Detroit thread. Post Kwame, Monica, and $1 houses here.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Years from now people will look at Detroit and know that 2009, Detroit, was the tipping point in America's decline.

[Neil]

Years from now people will look at Detroit and know that 2009, Detroit, was the tipping point in America's decline.

Actually, I wonder when future generations will say that America started to decline.  My guess is that it'll be sometime in the mid-60s.

[Darth Wagtaros]

Years from now people will look at Detroit and know that 2009, Detroit, was the tipping point in America's decline.

Actually, I wonder when future generations will say that America started to decline.  My guess is that it'll be sometime in the mid-60s.

There can be no question that the Baby Boomer generation is responsible for most of the nation's ills.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that they cause most problems - including Detroit.  But it wasn't until some of our proudest cities became hellish banana republics in miniature. 

[charliebear]

There can be no question that the Baby Boomer generation is responsible for most of the nation's ills.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that they cause most problems - including Detroit.  But it wasn't until some of our proudest cities became hellish banana republics in miniature.

No.  Detroit was stumbling during the 1940's and 50's.  Boomers were barely born.

[Darth Wagtaros]

There can be no question that the Baby Boomer generation is responsible for most of the nation's ills.  In fact, I'd go so far as to say that they cause most problems - including Detroit.  But it wasn't until some of our proudest cities became hellish banana republics in miniature.

No.  Detroit was stumbling during the 1940's and 50's.  Boomers were barely born.

Nope. Never happened.

[Caliga]

Actually, I wonder when future generations will say that America started to decline.  My guess is that it'll be sometime in the mid-60s.

They will probably say the decline began with the Nixon administration.

[charliebear]

What's this I hear about Martha-Rose-Reeves not making the cut after the Primary Elections?  So sad.

[MadImmortalMan]

What's this I hear about Martha-Rose-Reeves not making the cut after the Primary Elections?  So sad.

Really? That's too bad. Hopefully she was defeated by someone else with high entertainment value.

[Savonarola]

What's this I hear about Martha-Rose-Reeves not making the cut after the Primary Elections?  So sad.

It couldn't have happened to a more deserving councilwoman:

Requiem for a Motown diva
Martha Reeves' gig as a Detroit councilwoman comes to an end
BY BILL MCGRAW • FREE PRESS COLUMNIST • August 5, 2009

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It was late Tuesday evening. The Diva had just left the building.

A few staffers stood outside the tiny headquarters of City Councilwoman Martha Reeves, on a gritty downtown Detroit street. They talked about city hall corruption and how the media had jobbed their boss. Nearby, Detroit cops pulled over in a scout car and questioned two young men. One was eating popcorn.

Inside the office, the atmosphere was even grimmer.

Food leftovers sat on a table. A few of Reeves' amateurish campaign ads — "Re-Elect MARTHA REEVES, The Vandella" — remained behind.

Reeves scored 0.83% of the vote and failed to finish among the 18 candidates who will run in November for nine council positions, jobs that include an $81,000 salary, a Ford Crown Victoria, several staff members and a budget of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"I feel great," she said in a phone conversation later.

She didn't sound great.

Asked to comment about the end of her political career, she said: "Why should I?"


She was reminded she is a star.

She is a legendary Motown vocalist, perhaps the second most famous female singer after Diana Ross. She was a Detroit success story, a kid of modest means. She was born in Alabama and came north with her family as a baby as her parents sought jobs and what passed for freedom for African Americans in the World War II era.

She had a strapping voice, and her hits included "Jimmy Mack," "(Love is Like A) Heat Wave," "Dancing in the Street," "Come and Get these Memories" and "Nowhere to Run."

When she took office in January 2006, it was international news in a way no Detroit City Council members ever make news. She was interviewed on CNN and NBC's "Saturday Today" show, profiled in the New York Times and Rolling Stone and featured as the half-time performer during a Pistons game.

