Eat your heart out, Matty!

Posted on May 2, 2010 by hro50ta1

RIVERSIDE PARK BOAT LAUNCH -- As seen from canoe May 1, 2010, with Ambassador Bridge. Joel Thurtell photo.

By Joel Thurtell

PADDLING AT RIVERSIDE -- Curt Guyette in bow, Karen Fonde in center of canoe with blogger JT in stern just put in at Riverside Park boat launch. First boat launched from this public ramp in nearly nine years. Joel Thurtell photo.

We put a boat into the Detroit River at Riverside Park on Saturday afternoon, May 1, 2010.

It felt great!

Thanks to Matty Moroun, the billionaire owner of the nearby Ambassador Bridge, no boat had set forth from the public Riverside Park boat launch since before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Matty exploited 9/11 to seize  park land adjacent to his bridge, and his henchmen padlocked the boat launch gate and hung a fake “Homeland Security” sign from its chain-link fence.

Sometime in late 2001 or early 2002, Matty’s goons ejected city recreation officials, citing Homeland Security authority which the real Homeland Security people tell me was a complete sham. But although city recreation officials and city lawyers wanted to take Matty to court and eject him, nothing happened while the Matty-supported felon, Kwame Kilpatrick, was mayor of Detroit. Then, with Kwame out of power, one of Matty’s shotgun totin’ goons tried to arrest a blogger (me) for taking pictures at the park and instead set off a chain of events that led us to put a boat into the river at Riverside Park on a windy afternoon in May, 2010.

SHOTGUN TOTIN' GOON

It was the first boat launched from the park in almost nine years.

And, as I say, it felt fantastic.

The boat was a 15-foot Michi-Craft aluminum canoe, the same one used by Detroit Free Press photographer Patricia Beck and me on our five-day, 27-mile odyssey up the Rouge River five years ago.

This time, on May 1, 2010, the canoe’s crew consisted of me, my wife, Karen Fonde, and Metro Times Editor Curt Guyette.

I’d been wanting to launch a boat from this ramp ever since September of 2008, when I learned that Matty had closed the launch shortly after September 11, 2001, citing security concerns for his neighboring Ambassador bridge. Those concerns were bogus. The opposite side of the bridge is accessible, as is the Windsor side in Canada. Matty’s real reason for wanting control of the park is that he needs the land for the bridge he wants to build to replace the aging and decrepit Ambassador.

OH, OH! SECURITY THREAT! BLOGGER APPROACHES MATTY'S BRIDGE IN CANOE! Where's the shotgun totin' goon when you need him? Joel Thurtell photo.

Most people buy the land they want for their construction projects. That didn’t suit Matty. He just took it. His fence still stops people from using part of Riverside Park, even though a judge ordered him to get out.

On September 22, 2008, when I went looking for the boat launch, I found instead one of Matty’s shotgun-totin’ goons, who did the same thing to me that Matty’s thugs did to City of Detroit Recreation Department staffers late in 2001. The goons kicked the city workers out of a public city park.

Matty’s goon tried to arrest me, and I high-tailed it out of the park.

Exactly what Matty wanted.

He thought the park was his.

But hey, the news today is that the city is committed to re-opening the boat launch. This is about more than a boat launch. By investing in Riverside Park, the city is telling Matty he can’t have Riverside Park. And if Matty doesn’t get the park, his dreams of building a new bridge are dead in the water.

CLEANUP AT RIVERSIDE -- Jennifer Roberts, public relations manager for Detroit's Recreation Department, sweeps at Riverside Park boat launch. Joel Thurtell photo.

I’d gotten a tip that recreation staffers would be working on their own time to clean the boat launch on Saturday, May 1. I got excited. Maybe I could put a boat in! Screw Matty and screw his goons! What a thrill it would be to dig my paddle into water at Riverside.

Recreation director  Alicia Minter gave me permission to put the canoe in. I did not ask Matty.

Oh, by the way, I can’t help mentioning that Pat Beck and I co-authored a book about our Rouge adventure. It’s Up the Rouge! Paddling Detroit’s Hidden River, published in 2009 by Wayne State University Press. It was named a Michigan Notable Book for 2010 by the Library of Michigan.

I bought the canoe later from the canoe livery that rented it to us back in 2005.

OH, MY GOD! IT'S ANOTHER JOURNALIST IN A CANOE HEADING FOR MATTY'S BRIDGE! Metro Times Editor Curt Guyette checks Ambassador bridge security from canoe. Joel Thurtell photo.

As I chatted Saturday with recreation staffers doing volunteer cleanup work at the launch, who should show up but Curt Guyette of the Metro Times. Curt, who has done terrific coverage of Moroun, was game to go in the canoe. Curt, Karen and I paddled the little metal shell through the launch area and into the river.

Into, I might add, a strong wind from the south that was raising swells far higher than the low freeboard of a 15-foot canoe loaded with three passengers.

