Sunday Rantings

There is an attempt being made through the Michigan Legislature to ban certain types of ticket purchases. Apparently there is software out there which allows ticket brokers to almost instantly buy large amounts of tickets the instant the go on sale online; this prevents individuals from having a fair shot at a direct purchase for various events.

Ordinarily we are slow to support government involvement between private transactions, but this one has merit. As it is, small groups are able to control the free flow of commerce. This makes the proposed legislation something which would free up rather than restrict the markets for concerts and sporting events. That makes it a good thing.

Speaking of concerts and events, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra is scheduler to hold five free concerts later this year in the Detroit area. They apparently been off strike since April of 2011! We apologize, but we didn't notice. It does make us wonder how many others didn't notice either.

A reader pointed out, in response to our article yesterday, that the Detroit Occupiers do not own the buildings which they currently occupy. If he thinks this helps their position, well, it doesn't. If they're squatters, whether on city but especially if they're on private property, then they should be given the boot. If the properties have been donated for their use, then the Occupiers are hardly true to their principles. But we have become accustomed to this sort of inconsistency among, particularly, the extreme left. They want what they want solely because they want it, and such minor thing as consistency about philosophy are beneath them.

Kwame Kilpatrick must go on trial. Again. US Federal courts have said so. We don't know why and we don't care. We just want the Kilpatrick circus to move on. Detroit has enough issues without having him dragged through the legal system again and again. Perhaps there is good reason to keep up the pursuit. We don't care about that either. It's time to let Detroit move on, even if it means letting him skip out on a few things. We need to let it go, for our god, not his.

Neil Armstrong has passed away at the age of 82. He was, as we all know, the first man on the Moon. Godspeed, Mr. Astronaut. Godspeed.

Friday Morning Musings

Former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has been ordered to pay restitution of $500 per month. That's about triple the $160 he had been paying. It's really kind of a joke, though, considering he is supposed to pay back around a million bucks total. If the money only trickles in, there's almost no point in the city getting it at all. But something may be better than nothing, even if the payments are only symbolic.

Speaking of money, many folks are decrying the %7.6 million which the so-called Super Pacs spent on ads before the recent Michigan Primary. That cash needs to be monitored and controlled, they say. It needs to be done to level the playing field.

Well, why not make Washington less important, so that offices such as the Presidency are less important? Get back to our constitutional roots so that the federal establishment is smaller and weaker, and of course less influential. Then those Super Pacs wouldn't mean as much. But that is, of course, preposterous. Nobody can take care of us like Washington can.

That's sarcasm, by the way.

The Michigan Republican Party has given both at large delegates to Mitt Romney despite the closeness of Tuesday's vote. That makes it pretty obvious that establishment types want an establishment guy heading the ticket. The liberals in the media, the organized party types - at least in Michigan - want bland over dynamic. It's not about beating Obama, at least for the GOP. It's about not rocking the boat, not pricking any consciences with pesky questions about moral good. And we wonder why people dislike politicians and politics.

Ah, that's enough crabbing for a Friday morning. Have a good weekend folks.

That's not sarcasm. Just for the record.

Suh, Egypt, and Black Friday

Ndamukong Suh just doesn't get it. He is an egregious example of what's wrong not just with football as it's now played but of what's wrong with the City of Detroit itself. It's called arrogance, plain and simple, and it has to stop.

He sounded an awful lot like another infamous Detroiter, Kwame Kilpatrick, after the game. No apology, no true acknowledgement that he was wrong, but only a shallow explanation about being held down. He didn't intend to kick the defender. Uh, then why did you in fact kick him?

He ought to be suspended, and the Detroit Lions need to examine the ways in which they've allowed yesterday's incident to happen and stop making excuses for Suh themselves. The City of Detroit too should look at how the man's actions make it look worse as well, and make a few changes for the better in the town's collective conscience. As to Ndamukong Suh, he needs to finally ask his mother whether he really is a dirty player.

Is it too early, in light of recent actions in Egypt, to say we told you so? Because the recent unrest suggests that installing a democratic government there aren't all coming up roses. Sometimes it is better to deal with the devil you know...but, to be fair, it is still very early in an ongoing process. We just wish it didn't look quite so much like chaos. It is difficult to trust the intentions of rioters and riot supressors in a part of the world so long dominated by authoritarian government.

