RENO, Nev. — With a second order from a federal judge for Detroit Free Press reporter David Ashenfelter to submit to a deposition, editor Paul Anger said this week the newspaper is fighting against it “tooth and nail.”
Former federal prosecutor Richard Convertino wants to ask Ashenfelter about a source who told the 26-year Freeper about an internal Justice Department investigation into the attorney’s work.
Convertino had successfully prosecuted the country’s first post-9/11 terrorism trial in mid-2003 — a suspected “sleeper cell” operating out of a southwest Detroit apartment. But in December of that year, U.S. District Judge Gerald Rosen ordered a review of the court file after learning documents the prosecution had were not turned over to the defense. Rosen later overturned the four convictions in the case.
In early 2004, Ashtenfelter, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for exposing a U.S. Navy cover-up of the circumstances surrounding some deaths aboard ships, quoted unnamed sources in a story about an internal Justice Department review of Convertino’s work.
Convertino later resigned from the Justice Department and is now in private practice concentrating on defense work. He sued the department in 2007 in U.S. District Court in a whistle-blower and privacy case, alleging his rights were violated by the leak to Ashenfelter. As part of that case, Convertino wants to know who gave the information to Ashenfelter.
Last week, federal judge Robert Cleland issued an order granting Convertino’s request to depose Ashenfelter. In his first such order in August, Cleland noted the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, the next level up from Detroit’s federal district court, has not recognized a First Amendment privilege for reporters to not name sources.
Free Press Attorney Herschel Fink submitted a motion this week that Cleland should allow the federal court in Washington, D.C. — where Convertino’s suit against the Justice Department was filed — to decide whether Ashenfelter could be deposed.
Anger, appearing here Monday at a National Judicial College workshop for judges, journalists and court officials, talked about the Free Press’ commitment to protection of sources. The paper will never, he said, reveal the source who provided the Kwame Kilpatrick-Christine Beatty text messages. (See today’s related News Blawg item.)
But there may not be an easy choice in the Ashenfelter-Convertino case.
Journalists are protected by state laws from disclosing such sources of information, but without a federal shield law or court recognition of the privilege related to the First Amendment, Ashenfelter is not protected in the Convertino case. If he doesn’t submit to the deposition, Ashenfelter could be imprisoned, fined or both.
“Our reporter has said, ‘I’m not going to be the first Pulitzer winner to go to jail,’” Anger said.
Detroit Free Press editor speaks nationally about Kilpatrick case, coverage
RENO, Nev. — Public corruption that cost taxpayers millions of dollars, courtroom drama and human tragedy all added up to one helluva story for the Detroit Free Press this year, and the paper’s editor is telling it himself to national audiences.
Free Press editor Paul Anger appeared here this week to speak to judges, journalists and court officials about the scandal, saying the paper took no pleasure in chronicling the downfall of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his chief of staff, Christine Beatty.
“We’re proud of our journalism, but this was a nightmare for our city,” he said.
Anger was the dinner speaker Monday at a national workshop about technology’s impact on the courts and media at the University of Nevada-Reno, sponsored by the Reynolds School of Journalism and the National Judicial College.
He shared a few lessons from the reporting and legal wrangling over a case that began when three veteran police officers sued the city, saying they were fired because Kilpatrick and Beatty needed to cover up their affair. Two settled their cases, and one went to trial.
After the Free Press published text messages that supported the officers and showed Kilpatrick and Beatty lied under oath at the trial, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy brought charges against them.
Taking a plea deal, Kilpatrick is currently serving a 120-day sentence in Wayne County Jail after admitting to perjury in one of the cop’s trials, and Beatty is scheduled for trial next year.
In his speech Monday evening (which concluded with a standing ovation), Anger debunked some of the assertions made at the conference about the demise of traditional print journalism due to the overwhelming use of the Internet to deliver immediate news.
“Journalism is alive and well on the Web,” he said, noting the 4 million hits the paper’s site had the day of Kilpatrick’s plea. “We know from our experience in Detroit, people will find and read great journalism on the Web.”
