A GLARING ILLISTRATION WHY SECRETS OF ANY KIND ARE NO GOOD!

(Detroit Free Press, Frazer Chronicle)

 

I thought maybe Dave Bing, that former marvelous basketballer of Detroit Piston fame, might need a little help; after all, he is the mayor of Detroit. Detroit, Michigan, once synonymous with Michigan’s automobile industry now finds itself drowning in a sea of debt. From a crooked former mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, who is serving time for his indiscretions, to a migration from the inner city to the suburbs, to…..another potential money scandal.

 

I feel for Dave Bing, he’s the same age that I am, and God knows I’d of already had a heart attack with what he’s went through, hell I read about the crap that’s going on there and get heart palpitations, and I’m 500 miles away. I can just imagine what the former Syracuse All American is going through; it must be some of his toughest stuff he’s ever seen.

 

I’ll be in the area over the week-end conducting some business, and if Mr. Bing is a fan of the Frazer Chronicle, and all the news that nobody else will print, I have one suggestion, call it free advice, get your basketballing butt out of town, you can’t help, PLEASE!

 

The latest jerk to bounce his way onto the public court system is…..who else, an attorney, seems these days it’s either a politician or an attorney. Ronald Zajac, general counsel to Detroit’s two public pensions, totaling more than a billion dollar.

 

The reaction from Tom Sheehan, chairman of the General Retirement System regarding the allegation against Mr. Zajac, “we are aware of the indictment of Ronald Zajac. the board is reviewing the appropriateness of Mr. Zajac continuing to serve as the General Retirement System’s attorney.” Further Sheehan said that “we will announce a decision at the appropriate time and will have no further comment.”

 

Do ya think Mr. Sheehan, I mean how many ton of brink do you need to fall all over the place before you take some sort of action to prevent further damage…..see, now you-all know exactly why I live in Wisconsin…..at least our cities aren’t going broke…..yet!

 

And Zajac isn’t a Johnny-come-lately kind of attorney, he didn’t just get his job of authority, he’s had 30 years to hone his craft as a rip off artist. How much has been siphoned off…..nobody will ever know, it’s almost the nature of the beast.

 

ALLIGATIONS

Zajac who made a nice tidy salary of $400,000 a year is just the latest in a long list of Detroit city officials who are systematically facing charges for scamming, skimming, cutting and slashing at a city that has been on life support for years.

 

In the mix is former pension fund trustee Paul Stewart who was indicted along with Zajac yesterday, March 20. The allegations are accepting perks galore from businessmen seeking favors, $5,000 casino chips, a Christmas basket stuffed with cash, trips, and funding a mistress.

 

Zajac…..I could care less about Stewart, Zajac was entrusted with billions of dollars that weren’t his…..ever, those funds weren’t cash cows, they weren’t expense accounts, and his position was not supposed to be some kind of bargaining chip that he could use whenever he felt the erg or if the wind was blowing out of the south on a particular day.

 

In November of 2012, the Board of Trustees of the Police and Fire System fired Zajac as its general counsel…..which should have set off all kinds of fireworks, bombs and a couple of ding-dongs, but apparently nobody was listening.

 

WHEN A CITY DIES

I have been involved with the death of a baseball club…..a baseball team that had been in business for 15 years before I came on-board, and it would last 5 years after my 2 year tour of duty. I saw firsthand the degradation, the attitude and the atmosphere that came to permeate the day to day activity of the team. Luckily the death of the team only affected 20 or so players, the team owner, and the front office officials.

 

However there was another aspect to the victims that suffered with the demise of the team, the hundreds upon hundreds of baseball fans that had lost their ability to cheer, to take pride and to feel a sense of camaraderie one with another.

 

The same can be said about a city dying, of course on a much larger scale, people depend on their city for all kinds of reason, for work, pleasure, recreation, culture, education, and to obtain items used for their daily lives. Detroit has been dying for years, and it’s sad, depressing, and makes people angry, all at the same time.

 

The population of the city of Detroit peaked with the census count of 1950, when 1,849,568 people called the city home. For the next 6 decades the population plummeted to its present estimated 2010 count of 713,777. Well over half of the tax base for the city has moved either to the burbs, or completely out of the area.

 

On one problem can be pointed to when assessing the beginning of the end for the city of Detroit, where once there were rows of million dollar homes lining the downtown streets of the city. Attitudes change, business practices are altered, and different bottom lines are created, and necessary to be reached for the health of a particular company.

 

With the loss of a tax base, and the cost of services offered lagging in the understanding of what is going on with their community, a money crisis was inevitable. Four of the top ten employers are tax supported, Detroit Public Schools, 13,750, City of Detroit, 13,187, U.S. Government, 6,335, State of Michigan, 4,910, and number eleven, the United States Post Office, 4,106.

 

A decent sized city, 42,000 people work either of the city of Detroit, the State of Michigan, or the Federal Government. That’s more than 100,000 people depending on taxpayer money to survive on, is it any wonder that Detroit is in its final stages?

 

People like Ron Zajac and Kwame Kilpatrick need to be behind bars, they certainly are part of the problem and not the solution…..oh wait, Kwame Kilpatrick is behind bars…..(get your bunkmate’s space ready Kwame, Zajac will be right along.

 

Zajac and Kilpatrick are examples of why there should be absolutely no secrets in government of any kind. One guy, Zajac, and the other, Kilpatrick, took their turns fleecing the public coffers of millions of dollars…..and Mayor David Bing, with his $176,000 yearly paycheck being paid in 26 equal payments of $6,800, what should he buy with his money…..well I’ll tell ya, he doesn’t, every penny he makes from his job goes directly to the city police department budget, a donation from a true All American, still playing flawlessly.

HAVE A NICE DAY