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’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.