A few weeks later, when Super Bowl XL came to town, the BBC, "Dateline NBC" and "Nightline" — among others — came calling.

Reeves at that time admitted she had run for office only when her music gigs began to lag. Ironically, the new political job energized her singing career.

But when it came to public policy, something about Reeves never seemed to click.

Nobody minded that she had her office painted bright purple.

But early on, she raised eyebrows when she suggested that council members should get free tickets to events or activities that require their approval, such as the Super Bowl, and when she introduced a resolution to rename West Grand Boulevard after Berry Gordy Jr., the Motown label founder who moved his music business to Los Angeles in the early 1970s and has rarely returned.

Last year, three weeks after workers began tearing down the famous ballpark at Michigan and Trumbull, Reeves asked: "Has the demolition of Tiger Stadium already begun?" Last summer, when the Synagro sludge-hauling scandal broke, she seemed confused at times.

Perhaps the final blow to her political career came in June, when she spent a week touring Britain with a Motown revue when the council was consumed with the Cobo Hall mess and the criminal charges against City Councilwoman Monica Conyers.

In London, Reeves told the BBC that being a councilwoman is "a second job I have." When she came home, she refused to say which job — music or public service — came first.

With Reeves' demise, Detroiters appeared to have second thoughts about their choice four years ago of a celebrity singer, though they made another celebrity neophyte — Charles Pugh — the No. 1 council vote-getter Tuesday. Pugh, at least, has spent years dealing with public issues as a TV newsman, and he is intriguing because he would be the first openly gay person in history to hold public office in Detroit.

It was Wednesday morning when Reeves talked on the phone. She sounded tired. She insisted she was not hurt about being rejected so decisively by Detroit voters.

She said she would be at work today. Then she corrected herself, saying the council is on recess. Actually, she is scheduled to be in Chicago today for a singing engagement, according to her staff.

Calling the council job "another phase in my life," she said, "now I'm ready to go on with the next phase of my life."

And that is?

"To continue living," said Reeves, who is 68.

"I'm not going to die. I'm not going to jump off a cliff. I will survive."

Then she said, "Thank you."

[Savonarola]

What's this I hear about Martha-Rose-Reeves not making the cut after the Primary Elections?  So sad.

Really? That's too bad. Hopefully she was defeated by someone else with high entertainment value.

All Detroit's council members are elected at large, and yesterday was only the primary so we don't know the make up of the next council yet; just that Reeves won't be on the ballot.

The next council probably won't be so entertaining.  With Reeves gone we've lost the three worst council members (Barbara-Rose Collins and Monica Conyers are the other two for those of you playing along at home.)

[Savonarola]

Of course in Detroit ever silver lining has a cloud:

Audits of Detroit Public Schools reveal unused BlackBerry devices, motorcycles
BY NIRAJ WARIKOO • FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER • August 5, 2009

A couple of audits of Detroit Public Schools uncovered rampant financial waste, Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb announced today.

One audit of health-care workers revealed that there were 411 people, some of them deceased, who were on the payrolls even though they were not eligible, the district said. Removing the 411 people will save about $2.1 million, according to the district.

Another audit of the district's Office of Public Safety uncovered wasted equipment that was not being used –- including 160 BlackBerry phones, 97 two-way phones, 1,872 master locks, 132 safety kits, 50 handheld radios, and 13 printers. Eleven motorcycles were not being used.

"It's now time to bring all of this BS to a standstill," Bobb said at a news conference today. "This school system cannot be viewed as a personal bank."

On display at the news conference were two of the unused motorcycles as well as several boxes of the unused equipment.

Overtime and work attendance were other abuses. In 2007-2009, overtime costs were $790,604, which was $740,604 over the $50,000 budgeted for overtime, according to a news release from the district. On average, security and police officers worked one month less than the minimum number of days required.

Bobb said the public safety abuses happened before the current leadership in the Office of Public Safety.

Bobb said he heard stories in recent weeks about school officials and others trying to sell school supplies for personal profit. The two-year audit also showed there was little, if any, inventory of weapons and police vehicles.

