Tag: Kwame

After being 3 Days Late And $3,500 Short, risking a revocation of his probation, Kilpatrick moved into a mansion bigger than Manoogian! I kid you not! Here's the headline from the Detroit Free Press: Kilpatrick's new home bigger than Manoogian.

And so we focus on sunshine and rainbows.  Like, for instance, this week the big-shot politicians in Lansing will start figuring out how to spend $625 million of our grandkids money to repair those potholes that put such a serious crimp in yesterday's trip to church.  

Yeah, yeah, spending our grandkids money might not make the most economic sense but c'mon, nobody likes pot holes!  Plus, they're spending so much to make these road repairs, if push comes to shove they can actually fill each pot hole with stacks of twenty dollar bills.  So that's a win-win.

Good news... good news... Monica Conyers arch-enemy on the Detroit City Council is going to run for Mayor of Detroit this August.  Good old Kwame Kenyatta.  (Apparently rumors of the man's impending cancer-related death were greatly exaggerated by the Council President.)  

That's... something.  But even better, according to the Detroit News, he's one of more than 50 (FIFTY) some odd candidates whose names might appear on the ballot.  

And by "might appear" I mean over 50 have already grabbed the paperwork to file.  Not rumors, not speculation... 50+ are already starting the legal process.  Guess how many are going to wind up filing as Republicans.  Go ahead... guess.

Talk about a crowded field.  Somebody should work up some brackets and we could run those elections NCAA Tournament style, then instead of cutting down the nets, the ultimate winner could take the first shift re-roofing Cobo Hall with city cash since they refuse to take any money from the state.  Oh, wait, they don't have any cash to stop the leaks... shoot.

But, seriously, in happier news, big ups to the Michigan State Spartans and the University of Michigan Wolverines men's basketball teams on their selection to the NCAA tournament beginning this Thursday!  Start working on those faux-coughs and sniffles around the office today or tomorrow, gentlemen, because come 11:30AM-ish on the 19th we're in for four days of pure, unadulterated madness.

This is Michigan's first trip to the tournament in a decade and Maize and Blue fans are pretty geeked today.  They should be extra excited about their first round draw, too, matching up against a tough but beatable Clemson team.  At that point you're only a sterling game away from the Sweet 16.  

And the Spartans?  A well deserved 2.  Casa De Leeuw will undoubtedly have competing brackets this year with some picking the Green and White to win the whole thing and others playing the homer-role and picking those guys from Ann Arbor to run the table.  Silly Wolverine fans.

That said, it should give me a clear path to the family pick-em championship and THAT, my friends, is good news.

They got a nugget or two yesterday when the woman announced that the big cost cutting move, amidst a billion dollar budget deficit, was a proposal to close the State Fair at a total savings of as little as $50,000 a year and they're STILL running that thing around the wires.  Oh, she's a cost cutter, look out!

They'll continue to dig today, they'll wonder what she's going to say, how her tone will be, how well the speech will be delivered and what she is wearing.  Then, no matter what the answer to those questions, they'll write glowing reviews about how seriously she takes the challenge and how she's fighting for Michigan and how lucky we are to have her.

They won't question any of her numbers.  They won't question any of her logic.  They'll just sit back and bask in her glory and whisper a silent prayer of thanksgiving for even being able to experience a moment in her presence.

Me?  I'm not star struck.

Yeah, I'm interested in what she's going to say.  I'm afraid it's going to be a speech only sprinkled with substance that ultimately leaves us worse off than when we started.  But it might just be more interesting to figure out what she won't say.

These are two graphs, for instance, that I'm pretty sure won't wind up in the Governor's fancy to-do this evening:

Residential property values plummeted last year throughout Wayne, Macomb, Oakland and Livingston counties. In a majority of the communities, home values dropped on average by double-digit percentages, according to tax assessments to be mailed out through the end of this month.

This is a far cry from the double-digit increases that many homeowners enjoyed just a decade ago.

Those lines, by the way, courtesy of today's Detroit News.

Read on...