I was frankly glad to nose back into the placid waters of the launch area. Why, I didn’t even pull out my camera to shoot photos of the toilet paper-encrusted sewage outfall that stands beside the launch outlet.

As we loaded the canoe back atop my car, more and more volunteer workers were showing up to rake, pull weeds and haul junk wood out of the launch area. My photos from the water show lots of driftwood and flotsam in the launch area. That was gone later in the afternoon.

Community organizer Joe Rashid works on fixing Riverside Park ballfield. Joel Thurtell photo.

At the Riverside park extension nearby, Joe Rashid with friends and relatives, were putting a new surface on the softball field near the fenced-off park land Matty still holds illegally. I’ll be writing more about this effort.

There will be another work party on Saturday, May 15, 2010, so if you’re someone who likes parks or wants to put a boat in at Riverside, here’s a chance to help the city with this noble project.

Recreation officials told me the city plans to spend $250,000 to replace the two docks, install new LED floodlights, replace the restrooms and renovate an office, replace benches, a water fountain and trash cans and paint the railing. Later in the summer, the city will seek state grant money to repave the parking lot.

Meantime, while Matty sends flocks of lawyers to court in a try to endlessly stall a government-proposed international bridge, work will proceed through the summer so the boat launch can re-open in August. It would remain open through the remainder of the boating season this year. Next year, it would open in the spring for a full boating season.

RAMP INSPECTORS -- The boat launch works. Karen Fonde and Joel Thurtell. Curt Guyette photo.

AFTER THE TRIP -- Curt Guyette and Joel Thurtell after checking Riverside boat ramp. Karen Fonde photo.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Adventures on the Rouge, Me & Matty | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Patriotism and Matty

Posted on May 1, 2010 by hro50ta1

Michigan Gov. Granholm, who is both a Canadian and an American citizen, has offered to sell the Michigan border to Canada. Meanwhile, the governor has consistently caused red tape from the state of Michigan to prohibit an American company – Detroit International Bridge Co. – from building a second span to replace its 80-year-old Ambassador Bridge. Instead, she wants to tear down hundreds of homes, businesses and churches in Southwest Detroit to obtain money from Canada.

— Dan Stamper, president of Detroit International Bridge Co., owner and operator of the Ambassador Bridge, which is really owned by Matty Moroun

By Joel Thurtell

To hear Matty Moroun tell it, he’s a poor, starving billionaire much-maligned in the press and beaten up by government officials premier among whom is the Canadian-born governor of Michigan whose patriotism must be questionable now that she’s lined up against the poor, starving billionaire.

Oh excuse me, Moroun didn’t say those things. That nonsense was uttered by Dan Stamper, president of Matty’s bridge monopoly.

Since Stamper does what Matty tells him to do, it’s fair to put Dan’s words in Matty’s mostly reticent mouth.

Patriotism was Matty’s theme, using the Stamper trumpet.

Nothing wrong with patriotism when it is an honest expression of love for one’s homeland. But in Matty’s hands, patriotism is a weapon in the rhetorical arsenal of the bridge monopolist intent on retaining his exclusive right to collect fares from trucks crossing between Canada and the U.S.

Matty’s patriotic petards belong to that definition of a patriot given by Dr. Samuel Johnson in the 18th century:

“The last refuge of a scoundrel.”

Does ownership of  the only bridge in town make Matty a patriot?

Does ownership of an unregulated monopoly over the passage of a quarter of the two countries’ Canada-U.S. freight make Matty, ipso facto, a patriot?

Is it an act of patriotism to sue every government that tries to enforce regulations, contracts or — and here’s the nut of it — build a bridge that would rival Matty’s decrepit 1920’s span?

The proposed new government bridge is the key to Matty’s patriotism.

Those of us who would remain patriots in Matty’s definition would mindlessly support the billionaire’s “right” to conduct business any way he chooses, to exclude government inspectors from his bridge, to steal land from the city of Detroit when he needs a site for a duty-free store, a gas station or even his cherished new bridge, which must stand on the site he stole from Detroit’s Riverside Park.

Dr. Johnson had more to say about “patriotism.” He had in mind the 18th-century English politician, Edmund Burke, when he made these remarks:

Sir, I do not say that he is not honest; but we have no reason to conclude from his political conduct that he is honest…In private life he is a very honest gentleman; but I will not allow him to be so in publick life. People may be honest, though they are doing wrong; that is between their Maker and them. But we, who are suffering by their pernicious conduct, are to destroy them. We are sure that [Burke] acts from interest. We know what his genuine principles were. They who allow their passions to confound the distinctions between right and wrong, are criminal. They may be convinced; but they have not come honestly by their conviction.

What Dr. Johnson said of Edmund Burke applies to Matty: We are sure that Moroun acts from interest.

His allegiance is to the almighty American greenback.