Anger also used the platform to publicly support shield laws protecting journalists from having to reveal anonymous sources who disclose compelling information. “Our sources in the mayor’s case would never have come forward if they could not count on anonymity,” Anger said.
And he asserted that the story held up because the paper’s ethics and accuracy in reporting it were unassailable. “We were determined never to have to apologize for anything,” Anger said.
Free Press reporters, like many other people, learned of the existence of the text messages during one of the cop’s trials when the judge subpoenaed them. They never appeared. “Everyone basically lost track of them,” Anger said. After the trial, the newspaper filed a FOIA with the city for the settlement document as the parties negotiated legal fees, and the settlement for all three officers grew to $8.4 million.
Told by the city no documents existed, the newspaper used two strategies to pursue the information: their own lawsuit for the messages, contending they were public records subject to disclosure through the state’s Freedom of Information Act, and sources, Anger said.
The latter paid off first, and reporters obtained copies of messages sent from Beatty’s pager.
“We got them from people who believed the whole story should come out. We haven’t identified them and we never will,” Anger said.
Reading the messages made Anger, Freepers and company attorneys blush.
“We were stunned,” he said.
But they were also saddled with responsibility.
“The Detroit Free Press was sitting on the story that could tear the community apart. We weren’t going to go public until we got it right,” Anger said.
Reporters decoded the messages and worked to authenticate them, matching dates and times with city calendars, for example. When the first story was published Jan. 24, the journalists focused on the discrepancies between what the texts showed and what Kilpatrick and Beatty said at Brown’s trial.
“It was not going to be about sex,” Anger said.
And unlike the normal news process, they wrote the headline first: Mayor lied under oath, text messages show. “We wrote the exact words we wanted in the headlines and we developed our story around that,” Anger said.
As the story unfolded throughout the year with lurid details of Beatty-Kilpatrick communications, the community learned about Kilpatrick’s attempts to keep the texts secret that continued as the city fought the newspaper’s lawsuit to obtain more messages.
“It may have worked, except for the Free Press investigative reporters Jim Schaefer, M.L. Elrick, Jennifer Dixon and some others,” Anger said, “And some judges who ordered the documents released.”
The newspaper is currently negotiating with the city to recoup some of its legal fees from pursuing public records in the case. “We’re thinking about donating a good portion of them to charity,” Anger said.
The highest-profile felon serving time behind bars in Michigan had for weeks escaped the taint of being listed on the online database maintained by the Department of Corrections. But he's there now.
Yes, former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick has shown up on the state’s Offender Tracking Information System, known by the acronym OTIS. It’s a website that allows you, me or your grandmother to search the records of thousands of prisoners, parolees and probationers to learn where they have tattoos, when their birthdays are, the crimes committed and the sentences they’ve received.
(And, at the risk of offending Stephen Grant, the Macomb County maniac who chopped up his wife and was caught tromping shoeless through snowy woods, we do feel confident in our assessment of Kilpatrick as the “most high-profile.” After all, Kilpatrick’s had more mentions on late-night television.)
As part of our public service journalism here at Metro Times — and having been alerted by a loyal reader of the Kilpatrick omission — we went searching OTIS earlier this week for the former mayor, who’s in the midst of a 120-day sentence in the Wayne County Jail.
To try this yourself, go to michigan.gov/corrections and then click on “Offender Search” on the left side of the page. That gets you to OTIS’s terms of use. By agreeing at the bottom, you’ll get the general search page. While online, we looked for Kilpatrick’s buddy, Bobby Ferguson, who is on probation after serving time in the Wayne County Jail for pistol-whipping one of his former employees. We found his record but no photo.
As a probationer who served time in a county institution, Ferguson doesn’t get a picture on the site like felons serving in prisons do, says Russ Marlan, MDOC spokesman.
But as for Kilpatrick as late as Wednesday. Nothing.
