I see this as a very good thing and not for the reasons you might think!
But, first, the video:
The Story:
Detroit’s New Mayor – Mike Duggan
For Duggan, born in Detroit but who lived much of his life in the western Wayne County suburb of Livonia, it was a victory rooted in his turnaround persona that may also reflect a move away from decades of racial politics.
He will replace one-term Mayor Dave Bing in a city where 83 percent of the residents are black and in a region where racial divisions have strained city-suburb relations until recently.
A beaming Duggan Tuesday made a veiled reference to race but immediately brushed it aside to focus squarely on the monumental tasks that voters decided to put in his hands — and which he’ll share with an emergency manager appointed by Gov. Rick Snyder who holds the power to make most major decisions.
“What we have in common is much more powerful than what divides us. Now the real work begins,” Duggan said. “They want somebody to go into City Hall, get rid of the bureaucracy and get city services going.”
Now about why I believe that Mike Duggan won the election; I believe that Duggan won because quite frankly, the people of the city of Detroit and I mean everyone — was sick and tired of the racial politics of the city. Those racial politics, by the way, date back to the first black mayor of the city of Detroit, Coleman A. Young. Quite bluntly, Young hated white people with a passion; and it showed in the white parts of the city, namely southwest Detroit — where I grew up.
Also too, I believe that many people in Detroit were sick of business as usual. That “Business as usual” bankrupted the city and put the city in the position that it is in now. I believe that Duggan represented a better path for the city of Detroit. What amazes me, as that Duggan has, as you can see in the video; an overwhelming support of the black community, which I think is an awesome thing.
I am convinced Mike Duggan has his work cut out for him. I wish him and his staff the best. However, I believe that if he plays his cards right and goes in with the right attitude; I believe that he can possibly do some great things for the City of Detroit.
Here’s to a prosperous future in the City of Detroit!
On Friday, Taeler Shaltry wrote on her Facebook page: “Yah its finally Nov I have 2 more weeks until my expected due date I can’t wait! I’m really excited!!!!”
Two days later, the pregnant woman was killed when she was shot inside a Detroit home. The shooting also injured an elderly man and killed his adult grandson.
Doctors delivered Shaltry’s baby via emergency C-section, saving the infant. On Monday, the baby was in critical condition at Henry Ford Hospital.
Police continued Monday to investigate the shooting at 9206 Meyers on the city’s west side. The Wayne County Medical Examiner’s Office said the woman at the scene died from a gunshot wound to the head. It did not release her name pending identification by her family, but Sharon Shaltry said the victim is her daughter.
Detroit used to be a great place; now it’s a crime ridden cesspool. Who or what is to blame is the question. The answers are more than this blog posting would be able to fill.
To make sure that the black guy wins. Because we just cannot have the evil white man win the election! 🙄
Sickening… 😡
The Story:
Washington — The U.S. Justice Department said Monday it will monitor municipal elections Tuesday in Detroit and Hamtramck along with Orange County, N.Y., and Cuyahoga and Lorain counties in Ohio.
The department said monitoring is designed to ensure compliance with the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in the election process on the basis of race, color or membership in a minority language group.
During the 2012 elections, the federal government had about a half-dozen or so inspectors in Detroit monitoring polling stations and responding to complaints. The department will have a smaller presence for Tuesday’s election.
In Cuyahoga, Lorain and Orange Counties, the Department will assign federal observers from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management to monitor polling place activities based on court orders. The observers will watch and record activities during voting hours at polling locations in these jurisdictions and Civil Rights Division attorneys will coordinate the federal activities and maintain contact with local election officials.
In addition, Justice Department personnel will monitor polling place activities in Detroit and Hamtramck. Civil Rights Division attorneys will coordinate federal activities and maintain contact with local election officials. The department has previously monitored polling places in Hamtramck to ensure voters’ civil rights were upheld.
In 2000, Hamtramck agreed to revamp election procedures to ensure all voters were treated equally under an agreement reached with the Justice Department. The agreement resolved a government suit claiming violations of the Voting Rights Act aimed at Arab-American voters in the November 1999 election.