As for love of country, he waxes patriotic when it suits his aim — control of trucking fares on the Detroit River.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Is it patriotic to

Posted in Me & Matty | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Volunteers for Riverside

Posted on April 30, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

STILL SQUATTIN' -- The area between the chain-link fence and the Ambassador Bridge is part of Detroit's public Riverside Park still occupied by Manuel "Matty" Moroun. Joel Thurtell photo.

Volunteer workers are needed to make improvements on Detroit’s Riverside Park.

Matty Moroun’s fence — declared illegal by a Detroit judge — still surrounds part of the city’s Riverside Park, but the billionaire’s squatting won’t stop people from renovating a softball diamond in a section of the park that is not occupied by Matty, who owns the adjacent Ambassador Bridge.

Work will begin at 2 p.m. Saturday, May 1 on the ball field at 24th Street a block south of East Jefferson. The city’s Recreation Department meanwhile plans to organize a clean-up from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. on Saturday, according to recreation director Alicia Minter.

Plenty of work to do.

“The Peoples Softball League will play at Riverside every Friday night,” said community organizer Joe Rashid.   “So far clean-up materials were donated by Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision.  The materials to resurface the field and parking lot came from Edward C. Levy Company.”

More volunteer workers are needed, according to Rashid.

“Every little bit helps — shovels, people, we will take whatever we can get!” said Rashid.

“I am hearing we may have DFD (Detroit Fire Department), Rec Department and other support at the park on Saturday, so it is coming together nicely,” Rashid said.

“Plus I got the materials secured to resurface the field,” he added.

“So far, it is mainly focused on the softball diamond, as that will take a good amount of time and energy to get in playable shape,” Rashid said in an e-mail.

STILL LOCKED -- Padlock on Detroit's Riverside Park boat launch closed by Matty Moroun for fake security reasons. Joel Thurtell photo.

Moroun closed the boat launch a few years ago for phony security reasons, placing padlocks on the gates along with a bogus “Homeland Security” warning sign. He also fenced off an area of the park near the ball field that once had basketball hoops and trees. His fake “Homeland Security” signs still hang from the chain-link fence a judge has ordered him to remove. Inside the fenced area where shade trees once stood, he stores materials for the second bridge he started to build without permits from either Canadian or U.S. authorities.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Me & Matty | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Bush-tail election

Posted on April 22, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Peppermint Patti

JOTR Columnist

The bush-tails took a vote, Sophie, and they want me out of the yard.

Isn’t that precious?

I’ve never been so flattered.

They held their congress all afternoon — didn’t you hear their chattering?

They came up with a long list of offenses.

I’ve never been so proud.

A vote of banishment.

That’s what they called it.

What a hoot!

Oh yes, my offenses.

Excessive barking.

They called it “incessant yipping.”

That is wrong, Sophie. I don’t do yipping.

Barking is my game, and if they don’t like it, I’ll do more of it.

Whatever the bush-tails don’t like is my cup of tea.

Their anathema is my nirvana.

I was surprised, though.

That it was barking they hate most.

What about my incessant chasing of them up maple trees?

Running them through the pines?

Doesn’t that annoy them?

Just a little?

They have their priorities all wrong.

Barking takes no effort on my part.

Barking, woofing, yipping, baying — it’s duck soup to a dog.

There’s no achievement in sheer noise.

But chasing, now, that takes practice. 

Chasing takes timing.

Chasing takes hard work — speed, endurance, agility.

It is a form of art, chasing.

It should be on the list of things about me they hate.

Yipping?

How pedestrian.

And the other thing about me that annoys them — tail wagging.

I beg their pardon.

This is getting personal.

What I have is NOT a tail.

It is a plume.

You’d almost think, Sophie, that they took their vote just to, well, you know, to needle me.

Talk about yipping — I barked long and hard when I heard they want me ousted.

You and what army? I said.

Banished, indeed.

I took a vote a long time ago.

I voted to wipe out the squirrels.

Vote was one to zero.

Get out! I said.

I barked it.

I bayed it.

I yipped it.

I’m not above yelping.

Whimpering, if need be.

Know what they said?

You and what army?

Posted in Peppermint Patti | Tagged | Leave a comment

New journalism award

Posted on April 20, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

I’m having a tough time restraining my star columnist, Luke Warm, from having the first word on something I want to write about.

Warm, the renowned Professor of Mendacity at the University of Munchausen, is so excited I can see him already pounding away on his keyboard. Finally, he’s found an example of journalistic prevarication, duplicity, deceit and hauteur worthy of his plaudits.

He’s ramping up his encomiums for a veritable laudfest of recognition for the news website known as Michigan Messenger. He’s ecstatic, all because of a Messenger article about the fight between the city of Detroit and billionaire Ambassador Bridge owner Manuel “Matty” Moroun over possession of a city-owned park that sits alongside the bridge in southwest Detroit.

Luke thinks this piece of journalistic sleight-of-hand is so praiseworthy that he rooted around an old landfill until he found a rusty crockery statue of a hawk whose head had been knocked off. He says it’s going to be his version of the Tony or Emmy awards, but this trophy — a headless news hawk — will be given to a news organization that publishes the most flagrant (Luke calls it the “bravest”) example of journalistic quackery he’s ever seen.

