9: Let them eat cake, Mr. Mayor?

EVENT

Mayor's hiring of Cleaves assailed.

The mayor of Flint, Michigan needs a bodyguard now?!

The $33,000 the mayor is paying Cleaves is a sizeable chunk of what it would take to keep the Haskell Community Center open... the mayor gets a bodyguard and the only community center in one of the most poverty-stricken and violent neighborhoods of one of the most poverty-stricken and violent cities in the country is closed.

All this after your latest scandals, your petty suppression of the Flint Journal (it's not Pravda, Mr. Mayor), industrial economic quackery, financial bamembeoozling, and your involvement in your wife's campaign, have all been dodgier than Chrysler. These are classic plays from the Banana Republic handbook, Mr. Mayor. You're like the master of Belarus presiding over thirty sad square miles and a population of one hundred thousand. You are a shameless thug. The municipal political equivalent of someone who can't get it up to take on the big heist so he has to go around stealing kids' bicycles. Your administration has been, if possible, just as incompetant and corrupt as Woodrow Stanley's. At least Stanley knew how to move within the democratic party and, during his early terms, build consensus. But this whole "mayor" job is simply your personal power trip. Enjoy it, because in a decade you'll just be the latest casualty in a slew of shit mayors this city has neither asked for nor deserved. Even the city council you essentially bought is getting fed up with your autocratic, offensively blind-sided and uncompromising policies.

Darnell Earley was the closest thing Flint's had to an accountable leader in my thirty-year lifetime. Between city council, the board of ed, and local industry, I'm not surprised he backed away with his hands in front of him.

* * * * *

For the record I'd like to say that Herbert Cleves, whatever my disagreement with his policies and opinions, gives every sign of being one of Flint's most dedicated and committed officials.

But this issue is too simple to comment on successfully.

Flint's city council and board of education have taken steps towards accountability in the last election. Executively we've taken steps back, foremost with the wretched, odious Williamson administration followed at a distance by the brilliant but sketchy-as-Hell school superintendant Milton.

If serious candidates step up to the plate, they will be elected.

Unfortunately, they can only do so if they put little stock in typical incentives.

Is this a job you would accept?

END OF POST.