The future of Riverside Park

Posted on March 22, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

Ever been to Riverside Park in Detroit?

It’s a pleasant place for a walk, or just to sit.

A short distance across the Detroit River lies the Windsor skyline.

Nearer than Canada are the freighters, tugs, speedboats, tour boats, barges and other watercraft that ply the river.

Like to fish or just sight see from the water?

The park has a fine public boat launch.

Sorry to say, the boat launch is closed.

Henchmen for Matty Moroun deny that the billionaire who owns the Ambassador Bridge next door to Riverside Park closed the boat launch. Since his minions posted a phony “Homeland Security” sign on the boat ramp fence and placed bridge company padlocks on the gate, that claim is a bit hard to swallow.

And although I keep hearing a persistent rumor that the mayor is talking to Matty about a park sale, the mayor’s office has denied it, after first sending me an apparently erroneous e-mail confirming that a deal was underway.

Meanwhile, I’m waiting to see what the mayor’s spokespeople have to say to my question whether the city might swap — not sell, but trade — the park to Matty for some other property.

Right now, though, I have to believe the park is NOT in play.

Which means the city still regards it as a place for rest and recreation.

Now, I have my biases, and one of them is that I LIKE BOATS.

I’ve never seen Riverside Parks’ boat launch, because it is locked. I’ve looked at aerial photos of the launch on Google Earth. What I see is a very fine launching area complete with docks for tying boats.

It’s a great boat launch, except for the fact that it’s been closed for years.

And that is the purpose of this essay: To explore the possibility that the boat launch might again serve the public interest rather than the private purposes of Manuel Moroun, one of the richest albeit most selfish men on the planet.

While the padlocks are Matty’s, for sure, we’ve also heard that the city is too poor to re-open and maintain the boat launch. It’s a bit hard to believe, since the state of Michigan operates dozens of public boat ramps, charging a nominal fee for each boat that goes in and out of the water.

But if poverty is the problem, there are other solutions.

Why not have the state operate Riverside Park’s boat launch? Or Wayne County?

That kind of arrangement is not unheard of. While the state owns the Fort Street drawbridge over the Rouge River, Wayne County has a contract to operate the span. Why not have Wayne County or the state contract with Detroit to operate Riverside Park?

Or maybe the Huron-Clinton Metroparks could lease or purchase the park and operate the boat launch. There might be other park functions, such as a food concession and additional recreational activities that could generate revenue — and public interest.

If the city can’t manage to do it, let another public agency with a PURELY PARK AGENDA give it a try.

The best option, though, would be to have the City of Detroit keep this jewel of a park and develop it as a park, with an operational boat launch.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Me & Matty | 1 Comment

Maunderings of a media mogul

Posted on March 20, 2010 by hro50ta1

A play in one act

By Joel Thurtell

The hero of our new unillustrated, eponymous comic strip is the head of a once huge media company hard-hit by an economic recession. He is struggling with the same moral issues that beset moguls in the banking industry and throughout American businesses: How to save their firms from extinction while also retaining their porcine salaries and bloated bonuses while also hanging onto some semblance of credibility, some shred of at least a PERCEPTION of integrity.

It is a hard act for a 21st-century czar of industry to maintain in the best of circumstances.

Join us now, as we peep over the transom of a magnificent office suite in a small town on the East Coast of America. Perhaps the reader will sympathize with this titan of industry as he agonizes over the sordid details of managing a media empire.

In this scene, our hero has been confronted with a request from a rival media company to appear on a television show called “Undercover Boss.”

It is a moral question and seen as such by this ever-sensitive media magnate. Join us as we observe how one individual American, though highly-placed in terms of power, influence and money, nonetheless struggles as would a fellow creature of lower standing as he tries to decide what would be  an appropriate stance in this ethically-charged situation.