And he’s going to call his decapitated raptor the “Messy,” after the Michigan Messenger.

Well, he’d confer this honor if I let him.

But I won’t.

Not, at least, until I’ve had my say.

Past practice at JOTR calls for me to write my column first, and then Luke weighs in to rebut me.

No reason to deviate just because the good prof is all het up.

Here’s what Luke’s so excited about: The Messenger suddenly discovered the story of Detroit’s Riverside Park a year and a half after it was first reported.

On JOTR.

It’s a story the Messenger could have had on September 22, 2008 when I wrote the first of my blog posts about Matty and his fight with Detroit.

Well, the Messenger could have had my story, except for one thing.

In August of ’08, roughly a month before I wrote that story, the Messenger fired me. I’d been working as a month-by-month free lance columnist and they decided they could invest their stipend in a more productive or interesting way.

Then came Matty Moroun and his shotgun-totin’ goon.

Rather than allude to this blog, the Messy quotes a local person saying, “The bridge company literally had a guy drive around in a vehicle and he’d let you see his shotgun.”

Amazing, isn’t it? Wonder where the source learned that one.

SHOTGUN TOTIN' GOON -- Sept. 22, 2008 photo taken in Riverside Park by Joel Thurtell

 

The twists that some publications make to keep from mentioning the actual source, which would be the blogger they canned.

Pretty messy.

But maybe the Messies weren’t reading JOTR.

Here’s why Luke Warm wants to confer his “Messy”  on the Messenger.

They’re writing as if the story is new and they own it.

It’s an old journalistic gambit: Faking it in the slipstream of the news.

Pick up a 2008 story in 2010, more than a year after it broke. Write around a huge hole. So what if you missed the big story? Wait long enough, and maybe people will forget the facts. Let the big story slide for a while, then as the outline grows dim, feed off the flotsam and jetsam that float past you. Ignore central facts, set aside causal connections. Wait, wait, wait — and then run your story, and voila! You’re in the game, a credible reporter. You’re on the beat and nobody’s the wiser.

You hope.

Not particularly honest to readers, but hey, after all, this is only journalism, right?

It’s a gambit that puts them squarely in a league with the Detroit Free Press, a newspaper  that managed to ignore the year-long Riverside Park story that led to a judge ordering Matty to relinquish a section of public park he seized for room to build a new international bridge.

We’ll give them credit where it is due.

Okay, Luke — unveil your Messy.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Joel's J School, Me & Matty | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Fishing for class

Posted on April 18, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

This is nothing more than a peeve.

But it’s a peeve that has bugged me — literally — for years.

I write about it now because, well, it’s Sunday morning, the coffee is strong and hot, The New York Times was getting a bit heavy with news about fraud at Goldman Sachs, no US options against a nuclear Iran and Mexicans moving here to evade drug violence at home. I turned to the Times Magazine and read  Deborah Solomon’s Q & A with Jane Fonda. It’s all about Fonda the Fitness Queen and I’m wondering if there’ll be anything about Vietnam when one short sentence trips me into blog-mode.

Fonda has just told Solomon about her ranch in New Mexico. She adds: “I like to fly-fish.”

Now, I have nothing against fishing with flies, which is to say, little manufactured insect-like morsels of bait with hooks embedded.

I have nothing against fishing with worms, either.

Or minnows, or grubs, or leeches or a chunk of soap.

Anything that gets the fish to bite.

But when I tell you I like to fish, do I say, “I like to minnow-fish”?

Or maybe, “I like to worm-fish”?

Or “grub-fish” or even “soap-fish”?

I like to fish with Rapelas, the name of a manufacturer that markets chunks of balsa shaped and painted to look like little fish with hooks dangling below and behind.

Do I go “Rapela-fishing”?

When I was a kid, my favorite lure was the “River Runt,” made by Heddon.

Did I go around telling people, “I like to River Runt-fish”? I like to “Heddon-fish”?

I like to fish.

Period.

I like to fish, even if I catch nothing, zero, naught.

Recently, I heard a speech by an author who told the audience she likes to fish — with flies.

Why is it that people who lure fish with little tufts of hair feel compelled to advertise the kind of bait they use?

After I catch a fish, I might allude to my bait.

“Mepps Number Three,” maybe, or “minnow, hooked under the lip.”

I never have fished with leeches, but I plan to try it this summer.

In Ontario, where I do my fishing, US citizens are not allowed any more to catch minnows. Used to be, we would net minnows, the absolutely most effective bait for bass, pike or perch. Only Canadians can net minnows now, and if I want to fish with minnows, that is to say in fly-fisher speak, “minnow-fish,” I have to buy them from a Canadian. I’ve tried all sorts of substitutes, and haven’t caught much lately when I went out worm-fishing, Rapela-fishing, Daredevl-fishing or Mepps-fishing.