Black Friday is once more upon us, that annual orgy of consumerist excess. But what we find rather galling this year is the advent of shop local Saturday following it. The idea itself is a good one: we should support our local merchants, our closest neighbors. But to see television ads encouraging local shopping on the day after you gorge yourself at the national chains seems rather patronizing. Spend the big bucks with us, the few dollars left over at the neighborhood appliance shop (if there is one) appears to be the mantra. Such gall makes us frown even more harshly at Black Friday.

Ah well. Until the morrow...

Kwame's Third Chance?

It seems, perhaps, that former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick might land on his feet after all. He has been released from prison, having served his sentence for not being entirely honest about his ability to repay the City of Detroit what he owes it in the wake of the text message scandal. He has a book in print, Surrendered: The Rise, Fall & Revelation of Kwame Kilpatrick, sales of which are, by court order, to go towards his restitution payments (which the former mayor insists he intends to repay anyway). And now he has a paying gig, meeting with students and speaking to them about his life and its pitfalls. He will speak at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas on August 27th.

The school's motto, Think Justice, indeed seems appropriate to the nature of Mr. Kilpatrick's visit. Further, school officials assure the public that Kilpatrick will be properly challenged by their students.

Let's hope so. It would be nice to think that, as Mr. Kilpatrick somehow still seems to view himself as a role model, he might actually take on the mantle and instruct those college students on proper behavior and how to live rightly. There's no good scoffing at this prospect: if he isn't recalcitrant, it doesn't matter, and folks will see through him. If he is, well, his crimes certainly weren't beyond forgiveness, and hopefully the students will learn a lesson in that.

Mr. Kilpatrick does have to earn his daily bread as well. It is unfair to expect that every dollar he earns should go towards restitution no matter how fair and, ahem, just the payments may be. And to give him his due, he could certainly inspire the young at one time in his life. If he can find a way to inspire them properly as he gets his own affairs back in order, there's no harm giving him the chance.

True, his past actions do not offer much reason to believe that possible. Yet as the future is unwritten, there's no harm giving him the benefit of the doubt. As only time will tell, as time is all he or we have got, we just as well let it play out its course. If nothing else, maybe the upcoming Federal case against him will help keep his actions in check.

Sting of Kilpatrick will linger a long while

It is, in many ways, the saga which never ends. But the fact is, the specter of Kwame Kilpatrick just keeps hanging over Detroit.

The latest issue has to do with the fact that the former Mayor used campaign funds for personal use; namely, that his lawyers in the text message scandal were paid out of it. It is a clear violation of state law.

But rather than accept a much smaller fine as proposed last year by then Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land, Kilpatrick bid his time and never took the deal. Now, new Secretary of State Ruth Johnson is insisting on a fine of close to a million bucks.

All of this is before the former Mayor must return to Wayne County to face federal charges for public corruption next year. The saga simply has no end in sight; it appears as Detroit will be paying for their old leader's miscues for a long time to come. This cannot help current Mayor Dave Bing or the Common Council move Detroit forward. Indeed, it surely will do the average citizen little good.

The sad fact is that the average citizen is exactly who put Kilpatrick in power in the first place. Hopefully, there will be a lesson learned, even if after years of it being taught: keep a better eye on your elected officials. When Detroiters learn that lesson, they shall indeed better serve themselves.

GOP Bashes Detroit

The Republican party is making hay on something of a familiar note: hitting Detroit while its down. Several GOP leaders and conservative commentators, Newt Gingrich and Glenn Beck among them, are citing Detroit as exactly what happens when Democratic leadership rules for long periods of time.

Are such criticisms fair? When an area becomes so dependent on a single industry, as Detroit had been relying on the automotive industry for so long, then it is natural that when the one suffers the other must. Further, such things as the Interstate Highway System cut through many viable neighborhoods during the 1960s and led many to leave town. For these and other reasons, it arguably an overstatement to blame all the city's woes on its leadership.

