Even though I've lived much of my life in the South, I hate heat waves like the one Detroit is experiencing these days. Too much sun plus too much humidity lays me low, drives me to whatever dark shade and coolness I can find. But lately, there's nowhere to run!
Detroit is in a heap of a mess, as bad or worse as any city in the USA. There may be a riot in cell block number nine, but there's not much dancing in the streets at this juncture.
Aside from widespread socio-economic disaster, Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is blustering under cover of a fat scandal with his ludicrous cartoon defense lawyer as mouthpiece. Concurrently, at least some members of the City Council (composed of Martha Reeves, Kenneth Cockrel, Jr., Monica Conyers, JoAnn Watson, Sheila Cockrel, Barbara-Rose Collins, Kwame Kenyatta, Alberta Tinsley-Talabi, and Brenda Jones) and their staffs are under FBI probe for taking kickbacks in exchange for approving an "alternative" sludge deal with Synagro, a subsidiary of the internationally notorious Carlyle Group.
Which reminds me eerily of Dick Nixon's buffoonish VP, Spiro Agnew, taking cash bribes stuffed in envelopes before he was eventually forced out of office back in the early 1970s. Let the chips fall where they may. For Kwame Kilpatrick and others, there's nowhere to run and nothing left to run for, perhaps. Maybe they'll have a future in Baghdad, or in Dubai -- with Halliburton Energy Services. . . . .
Today's Rune: Signals. Stay cool, folks!
4 comments:
Sounds like the heats on in places other than just outside.
Go to www.freep.com look under text message scandals and Synagro sludge if you want to read about the comitragedy that is Detroit politics.
Coleman Young spent a fairly large portion of his 20 years as mayor under federal investigation, some of his pols went to prison but they never were able to find anything incriminating on him. That old man was smart. And in my personal opinion most of the reason he was so closely scrutinized was because of the "in your face" stand he took in the 50's before the HUAC (think Joseph McCarthy)which blackballed him. J Edgar was still head of the effabeeeye during Young's administration.
Kwame is not smart, the product of what his mommy (Caroline Cheeks-Kilpatrick U.S Rep D-MI) and his daddy (Bernard Kilpatrick Long time county commissioner, now being tied to Synagro) hoped would become a new political dynasty.
Young for his 1930's slap you down style of politics and Kilpatrick's hip-hop wannabe style are starkly compared in one thing by most who saw first hand both administrations.
Young actually cared about the city first. It is not so for Kilpatrick who has consistently looted an impoverished city for his own, his family's and his highschool buddies profit.
The city council is an ineffective board not elected by district but at large. This allows them to answer to no particular constituency. Of them all Monica Conyers (wife of John Conyers US Rep D MI)is the one most likely to be the target of the feds.
The curious, over all general attitude in Detroit politics seems to be that once elected it is not to benefit the city by hard work and service but rather "I worked my ass off to get here, now what can I take from you for my benefit."
Honestly? The real politik here is fucking ridiculous and the main reason this city will slide deeper into the heat of the fire.
Is it that Martha Reeves, of "Heat Wave" fame?
We had CNN on for a while at work last night and I saw on the ticker that Bush is claiming executive privilege in the Plame/Rove affair. We've got stagflation, skyrocketing energy prices, an embattled presidency and we're stuck in a war in Asia. It's like 1973 all over again.
Speaking of Agnew...it seems the more things change the more they stay the same, eh? And yet people have some, strange "faith" that voting gives them actual power. Gads, how that makes me laugh!
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