“He should be there,” Marlan told us when we first inquired. After we insisted that Kilpatrick was indeed MIA, so to speak, Marlan did some digging around Lansing and then dutifully called us back.
“They were waiting for some additional information on his case, however it appears that they thought he was on there,” Marlan says. “We touched base with our technical folks and it should be in there this afternoon (Nov. 12) so it will be uploaded overnight and by tomorrow morning (Nov. 13) it should be in there.”
If you want to check on the good work of Marlan’s colleagues, Kilpatrick’s MDOC number is 702408. He's there.
We apologize to the employers of our readers for the untold hours in lost productivity from these searches.
Former MT staffer Jennifer Bagwell wanted to share her reflections on last week’s Election Day:
The afternoon of Nov. 4, Denise came to the door in curlers and told us how they wouldn’t let her vote.
“I was so geeked,” she said, now looking crestfallen. “I was all dressed up.”
It was now hours later on the Election Day that blew away any others in recent memory. As with many people in her predominantly African-American neighborhood in Detroit, Denise had wanted to vote for Barack Obama. She stood in her doorway, describing to me and another Obama campaign volunteer how she had walked several blocks down to the fire station on Second Avenue — not an easy feat, given a health condition that makes it difficult for her to walk — only to be deterred over confusion about her registration. She didn’t know if she was listed under her maiden name or her married name, and didn’t want to make problems for poll workers, so she went home without voting.
When we showed up at her door, she told us she hadn’t voted since her divorce. In fact, the 50-year-old grandmother of 10 had never before voted for president. We put her on the phone with the campaign hotline, and they let her know she was, in fact, registered under her maiden name — Glaze. Since that was the name on her current ID, there’d be no difficulty at all in casting a ballot.
She looked for a second as if she might cry, but instead went into the house, emerging moments later with a bright yellow polka-dot scarf tied around her curlers. We offered her a ride, and as we walked out to the car she noticed her neighbors standing around. She laughed.
“They think you’re taking me away,” she said. “I don’t care. I’m going to vote!”
There must have been a million tiny moments like this all over the country, leading up to the election and immediately afterward — moments of personal and collective determination that began breathing new life into many of us, alleviating the sad, sagging sense of hopelessness that we have been carrying around about our great country, our world. One voter reported that her 18-year-old niece refused to have surgery at a local hospital for appendicitis until she had voted absentee. Another said she knew of a woman in Southfield who went into labor waiting to vote. And then there were moments after the election, like when people laid on their horns in the middle of Woodward Avenue, or when I returned to my Detroit apartment around 2 a.m. and was approached by two African-American men in a car, who rolled down their window and simply said: “We did it.”
The day after the election, the awestruck weariness was palpable. And yet, there really is no time to rest. As Obama prepares to take the helm, we all know that we face a stark set of circumstances, and no amount of dancing in the streets is going to make them go away. People are wondering: Can Obama really do what he says he’s going to do? But another, perhaps even more exciting question hangs in the air for voters now that the election has passed: Now that we’ve seen what we can do, what can we do now?
It’s question that only we can answer. Just as we threw our gusto behind this unlikely candidate, we can now go out into our communities and, with a renewed sense of personal agency and hope, really sink our energy into what matters most to us. We can donate hours or days, money or time, physical or intellectual might. We can also chose to put our differences behind us, and try to explore common ground with those who voted differently than we did, with an eye toward what we can accomplish together in the next four years and beyond.
I think about Denise, whom we drove back to the fire station in the early afternoon for a second try at voting for president. There wasn’t a line, but it took a little while for her to finish. We peered in at her, and saw that she was sitting at a special voting machine for people who have trouble standing, surrounded by helpful campaign workers. Maybe, in the end, part of what she needed was for someone to remind her that she really counted. Thanks to her own perseverance and courage, she did.
When we drove Denise back home, the neighbors — some of whom had been standing around earlier, eyeing us suspiciously — were now ready to help us find other likely Obama voters so we could remind them to vote too.
