Long ago, our forefathers (Michigan forefathers, that is) had a great idea.  They needed to know how they should divvy up all of the state cash that was allocated for public schools.  After much thought and careful consideration, they decided that the fairest and most accurate way to do this was to have one single day, in the middle of each year, where they would simply count the number of students in the classrooms of each school.  The more kids a school had… the more money they would get.

Brilliant, no?

Students offered gift cards, cash for Count Day success

Detroit Public Schools will offer $20,000 in Target gift cards — including five $1,000 prizes — to DPS parents who bring their children for a full day on Count Day.

Breakfast and lunch also will be served to every DPS student at no charge.

How else could we possibly expect our public schools to get the proper amount of state funds if not through pay offs, free offers, and outright bribery?

Apropos of nothing, Detroit native and former mayor of Detroit, Kwame Kilpatrick, “is facing 19 counts of fraud and tax evasion, accused of illegally using the nonprofit Kilpatrick Civic Fund for personal expenses, including crisis consultants, a Cadillac, and summer camp for his kids. The fund was supposed to be used for charitable purposes.” (Kilpatrick’s status conference delayed to January)

How could he possibly have ever believed that he’d get away with these things?

Detroit Woman Kills Alleged Purse Snatcher

A woman in Detroit was at this gas station when two guys come up and grab her purse.

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As they run away, she whips out a gun and goes Dirty Harry on their asses.  Half an hour later, one of the guys stumbles into a hospital and dies.

Pretty hard core defense for your $15, lipstick, and pack of Newports, Don’t you think, lady?

What do you expect in a city whose mayor hires hit men to take out stripper witnesses and then fires any police who investigate?

Detroit City Councilwoman, Monica Conyers, pleads guilty to bribery.

A career of nepitism, slander, corruption, and self service finally comes to an end.  Hopefully.  Take a look back at one of Monica’s finer moments.

How Monica behaves during Detroit City Council meetings:

How Monica behaves around kids: (The first part is a repat of the above video, skip to 1:25 for video of a Detroit City Councilwoman losing an argument to an 13 yr old girl)

Detroit’s self proclaimed hip-hop mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, left office on September 18th, 2008.  “Left office” as loosely defined as being led across the street in hand cuffs to his new office behind bars.  Shortly before this happened, Detroit’s deputy mayor, Anthony Adams, stepped down from his office.  “Stepped down” can similarly be defined as taking the position as director of the Detroit Water Dept. for a $90,000 a year pay increase.  Evidently, no one saw the need to actually fill Mr. Adamas’ former position, leaving the question of, “Erm… exactly who’s in charge around here?” unanswered.

So what’s a city to do?

Detroit has so little money that we’re selling bridges to Canada.  Seriously… that was our bright idea to balance the budget.  No longer able to afford Lincoln Navigators for Kwame’s entire family and employ his contingent of umpteen dozen bodyguards working 80+ hours of overtime every week, Detroit figured it’d be a great idea to just sell our bridge to those kooky Canadian neighbors of ours.  Clearly, this would solve our budget crisis for the foreseeable future.

There was little over a year until Kwame’s pervious term was up and all we needed was someone to hold down the fort until the good citizens of D-Town could elect a new thief to steal their money.  Instead, they decided to hold what amounts to 4 separate elections at approximately $3 million a pop.

First of all, the president of Detroit’s City Council, was promoted to serve as Mayor.  After all, it’s a big city and big cities need mayors.  But instead of just letting him serve out the year, for some reason Detroit needed to have a special election… in May… to elect a mayor for 5 months!  And of course, what’s a special election without a pre-special election to elect the candidates for the special election?

Yeah, let’s hold one of those.

In recent news, Detroiters care so much about the situation that about 10% of the registered voters will actually participate in this pre-special election election.

I know this is going to come as a complete shock to all of you, but yes, it’s official… Detroit Sucks.

#1 – America’s Most And Least Popular Cities

“Of course, current economic conditions also play a role. It’s no surprise that 90% of those surveyed don’t want to live in Detroit, which ranked lowest out of 30 cities. It’s got a 9.5% unemployment rate and a murder rate 5.16 times higher than the national average.”

Does anyone find these figures surprising?  Honestly, I’m more amazed that 10% of America would actually consider living in Detroit.

#2 – America’s Emptiest Cities

“Detroit and Las Vegas are among the worst offenders by both measures–the Motor City sports vacancy rates of 19.9% for rentals and 4% for homes”

“But starting in the 1960s, Detroit began a precipitous decline. Detroit’s population is now 900,000–half what it was in the middle of the century–and many of its neighborhoods languish in varying states of decay.”

Detroit is losing population faster than the Lions lose football games… “a murder rate 5.16 times higher than the national average”… hmm…there’s a connection here, I can just feel it.

#7 – America’s Most Miserable Cities

“The Motor City benefited from our revised criteria this year (we added sales tax and sports teams in addition to corruption).”

Evidently Forbes hasn’t been watching the Lions for the last 50 years, or even the last year where they went 0 – 16… a feat previously thought about a 100 times less likely than a team going 16 – 0.  But evidently hockey is every bit as important and popular as football, right?  O.o

“Yet after more than half a century, countless scholars, politicians, community organizers developers and nonprofit workers have been unable to come up with a solution to fix Detroit.”

Oh really?  Has anyone suggested that perhaps Detroit should stop re-electing politicians who’ve been caught red-handed and shown on TV to be stealing the public’s money?  Maybe the big 3 could stop developing new cars that Toyota and Honda have had on dealer lots for the past 10 years?  Or wait… this may be a radical idea, but let me take a “stab” at it… How about Detroiters stop KILLING each other?!?!

And by the way, our house is still up for sale if anyone’s interested.