That Canadian law is more than a peeve. It is a true pain in the keister.

Maybe I should try fly-fishing.

Which brings me back to my subject: Why is it that people who fish with these little puffs of feather or whatever that they think resemble some insect or other in mutation must trumpet the fact to the world?

Why can’t they just say they go fishing, like the rest of us mortal fisherfolk?

Is there something better, higher, more spiritually uplifting about fly-fishing?

Are fly-fisher people morally superior and thus more enlightened than peons like me who use whatever bait catches fish?

I once stopped at a fly-fishing store — yes, there are such specialty boutiques — and realized that to join this fraternity I’d have to shell out lots of bucks.

Once upon a time I wrote a newspaper story about a guy who made bamboo fly rods and sold them for thousands. Thousands of dollars, not flies.

There is something definitely exclusive about this fly-fishing thing.

I certainly am more comfortable using my old spinning rod and reel and forking over some cash for worms or artificial lures or even minnows.

I can’t afford to belong to the fly-fishing club.

Maybe that’s what annoys me when a member of the sorority brazenly announces that she is more than a fisher person. They have to tell me they do it with flies.

A bit of one-upsmanship.

Next thing you know, they’ll say they don’t like to eat fish!

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Lakes and streams | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Faces of Matty

Posted on April 17, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

'BENEFIT' TO THE CITY -- One of an estimated 140 board-up houses purchased by Manuel "Matty' Moroun in the Sandwich community of Windsor, Ontario. Joel Thurtell photo.

 

What a friend we have in Matty.

A benefactor, really.

After reading the April 11, 2010 Detroit Free Press “I’m a benefit to the city” spread on billionaire trucking magnate Manuel “Matty” Moroun’s land dealings, readers might be forgiven for thinking we should all be grateful for a citizen like Matty who acquires and holds big and small buildings alike, keeping them in a uniform state of decrepitude and ugliness.

“I’m not a detriment,” says Matty. “We try to do the right thing.”

His claims would be more convincing if I could just forget that the man illegally seized part of 23rd Street — city property, a public thoroughfare — and on top of it built a gas station and duty-free store without permits or actual ownership of the property. This is the “right thing”?

OCCUPIED PARK -- In April 2010, Matty Moroun still has not removed his fence from public Riverside Park. Joel Thurtell photo.

 

Forget too that he illegally seized part of the city’s Riverside Park so he could possess if not own the footprint for his dream of a new international bridge alongside his substandard antique known as the Ambassador Bridge. The “right thing”?

Forget that he started building his new bridge without permits until the Coast Guard cried foul. Now we have a bridge to nowhere.

Forget that whenever a government agency or court tells him “no,” the Savior of Detroit stalls, procrastinates and prevaricates with endless lawsuits.

If Matty does it, it must be the “right thing”.

Matty’s doing all these favors for us, remember.

What a friend we have in Matty.

Someday, so a Moroun lieutenant says, the bridge mogul will be remembered for his vision and civic consciousness, though today he’s reviled by some journalists and public servants — miscreants who believe that a rich man who thinks he can steal his way to even bigger wealth is not the proper custodian of a portal that accounts for a quarter of the freight carried between the U.S. and Canada.

Miscreants like, well, like me.

SHOTGUN TOTIN' GOON -- Matty's security guard, who tried to arrest me in public Riverside Park on Sept. 22, 2008. Joel Thurtell.

 

Perhaps I can be forgiven for conjuring the memory of a different face of Matty Moroun.

The face of Matty I remember had a shaved head. He had tattoos on his arms. He had a shotgun in the front passenger seat beside where he sat in Matty’s hireling security company pickup. He had just driven over the lawn of Riverside Park to warn me I had to leave city property because I was a threat to Homeland Security. Or else. When I told him he had no authority over me, he tried to arrest me.

Matty, in the guise of this goon, was lying. I was on public property and had a right to be there. He didn’t want me taking pictures of his bridge? Tough — it’s public property and anyone can shoot photos there any time they want.

Matty had no right to kick me out. Nor did Matty have a right, through his shave-headed thug, to tote a shotgun in his pickup. Those “Homeland Security” signs on the chain-link fence (they’re still there!) are Matty’s fraud.

STILL SQUATTIN' -- Matty's 'Homeland Security' sign is a fraud. Though ordered by a judge to leave Riverside Park, Matty is fighting to stay so he can build a new bridge on public land. Photo taken April 2010 by Joel Thurtell.

 

The fence itself is on city property. Yes, present tense. Despite court orders that he get off the land, Matty is still there. He’s ripped off  a section of city park and yes, still using it to store construction materials. It’s a nice, private lunch spot for his workers.

Oh yes, what a pal we have in Matty.

Patrick Moran, a Moroun lawyer, predicted “in years to come, he’s going to be seen as a preservationist.”

Aha! So that’s what he’s up to. The guy who’s gunning for a preservationist legacy destroyed basketball courts and tore down shade trees in Riverside Park without permission, without compensating the city, all because apparently he believes that billionaires can do whatever they want.