That night, Denise stayed up late to watch Obama be declared the next president. She said that in the wake of the election, she feels inspired to be more positive and helpful.
“I’ve never felt as free as I do today,” she said. “I’m going to put it in my own life. If he can do it, I know I can do it. You’re not supposed to just sit and take things the way they are. You can change things.”
Around the country, as here at Metro Times, folks no doubt continue to share personal anecdotes about what transpired last week. An electric current of optimism surged through a vast network of people — from those who invested dollars and labor in the Barack Obama campaign to those who simply voted. And we’re still coming to grips with what it all: fearful that it will dissipate, or that the new administration will disappoint; hopeful that the promise of his campaign can be substantially fulfilled.
I keep turning to a story recounted by a good friend who campaigned in Jacksonville, Fla., traditionally a red patch in a red state. The early voting had already begun when she was canvassing in a racially mixed lower-middle class neighborhood of (mostly) weather-beaten cottage-style houses. No sidewalks, lots of dirt paths to front doors, lots of fenced lots with mean dogs. Of all the visits, an older, white-haired white guy in a rocking chair on his front porch made the deepest impression. He’d already cast his ballot, and he had plenty to say:
“Yup, I voted for that man,” he said, clearly referring to Obama. “Not telling a lot of people. My friends wouldn’t understand.” And then he said very clearly, “We’re not all as stupid as they say we are.” And he sat and he rocked a little more, and he said, “Yup, I know he’s black, but in my heart, I know he’s a better man. I voted for him even though I can’t tell the guys I bowl with. They would never understand — not all of them, at least.” And then, he repeated: “We’re not all as stupid as they say we are.”
I got to thinking of that again this week when I read Daniel Gross’ Moneybox column in Slate, headlined: “What’s the Matter With Greenwich? Why the rich vote against their economic interest.”
At issue is “the phenomenon of angry yuppies — who’ve largely benefited from President Bush’s tax cuts — funding angry, populist Democratic campaigns.” In many areas of country, those yups voted decisively for the candidate who joked about people earning more than a quarter-million a year, and promised to raise their taxes.
Writes Gross: “If the exit polls are to be believed, those making $200,000 or more (6 percent of the electorate) voted for Obama 52-46, while McCain won the merely well-off ($100,000 to $150,000 by a 51-48 margin and $150,000 to $200,000 by a 50-48 margin).” And he goes on to try to make sense of some specific hot spots of wealth that went for and against Obama.
I’m no economist, but maybe some of the rich are more concerned with whether Obama is the best man to protect their incomes (by keeping us out of a worst-case depression) than they are with the proportion of that income his administration will claim in taxes.
And just maybe it’s not all about the money. Maybe those rich Obama voters aren’t all as stupid — or greedy — as some say they are.
A joyous crowd cheers President-elect Obama at the Renaissance Center's ballroom.
In Phoenix, Sen. John McCain had finished his concession speech. In the streets of downtown Detroit, the first notes of the celebratory car-horn symphony were being honked and tooted. Up several floors in the ballroom rented by the Democratic Party, lots of folks, including pretty much all the bigwigs, were trickling out. Gov. Granholm and re-elected Sen. Carl Levin had given their speeches and split. Detroit City Councilwoman Martha Reeves and her entourage were exiting as we made our way in.
But that left a throng of hundreds and hundreds — could there have been a thousand? — in the ballroom, their jubilation a sort of collective roar in celebration of President-elect Barack Obama. The CNN pundits on the four large projection screens at the front of the room were drowned out, but what mattered more were the periodically updated vote tallies, the blue-washed electoral map, with its few red splotches and the undecided yellows clicking off. A proper lady, who we presume doesn't often seek to discuss ass-whooping, told us, "You saw the numbers" — and there was no doubt which numbers she meant. "He beat him up. It wasn't no squeaker."
