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Politics & Prejudices

It's all about crime

Jack chats with mayoral favorite Benny Napoleon

Photo: , License: N/A


By Jack Lessenberry

Published: January 9, 2013

Would you still want to be mayor, I asked, if you have to serve under an emergency manager? "Yes, I would," he said.

"Because I would hope that person, [the emergency manager], would be wise enough to make use of my 38 years of law enforcement experience. And at least I would have a seat at the table. Emergency managers are temporary, and I would be there to take over when control was returned to Detroit's citizens." Napoleon acknowledged that he doesn't yet have a complete handle on the city's financial problems.

But he believes he knows how to solve crime, and connect with people. Instead of today's cold war between the mayor and the City Council, "I would be grabbing my coffee cup and going up from the 11th floor to the 13th floor, to sit in their offices and talk." He insists he hasn't yet decided to run; he says he is still assessing whether the money and political support is there.

"If I were to become mayor," he added,
"I wouldn't use it as a stepping stone to anything. This would be it." And if he becomes mayor, his goal is that after he spends his time in office, "I will have left everything I have on the streets of Detroit."

That, after all, is where he's always
been from.

 

Happy birthday, Tricky Dick: Today would have been the 100th birthday of the man Michael Moore calls "our last liberal president." That would be the guy who created the Environmental Protection Agency, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, to oversee conditions in the workplace.

He also re-established a relationship with China, cut military spending by a third, and signed major arms control treaties. He created Title IX, which was meant to assure equality in women's sports, and expanded food stamps and welfare.

So who was he? None other than Richard Nixon, the paranoid people-hater who had to resign from office in 1974 after his bizarre habit of bugging himself proved that he illegally participated in a conspiracy to cover up bugging the Democrats.

These days, Nixon is remembered mainly for his evil deeds. But when you look at his domestic record, you can't help but wish President Obama was a little more like Richard Nixon. 

Jack Lessenberry opines weekly for Metro Times. Contact him at  letters@metrotimes.com.

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