"It's sad," Bobb said. "The pettiness is just unreal."

"I don't have any more patience," Bobb added. "The kids deserve a lot better."

[Savonarola]

Another travel with Charlie:

Unclaimed dead stack up in Wayne County morgue
Charlie LeDuff / The Detroit News
Detroit -- Poor Grandpa.

His corpse lies at the bottom of a pile of other bodies unclaimed at the Wayne County morgue. But Grandpa -- whose name has been withheld to avoid embarrassing his family -- is a special case. He has been in the cooler for the past two years as his kinfolk -- too broke to bury him -- wait for a ship to come in.

"There is destitution," says Dr. Carl J. Schmidt, the chief medical examiner of this, the nation's poorest big city. "But when you're so destitute that nobody has claimed you, that's a whole different level of being destitute."

Peering into the small glass window of the cooler door, Schmidt counts 52 unclaimed bodies stacked like cordwood -- in some cases four to a shelf; always two to a gurney.

Generally, the economic well-being of a municipality is measured by unemployment rates and quarterly earnings reports. But Schmidt's cooler may say as much about metropolitan Detroit's financial health as any statistics released by the Federal Reserve.

"It really is a sign of how bad things have gotten," says Schmidt, 52, a 16-year veteran of the Detroit death scene. "Some people really have to make a choice of putting food on the table or burying their loved ones. It is very sad really. In all of my years here, I have never seen it this bad."

As a comparison, the doctor said that just a few years ago, when credit was easy and SUVs were a must-have, he would typically have no more than 10 unclaimed bodies at any one time.

But nowadays, people are using his cooler like a no-charge cold storage facility, he says. Corpses linger longer and longer as family members wait for a paycheck, a tax return, the lottery or a lawsuit to get the money needed to give their dead a proper burial. And thus, Grandpa lingers. Some of the dead have been signed over to the county by people either unable or unwilling to pay for the burial.

The dead who have been signed away by their families find themselves bound in bureaucratic red tape. They await a $700 check from the state Department of Human Services, which, because of its own budgetary constraints, last year slashed the burial grant from $900.

Once the state money is received, Wayne County will kick in another $250 and the remains will be contracted out to a funeral home that will place them in a pauper's grave. Cremation is never a consideration, says Schmidt, as state law prohibits it.

The process takes about two months, and by that time, another 15 to 20 corpses will have taken their places in the cooler. Schmidt may handle as many 200 indigent cases this year.

There are an additional 20 bodies in the cooler waiting for investigators to locate a next of kin. Another two bodies have yet to be identified, including a femur that has been there for several years.

Living on the margins
Any way you slice it, says Schmidt, the cramped cooler is a repository of the human condition. "How society treats its dead says volumes about the way society lives," he says. "Civilization requires intrinsically that we bury the dead. It distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom."

About 4,000 people died last year in Wayne County, with 2,500 requiring an autopsy. According to Schmidt, perhaps 15 percent of those were murdered. Another 20 percent died as a result of accidents, even drug overdose, and another 10 percent committed suicide. The remaining 55 percent died of natural causes.

It is this "natural cause" type of death that appears to be on the rise due to the bad economic times.

"There are some people living on the margins who simply can't afford their medication anymore," he says. "Diabetes and what have you. And sadly, these types of deaths are preventable."

Rarely will you find that children go unclaimed. "There is still a social connection to children," the doctor says. And rarely will a person of Jewish or Muslim descent have to wait. Religious law requires that they be buried within the day.

Being nice matters
Schmidt is a sort of Descartes to the deceased -- a detective of death who washes away the daily stress of his job by solving complex mathematical puzzles by lamplight. He continues to perform autopsies -- about one a day -- and has conducted more than 5,000 in his career. He believes in the concept of a soul and enjoys reading the existential philosophers Kierkegaard, Camus and Sartre, whose writings he boils down to this: You are really the consequence of your own actions.

