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By RightMichigan.com Posted in Breaking News | Detroit | Kwame Kilpatrick | Michigan — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.

Democrats behaving badly.  What's the deal?  So much for this being the new party of family values.  We've got another Clinton running for the White House, seriously threatening to return Bill to the residence it's taken six years to purify and now we come to find out that one of the nation's most prominent mayors may be every bit the philanderer.  The Detroit papers are all abuzz this morning with news of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's romantic trist with his chief of staff Christine Beatty.  But philandering isn't against the law (in most states).  What IS against the law is lying under oath and firing people because they might expose one libidinous rendezvous or another.

The Free Press reports:

Kilpatrick and chief of staff Christine Beatty denied during testimony in August that they had a sexual relationship. But the records, a series of text messages, show them engaged in romantic banter as well as planning and recounting sexual liaisons.

The messages are also at odds with the pair's trial testimony that they did not fire Deputy Police Chief Gary Brown in 2003, an ouster that led him to sue. The text messages show Beatty recalling the "decision that we made to fire Gary Brown."

The newspaper examined nearly 14,000 text messages on Beatty's city-issued pager. The exchanges, which the Free Press obtained after the trial, cover two months each in 2002 and 2003.

The Kilpatrick-Beatty relationship and Brown's dismissal were central to the whistle-blower suit filed by Brown and Harold Nelthrope, a former police officer and mayoral bodyguard. The two cops accused Kilpatrick of retaliating against them because of their roles in an internal affairs investigation of the mayor's security team -- a probe that potentially could have exposed the affair.

This one actually bothers me.  I actually like Hizzoner a lot.  Our politics are usually different but there's a bit of common ground.  He's been a staunch advocate of school choice and he's always seemed to genuinely care about improving the city of Detroit.  Plus, one time a few years ago I saw him somewhere in the city and from a distance he gave me a head nod and a wave so that was cool.

Seriously, though.  I like the guy.  Apparently his chief of staff did too but in a much more personal way.  I won't bother linking to the text messages that the press has obtained.  They're easy enough to find and they're blue enough to make you blush but ultimately they aren't the issue here.  The two of them lied under oath.  What else did they lie about?  

And was Brown let go because he could have exposed them?  No, not Ron Brown.  Gary Brown.  Ron Brown was let go in an entirely different way.  

So where do we go from here?  

What's next?  Let me make a little prediction for you.  The mayor will continue to insist that he's sorry and that this was just an embarrassing personal mistake and   Michigan Democrats will, almost to a person, try to make this all about sex while conveniently ignoring the fact that the Mayor of Michigan's largest city perjured himself and may be making unjust personnel decisions based on his risk of being exposed as an adulterer.

Oh, and Gary Brown and others will sue.  Again.  The trials and court cases that have been spawned already by these accusations have cost Detroit taxpayers millions of dollars.  Just wait until Brown wins his lawsuit.  Kwame made a horrifying personal mistake that will cost he and his family for the rest of their lives and it's going to cost the citizens of the D a ton of cash, too.  As if there aren't enough problems in that city.

At the very least they shouldn't have to worry much longer about the politically and practically asinine idea of one Republican State Senator to repeal Michigan's earned income tax credit.  Months and months ago Nancy Cassis sponsored an EITC repeal.  With the tax break going through as planned it could knock anywhere from $41 to $130 million out of the state coffers.  And the problem here is... ?

It was a stupid idea, a stupid decision and one that she's likely to hear about from now until the end of her term in office but at least the thing is getting deader and deader in the water.  Economists and social service workers are lining up again to blast holes in the repeal idea and to put it to bed for forever.  The Associated Press reports:

The credit would allow more people to get and keep jobs and allow low-income taxpayers to keep more of their own cash, East Lansing economist Patrick Anderson said. That would bring in more payroll and sales taxes for the state, and reduce the state's benefits costs to the unemployed or underemployed.

The Michigan Catholic Conference and the Michigan League for Human Services are among the groups saying the tax credit must be protected. State budget director Robert Emerson, who was a chief architect of the plan while in the state Senate, also wants it to be kept in place.

"Our message today is that the state cannot chip away at the budget deficit on the backs of Michigan's working poor," said Paul Long of the Michigan Catholic Conference. "Such action would amount to nothing more than a tax increase on those working families who are struggling to climb above the poverty line in Michigan."

Here here.  So let's just forget about that one, shall we Senator?  Thanks.  Now if only we could convince Andy Dillon to forget about his plans to engineer a lame-duck gas tax hike that would have the exact same effect Paul Long fears from the EITC repeal.  Because if Dillon does pull that one off, well, such action would amount to nothing more than a tax increase on those working families who are struggling to climb above the poverty line in Michigan.  And on everybody else.  But especially on them.

Remember, a gas tax is a regressive tax.  The poorest among us pay just as much as the richest of the rich.  I'm not one to get into the class warfare stuff and I know that that's a criticism largely reserved for the kook fringe left in the regressisphere but lets call a spade a spade.  They want to raise the gas tax Michigan Democrats are taxing the poorest among us much more painfully than they're taxing the rich.

But at least they're driving folks towards public transportation.  Say, maybe that's been Dillon's goal all along.  And maybe the Big 3 see the writing on the wall on this one and that's influenced their decision to go ahead with additional buyout packages aimed at reducing or reducing the expense of their union work forces.

The Lansing State Journal reports 240 GM workers in Delta Township find themselves with less than two months to decide whether to accept buyouts of their own at the same time details begin to trickle out about their cross-town competition's massive buy out plan.  According to the Oakland Press:

Ford spokeswoman Marcey Evans confirmed Wednesday that the automaker and the United Auto Workers have reached an agreement to offer buyouts to UAW-represented hourly workers, but she wouldn't give further details. Earlier this month, however, Ford's vice president of North American manufacturing Joe Hinrichs said any buyout offers would be extended to all of Ford's hourly workers...

Jim Stoufer, president of UAW Local 249, which represents 4,300 workers at Ford's Kansas City Assembly Plant in Claycomo, Mo., said he was told the buyout terms would be similar to those offered in 2006. Under that program, hourly workers were offered eight packages ranging from $35,000 to $140,000, including one package that offered up to $15,000 per year for four years of college tuition. Approximately 33,600 hourly workers left under the 2006 buyout program.

With that sort of cash they won't have to worry about any EITC repeals just yet but they will have to shell out an extra couple bucks when they're filling their tanks to drive to the unemployment line.  But it could be so much worse.  The Gary Browns of Detroit didn't get any sort of buyout package.