The agreement stems from an investigation that began after the Justice Department received complaints from Arab American voters in Hamtramck that their citizenship had been challenged by private citizens during the November 1999 general election. “As a result of those challenges, Arab American voters and other dark-skinned voters, such as Bengali-Americans, were required by pollworkers to take a citizenship oath prior to being permitted to vote. This requirement was not imposed on white voters,” the Justice Department said.
Each year, the department deploys federal observers to monitor elections across the country. To file complaints about discriminatory voting practices, including acts of harassment or intimidation, voters may call the Voting Section of the department’s Civil Rights Division at 1-800-253-3931.
Good to hear about this one; this guy was a straight up thug, just like the former mayor.
(Reuters) – A friend and former business associate of former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick must serve 21 years in prison for corruption, a federal judge said Friday, a day after she handed Kilpatrick one of the longest prison terms ever given a U.S. politician.
Bobby Ferguson, 44, would stop at nothing to further his business interests, said U.S. District Court Judge Nancy Edmunds in sentencing him on nine counts including extortion and bribery. Kilpatrick was sentenced to 28 years in prison.
“The atmosphere of corruption forced many good people away from the city,” said Edmunds. “The impact on the morale of the city of Detroit cannot be overstated.”
Ferguson’s lawyers had argued for a sentence of no more than 10 years, saying the government sought to lay the blame for all of Detroit’s ills on Ferguson and Kilpatrick.
Detroit, which filed for bankruptcy in July, has lost more than half of its population since the 1950s, leaving it with a shrinking tax base and huge debt.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Bullotta had argued for Ferguson’s sentence to be equal to Kilpatrick’s, on the grounds that Ferguson was the “muscle and money man” who bullied business people, threatening financial harm and cancellation of their city contracts if his demands were not met.
Detroit — Kwame Kilpatrick has been sentenced to serve 28 years in prison for crimes of racketeering and conspiracy committed during his six years as the mayor of Detroit. That sentence was just handed down in U.S. federal court by Judge Nancy Edmunds.
Edmunds said she was required to issue a sentence that is “sufficient but not greater than necessary” for a criminal enterprise that ran from Kilpatrick’s time in the state House to the mayor’s office. She described the former mayor as a larger-than-life character who helped himself to a jet-setting lifestyle. A significant sentence, she said, sends the message that corruption won’t be tolerated.
Kilpatrick appeared stunned on hearing his sentence, and a few in the courtroom crowd could be heard saying “Oh no.” If he serves the entirety of the 28 years, the 43-year-old would be 71 when he walks out of prison.
After declining to testify on his own behalf during the trial, Kilpatirck spoke before Edmunds made her ruling. It was an emotional and occasionally apologetic speech that included the omission: “I really messed up.”
“We’ve been stuck in this town for a very long time dealing with me,” he said. “I’m ready to go so the city can move on.”
One of the many significant disadvantages to Southerners of being in the Union is the periodic transfer of wealth by the US Federal Government of Southern tax dollars to non-Southerners, including foreign dictators, Islamic terrorist groups and failed Third World countries. Recently, the US government decided to transfer $300 million to a Third World city – which, in this case, happens to be located within the United States. The City of Detroit’s decline over the past half a century has become the stuff of legend. It is now symbolic of the decline of the USA as a whole, a microcosm of the loss of industry and the demographic transformation of much of the US into a Third World society. In 1940 Detroit was 90% White and an industrial power-house. It was one of the most affluent and productive cities in the world. By 2010 the city was just 10% White and 82% Black. White flight from the failed city has dropped the total population of Detroit by 40% over what it was in 1950. Any way that one looks at the numbers associated with Detroit it is clear that it is a Third World city in the middle of the United States. If one took a Haitian city such as Port-au-Prince, dropped it in the middle of North America and periodically transferred wealth to it from outside it would look very much like Detroit.
As much as it pains me to admit this; Michael is absolutely correct. I am from the “Detroit Area” currently and I grew up in Southwest Detroit in the 1980’s. Even back then, Detroit was a different place in a different time. There are a ton of reasons why Detroit ended up like it did; I blogged about that in the past.
There are times, when I honestly wish that I could just pack up everything and move to another part of the Country. The flathead valley in Montana is where I would love to go; but, as many Americans, I simply cannot afford to move and I have parents that need me here for the time being. So, I do what I can and wait.