Among those milling around, clearly feeling like a million bucks, we noted artists and political consultants, unionists and school teachers, musicians and advertising execs, real estate agents and activists, long hairs and graybeards, with more African-Americans than any other group, but encompassing the breadth of the Rainbow Coalition proclaimed by Jesse Jackson, the last serious African-American aspirant to the presidency. We even met Germans and Brits who came here to work for Obama in the campaign's final days, "on their own dime," because the issues here were "bigger than America."
Sam Cooke crooned "A Change Is Gonna Come" over the loudspeaker at one point — would it ever sound more prophetic? Then came "One Nation Under a Groove," which snapped a phalanx of "Hustle" dancers into formation. "One nation under a groove … and you can't stop us now," sung by George Clinton and Co., was merged with rhythmic chants from the floor of "O-bama — O-bama — O-bama — O-bama."
Then the man himself strode toward the podium in Chicago, and the Detroit crowd surged toward his image on the multiple screens. The Detroit hundreds cheered along with their 100,000 Windy City counterparts. When the camera zoomed in on the Chicago crowd, the Detroiters might as well have been cheering their Rainbow reflection. (And, notably in the crowd shots, was the original Rainbow visionary, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, his eyes, wet and welling before it was all over.)
"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer," Obama started out, to the first of many roars of approval. (We started off counting, but soon lost track.)
His riff of "It's been a long time coming … change has come to America," with its Sam Cooke echo, was one of the many others, likewise his shout-outs to the foot soldiers of the campaign, and the folks with their $5, $10 and $20 donations, and on to his stirring evocations of American hardships overcome and difficulties ahead.
After the speech was over, after the Obamas and the Bidens had finished their victory waves, they strode from the Chicago stage, and the roar of approval in the ballroom fractured into so many smaller conversations, seemingly all about variations on the same few themes.
"We have overcome," we heard one woman exult, only to be corrected by a companion: We've overcome a lot of hurdles, many more remain. We heard a man talk about going home and playing that Sam Cooke tune again.
And one comment about Obama that stuck with us as we headed into the night was the older woman who simply said: "Now we have to pray for him."
For you political junkies out there who can’t get enough election news and want to keep tabs of how the presidential race is going down the home stretch, I have a couple of Web sites to recommend. The first is realclearppolitics.com, a site that, among many other things, posts a daily roundup of all the leading polls and then averages them, providing what is probably the most accurate snapshot of where the electorate stands on these last days before the election. I’ve seen John McCain claiming during the past couple of days that he’s closing in on Barack Obama. And, from the data I’ve seen, that appears to be true. But there are a few factors to consider. The most crucial is that, with four days to go, RCP’s average show’s Obama to be up by about 6 percentage points, meaning that McCain has an immense amount of ground to make up in a very short time if he has any chance of winning. Here’s something that’s even more crucial: Where the candidates stand in national polls doesn’t really matter. Remember, Al Gore actually won a majority of the popular vote back in 2000. What it all comes down to is capturing at least 270 Electoral College votes. There are a couple of ways to get a sense of how that aspect of the race is going. One is to check out the Electoral College map posted on the home page of Salon.com. Even richer with information, though, is a similar map posted at http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2008/Pres/Maps/Oct31.html. As of Friday, according to info posted on that site, Obama is thumping McCain, 364-171, with only North Dakota’s three electoral votes listed as a virtual tie. The bottom line, though, is that winning polls and winning elections are two very different things. Remember 2004 and all those exit polls of people who had already voted indicating that John Kerry had won a number of crucial states only to have George Bush emerge victorious (eliciting cries from many that it was rigged voting machines and not bad polling that was the real problem). And, finally, there’s this item picked up by Rachel Maddow, a certified lefty who hosts a nightly show on MSNBC: “The latest L.A. Times/Bloomberg Poll of early voters in Florida and Ohio contains this really, really interesting tidbit: 6 percent of Florida voters and 3 percent of Ohio voters, those are early voters told pollsters they don’t know who they voted for, who they already voted for,” reported Maddow. “The post-election undecided voter? That is a very new idea.” —Curt Guyette
The news came today: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved Aziz Alfassa for permanent residency in the United States, putting to rest the 20-year-old’s fears of deportation to Togo where he said he would have feared for his life.
