Detroit verbatim: the week in quotes

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Above:A view from Detroit's Cobo Convention Center (that is in the process of being "hijacked" for $20 million}.


Dear blogger,

It's been another awesomely ridiculous week. Detroit Mayoral candidate Bing not only forgot he didn't have a Master of Business Administration (MBA) but that it took him 29 years to get a bachelor's degree;Former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's partner in crime, Christine Beatty, got sick on jail food -- a lot; Radio personality Mildred Gaddis was still spewing hot fire at the "Hijacking of Cobo Hall", and Governor Jennifer Granholm gave the city of Detroit up for "adoption" to --- waaaiit for iiiiit --- MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Scarborough!? Hold on ... I'm having a premonition ... something about the "City of Detroit hijacking" ...

You CAN'T make this stuff up but you CAN slice it into fabulous one-liners and post them onto your blog!


"She spent a lot of time throwing up."
Christine Beatty's lawyer Mayer Morganroth said regarding Beatty's reaction to jail food. Apparently Coney Island hot dogs are much easier fare for the stomach.

"We are going to adopt Detroit,”
Joe Scarborough of MSNBC's "Morning Joe" told Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm referring to a plan to air "Morning Joe" in the city out of ... pity?

"I think you're trying to dig into something that isn't a story."
Detroit Mayoral Candidate David Bing angrily told Free Press reporter Bill McGraw when he asked for college transcripts. Weeks before he blasted interim Mayor Cockrel for not releasing his personal finances. Oops. Maybe Bing's right when he says he ISN'T a politician.

"There is not a category of money for large public buildings or anything like that."
Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm said about using stimulus funds for expand Cobo Hall instead of transferring it to a regional authority.

"Some folks think we're stupid and don't read."
Detroit City Council President Pro Tem JoAnn Watson about people who are pushing the Cobo Deal. And if by "folks" she means interitm Mayor Cockrel, Wayne County Ececutive Robert Ficano, Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, Governor Jennifer Granholm, and Detroit Free Press Columnist Nolan Finley then ...

"You can google economic stimulus plans and convention centers. You're going to get more than 50 cities -- including Lansing."
Detroit City Council President Pro Tem JoAnn Watson.

"If you want to help us, just give us the money."
Detorit City Councilwman Monica Conyers said at a rally against the Cobo Hall expansion that would turn the city owned convention center over to a five person regional authority. She added, "A diva is a female version of a hustlaaa!"

“I got an MBA from the General Motors Institute after I got into business, quite frankly."
Detroit Mayoral candidate David Bing on an NBA website video interview.

“I don’t have an MBA from General Motors Institute.”
Detroit Mayoral Candidate David Bing on the Paul W. Smith show on NPR. Which one is it, Dave?

"I have pictures with my cap and gown [from 1966]"
Detroit Mayoral candidate David Bing told the Detroit News' Leonard N. Fleming. However, a story in the Free Press said: Bing's campaign spokesperson Cliff Russell "acknowledged Bing did not attend graduation ceremonies or receive a diploma." Get your game tight, Bing!

"I don't think I can get any more name recognition than I already have."
Detroit City councilman Kwame Kenyata on announcing his run for mayor in August. Apparently he can't possibly get any more well known. Is it because his name is Kwame K.? I kiiid, I kiiiiid!

"I don't see how somebody can forget that they never actually got a diploma."
Detroit Interim Mayor Kenneth Cockrel said of Bing's college education gaffe. Same way somebody can forget that they owe the city clerk $42,000, Ken. Saaaame way.

"We don't give up tapes without subpoenas."
Mildred Gaddis said to people calling into "Inside Detroit" asking fora copy of her program with John Conyers. Congressman Conyers said jokingly that she sounded like Carl Rove.

"I'm having a problem with elected officials with the audacity to ... tell Mildred 'I voted for it'. 'I hope it [passes].' I"m [going to] hire an attorney to make sure that it passes. Why? Because I'm smarter than you!"
Radio producer David Stephen at Cobo transfer protest. He added,"How dare Senator Hansen Clarke, Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano and Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson get the NERVE to tell MILDRED their position in the Hijacking of Cobo Hall?


All in good fun,

MMF

Cockrel, Bing win Detroit primary

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Election night parties went on late Tuesday night after Detroit's special election primary for mayor of Detroit. Here's some pics from election night!

Det. Mayoral Candidate Warren Evans: "Public Safety is the biggest problem."

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Detroit mayoral candidate and Wayne County Sheriff Warren Evans spoke to a group of 12 senior citizens at a retirement home on Detroit's East Side on Monday afternoon [MLK day].

He addressed issues such as blight, employment, and budget but his main focus was public safety and policing techniques.

Here's the transcript from Evan's half hour speech to the Detroit senior voters.


I’m a third generation Detroiter. In 1910 my grandfather came here. [Studied in Detroit from Elementary school through law school].

If you haven’t lived the life that people in the city live, then you don’t really know what the problem is really. [Detroit is] so bad now I don’t think many people realize how good it could be. Everybody talks bout “the good old days.” I know in my life I’m looking for the god days.” “Even when this city was a better city it wasn’t better for us as black people.”