Yet that cannot excuse areas where leadership has failed Detroit and Detroiters. Indeed it is rather simplistic to see an area suffer without consideration of how its politics may have contributed to the decline. Think what you want of him, but Coleman Young did not exactly help the situation. His bluster and confrontational style surely did not attract outside help. Kwame Kilpatrick, well, we know what being Mayor meant to him, and he is paying the price of his own arrogance. As a result, when we get decent Mayors such as Dennis Archer and Dave Bing, we ought not be surprised at the uphill battles they have faced.

Is it coincidental that our Mayors have been Democrats? That our Council has been ruled by Democrats for decades? Does anybody even know who was the last elected Republican to win a Detroit elective office? And would they have been swallowed by their loyal opposition regardless? That Detroit offices are held as nonpartisan matters not one whit. We know to whom they pledge their loyalty.

That the troubles with Detroit may ultimately have sprung from multiple reasons of varying effect is fair to consider. But while we cannot say that some of the city's problems were wholly of her own making, we cannot absolve Detroit leaders of the role they played. That they were overwhelmingly Democrats must mean something. It is pretty obvious that such meaning has not been lost on the rest of the state, nor the nation in general.

Pot Shots on August 5th

A federal court has overruled California's Proposition 8, which disallowed gay marriage. It's just another example of how liberals are all for democracy and the will of the people...until the people disagree with them. Then we haul the issue into the courts. The courts, of course, as no less of a civil libertarian than Thomas Jefferson has noted, offer the greatest threat to our true freedoms. Especially when they begin to be used to enforce upon the body politic pure abominations.

Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick has lost the Democratic Primary for the seat she has held in Congress for years. It seems that the apron strings can stretch a very long way; no one doubts that her name association with her infamous son has caused her downfall. Blood is thicker than politics, apparently.

A British group claims that a glass of beer per day, rather than a glass of wine, will burn more calories than a 30 minute jog. We don't care about the scratch your head factor which such statements invite: the bottom line here is that just when you think that England has become unimportant in the world, they give us reason to respect them again. Any nation which touts beer drinking as healthy is a good and grand ally in our book.

Poor Kwame!

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has tried to get his restitution payments, part of his legal settlement with the City in the aftermath of his scandal while in office, lowered to six bucks a month. Luckily, there is some justice in the world: Judge David Groner of the Wayne County Circuit Court has ruled that his payments cannot be adjusted. Kilpatrick's legal team is mulling an appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court.

The arrogance of the man throughout this entire ordeal is nothing less than staggering. His attorney claimed that “I don’t think he was ordered to live a more modest lifestyle. ... Is it better Mr. Kilpatrick drives a beat-up Yugo?" Perhaps not; but living in a swanky mansion and driving a Cadillac Escalade when he knows full well that he's expected to ante up $6,000 a month to the City of Detroit hardly seems like appropriate behavior either. It looks far more as though he's yet again snubbing his nose at his old constituents. Basically, he's telling the local taxpayers that he intends to live in however manner he feels and that his obligations to others are at his whim.

Oh, but someone else is leasing the mansion for him, attorney Alan Schwartz tells us. In that case, then, paying what he owes should be easier, shouldn't it?

The whole situation is one absurdity after another. Our belief is that Kilpatrick is simply trying to get out from under his obligations: how much effort is it worth to go after a guy 1500 miles away when county budgets are tight? He may well be gambling that that, along with the apathy which often grows among the public as scandals die, will in the long run allow him to escape justice.

Time will tell. Meanwhile, Detroiters are left with another example of the arrogance which all too often comes with power, privilege, and leverage. Ol' Kwame sure knows how to wield influence, and we're left holding the bag.

Kwame: All Gall

Former Detroit Mayor (I love how that sounds!) Kwame Kilpatrick is asking for early release from prison, where he is serving time for his scandalous role in the text message/perjury affair (no pun intended). He wants to move out of state to seek work.

What's the matter, Kwame? Afraid you can't get a decent job in Detroit? What about the comeback we set you up for? Where's the arrogance now?

Oh, we all know why you want to leave. Sure, you're family lives outside of Michigan now (can you blame them?) but what else might be afoot? Hmm? That little affair with the stripper at the, ahem, alleged wild party at the mayoral residence? The fact that a sludge contractor just implicated you in bribes offered to city officials for a waste hauling contract? Could any of that be a factor in your wish for early release and desire to leave Michigan?

I'm sure that none of that matters. Yeah. Just incidental.

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.