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?"