Public safety is I think the biggest problem. People in the city have got to feel safer. People would like to have the wheels on their car or their car when they go somewhere. Not only are taxes high bit you can’t get the police to respond when you call them.

I’ve been involved in criminal justices for 30 years. I’m not running for police chief, I’m running for mayor, but one thing you can be sure of is that I understand the language a police chief talks. When I hire a police chief nobody can blow smoke past me because I understand the business.

It’s important to understand that that’s not all I can do. I do other things in the city. [Mentioned his career as a Lawyer, college professor.]

The people that have the money to get out of Detroit go. No city is going to get better like that.
Usually the commitment is to fix up a downtown and bring in a Quicken. But when you bring in a company with a tax abatement so they don’t have to pa tax because they’re bringing jobs in … but when you watch in the morning people get off the freeway from the suburbs and go to job and they go home at the end of the day they haven’t done any business in the city. We need to look very seriously. What are we doing for.

The future of the City is in building up the neighborhoods. Property value of homes is higher because there’s a neighborhood. We don’t have that value now. Everywhere in the country 60 or 70 percent of all job are new jobs created in this country are new jobs created in what are called small businesses. In those small businesses, some of them might have 500 people in it but small compared to a General Motors.

I’m hoping auto companies … rebound but they will never be what they once were. So we’ve got to have safe neighborhoods. If we have safe neighborhoods people will start those business. See everything in my mind goes back to public safety.
I’ve been a professor for 20 years but I can’t go in there and turn the schools around academically. After talking to hundreds of teachers and hundreds of students [I found that] kids are scared to go to DPS and teachers are scared to teach. I don’t care what you do to the curriculum, if the kids aren’t comfortable in class and teachers aren’t comfortable teaching so even the biggest problem f DPS is public safety.

The mayor can do that. That doesn’t mean take over the schools. The mayor’s job is to protect the citizens. It’s not a pipe dream.
The police need to start responding to complaints. Let me tell you a little secret about how that operates before I tell you what the solution is . You also read articles that say crime is down. None of us are probably rocket but are smart enough to know crime is not down, right. The reason they can say it’s down is that crimes are is counted by reports. If they never come out to take the report it never happened. But the crime did happen. The most basic answer is to use common sense.

Every shift in Every district of the City of Detroit when an off comes on duty he has a list of all the other rounds that the shift before him never got to . So he or she starts out the day going around to 20 other places trying to catch up. When you’re catching up you’re not policing. Why waste two police officers in a scout car to go catch up? Why not have one person call the home owner, talk to him and go and get a report when you can and let the police officer in the police car protect you? I mean that’s what you want them to do. It is basically that simple to get started. Which is something you can get started on the next day. And then you start bring another police officers.

Leadership. Start using reserves. There are a lot of reserves in this city who volunteer their time to help the police dept. I’ve got people in my reserves that fight Internet crime. They spend their time chasing child predators. That makes them feel good. They come back to work because they provide something of value because I ask them to do something of value. But they do not get used appropriately.

Everybody’s gonna tell you they gonna fight crime. The question is when have you done it before and how have you done it? And if you’re so good at it how come you didn’t you fix it when you were office before?
If you go back and you believe that as a Sherriff I’ve done a good job. Don’t accept that has he’s a good sheriff he can’t do anything else. You pay me to do another job I’ll do a good job at that. Teaching 20 years, practicing law I work hard at what I do. We’re broke we messed up.

There are a lot of people running – business people other people now I’m not knocking anybody but I’m the only elected CEO in this race. You vote for me to run an organization. I’m not out chasing crooks all day. I wish I was ‘cause it’s fun. But that’s not what I do all day. I manage a $150 million a year budget and 1,200 employees. That’s what I do. It’s a small city. There are lots of city’s around here that don’t have that big a budget It would certainly be a promotion to running the city of Detroit but it’s the same, it’s apples to apples. I’m not running a private company that doesn’t have labor unions or state legislators and all those other people you have to deal with every day. I deal with them in good times and bad times.
I brought in $30-35 million in grants from the federal Govt. in the past 4-5 years. That’s federal grants. That’s not your tax dollars. You gotta go find ways to get money and move forward to do some stuff.

The city has a significant amount of money … Detroit has some money called neighborhood stabilization fund. And part of that money can be used to demolish buildings. We don’t have enough money to demolish them all, but one of my biggest pet peeves is that they don’t even use good judgment deciding what to tear down in the first place. I mean when the money comes I’ve seen them cut a contract with a vendor and then let him decide what houses he’s going to tear down. I want to tear down houses next to people who live in the community who got a burnt house next door to them. Get some of the abandon house out of the way so the kids can get to school. Even if you can’t tear them all down, prioritize the ones that are in the best interest of your citizens.

Let me just leave you with this. I’m a workaholic. And I don’t get Amnesia. If you see me later and it’s something I didn’t live up to then see me about it. I want my granddaughters to still live here. I don’t want my granddaughters all over the globe because they don’t want to live in the City of Detroit.