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Sick and tired of leftover politicians. Well its time for Detroiters to elect new faces in the city council and other officers. The Coleman Young years are long gone, The Archer Years are gone and the King Kwame Years are stomped out. What can Detroit and its citizens accomplish with brand new leaders? Will the perform their civic duties or act like Monica Conyers, Sharon McFAILED, or Barbara Rose Collins, any thoughts.
Start with instituting a ward system, like in Chicago.
Elect people who are accountable to those they represent- wow! representative democracy, what a concept!:eek:
I don't know enough about the individuals who are politically active right now, living in Florida and Southfield part of the year, but cetainly those in charge of grass-roots neighborhood organizations would be a great place to start recruiting.
Bad institutions can create bad government, but it takes more than a good institutional structure to create a good government. You can only have accountability if the people hold officials to account. We have not seen a lot of that in Detroit. I would argue we haven't seen enough of it in the country as a whole.
I'm not sure that there is a solution for that.
If you elect me to the Charter Commission and I will fight tooth and nail to institute a district [[ward) system.
You've got my vote, Andy. Might I suggest adding some teeth to the Historic District Commission as an additional plank in your platform?Quote:
Originally Posted by andylinn
Bolstering the HDC is a wonderful idea. I will examine that and see how it could best be done.
Danny, what do you think of Dave Bing?
Since it would reduce the cost of filling a Council vacancy, I'm for Council by District. But, unless we become more responsible in electing our officials, we're going to get the same kind of idiots that we currently have, just through a different system.
But, good luck to Andy.
Retroit,
I do not support Mayor Bing. For starters he's a businesses man doing manfacturing work, he lacks on city politics and he has series of violations over the years with his company. Detroiters voted for him due to new leadership concept not on his political principles. Most Detroiters are just sick and tired of young Kilpatrick wannabes who tried to run for office. Therefore Detroiters voted for a businessman to become mayor. The People of Detroit don't want any more parties coming for young politicians. So let's see what Bing can do move Detroit forward.
I'm and Street Prophets are against the ward system is too corrupt and its several side effects it happen in Chicago:
Corruption still king in Chicago
Review by Joe Allen | September 16, 2005 | Page 13
Robert Cooley with Hillel Levin, When Corruption Was King: How I Helped the Mob Rule Chicago, Then Brought the Outfit Down. Carroll & Graf, 2004, 368 pages, $26.
CHICAGO MAY be the third-largest city in the U.S. and the "Second City" when it comes to culture, but without a doubt, Chicago is America's first city when it comes to political corruption.
Not a day has passed in the last five months without the media exposing some lurid story of city hall corruption. The current ruler of Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley II--who just a short time ago was considered by Time magazine to be one of the best mayors in the country--suffered the humiliation of being interrogated by the U.S. Attorney's office about the recent scandals.
The recent revelations of corruption in Chicago politics may come as no shock in the city identified around the world with Al Capone. Yet what has been hidden is how the corruption was organized by the "City's Fathers"--the mobsters, the politicians and the businessmen.
Robert Cooley's When Corruption Was King is an insider's account of how the mob and their Democratic Party allies ruled the "city that works" in the 1970s and '80s--especially how they "fixed" the judiciary. Cooley, the son and grandson of Chicago police officers, learned quickly that if he wanted to be a successful lawyer he had to deal with the Democratic Party's First Ward leader Pat Marcy.
The First Ward was a sprawling district that went from Chicago "Gold Coast" on the North Side to the steel mills on the South Side. It was the major institution through which the mob, businessmen and the Democrats made deals and swapped cash. "The First Ward...was about power, and that was the one thing I couldn't buy," recounts Cooley. "I knew how to work the system; these guys controlled the system. They could hire and fire cops. They could even make or break judges."
Cooley's big break came when Marcy approached him to "fix" a murder case involving notorious mob assassin Harry Aleman. Cooley bribed Judge Frank Wilson--known as a "law-and-order" judge--to acquit the murderer for a measly $10,000.
This opened a floodgate of business for Cooley. Cooley extensively recounts his "highlife among the lowlifes" of the Chicago underworld--the book reading like Goodfellas with a law degree.
In the 1980s, Cooley's life as a "fixer" became unsustainable. In 1986, the FBI approached him, and he wore a wire for the next couple years. In a series of trials that began in 1990s, Cooley helped put 24 people in prison, including two judges.
The most notorious judge Cooley helped put away was Thomas J. Maloney, who is responsible for putting large numbers of people on death row for crimes they didn't commit. Some, but not all, of Maloney's victims have since received pardons or new trials. Maloney was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The current Mayor Daley came to power as Cooley's testimony was tearing down the old First Ward system. When Daley was Cook County State's Attorney in the 1980s, he neither heard the screams of the torture victims in his jails nor saw the rampant corruption in the judiciary. Daley reorganized Chicago corruption over the last decade and a half with an array of new institutions. Cooley's book and the recent revelations about the Daley administration shows us how corruption and city politics go hand-in-hand.
If we Detroiters let the ward system be the norm, corruption will come just like it happen with the city council. Any person [[Alderman or Alderwoman) who is the head of ward district will become THE STATE, JUDGE, JURY, POLICE OFFICER, and EXECUTIONER. Sometimes the Alderman or Alderwoman can have the power to pardon those who are in ties with him or her due to personal status or put people in prison for crimes they didn't commit. Having a ward system in Detroit is like having communism with a premier with power. New leadership in Detroit starts with people changing themselves with their communities, their homes, businesses, schools and flushing out the corruptors and replacing with poltical reformers like it were since Pingree days.