Mlive.com is reporting that state court Judge Robert Colombo, Jr. issued an order that the City of Detroit is to reimburse nearly a half-million dollars in fees incurred by the Detroit Free Press when it successfully sought the production of public records denied to it by its corrupt former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick (pic).
Now here's the thing, we the people own the public records. That is why these records are called "public records." What is going on when our elected officials play games like this? That anyone in Detroit tolerated this bullshit is outrageous.
Detroit has been and is on welfare-life support, so Detroit, where does any elected official in Detroit get off refusing to produce public records? Where does any elected official authorize the expenditure of reesources to fight a request for the production of records that already belong to us? There is no debatable principle. None.
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Detroit, sadly, has become a third-world country. It looks like a war zone, and, despite what I take to be the best efforts of the new mayor, is still rotten with corruption. The center of the city is all but abandoned, houses are selling for 5 grand. It's the forgotten America. Everyone should be required to take a tour before they pass a high school civics or college economics course. This is the ruin of twentieth-century capitalism. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here...
ReplyDeleteI went to college with a friend who subsequently moved to Detroit. I forget the neighborhood, but it was very nice--it was in the city. Late 1970s and early 80s I would visit--to partake of the rock-scene, Cobo Hall, punk rock, etc.--and I wandered into a gas station mmm maybe a block from my friend's apartment. Everything was in plexiglass, the attendants, the merchandise, everything. Astonishing! This was at a time when Detroit was in renaissance, supposedly. The reports since that time have been nothing but grim. What a tragedy.
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