Last summer, on July 18, Detroit filed the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history. And the political corruption recounted here explains why:
‘While the city’s finances foundered, Kilpatrick was shaking down contractors, ensuring that a pal got millions in city work and turning a nonprofit fund to help struggling Detroiters into a personal slush fund, according to evidence at his five-month trial.
‘He created a ‘pay-to-play’ system for the provision of city goods and services, which compromised vast swaths of city government, including the water and sewer system, the convention center, the pension system, casino developments and recreation centers,’ prosecutors said in a court filing last week. ‘City government essentially became up for grabs for the right price.’
(The Associated Press, October 10, 2013)
That he godfathered crimes for which 34 other people have been convicted is the most damning indication that Kilpatrick ran the city like a veritable crime syndicate.
A jury convicted him in March on federal racketeering, fraud, extortion, and tax crimes, for which the judge sentenced him to 28 years in prison yesterday. But it’s easy to forget that his fall from grace began in 2008 with revelations about a Clintonian extra-marital affair, which ended with him resigning (only to avoid an even more humiliating recall) and copping a plea to charges related to his thuggish attempts to cover it up. Back then the judge sentenced him only to a few months in jail….
Still, nothing became Kilpatrick in public life quite like the way he was forced to leave it:
Kilpatrick has defied near-universal calls (including a 7-1 vote of the City Council) for him to resign…
He seems to be hoping against hope that an O.J. jury will acquit him… No doubt this is why he has taken every opportunity in recent weeks to cast himself as the victim of a judicial system designed to keep Black men like him down…
Never mind that 99% of the people calling for his head on a platter are Black. And, moreover, that the system in this case is personified by none other than Kym Worthy – a very capable prosecutor who just happens to be Black…
Therefore, here’s to the end of his political career.
(“Indictment of Detroit’s ‘Hip-hop’ Mayor…,” The iPINIONS Journal, March 25, 2008)
It’s worth remembering, though, that many were touting Kilpatrick to become the first Black president of the United States when Barack Obama was still toiling away as a community organizer in Chicago.
Except that:
Kilpatrick always struck me as more of a wannabe gangsta rapper than a trend-setting politician. Therefore, it seems fitting that he will now have some jail time to enhance his street cred.
Good riddance Kwame!
(“Kilpatrick Cops a Plea…and Resigns,” The iPINIONS Journal, September 5, 2008)
So here’s to the people of Detroit for refusing to be played by this … playa.
But it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the oft-cited similarities between Kilpatrick supporting his lifestyle of the rich and famous on public funds and Michael Misick, the former premier of my mother country, the Turks and Caicos Islands, doing the same.
Because it seems the fulfilling of a karmic symmetry that, as the 43-year-old Kilpatrick heads off to prison (effectively for the rest of his life), the 47-year-old Misick is withering away in a prison cell in Brazil.
He’s awaiting extradition back home to face trial on corruption charges that make the crimes Kilpatrick committed seem like the petty thievery of a juvenile delinquent.
Which is why he’s bound to suffer a similar fate. And, I say, good riddance to him too.
Related commentaries:
Kilpatrick cops a plea…
Indictment…