Today the Nadir has been reached in Detroit

Panic in Detroit!

As one would know if they followed my sort of half assed on going Detroit Malaise Report...

I have been seeding articles or providing well intentioned, and informed I might add to toot my own horn a bit, articles with regards to the descending nature of the political and socio-economic scene in the fair and much maligned City of Detroit.

This of course has by and large taken its form in the seeding of wonderful Detroit Free Press articles about our Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his nefarious scandals.

Yet today we have reached the terrifying Nadir, the Mayor has been ordered to jail for the violation of his pre-trial bond. This preposterous development has turned the doubters, a few still left standing, and those cries of suburban negativism, into a harsh and terrible reality for citizens of the City of Detroit. Now we have gone through the process of people saying, well no mayor of the city has been convicted while still holding office, these charges wont stick, etc to this shocking development.

Accountability begins with the chief administrator of any organization, and here we have the CEO of Detroit jailed for something that only the most defiant criminals perpetrate, the bond violation. Typically this is done in secret, but to wit, this is the Mayor of a large urban city, who is under the protection of the Police, how could this action not be reported.

Absurdly Mayor Kilpatrick has already lowered himself deeper into the flames of scorn by last week assaulting a State Police Detective, which typically would violate anyone placed on bond from pre-trial incarceration; yet not this Mayor.

Still defiant, Mayor Kilpatrick has refused to resign; the calls have been out for his head since for this entire year, yet he refused this honorable, accountable method of removing these scandals from front-page headline lead news. He always came back saying that his administration had so much more work to do to help the fair and much maligned City.

This bond violation has to do with the Mayor's not Court approved journey to Windsor, Ontario last night on City business supposedly to save the Ambassador Tunnel Deal or something, yet the details have not emerged from the Canadian side of this affair. Whatever good intentions that trip may have had, the simple fact is that he did not follow through with being accountable to the Court in the serious matter of the felony charges leveled against him. Even more astonishing that this came the same week that his mother Rep. Carolyn Cheeks-Kilpatrick, an esteemed Rep for the 13th District of Michigan, nearly lost her primary bid due to the malfeasance of her son, losing her would be a blow to the region.

Not accountable to a felony charge, is that the psychological state of this city? Are we so far gone that we forgot to check in on the path towards total economic doom, educational wasting and social disintegration? Are the actions of this mayor reflecting the larger questions of how the elite, elected classes regard the legal system that so many "normal" citizens are wrung through daily?

This Mayor has to resign!

The one person who holds his fate as Mayor is Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, who could remove him from office immediately, yet is going to hold meetings as to how to proceed with all parties involved in this crisis. However she could remove him tonight, this situation should force her hand.

Detroit deserves much better than this, as one who voted for this administration twice I would have to say that so many people truly believed that Kwame Kilpatrick could do so much for this City, and he has. During his administration Detroit, at least downtown, has radically changed for the better. It makes me quite happy to see this progress. Yet somehow this Mayor has not materialized a higher standard for himself, like ex San Francisco mayor Willie Brown or Chicago Mayor Harold Washington. Instead he declared himself the Hip-Hop Mayor, and lived in an unfortunately widely reported "gangsta rap" lifestyle; of course now is not the time to detail exactly what that means in terms of semiotics. The people of Detroit believed, we waited; we gave the benefit of the doubt. And today those hopes and holdouts have been ruthlessly dashed and slammed to the Nadir of the Detroit Experience.

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	Detroit mayor charged with 2 felony assault counts	Associated Press	Fri Aug 8	50
	Detroit mayor charged with 2 felony assault counts	msnbc.com	Fri Aug 8	1
	Charges continue piling up against Detroit mayor	Associated Press	Thu Aug 7	4