CEO: sits alone in office with huge windows overlooking marvelous view of Southern United States landscape. He sits in soft, leather-covered chair behind giant mahogany desk. The captain of industry reflects on the stresses he must face as he tries valiantly to cope with an economy that is draining money out of his company in ways that were not imagined when he pretended to be listening in his business school lectures. To himself he says:

Oh for the good old days! Oh for the salad days when I was not CEO of the largest newspaper chain in America with concomitant responsibilities unimagined by common mortals! What would I give for just a day driving a truck in some tiny backwater cog of this mighty machine of which I am the driver.

Enter DOOGAN, CEO’S chief lieutenant and adviser. Doogan sees that his boss is lost in revery, which often occurs in these troubled times.  Clears throat. Boss, excuse me, Chief, but I have something here that might be of interest —

CEO: Oh my word, Doogan, what could interest me at a time like this? I am so distraught over the plight of our firm and the measures we have been forced to take to keep our ship sailing against the wind, so to speak.

DOOGAN: I have something to cheer you up, Boss. It’s TV. They want you to star on a show.

CEO: Me? They want little ol’ me on a TV show? How could my life possibly be of interest to TV?

DOOGAN: Well, Chief, you ARE the head of a mighty media conglomerate with tentacles reaching all over the world.

CEO: That was true last year, when we had bureaus in hot spots around the world. I had to cut off my tentacles to save money. We get our international news from other mighty media conglomerates now. Or, heh-heh, we make it up!

DOOGAN: I’ve always said we’re better off making up overseas news. When every nickel-and-dime news outlet had bureaus in those places, you kind of had to toe the mark where truth was concerned. But now, with nobody out there, the sky’s the limit! We can dictate the truth!

CEO: Come to the point, Doogan. You know I’m a busy titan of consequence. I need to get back to reflecting on my role in this Greater Society and how we magnates of munificence fit into it.

DOOGAN: Well, Chief, TV wants you to star on an episode of “Undercover Boss.” They want you to take off your three-piece black power suit and dress as an ordinary worker in your vast newspaper empire. You will be a newspaper carrier early in the morning. You will deliver newspapers to the tubes of our customers —

CEO: Correction, Doogan. Toss them on their driveways or into their hedges. Remember? I cut out those plastic newspaper tubes last year. Too expensive! Also, no more plastic baggies to keep the rain off the papers. That’s more money in our pocket!

DOOGAN: Duly noted, Boss. Do you want to fire anyone?

CEO: Fire someone?

DOOGAN: Usually when you take a draconian measure like axing plastic wrappers, you find a way to fire a few hundred workers, at least.

CEO: Oh yes, good point, Doogan. There’s a logical policy reason for canning hundreds of workers at least. Maybe we save a bundle of money not wrapping papers in plastic against rain and snow. So what? That is not a headline. It is not a grabber. It gets no attention. If I am going to cut costs, then I want some attention. The best way of grabbing headlines in this society is to fire people. You take away the livelihoods of hundreds or thousands of people, it sends a loud signal: This company is in trouble, but management is in control. It also tells the unions, in those few places where we still have unions, that we mean business. If we cut a hundred people today, we could cut a thousand tomorrow. Yes, Doogan, firing people gets their attention.

 CEO: Right, Sir. That is very good business philosophy. But we will need to cloak it for TV. The idea of “Undercover Boss” is that you are at heart a sympathetic person, someone who would improve the lot of his employees if he only knew how they were suffering.

CEO: They want me to dissemble? Pose as something I am not? Not a problem. I do that every time I bargain with the unions, in those few places were we have not completely rid ourselves of unions, driven stakes through their hearts, utterly wrecked them. Carthage delicto est!

DOOGAN: Cartage is pretty much out, Boss. We got rid of our truck drivers a couple years ago.  

CEO: Carthage must be destroyed, you ding-dong! It’s from literature.

DOOGAN: It might not be wise to mention literature, Chief. We canned our book review editors last year.

CEO: So TV wants me to dress in rags and wander around pretending to be one of my peons?

DOOGAN: Right. For instance, they want you to pose as a photographer at one of your numerous newspapers.