“We are grateful that they decided to give this young man a chance at a new life here in the United States,” says his attorney, David Koelsch, the director of the Immigration Law Clinic at University of Detroit Mercy School of Law. Koelsch got the news in a phone call from a field officer at the Detroit field office. “Aziz is going to be a fine citizen of our great country,” Koelsch says.
The approval of Alfassa’s petition means he’s entitled to federal financial aid to continue his college education and can apply for citizenship in five years.
Alfassa could not immediately be reached for comment.
Click here to read the News Hit item we wrote about his saga this week.
It was hard not getting a little teary-eyed watching the Barack Obama infomercial Wednesday night. Who could not be touched by the amber waves of grain, and all those seemingly sincere testimonies to the character of the man who wants to lead us, and the tales of people struggling as a result of eight years of disastrous Republican policy?
But even as emotions started to swell over the hard-luck stories of working-class Americans who are pinning their hopes on Obama, and the epic story of the candidate’s personal journey — especially the heart-breaking tale of his mother poring over insurance forms as she died of cancer while still in her 50s — I found myself bristling at the manipulation being perpetrated by a candidate I desperately want to win.
In one sense, I’m glad the Democrat in this race is doing a better job of constructing a compelling narrative than his GOP counterpart. Whatever it takes to achieve victory, right? Winning hearts as well as minds is a fundamental part of politics. That’s simply a fact of life. And there is real value to it.
On the other hand, any attempt to elevate style over substance — an art taken to new levels by Ronald Reagan — is, I think, a dangerous thing for a democracy. The mantra for Reagan and his handlers was that Ronnie could pursue whatever harmful policies he wanted as long as the associated images conveyed a feel-good message, no matter how discordant those images were with reality.
Put bluntly, it is a kind of con job, and we are the marks.
Maybe it has always been that emotions rule the day, and that image mattered more than actual policy. As one of my co-workers pointed out as we debated this issue, would Franklin Roosevelt been able to achieve what he did had the public been made aware of the effects of his polio? Should it have mattered that the man whose policies helped save this country during one of its darkest moments concealed the fact that he was really wheelchair-bound? Logically, no. But in reality, Roosevelt knew that the truth of his condition had to be hidden for him to hold power.
Or, consider the debates between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon back in 1960. Those who listened on radio thought Nixon had won, while those who watched on television, with the handsome young Kennedy juxtaposed with a sweaty-browed, beady-eyed Nixon, thought Kennedy had actually come out on top. As we know now, Nixon’s unease was a telltale sign into the man’s truly venal character.
Part of the intrinsic qualities of leadership is the ability to inspire others.
There is, too, what can be considered an emotional intelligence. I’ve known people in my life who understood things intuitively, and evaluated people and situations using gut instincts better than I did trying to use logic. In other words, this is all complicated stuff with none of it clearly marked in ways that are black and white.
But a part of me has never been able to shake a story I heard many years ago, told by a Jewish man who lived in Nazi Germany. He described attending a massive Hitler rally, and experiencing the phenomenon of mass psychology. Even though he was listening to the words of a psychotic leader who wanted to exterminate him simply because of his ethnicity, and even though he clearly understood that intellectually, as the words sieg heil thundered, he found his arm rising almost involuntarily in salute.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m in no way comparing Obama’s infomercial to a Nazi rally. That would be insane. And I’m hoping that when new polls are released in coming days, the Democrat’s lead in this race will have expanded. But as a consumer, I think that when it comes down to deciding what to buy, it is not the package that counts, but what is inside.
At some level I can’t quite articulate, I think there is a difference between reasoned persuasion and manipulation that relies on playing with our emotions. And, whether the end goal is considered bad or good, it is never a good idea to succumb mindlessly to that kind of manipulation. It’s important to see it for what it is, and then see through it, to determine what the end results will be.
