take advantage of it. We ignore that fact to our peril. They will try to come right down to into our own backyard. Wherever that backyard may be.

Just an Empty Lot

I pass by the field which was Tiger stadium regularly, and I regularly sigh. What was once a grand baseball palace is now another Detroit vacant lot.

In all likelihood nothing will ever come of it. That's the City for you: all talk. Well, mostly talk: it amazes me that they cannot get an eyesore like the old train station on Vernor torn down despite its standing empty since the 80's, but they could get that ballyard razed within a decade of its closing.

I suppose it's all in their priorities. I think former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick wanted it gone so that he could seem an active leader or to keep in the favor of the Ilitch family; no second stadium means no competition for their Tigers. Any way you slice it, there's one less chunk of Americana.

Heavy sigh. We do not appreciate things they way we ought. Yet we wonder why there's little respect for people and things anymore. There's a lesson in there somewhere, but we'll never learn it.

Bread and Circuses?

This is a fine time to live in the City of Detroit, Michigan, let me tell you. What a fine crop of political leaders we have here.

I suppose that it isn't enough to be the laughingstock of the nation with the Kwame Kilpatrick/Cristine Beatty, ahem, affair. Rather than getting beyond that and improving our City and the outlook with which the country views us, we get stuck with Detroit Common Council President Monica Conyers raising the spectre of that old devil racism and fellow Councilwoman Barbara Rose Collins bellowing 'Onward Christian Soldiers' at meetings called to an illegal purpose. As my Army son would ask, "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?"

What brings this on is the issue of putting Detroit's Cobo Hall exhibition center under a regional authority, a move aimed at helping the City (which cannot afford even the maintenance fees at this point) while making the center a more viable convention hotspot so that we can keep things like the North American Auto Show. You know, Madame Councilwoman, make it so that we can keep bringing major events and the cash which comes along with them into Detroit and, yes, the entire region of Southeast Michigan. Cash which we sorely need, much more than your pompous grandstanding.

You want to know who's racist, Ms. Conyers? You are. Telling a white Teamster that there are too many faces like his and not enough like your own fabulous mug at construction sites. What would happen if that Teamster had said that to you? He'd be the worst soul on Earth, that's what.

How dare you. You demand respect but won't respect others.

Why were you calling the meeting anyway? Oh, right: to override what you think an illegal veto by Mayor Ken Cockrell approving the move to the regional authority. Along the way I guess it doesn't matter that your own move clearly violates the City Charter: vetoes must be addressed at regular, not special, Council meetings. Are you so special that you're above the law?

What we have here, my friends, is something akin to the old Roman Empire: bread and circuses. Yet we have no bread. We're only just stuck with the three rings.

Detroit Common Council Welcomes Your Business!

How can you not be proud to be a Detroiter? We have a mayor who believes he’s dictator for life, and a near majority on the City Council who believe that their votes for the awarding of a city contract are worth all of four figures. That’s nowhere near creative influence peddling; it’s really not even laughable. It’s merely pathetic, but that’s what passes for politics in Detroit these days. I have always been proud to be a lifelong Detroiter, but holy cow, it can be hard to hold your head high under the current onslaught of hubris.

Well, you get what you pay for. Kwame Kilpatrick must be loving it, for it surely will take some of the heat off what he made the taxpayers ante up for his escapades. Indeed I expect he’ll make hay over it: how can you possibly compare his dalliances with outright bribery? And here so many of us thought Kwame’s scandal was as bad as it could be. I supposed there really is no such thing: it can always get worse, and this certainly promises to.

We used to be known as the murder capital. We used to be feared rather than mocked. And while murder is surely worse than incompetence, there’s something more embarrassing about the latter. Murder can typically be attributed to the shortsightedness, stupidity, and emotion of individuals in scant moments. Often it’s already crime related, as in drug wars. Graft is, generally, planned, crafted; it’s thought out and has to be acted out over time, time which could offer the opportunity to step back and examine just exactly what the hell is happening. It usually involves people better able to know better.

Or can they? Maybe it’s only politics as usual in this Michigan urban backwater.