CEO: You must be kidding! Photographers are scum, Doogan! They hang outside rich people’s houses trying to take compromising pictures of them. I’m a rich guy — that could happen to me! I know it’s what sells papers, but damned if I’ll dirty my hands. Besides, every photo staff is short workers now because we fired so many people. Those people don’t get lunch breaks. How could I pretend to be a photographer and still work in my three-hour lunch and a slew of martinis? Besides, that means I’d have to know how to take pictures. I’m a CEO, Doogan. That means I don’t have to know how to do anything. Take pictures? Out of the question! 

  DOOGAN: So, okay no photography. Maybe you could try being a reporter.

CEO: I told you, Doogan — I don’t DO things. I’m the boss. Reporters and photographers come under fire, don’t they? They could get shot by some barricaded gunman. I love barricaded gunman stories! Somebody always gets hurt or killed or at least put in jail. Sells papers. But damned if I’ll take that risk. I’m the brains of the outfit, the general who stands on the hill far away and directs the battle.

DOOGAN: Okay, okay, you can work inside. A desk job.

CEO: That’s better. A desk job? That’s what I do best. I don’t have to fake doing nothing. Now, what else will I have to pretend? That I don’t have health insurance? We’ve pretty well screwed up health insurance for a lot of our workers over the years. I’ve got a gold-plated deal. I don’t have to give that up, do I?

DOOGAN: Not at all, Sir. Remember, this is TV. Nothing about it is real. Nothing about it is honest, fair or just. It’s mere entertainment, bread and circuses for the masses.

CEO: I just want to be sure. I can’t imagine trying to live on the paltry salaries we pay our workers.

DOOGAN: TV’s idea is to elicit sympathy for the poor workers.

CEO: That’s a bridge too far, Doogan! Those people got what they deserved. If they were born to be magnates, titans, captains of industry, that’s what they’d be doing. But no, they were born to be lowly plebians, moilers and grubbers after meager livings. God’s will, Doogan! God’s will be done.

DOOGAN: Well said, Your Highness.

CEO: If I go on this show, I won’t have to take a pay cut, will I?

DOOGAN: Of course not, Sir. Like I said, it’s TV. It’s sleight of hand, illusion, in a word, media bullshit.

CEO: Just what we dish out! But wait a minute — do I have to PRETEND to be sympathetic to our minions if I find their plights to be somewhat, say, uncomfortatble or even untenable?

DOOGAN: May I repeat, Sir: You may indeed be required to dissemble.

CEO: Okay, that’s the name of the game: Big business. Lies and moral turpitude are the mortar that pastes this house together. Hey, Doogan — I have an idea. As long as this is just ACTING, a big put-on, how about I dress up as a king who goes around incognito bucking up the troops before the big battle?Yes, I would make a great king! But one thing I will not do.

DOOGAN: What’s that, Your Excellency?

CEO: I will NOT pretend to be one of those workers we fired.

DOOGAN: Why not?

CEO: You ask “why not”? Figure it out, Doogan: We fired six thousand people last year. Six thousand! I can’t pretend to live the lives of six thousand miserable, downtrodden, salary-less employees. That would tax even my ability to fake and deceive.

DOOGAN: There is one little unpleasantness, Sir. The matter of your compensation. I’m afraid TV, rabblerousers that they are, may disclose what you made last year while you were firing six thousand workers and ordering thousands more to take unpaid leaves.

CEO: What “unpleasantness” is that, Doogan?

DOOGAN: The little matter of the four-point-seven million dollars you made last year, including that one-point-five million dollar bonus. That might just play a sour note.

CEO: “Sour note”? Are you kidding? That four-point-seven million smackers is hardly “unpleasant” to me, Doogan! And I deserved every nickel of that one-point-five million dollar bonus. I fired six thousand people, Doogan! Firing six thousand people is damned hard work!


Posted in future of newspapers, Joel's J School | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Questions for Mayor Bing

Posted on March 19, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

So hizzoner isn’t going to SELL Detroit’s Riverside Park to Matty.

Maybe Matty doesn’t need to BUY the park to become its owner.

If I recall correctly, Matty didn’t BUY the Michigan Central building. He acquired it as part of a debt payoff.

