A Leap of Faith

Well, as I write this it's a rare day, a once every 4 years day. Leap year day, February 29! So, since it's so rare and since I'm in a rare mood, lets do something I never do, lets talk politics shall we?

I see Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano has gone on record today as saying Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick should not be pressured into resigning. He further stated that his thoughts on this could all change if Wayne County Prosecutor Kim Worthy charges the mayor with purjury in the text messaging scandal. I feel Ficano is right. No matter what you may think about his private life, Kilpatrick has done more for the City of Detroit as mayor, than any of his predecessors over the last 40 years combined, dating back to the 1967 Detroit riots. He's bringing business back into the city and he's striving to improve neighborhoods which, in my opinion, is the real key to making Detroit a world class city again. For years, city leaders felt improving the downtown riverfront area was the key and they neglected the neighborhoods.

Many of the "letters to the editors" I see in the 2 Detroit dailies and the public voices I hear on Detroit talk radio stations, are not the "voices" of Detroit. They are outsiders, like me, living here in the suburbs. Maybe they feel they can tell Detroit and the mayor what to do, because they work in Detroit as I did for 15 years and thus, pay a city income tax, as I did. But they don't live there, they live in the suburbs. Many don't even work in Detroit. If you don't live there, what right do you have to tell the city what to do? Reporters can be very selective sometimes as to who they talk to on the streets, when they talk to residents. My sources tell me, many Detroit residents don't even want to talk to reporters. So how can you get a true feeling about what's going on in the heads of the Detroit electorate if they won't talk with you?

Yes, I'm in a rare mood. But not rare enough to want to stunt Detroit's recent growth. Detroit's "hip hop" mayor may have done some illegal things, but that's for the courts to decide. His youth and his surrounding "posse" have made him feel like king of the mountain. Yet he is a smart, sharp guy and a great public face for the city. However, if it becomes clear that his public face is being hampered by his private face, then yes, there should be hell to pay. As Ficano said, if Kim Worthy charges the mayor with purjury and he's found guilty, then he must go! But for now, let him stay on the job and do his thing, which is reviving this once great middle American city. As one Detroiter, not suburbanite, said on the local TV news the other day, "why don't they just let the mayor alone and let him do his job for the rest of the term for which he was elected?"

Strictly Baseball On This One!!

I watched much of Roger Clemens and Brian McNamee's testimony before Congress today and came away thinking what a dog and pony show. With a war going on in Iraq and Afghanistan, with Michigan and soon, much of the rest of the country in recession due to an economy that's in shambles, mostly due to homes sales and mortgages and with possibly the most important Presidential election in this country in years on the horizon and Congress is worried about the use of steroids or HGH in baseball? One Congressman even asked Clemens today what uniform Clemens would wear when he enters the Hall of Fame. Come on Congress, get a life!!

And then there's the media. I turned on one of the local sports talk stations and low and behold, they're telling me how Clemens is being "crusified" by Congress. Well, from where I was sitting, both here at home and then later on my real estate office computer, I saw McNamee getting his share of verbal abuse from the Congressmen and Congresswomen who were on hand. But then again, that's the media, ready to dub someone guilty until they're proven innocent. Think O.J., Robert Blake and others.

Hey, I don't know anything about this steroid usage issue, whether Roger did or didn't. Yes, I do care, because if he did, it's just another black eye for baseball. The game will continue getting black eyes, until they hire an independant commissioner, similar to what we had before Bud Selig took the job. Big Bud at the time, was a baseball owner and he continued in that capacity for quite some time after taking on the commissioners post. The leaders of the game, must clean up their own act before they can even think about cleaning up the sport itself. Lets bring in another Kenesaw Mountain Landis or Bart Giamatti to bring baseball back where it needs to be, untainted and unquestionably the "national pastime."