This is the face of Matty the Squatter.

The shotgun totin’ goon is the face of Matty the Bully. You don’t see that face in the Detroit Free Press.

Isn’t it curious how Michigan’s great morning tradition could spend tons of time poring over land records, yet somehow miss Riverside Park?

MATTYVILLE -- Manuel Moroun's Ambassador Bridge towers over boarded-up houses in Windsor, April 2010. Joel Thurtell photo.

 

Curious, too, that there was no mention of Matty’s land acquisitions across the Detroit River in Canada. Drive through the Windsor suburb of Sandwich and you’ll see 140 or so boarded-up houses with signs warning of guard dogs inside. There are cynics who think Matty wants to create blight to devalue surrounding houses and so buy up cheap whole blocks of real estate. Now I understand: He’s not a blockbuster. He turns a once fine neighborhood of sturdy homes into acres of creeping crud, then keeps things that way.

Sure enough, he’s a “preservationist.”

He’s doing the “right thing.”

What a friend.

BRIDGE TO NOWHERE #1 -- This ramp, part of Matty Moroun's proposed new international bridge, ends abruptly. Joel Thurtell photo..

 

Another thing about Sandwich. Seems Matty started building a ramp from his proposed six-lane road leading to the “twin” bridge he lacks permits to build. Well, according to Sandwich resident Mary Ann Cuderman, Matty was missing a permit to complete the ramp. Now it sits incomplete, like a concrete cliff. Match that Canadian-side boondoggle to the unfinished (due to no permit) bridge on the U.S. side, and you have a new meaning for Matty’s concept of “twin.”

As in, twin bridges to nowhere.

There they sit, on both sides of the Detroit River, preserved for posterity.

Twin monuments to the legacy of a “preservationist”.

BRIDGE TO NOWHERE # 2 -- Matty Moroun had no permits in Detroit for his second bridge and had to stop construction. Joel Thurtell photo.

 

(Note to the Free Press: You get to Windsor by either of two ways — the Detroit-Windsor tunnel or the Ambassador Bridge. I prefer the tunnel, because it doesn’t put the eight buck round trip fare in Matty’s pocket. Either way, you can expense it. Oh yes, don’t forget your passport.)

It took more than a year and a half for the friendly Free Press to produce — what? A bunch of chest-thumping about a supposedly rare sit-down interview with the great Matty, who supplied a bunch of half-baked rationalizations for his civic misbehavior and gussied-up bromides about some imagined legacy.

Then, it turns out, the Big Interview was not so unique — according to Bill Shea of Crain’s Detroit Business,  Shea and two other reporters have had one-on-one talks with Matty, though without trumpeting the “coup” in a headline and multiple boasts.

Want to see the real face of Matty?

Stow the friendly Freep in the nearest trash bin.

WHERE'S 23RD STREET? -- Matty Moroun tore up city-owned 23rd Street and built a duty-free store and gas station on it. Joel Thurtell photo.

 

Drop in on the Lafayette Bait and Tackle shop — if you can find it.

This is the store the Free Press recently called a “shack.”

This is the business Matty all but destroyed when he stole 23rd Street and built his gas station and duty-free store on it.

Used to be, people who wanted to fish in the Detroit River could buy their minnows and worms by driving a short distance up 23rd Street to the tackle shop. Not now. You have to know exactly where to turn into the Ambassador Bridge property. You follow a meandering gravel path around the duty-free store and gas station and finally, if you’re lucky, you finish your odyssey at the bait store.

If you’re not lucky, you’ll wind up in Canada. That’s right! One wrong turn and you’d better have your passport.

Like Riverside Park, a judge has ordered Matty to get his buildings off the city street.

Like Riverside, 23rd Street is still the site of Matty’s businesses.

Screw the city. Screw judges. This is the face of the pirate billionaire. This is the face of a man who makes the law to suit his needs.

If you walked away from last Sunday’s propaganda parade thinking Matty’s a swell guy after all, please turn to the April 14, 2010 Metro Times and an article by Curt Guyette.

The Metro Times didn’t need a one-hour “rare” interview with the troll under the bridge to report a face of Matty that swung into view during a recent court session involving Matty’s penchant for seizing city land.

Echoing a sentiment expressed more than once on this blog, city attorney Eric Gaabo remarked that the government could stop being polite and abandon the court process, since it has the legal power to seize 23rd Street back from Matty.

According to the Metro Times, Matty’s lawyer, William Seikaly, had this to say about that:

It’s a good thing that didn’t happen, responded Seikaly, saying that if any city employees tried to tear down the fence they “would be met by armed guards. Probably somebody would be shot.”

Ain’t that sweet?

Probably somebody would be shot.

City workers trying to fence off city property would be attacked with firearms.

By Matty’s goons.

Which is to say, by Matty.

That doesn’t play well around me.

I was confronted by one of Matty’s goons on city property.