"The essence of the dilemma is this: If you are nicer to people, your chances of ending up here are greatly reduced," he says during a midafternoon tour of the circular facility in midtown Detroit.

The morgue features seven dissection stations, an anteroom stuffed with jars of flesh samples, lighting the color of flypaper, a sickly stench of death that is something of a mix of cherry and ammonia and, of course, the metallic cooler.

Not everyone in the cooler is there because his family is poor. Rather, some have arrived because they treated their family poorly, the doctor explains. Consider the son of a dead man who said of his father: "I didn't like him when he was alive, why would I help him now?" Or consider the case of the man whose two wives first met over his dead body. Finding that they had little in common except for the cadaver, they left him.

"If you do end up here," Dr. Schmidt advises, "your chances of getting out of here are greatly increased the nicer you were to people when you were alive."

I liked that last little story. 

[Caliga]

Can't they just donate the bodies to those crazy Ashogi dudes in India who like to feast on corpses and think they can heal the sick?

[Savonarola]

Can't they just donate the bodies to those crazy Ashogi dudes in India who like to feast on corpses and think they can heal the sick?

We should bring the Ashogi here and sell them the corpses.  That would solve the storage problem, balance the city budget and solve the health care crisis all at once.

[Savonarola]

Slammertime!

Southfield declares Lattimore council seat vacant after guilty plea
Paul Egan and Delores Flynn / The Detroit News
Detroit -- An attorney for the city of Southfield issued a statement today declaring Councilman William Lattimore's seat vacant, minutes after Lattimore pleaded guilty in federal court to a bribery charge.

Lattimore, 55, admitted to accepting a $7,500 bribe in August 2007 to help get municipal approvals for a pawn shop to relocate. He faces up to 30 months in prison when he is sentenced Jan. 28 by U.S. District Judge Marianne O. Battani.

Lattimore said a pawn shop, Zeidman's Jewelry and Loan, hired political consultant Sam Riddle to assist in getting approvals for the shop to relocate from one Southfield location to another.

"Riddle and (former state Rep.) Mary Waters paid $7,500 to me," Lattimore told Battani in court today. "I accepted the payment intending to be rewarded for my assistance as a councilor in getting the proper approval."

Riddle and Waters also have been charged in the case, accused of conspiring together to funnel the money to Lattimore from Zeidman's.

Outside court, Lattimore's attorney, Arlene Woods, did not give a direct answer when asked if Lattimore plans to resign his seat.

"I don't know how that works with the City Council," Woods said. "It's going to play out the way the city charter allows."

Southfield City Attorney John Beras issued a statement saying that under the charter, Lattimore's seat is now vacant. Because he has been convicted of a felony, "he is no longer a Southfield city councilman," Beras said.

Southfield City Council President Don Fracassi has called the charge "an embarrassment" to the city.

"I'm glad it's all over for the city's sake," Fracassi said Thursday. "Now we can get on with the business of Southfield and not have to deal with this issue."

Bribery is a 10-year felony, but under Lattimore's plea agreement, in which he has agreed to cooperate in the case against Riddle and Waters, he faces 24-30 months in prison.

Documents filed in Riddle's case say Riddle asked Lattimore for "a letter of support or something" for the store relocation, which Lattimore wrote. Those documents say Lattimore may have been paid as much as $12,500.

Lattimore remained seated in the courtroom for several minutes following his guilty plea, blotting his face and eyes before facing the media with his lawyer. Woods said Lattimore's been an exemplary public servant for 20 years.

Lattimore's term had been set to expire Nov. 1. Now that the seat has been declared vacant, the city has 60 days to decide whether to fill the vacancy, keep the seat empty, or hold a special election.

Riddle, who also faces multiple extortion-related accounts in connection with his work as a top aide to former Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers, had his cell phone tapped by the FBI for more than a year in connection with the City Hall investigation. Those phone intercepts apparently led investigators to the Southfield case.