Although it wasn’t a part of the half-hour broadcast, former President Bill Clinton spoke at a later Florida rally. He talked about the redistribution of wealth that’s been going on these past eight years, with the poor and middle class losing ground while the richest 10 percent profited wildly. Obama’s tax plan is aimed at helping the masses, not the already privileged. And his health-care policy is “light years” ahead of McCain’s.
Then there’s Obama’s energy plan, which wants to put money into promoting conservation, the surest way to cut dependence on foreign oil, promoting job growth and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That and a significant investment in alternative energy could go a long way toward salvaging the wreck that is our current economy.
And one candidate has promised to extricate us from the costly morass that is Iraq, while the other has pledged to keep us there for 100 years if need be.
So there are plenty of rational reasons to get out and vote for Obama.
I guess what I’m urging is caution. This time around, it looks like it is the guy on the left who’s been most successful in getting us all teary-eyed and hopeful. But four years from now, there is a good chance that Karl Rove or one of his acolytes will have learned from Obama’s (apparent) success, and they will try to improve on it, looking to sway us not with what’s inside their nasty package but with the wrapping that attempts to conceal it.
Remember the seeming appeal of George W. Bush, the resolute Texas cowboy that we’d all much prefer having a beer with than the wooden and wonkish Al Gore? Look what that has got us. Or the below-the-belt attacks of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who somehow convinced enough people that a decorated veteran who volunteered for combat was somehow worthy of contempt while his opponent, who used family privilege to avoid going to war, was really the one deserving to be our commander in chief.
Strong emotions have a way of shutting down our critical faculties, and clever campaigns are capable of greatly distorting reality. The more we keep that in mind, and the more we pay attention to the substance of what’s being said instead of falling prey to the manufactured images that have become so prolific a part of our politics, the better off all of us will be. —Curt Guyette
I just got off the phone with Daniel Cherrin, spokesman for Detroit Mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. (man, it still feels odd typing the words “Detroit Mayor” without having them be followed by the name Kwame Kilpatrick). Cherrin says that the city’s Law Department is in the process of “going through the appropriate legal channels” to notify Manuel “Matty” Moroun and his Detroit International Bridge Co. that two fences blocking access to parts of Riverside Park have to be removed.
Wow. That was quick. What a difference a change in administrations makes. Critics have long bitched that the Kwamster was firmly tucked in the silk-lined pocket of billionaire Matty.
It was a week or so back that Riverside Park suddenly became an issue after former Freep reporter Joel Thurtell started posting stories about the fences and his run-in with Matty’s shotgun-toting security squad while taking pictures of the bridge from publicly owned land.
After stories and photos appeared on his blog, Joel on the Road, a handful of local patriots staged a protest softball game out at the park, with everyone wearing black shirts. I went out to catch the fun and ran into Dan Stamper, president of the Bridge Company, and Jack E. Teatsorth, the company’s director of security.
It was an interesting conversation. At the heart of the issue are two fences. One, at the north end of the park, is used to create a buffer zone around the bridge. Stamper told me that it was erected immediately after 9/11, and that a 40-foot wide swath of parkland on the bridge side of the fence was taken with the permission of then-Mayor Dennis Archer. It was done, said Stamper, to help keep the bridge safe from terrorists.
Participating in the conversation — which was being conducted with a chain-link fence between the bridge company folks and me — was a guy named Wade Streeter. Also there was Thurtell. Streeter pointed out to Stamper that there’s no such fencing creating a buffer zone around Port Huron’s Bluewater Bridge going over to Canada.
Stamper calmly pointed out that the Ambassador is privately owned, and that, as a result, boss Moroun is motivated to protect a highly valuable personal asset, whereas the Bluewater Bridge is owned by the public, and government officials apparently don’t have much concern about protecting that span.
“We care about our facility,” said Stamper. “They don’t care about theirs. “
My jaw dropped only a little.
Then the conversation turned toward a second fence — the one blocking access to a public boat ramp at the park. A sign on that fence warns people to stay out with the words “Homeland Security” prominently displayed.