“Probably would be shot.”

Well, that goon had a shotgun.

When he tried to arrest me, I walked away.

When he tried to block my car with his pickup, I drove away.

Guess I’m lucky.

I’m lucky the goon didn’t shoot me.

That was the real face of Matty.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com


.

Posted in Joel's J School, Me & Matty | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Better part of valor

Posted on April 16, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Peppermint Patti

JOTR Columnist

Lest you get the idea I’m totally anti-two-legger, Sophie, let me hasten to assure you that I believe two-leggers can be talented and even brilliant.

Within their narrowly-defined areas of expertise, two-leggers certainly have their uses, from a dog’s point of view.

Food, water, walks and treats come to mind.

Just don’t push them beyond their limits.

Case in point: They are lousy at catching raccoons.

Oh, to be sure, there may be, here and there, a two-legger who’s developed the skills we need to off raccoons.

But certainly I’ve never met one. A two-legged raccoon-killer, that is.

My two-leggers are of the citified, gentrified variety.

But that didn’t stop my male two-legger from trying to nail a raccoon.

Now I ask you, why would a raccoon be climbing each and every one of our back yard pine trees, in broad daylight, no less?

This was a question that perplexed both of my two-leggers when they saw what the bandit was doing.

Who do you think drew their attention to this bold invasion of my back yard?

Of course, me. I barked and barked and didn’t hold back. Five minutes of frenetic yapping finally got their attention.

When they saw the masked marauder, their first thought was, Why is he going up that tree?

Moi, I don’t waste time on philosophy.

A ring-tail on my property leaves me one option: extreme prejudice.

As in termination with.

I can’t think of a single use for a living raccoon.

But I can think of a lot of ways to off one, followed by days and days of feasting and chewing.

If I were left to my own devices.

But no, our male two-legger spouted dire warnings about what would happen to me — MOI — if I tangled with a masked varmint.

I don’t know what he thinks — I’d go head to head with that nasty villain?

Come up from behind is what I’d do, grab his neck and give him a hard shake. 

Snap his spine and then the fun begins! Treats for all.

Raccoon tartare anyone?

But it was not to be.

What do you think my two-legger does?

Finds an old machete and starts banging on the tree.

What does the bandit do?

Starts coming down the tree, head-first, aiming at my two-legger.

And where am I when the crisis breaks?

Locked inside, watching the farce unfold through glass.

I barked so loud and long and jumped at the window so many times the female two-legger grabbed me and locked me in a bedroom!

The male two-legger came in then. I looked him over. No fang marks.

“Digression,” he said, “Is the better part of valor.”

Posted in Peppermint Patti | Tagged | Leave a comment

Tale of a ‘rainmaker’

Posted on April 12, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

Well, well. So Abe Munfakh, the “self-made man,” is running for state senate.

Seems just yesterday that his $10 million inside deal — the no-bid contract his engineering firm received from the Western Townships Utilities Authority while he was a member of the Plymouth Township board — got him run out of office.

Munfakh, an incumbent on the Plymouth Township board in 1992, placed last in a field of seven candidates.

The voters smelled the deal a crowd of cronies cooked up to enrich lawyers, engineers and public relations hucksters in the scandal that came to be known as Sewergate.

On a website, Munfakh’s profile describes the retired chief of the Ann Arbor engineering firm of Ayres, Lewis, Norris and May as a “rainmaker.”

Rainmaker, indeed.

Eighteen years ago, plus a couple months, the Detroit Free Press published my articles about the back-room dealing that created WTUA. It was an arrangement, now in the ground and operating, that called for piping sewage from Canton, Northville and Plymouth townships across watersheds to the Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority near the Huron River for processing, then pumping a like amount of fluid back to the Lower Rouge in Canton.

While the insider-trading stories brought down such politicians as Munfakh, Maurice Breen and Georgina Goss, they also looked like opportunity to a Livonia lawyer few had heard of. Sewergate opened a career in politics to a greenhorn candidate named Thaddeus McCotter, who won Breen’s seat on the Wayne County Board of Commissioners and now is a Republican congressman from Livonia.

Abe Munfakh waited a while, then got himself elected back on the Plymouth Township board.

Guess memories are short.

Here’s the story I wrote on election day, August 5, 1992, about the trouncing of the WTUA gang. It ran on August 6, 1992. Soon, I’ll post the main sewer story I wrote for the Free Press editions on Saturday, February 22, 1992. Published with permission of the Detroit Free Press.