You don’t have to PURCHASE a thing to become its owner.

There is such a thing as BARTER.

I was thinking about horsetrading for several hours on Friday,  March 19, 2010, while I thoroughly believed that Mayor Bing was working on a sale of Riverside Park to Manuel “Matty” Moroun, who needs the land to complete the new bridge he wants to build beside his Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor.

I believed there was a deal afoot because I asked, yes or no, whether it was happening and Karen Dumas, a mayoral spokeswoman, e-mailed me a note saying. “Joel, There are discussions to sell Riverside Park to Mr. Mororun” (sic).

Later, she e-mailed a correction saying she made a typographical error and meant to say that “there are no discussions” regarding a sale of the park.

But shortly after I got the first missive setting off alarms that the park could be sold, I sent this e-mail to Dumas:

Karen — A few more questions:

 1. How long have discussions been going on?

 2. Would this be an outright purchase, land swap, or some combination of the two? Some other structure?

 3. Price?

 4. What about restrictions due to grant of the original land and federal and state grants?

 5. How soon could a sale be final?

 6. Is the park land sale being offered to other potential customers, say in a request-for-proposal? Is it possible the state or some other government or entity, such as Huron-Clinton Metroparks, might want a crack at it?

Thanks.

 Joel Thurtell

If the park isn’t in play, then these questions are unnecessary. But if any kind of land swap is being discussed — not a sale, exactly, but a sort of horsetrade — then my questions would be appropriate, after all.

Right now, I don’t know what to think, but I want my questions to be part of the record.

Just in case.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com


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

Riverside Park: No sale, after all?

Posted on March 19, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

Mayor Bing is not — repeat NOT — working on a deal to sell Detroit’s Riverside Park to Matty.

So I’m told after hearing the precise opposite from Mayor David Bing’s office earlier today.

The mayoral spokeswoman who e-mailed an answer to me seemed at first to confirm a rumor that the park could be sold.

Later, she wrote to say she was in a  hurry and left out a word in her response to my question.

On March 18 at 7:09 p.m., I e-mailed her counterpart, Rose Love, asking:

Hello, Rose — Not sure if you are the person to field this question,

but I’ll start with you.

 I’m hearing that Mayor Bing is talking to Matty Moroun about the city selling Matty part or all of Riverside Park so he can build his “twin” to the Ambassador Bridge.

 True?

 Thanks.

 Joel Thurtell

At 11:47 a.m., Karen Dumas of Mayor Bing’s office e-mailed a response. She seemed to be telling me that the answer is yes: Riverside Park IS INDEED for sale.

“There are discussions to sell Riverside Park to Mr. Mororun (sic),” Dumas wrote.

But in a second e-mail at 4:32 p.m. on March 19 with the subject line, “CORRECTION,” Dumas wrote:

My sincere apologies for the typo. There are NOT discussion (sic) to sell Riverside Park, to anyone.

Karen Dumas

Group Executive/Communications

Office of Mayor Dave Bing

In another e-mail at 4:51 p.m., Dumas wrote:

Joel,

Typing way too fast. We are NOT in discussions to sell the park, and are also currently still in litigation. My apologies for the typo/omission.  Previously sent you an email clarifying this issue. Thanks.

Karen Dumas

That typographical error really had me worked up.

Now I feel great relief.

I’d been worried that Matty might find a weak spot in the city’s resolve to fend off his illegal occupation and his attempt to build a second bridge without permits and without owning the property it would be built on.

While the answer came as kind of a stutter and had me upset for a while, in the end, I heard the answer I wanted to hear.

But now I’m thinking: I asked one question today and I got two diametrically opposite answers.

I WANT to believe the mayor would not sell Riverside Park.

I HOPE the second answer is the truth.

But now, sorry to say, there’s this little seed of doubt that’s starting to sprout.

So I’ll put it to my readers: I’ve copied the correspondence into my blog columns. You know what I know. What do you think?

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Me & Matty | 1 Comment

City may sell Riverside to Matty

Posted on March 19, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

Riverside Park is in play.

