POLITICAL POSTURING AT ITS BEST

The Hip-Hop Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick pleads guilty and resigns as Mayor of the city of Detroit. Detroit Police Chief Ella Bully Cummings has retired as Police Chief effective Friday, September 5, 2008. Sharon McPhail resigns as city of Detroit Attorney. President Pro Tem Monica Conyers becomes the New President of the City Council and President of Detroit City Council Ken Cockrel Jr. becomes the Mayor of the city of Detroit. While Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy tells the news media she got everything you wanted out of Kwame Kilpatrick’s plea deal. So what does all this mean? It means the city of Detroit will see Kwame Kilpatrick get between 120-180 days in jail so literally 4-6 months jail time and he has to pay the city of Detroit back $1 million while resigning from his post at the same time. So what does it all mean? It means the city of Detroit residents have been hoodwinked, bamboozled and lead a stray by our politicians who had a stake hold in the mayoral mess?

First let me begin, everything that Kwame Kilpatrick was charged with was worth 5 years or more of jail time. So since Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy is around here talking about we got everything we wanted, the citizens of Detroit didn’t get anything out the deal because Kwame has got a lesser jail sentence than Michael Vick, than Michael Vick’s colleagues and than people wrongfully convicted. Then Ken Cockrel Jr. has set up here and told the media that since Kilpatrick was first charged, he has been planning his first 120 days in office. Is that ironic or what? Cockrel only pushed for Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm to intervene in the mayoral mess because he knew he would take over the mayor’s seat. However what many don’t know is that Cockrel Jr. as President of the Detroit City Council has not brought the city council into the 21st Century Technology age because when you go down to the city council meeting, you will see no computers whatsoever but stacks of paperwork.

Then let’s look at Monica Conyers who is under investigation by the FBI and has given the city a black eye with her “Shrek” comments that were aimed toward new city of Detroit mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. Also what I left out is that while at the Democratic National Convention Monica Conyers got into with hotel staff and Denver police had to be called in to calm her down. So what does the city of Detroit look like with Monica Conyers as President of the Detroit City Council? Is this what the city of Detroit really wants? Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick had the city of Detroit pay former Detroit Police Officers $9 million in the “Whistle Blower” lawsuit that the city council approved to pay. However the city of Detroit only will see Kwame Kilpatrick pay $million back of that $9 million, so is that what the citizens of the city of Detroit really want.

So while you see so many people move up to more positions and talk about what they are going to do to get the city back on track, you have to ask, why haven’t they did anything so far to help improve the city. Why didn’t the citizens of Detroit and the city of Detroit get more back from Kwame Kilpatrick than a merely $1 million and 4-6 months of jail time. Is that right? We have people caught with a blunt of weed who have received up to a year or more in jail. However Kilpatrick only gets 4-6 months of jail of time. So the city of Detroit doesn’t win after all the drama and with all that is going on, we hear all this praise for next mayor of the city of Detroit Ken Cockrel Jr. but my question is that it is tragic, sad, and historic in the sense that our government has failed us all over. Our mayor isn’t the only one to fail us but the city council has failed us. We have had poor results in the city because of political posturing and ambitions of people who want to make careers out of public office. The city of Detroit needs a new slate of city, county and state leaders who fight for the people and do the jobs they are elected to do in a selfless way. Too many of our politicians are self-serving and only want to see their friends and family prosper rather than the citizens of Detroit prosper.

Thus the good old boy show is alive and well and the political posturing is clearly seen in the city of Detroit. The city of Detroit did not get a break in this deal and while so many of us want to say that finally the city of Detroit will move forward without Kilpatrick. I ask you what did they city do before Kilpatrick. Is Kilpatrick really the reason for the city of Detroit demise? The answer is no. Did Kwame Kilpatrick do good things for the city of Detroit? Yes he did but for every good thing, he and the city council did 5 bad things. Thus I ask our current mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. what he has really done to help the citizens of Detroit since being elected the youngest city council member in 1997. Since that time of being elected to city council, speculated started that Ken Cockrel Jr. would run for mayor some day and even before the mayoral scandal broke, many speculated that Cockrel Jr. would run for mayor. However the buzz got louder after the mayor scandal. Is that political posturing or what? Cockrel got called out by Kilpatrick at the city of Detroit address in February and my question is what man just sits in the audience and does nothing or better yet, why pretend not to support the mayor because some of your other city council members say they are not going to sit on the stage behind Kilpatrick or better yet because the citizens of the city of Detroit didn’t like the mayor at the time. Nonetheless, everything that Cockrel has done in his political career has been aimed toward becoming mayor of the city of Detroit one day.

While I hope Cockrel likes it while it lasts but it is no way in hell the citizens of the city of Detroit would have-elected Cockrel to office in any way. It is clear that Cockrel’s rise to mayor is by chance and circumstance. Thus what will happen next and what’s next for the city. While according to Cockrel better services and a more transparent government as well as more media access to the city of Detroit mayoral office. My question is why the talk now and why didn’t this talk occur in 2005 when elected President of the Detroit City Council. Why the tough talk now that better city services will occur when most city services are under the council’s approval and watchful for eye any way or I am to believe that city council’s job is to only look at stacks of paper and approve budgets and appoints. Come on people, a Detroit City Council member works with a budget of nearly a half a million dollars that is suppose to pay their salary and staff. That’s more than enough of a budget to make sure city services are better.

Am I hopeful that things will change in the city? Yes I am hopeful but do I think that under Cockrel’s watch life in the city of Detroit will get better. No I don’t think so and I believe that the city of Detroit will only get better when we elect a full time mayor next November. Yes November 2009 will tell it all in terms of how the city Detroit will change for good or worse. We need a mayor who understands our past and knows our present conditions and has a clear cut short term & long term plan to deal with our present while improving our future for generations to come. Thus until the political posturing ends, I have to sit and wait to see what will happen next as many in the news media will continue to prey on the city of Detroit now that Kilpatrick is gone, the preying without stop. People will never showcase the good about the city of Detroit no matter what and even when Mayor Dennis Archer did all his bad, the news media didn’t scrutinize him as much as they have did Kilpatrick. However one thing I will say, most of Kilpatrick’s problems were self inflicted but not all of it. Archer kept himself under control when dealing with all the corruption he did, while Kilpatrick loved the lime light.

So for now as the political posturing and the political jockeying for who will be the next mayor of the City of Detroit takes place, it is clear that the citizens of the city of Detroit will continue to get lost in the political shuffling that will soon take place in the city within the next 14 days. It is a very sad day in the city of Detroit and its citizens while the cities politicians rejoice because now the gateway to the mayoral seat becomes wide open sense it is being vacated with Kilpatrick’s plea deal that involved his resignation. So we the citizens of Detroit continue to lose out as those in city, county and state government continue their political posturing and political jockeying in hopes of improving their professional political careers of self-serving themselves and their political ambitions for higher offices and more money. The citizens of Detroit lost a major opportunity to regain back some self respect from the rest of the world but instead we have to settle for what our political officials are giving us in terms of a plea deal that at least got rid of Kilpatrick but created an even greater headache with Cockrel Jr. as mayor and Monica Conyers as President of City Council.

News Flash—City Council President calls Mayor Shrek! Be on the lookout for more details in the near future as I see nothing but bad things ahead from city government who is under Federal investigation.