Headline: ANGER OVER SEWER DEAL SWEEPS OUT INCUMBENTS
Sub-Head: 
Byline:  JOEL THURTELL FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
Pub-Date: 8/6/1992
Memo:  ; MICHIGAN PRIMARIES;  CAMPAIGN ’92
Text: “This is a clear message,” said Plymouth Township resident Mike Stankov.
“Business as usual will not be tolerated anymore. . . . “
Stankov was among the voters who contributed Tuesday to sweeping political changes in western Wayne County linked to fallout from a $94.5-million sewer project.
The Free Press detailed the project on Feb. 22, including how millions of dollars in contracts were  awarded without bids to people or firms connected to WTUA — the Western Townships Utilities Authority.
One local newspaper subsequently dubbed it “sewergate,” and the area saw a bumper crop of  candidates run for local offices, using the sewer project as an issue against incumbents.
In Tuesday’s primary:
* Veteran local politician Maurice Breen, a former Plymouth Township supervisor  who was a founder of WTUA, lost in the Republican primary for the Wayne County Commission to Thaddeus McCotter, a Livonia lawyer. McCotter said the Free Press report prompted him to run.
“The discontent  was  obvious. Now, the hardest part is to . . . channel it into constructive change.”
* State Rep. Georgina Goss, R-Plymouth, a former WTUA board member, was defeated by Plymouth City Commissioner Jerry Vorva. With no Democrat running, Vorva’s primary victory assures him a seat in Lansing.
* Northville Township Supervisor Betty Lennox, a WTUA member by virtue of her elective office, was defeated by Karen Baja, chairwoman of the township’s board of zoning appeals. No Democrat ran there, either.
* Plymouth Township Trustee Abe Munfakh, whose engineering firm received $10 million for sewer design  work without submitting bids, finished last in a field of seven candidates.
Also in Plymouth Township, Supervisor Gerald Law did not file to run.
Posted in From My Files, Politics | 4 Comments

Advice to pope: Get thee to a monastery!

Posted on April 10, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

King Louis XIV of France is supposed to have said, “Apres moi, le deluge.”

I wonder if the pope thinks that because he is anointed to serve as the Vicar of Christ for life, no earthly force can disrupt his reign.

Louis XIV’s descendant, the sixteenth of that name, learned from the blade of a guillotine that his grandfather’s postponed deluge could interrupt a monarch’s reign in a very terminal way.

Pope Benedict need not worry about guillotines, but nonetheless, he is thinking too much like a monarch of old. His Holiness needs to reflect on the history of sovereigns who thought they were beyond the reach of law.

The Vatican unveiled a grandiose gesture on April 9, 2010: Pope Benedict VI graciously consented to meet with victims of priestly predators.

The pope’s offer was immediately swept aside by a new wave of bad publicity as yet another story of priestly abuses broke with the kicker that once again the pope had protected a criminal. Not from Ireland, this time, nor from Germany, nor France, Spain or Wisconsin. This time the report came from California of a 38-year-old priest convicted of molesting kids who was protected by then Cardinal Ratzinger, the future pope. The pope thought the clerical criminal too young to defrock. The church needed its priests. He let the man stay on as a man of the cloth.

Or maybe I should say, a man of the uncloth.

My advice to the pope: Get out.

Resign.

Do it now, before things get worse, for both you, the Holy See and the Roman Catholic church.

You perpetrated a coverup, Your Holiness. You put the good of the church above the safety of human beings. You protected criminals as a matter of convenience and, yes, money. Keeping the lid on the criminal element in your own ranks would save the church paying out money damages to victims.

Or so you thought.

This mess is only going to get worse.

The parade of perpetrators connected to the pope will not end until the pope retires to some secluded monastery from which he can from time to time emerge to testify in trials of priests he tried to protect and, perhaps…

Maybe one of these days, a prosecutor in some place where kids were abused is going to discover that his or her jurisdiction has a law that calls for the indictment of people who remain silent or worse, actively try to cover up crime, despite their knowledge of sexual predation. I think the term is “obstruction of justice.”

A move to extradite the pope could come from any country, state, county shire, kreis or circumscription where such a protective law exists.

I know what the Vatican claims: The pope is exempt from prosecution because he has diplomatic immunity as the head of a sovereign state, which the Vatican claims to be.

That is a legal claim. Like all legal claims, it is subject to being tested.

It is a hurdle that a prosecutor would have to overcome.

It is true that the church has a powerful voice and might marshal overt and covert efforts to dissuade a prosecutor. But would it want to battle in open court to defend is sovereignty, when all the world would be watching it trying to save its own butt while kicking the victims?

It is hard to imagine such an indictment originating in the U.S., where the church is politically strong. Despite a theoretical separation between church and state, religious institutions — being tax free and able to raise huge amounts of money and legally able to deploy the cash for or against political figures or institutions — might seem invincible.

But the U.S. is not the only possible source of a prosecutorial move against the pope.

What if it came from a country where Christianity — not just Catholicism, but the entire Christian flock — were a tiny minority and without effective political power?

More than a few countries fit that description, from Asia to Africa.

It is not entirely impossible that such an indictment might originate in the West, even the U.S.

It could come from anywhere.

My advice to the Vatican: Search for a prelate untainted by any connection with priestly sexual abuse and, no matter how lowly his clerical rank, appoint him pope.

After Benedict retires.

Soon.

As in now.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in People, Politics | Leave a comment