This is a very interesting report and it is coming from the Detroit Free Press which is basically liberally biased.
Here is the meat and potatoes of the report:
For this report, the Free Press examined about 10,000 pages of documents gathering dust in the public library’s archives. Since most of those documents have never been digitized, the Free Press created its own database of 50 years of Detroit’s financial history. Reporters also conducted dozens of interviews with participants from the last six mayoral administrations as well as city bureaucrats and outside experts. Among the highlights from the review:
■ Taxing higher and higher: City leaders tried repeatedly to reverse sliding revenue through new taxes. Despite a new income tax in 1962, a new utility tax in 1971 and a new casino revenue tax in 1999 — not to mention several tax increases along the way — revenue in today’s dollars fell 40% from 1962 to 2012. Higher taxes helped drive residents to the suburbs and drove away business. Today, Detroit still doesn’t take in as much tax revenue as it did just from property taxes in 1963.
■ Reconsidering Coleman Young: Serving from 1974-1994, Young was the most austere Detroit mayor since World War II, reducing the workforce, department budgets and debt during a particularly nasty national recession in the early 1980s. Young was the only Detroit mayor since 1950 to preside over a city with more income than debt, although he relied heavily on tax increases to pay for services.
■ Downsizing — too little, too late: The total assessed value of Detroit property — a good gauge of the city’s tax base and its ability to pay bills — fell a staggering 77% over the past 50 years in today’s dollars. But through 2004, the city cut only 28% of its workers, even though the money to pay them was drying up. Not until the last decade did Detroit, in desperation, cut half its workforce. The city also failed to take advantage of efficiencies, such as new technology, that enabled enormous productivity gains in the broader economy.
■ Skyrocketing employee benefits: City leaders allowed legacy costs — the tab for retiree pensions and health care — to spiral out of control even as the State of Michigan and private industry were pushing workers into less costly plans. That placed major stress on the budget and diverted money from services such as streetlights and public safety. Detroit’s spending on retiree health care soared 46% from 2000 to 2012, even as its general fund revenue fell 20%.
■ Gifting a billion in bonuses: Pension officials handed out about $1 billion in bonuses from the city’s two pension funds to retirees and active city workers from 1985 to 2008. That money — mostly in the form of so-called 13th checks — could have shored up the funds and possibly prevented the city from filing for bankruptcy. If that money had been saved, it would have been worth more than $1.9 billion today to the city and pension funds, by one expert’s estimate.
■ Missing chance after chance: Contrary to myth, the city has not been in free fall since the 1960s. There have been periods of economic growth and hope, such as in the 1990s when the population decline slowed, income-tax revenue increased and city leaders balanced the budget. But leaders failed to take advantage of those moments of calm to reform city government, reduce expenses and protect the city and its residents from another downturn.
■ Borrowing more and more: Detroit went on a binge starting around 2000 to close budget holes and to build infrastructure, more than doubling debt to $8 billion by 2012. Under Archer, Detroit sold water and sewer bonds. Kilpatrick, who took office in 2002, used borrowing as his stock answer to budget issues, and Bing borrowed more than $250 million.
■ Adding the last straw — Kilpatrick’s gamble: He’s best known around the globe for a sex and perjury scandal that sent him to jail and massive corruption that threatens to send him to prison next month for more than 20 years. The corruption cases further eroded Detroit’s image and distracted the city from its fiscal storm. But perhaps the greatest damage Kilpatrick did to the city’s long-term stability was with Wall Street’s help when he borrowed $1.44 billion in a flashy high-finance deal to restructure pension fund debt. That deal, which could cost $2.8 billion over the next 22 years, now represents nearly one-fifth of the city’s debt.
With all the lost opportunities over decades, with Detroit’s debt mounting, with the housing crash and Great Recession just over the horizon, 2005 turned out to be the watershed year.
Although no one could see it at the time, Detroit’s insolvency was guaranteed.
I am from the “Detroit Area” currently and I grew up in Southwest Detroit in the 1980’s. Even back then, Detroit was a different place in a different time. There are a ton of reasons why Detroit ended up like it did; I blogged about that in the past. 
So, I do what I can and wait.