It could be sold to Matty.

Mayor Bing is talking about selling the park to the owner of the Ambassador Bridge next door to the park.

In my last post, I noted how I’d posed the question to Mayor Bing.

I asked if it was true that the mayor is talking to Matty about a sale of Rivrside Park.

My answer came by e-mail today:

Joel,

There are discussions to sell Riverside Park to Mr. Mororun.

Karen Dumas

Group Executive/Communications

Office of Mayor Dave Bing

City of Detroit

Manuel “Matty” Moroun needs the park land because without it, he wouldn’t be able to build a new bridge beside the old Ambassador.

Last week, the U.S. Coast Guard sent his application for a permit to build a new bridge back to Matty, saying he lacked the means to build a bridge when he didn’t own the land on which it would be situated.

I’ve heard that it would be next to impossible for the city to part with the land, due to state and federal grant money spent on it and resulting restrictions on a sale.

But it appears the park could be sold.

So Matty may get his new bridge, after all.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Me & Matty | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Rumor mill again: Riverside Park for sale??

Posted on March 19, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

Last year, I was hearing a rumor that the city was talking to Manuel “Matty” Moroun about selling the Grosse Pointe trucking tycoon part or all of Riverside Park so he could complete his cherished “twin,” a new international bridge between the U.S. and Canada to be stand alongside his privately-owned Ambassador Bridge.

I sent queries to the office of then-Mayor Ken Cockrel.

Yes or no was all I wanted.

I got nothing back.

Now I’m hearing that rumor again. This time, it’s Mayor Bing or his minions who supposedly are chatting with Matty about selling a public park that Matty has treated as his own.

True or false?

I’ll publish the answer.

If I get one.

On March 18, 2010, I sent my question to the city:

From: joelontheroad.com

To: Rose Love, City of Detroit PR

Hello, Rose — Not sure if you are the person to field this question, but I’ll start with you.

I’m hearing that Mayor Bing is talking to Matty Moroun about the city selling Matty part or all of Riverside Park so he can build his “twin” to the Ambassador Bridge.

 True?

 Thanks.

 Joel Thurtell

joelontheroad.com

Today, March 19, 2010, I got this answer from Rose:

Hi, I’m referring your question to the Mayor’s communications team.

Rose M. Love

Supervising Publicist

Communications & Creative Services Division

Coleman A. Young Municipal Center

2 Woodward Avenue – Suite 526

Detroit, MI  48226

A simple “yes” we are dealing with Matty or “no” we are not — that’s all I ask.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in Me & Matty | 1 Comment

Those Gannett sweeties

Posted on March 18, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

They’ve done it again.

Honchos at America’s Number One Newspaper Chain surpassed themselves.

I’m talking greed, of course.

Who else does it as well as Gannett?

Can you believe Gannett CEO Craig Dubow banked $4.7 million last year — including a $1.5 million BONUS — while laying off 6,000 Gannett workers nationwide?

Talk about gaping.

You know what I mean: Nether holes of humongous proportions.

And then, there were the furloughs.

Free Press friends are taking payless vacations while Dubow is rolling in his million and a half-smacker bonus.

Dubow was not the only hog at the trough.

According to the Gannett Blog, “Gracia Martore, promoted last month to president and chief operating officer, got $4 million as chief financial officer — more than doubling her $1.4 million in 2008. Her 2009 bonus: $950,000, …”

Union leaders were gulled last fall when Detroit muckamucks supposedly showed them the books and persuaded them the papers were going broke.

Wonder how Teamsters and Guild and printers union members feel now that Gannett has owned up to not being quite so penniless as they claimed.

When will people learn? NEVER, NEVER, NEVER believe a Gannetoid.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

Posted in future of newspapers, Joel's J School | Leave a comment

Offing and all that

Posted on March 17, 2010 by hro50ta1

Patti by Pat Beck 2008By Peppermint Patti

JOTR Columnist

Can’t live with em, can’t live without em.

Right, Sophie?

One way or another, we’re stuck with our two-leggers.

