If you're going to be corrupt, do it with style! (And other "progressive" stories from Detroit and beyond)
By RightMichigan.com Posted in Breaking News | corrupt | Democrats behaving badly | Detroit | graft | Kwame Kilpatrick | Michigan | www.RightMichigan.com — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Cross-posted on Right Michigan at www.RightMichigan.com.
So is this progress or a fresh series of setbacks? Depends on your perspective, I suppose. Those of us who value fair play and folks keeping their jobs would certainly chalk these up as wins, but the libs? Probably not so much.
It's got to be tough, watching one of your heroes implode before your very eyes, unwilling to recognize and act on the signs screaming for him to exit, stage left. If it isn't a tawdry affair caught on text message it's a multiple count felony indictment, a recall attempt, requests from the hyper-liberal city council that the Democrat governor kick you out on your can and now this, maybe more frustrating than any but the Mayor's criminal indiscretions.
The Ivory Tower reported over the weekend that Kwame Kilpatrick's days were spent getting into trouble long before he became the mayor of Michigan's largest and most prominent city. Turns out his days as a State Representative from Detroit yielded plenty of opportunities for shenanigans, few of which the Mayor was able to decline. And why would he? He was able to send hundreds of thousands of tax dollars directly to close personal friends who then provided kick-backs to his wife, Carlita.
At issue are a pair of grants around the turn of the century (and yes, this decade, Rod Allen... if you were watching the Tigers this Saturday, there was a trivia question and one of the hints was that a player had accomplished a particular feat some time last century and the color commentator exclaimed... `you mean last decade?' Nevermind. Mental note, when you have to explain inside jokes they're probably a little tooooo inside.)
Where was I? Oh yeah, grants. Engineered by Kwame to folks like his pastor and his friends. People like this guy.
According to the FREEP:
...Ferguson's firm... paid $100,000 to a company called U.N.I.T.E. Co. Inc. that Carlita Kilpatrick, the mayor's wife, incorporated in July 2000. Carlita Kilpatrick is listed as the president of U.N.I.T.E. on the incorporation papers. No other names are listed. U.N.I.T.E.'s incorporation papers were filed three weeks after Ferguson's nonprofit faxed its grant application to state officials from Kwame Kilpatrick's office at the Capitol.
Vann's program had agreed to pay U.N.I.T.E. $75,000 from its grant, but paid only $37,500, said the then-executive director of the program, after state officials raised objections about the propriety of compensating Carlita Kilpatrick's company with a state grant her husband helped secure. Vann praised the work his nonprofit has done in Detroit.
One grant was to a nonprofit formed by Kilpatrick's friend Bobby Ferguson and the other was to a group run by the Rev. Edgar Vann, who then was Kilpatrick's pastor.
The paper paints a pretty lurid picture of these deals. The original grant applications were, apparently, the flimsiest and least specific of any the State received and Ferguson's grant was actually cut-off half way through the payment schedule because the money was being used on sundry other things not covered in the task description. Vann's program? He was paying Carlita $200 an hour (the rate listed on her invoices) for programs that never even got off the ground.
Gotta love the smell of kickbacks in the morning. Not that the mayor didn't learn from his mistake. The next time he wanted to shell out tens of millions of dollars to his pal Bobby he waited until he was running the show in the D and didn't even bother demanding the man line his wife's pockets. So, see? That alone is progress, right? From graft and corruption WITH kickbacks to graft and corruption without them. Or without any that have been identified just yet. At this rate you can probably expect a Free Press expose in five or six days, the way they've been uncovering these stories lately.
Elsewhere, it looks like the American Axle Strike may be officially over, too. No way that can't be described as progress, right? Well, again, might depend on your perspective. On the upside, folks can keep their jobs and will be getting a big one-time payout to make wage concessions easier to stomach. On the downside, workers will only be getting paid about two-and-a-half-times the minimum wage, not four.
The Detroit News reports:
UAW members also learned that most of them will receive either a buyout worth up to $140,000 to leave the company, or a buydown bonus worth up to $105,000, to stay at the company but be paid lower wages.
As Vaughn Smith, holding his 8-year-old son's hand, emerged from the meeting Sunday at Martin Luther King High School, he said he would support the deal.
"People say this is a bad deal -- it's not a bad deal," the St. Clair Shores resident said. "A bad deal is walking around a burning trash can for another 11 weeks."
Details of the tentative agreement, seen for the first time Sunday, include sparing a Cheektowaga, N.Y., plant from closure. But wages for production workers in Detroit will fall from more than $28 per hour to $18.50, still better than the $14-per-hour range the company had demanded. And workers will continue to be paid supplemental unemployment benefits, among other provisions.
$18.50. Pfft. Please. Who can live on that these days? Especially with the giant windfall workers were making with their strike pay. Oh, wait... never mind.
I remember back in late 2004, working for the Michigan Republican Party as a Field Coordinator I was frustrated and exhausted. We were all working 20 hour days, seven days a week down the stretch and the only thing getting me from one day to the next was a constant stream of Pepsi and constant personal spoken reminders that "I can do ANYTHING for X number of days."
No one in that level of politics breaks the bank but when you're pulling down a flat, standard paycheck every two weeks, as the hours grow your hourly wage drops like a lead balloon. I remember doing the math at one point and realizing I was making something like $1.50 an hour. I swore at that point that I was finished with politics. After the election I'd pack up my desk, I'd head home to Grand Rapids, I'd sleep through Christmas and first thing in 2005 I'd start looking for a factory job somewhere, anywhere in the State. That's where the money was. 40 hours a week, every week, and big bucks, comparably. Goodness gracious I wish I'd been mercenary enough to actually do that. $18.50 an hour? And a $105,000 check to make that hardship a little easier to stomach?
Don't get me wrong... when you've been paid a certain wage, whatever it is, and suddenly you're forced to do with less it hurts. Especially when it's a lot less. And this is, no question. I'm sure our friends on the left would agree with that. Many will even argue that accepting any cuts is the wrong thing to do and that management should balance their books some other way.
Interesting, though, that those on the left who'd make this argument are the first to want to cut each and every one of our salaries to help management in Lansing stave off having to make any hard decisions on their own. And we don't get the luxury of a strike. But I digress.
We were talking about differing perspectives on progress. Remember the tragic shooting last year at Virginia Tech? How it came out of nowhere? How it left us all scratching our heads and pouring out our hearts?
A lot of schools started proceedings to react themselves to better prepare in the horrible, unthinkable event anything like that might happen closer to home. Here in Grand Rapids a private Christian school, Calvin College, began discussing the possibility of enabling some on the security team, those with experience as police officers and the like, to carry handguns on campus.
The Associated Press reports the school will officially give the thumbs up starting this fall semester. Progress. Slam dunk for safety, right?
Last month about 60 students shouting "community, not weaponry" protested on the Grand Rapids campus after the Faculty Senate approved a safety department recommendation to allow trained officers to carry guns.
Funny, that. Something tells me that particular hippie chant wouldn't discourage a bad man with bad intentions. A security guard with a .40 and twenty years experience on the force? Now THAT's progress.
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