Stamper claimed he didn’t know anything about that fence. Thurtell pointed out that it was identical to signs posted on the fence creating the bridge buffer.
“We put up the sign,” said security honcho Teatsorth.
But it was the city that put up the fence, he said, and it was the city’s decision to close the boat ramp in 2002 because of budget problems.
A few more questions and Teatsorth divulged that the padlock was the bridge company’s because it sometimes needed access to the area. He also said that, after a vehicle had rammed into the fence gate, the bridge company installed a new one. But it was done strictly as a favor to help out the financially struggling city.
It’s just an example of the bridge company being a good neighbor.
So, bottom line, the fence that Stamper told me he knew nothing about had a gate put up by his company, with a company padlock keeping it chained shut and a company sign claiming trespassers would be prosecuted under authority of the Department of Homeland Security.
As we reported earlier this week, several Homeland Security officials we talked with said they didn’t know anything about any fences at Riverside Park.
Cherrin was even more adamant when we talked Friday. He said Homeland Security at no level — federal, state or local — had anything to do with directing those fences be erected. Apparently they are as uninterested in protecting the security of economically vital privately owned bridges from terror attacks as they are in safeguarding publicly owned spans.
And so the city’s legal team is now on the case.
I wouldn’t go holding any victory softball games just yet, fellow patriots. Matty Moroun has a history of fighting back when it looks like he’s not going to get his way.
After all, he has a bridge to protect. And it looks like he’s the only one really willing to keep it really safe.
Detroit Auditor General Joe Harris delivered a message many officials didn't want to hear.
Given the collapse of the economy and the foreclosure crisis and the general gloom that seems to be hanging over us like cold October rain clouds, it was nice to see something in the news that actually made me feel like cheering. And I’m not talking about the firing of Matt Millen from the Lions. Maybe in the long run his canning will have some effect, but their season will be what it is whether that hallmark of incompetence is here or not. No, what had me picking up the paper and thinking “wow” was the announcement that new Detroit Mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. had brought in former auditor general Joe Harris to be the city’s new chief financial officer. It’s always a risky thing to be too effusive when praising any politician or bureaucrat. They often have a way of letting us down. With that caveat in mind, I have to say that, after witnessing Harris’ work for years, it’s fair to observe that the guy has always come off as both ethical and highly competent. He’s a numbers geek who spent a decade as an independent watchdog ferreting out inefficiencies and questionable financial practices in city government, which is exactly what this beleaguered city needs right now. The message Cockrel’s been sending in the wake of Kwame Kilpatrick’s scandal-plagued reign is that he’s filling his administration with straight arrows with the aim of taking on the messes KK left behind.
A little more than three years ago, as Harris was concluding his 10-year-term as auditor general, I watched as he gave a blistering critique of this city’s leadership and a trenchant analysis of the problems facing Detroit and the steps necessary to address them. I came back to the office saying we needed to turn his speech into a cover story. We called it “The Harris Manifesto.” The piece was introduced with an editor’s note that began like this:
There was a moment of high tension last week as Detroit Auditor General Joe Harris concluded the blistering financial critique he’d delivered to City Council. With his 10-year term ending this year, Harris let loose before heading out the door. He hammered the mayor for producing a proposed budget that Harris claims bears little resemblance to reality. He slammed the unions and other special interest groups for helping to drive this city to the brink of insolvency. And he lit into the council itself, calling it “one of the most divisive and ineffective legislative bodies of this City within the past several decades.”
In short, Harris unleashed a rhetorical flamethrower that spared no one. As he concluded, all present seemed to hold their breath for an instant. How would the council respond to this blistering attack? It was easy to imagine a sword of umbrage hanging in the air, ready to swing in retaliation. Then Council President Pro Tem Kenneth Cockrel Jr. stepped into the void.
“So, Joe, why don’t you tell us how you really feel?” Cockrel quipped. The relief of nervous laughter rippled through the chamber, and the moment of unease passed.
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