For better or for worse.

But dog, there are two-leggers and then there are two-leggers.

Know what I mean?

Take my female tw0-legger, just as a for instance.

Without her, I’d still be in the Holiday Inn for mongrels where they had me registered as a “stray.”

It was my female two-legger who picked me out.

She saw something in me.

Well, no point being modest here, since it’s between us two and the chain-link, but of COURSE she saw my potential.

Smart cookie, that two-legger. Knew breeding when she saw it. Didn’t need kennel papers to know.

That’s a step up from my first owners, who paid the big price for me at the pet store and then got bent out of shape when I mangled their wastebasket. Well, I was after the bone from the beef roast, you know the kind, absolutely delectable, especially when they’re three days old. Such a smell! Impossible to resist.

Oh, Sophie, they said some awful, unretractable things then. Things about my personality as being “incorrable” and “untrainworthy” and not getting a brain till I’m two and how it was high time to “off” me.

Advice to two-legged dog owners: Don’t mention “offing” — you know, termination with extreme malice aforethought — in front of a dog and then stupidly leave the yard gate open.

Auf wiederbite, mes amis.

What, Sophie?

Don’t mix my lingos?

Hey, dog, I’ll masticate whatever words I like.

Hold on!

Tarnation, Sophie, there’s a flagtail on a low branch mocking both of us. Pay no attention, he’s out of reach.

Dog, but I’d like a bite out of his butt.

Hold on, I’m gonna race over there and yap him into the topyards.

Hoo-eee! Did ya see that, Sophie? Sent him hiking to the topgallants, I did!

Now, where was I?

Oh, yeah, two-leggers.

Can’t very well live without them. They pay the vet bills.

But it can sure be hard living with them.

Know what I mean?

Posted in Peppermint Patti | Tagged | Leave a comment

Leave the renmimbi alone!

Posted on March 15, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

If you’d asked me a couple months ago to name the unit of Chinese currency, I’d have drawn a blank.

It was all a big yuan.

As near as I can tell, “renmimbi” and “yuan”can be used interchangeably.

Nowadays, it’s hard not to know what the “renmimbi” is. 

Everybody is writing about the renmimbi.

Correction — everyone is ganging up on the renmimbi.

The New York Times alone today, March 15, 2010, ran two news stories — one on Page One, one inside the A section, AND a Paul Krugman column, all excoriating China for keeping the value of the renmimbi artificially low. The Wall Street Journal also weighed in, suggesting that inflation in China might force the Chinese to recast upward the value of its currency.

Nobody outside China seems to think the renmimbi ought to stay where it is.

Except me.

I think there may be others in the U.S. and other parts of the world who see an advantage to China’s present currency policy, but we aren’t being quoted in the business stories. We aren’t the policy wonks on every reporter’s short list of talking heads.

Everybody seems to believe that the cheap Chinese money is stealing business and jobs from countries like the U.S. But the way I see it, Chinese currency policy is actually CREATING business opportunities — and jobs — outside China.

I hadn’t thought much about this until recently. But through my fledgling publishing company, Hardalee Press, I’ve learned how China’s cheap currency can help me save a project that was dead in the water and, by the way, provide work for Americans.

I’m sure Krugman, the Times’ Nobel laureate economics columnist, could tear my argument to shreds with all sorts of data about balance of trade and unfair currency pricing.

I’m not a Nobel prize-winner. I’m just a guy trying to make a buck selling books.

I have a little book I want to bring out in hardcover with a dust jacket. I priced the printing cost in the U.S. and production of this book would cost me about $17 per unit. This is a book I planned to price somewhere between $13 and $16 per copy.

With a $1-to-$4 deficit, the book looks dead.

That is just the beginning of the bad news. The cost of printing is not the only expense involved in publishing a book. There are many other costs, but the principal drains on cash are in the areas of editing, design and typesetting. But as you can see, the printing charge alone doomed the project. I’d be paying at least a buck per book more than the retail price of the book. But that is not the end, because I wouldn’t be charging retail for the book. Typically, distributors want 50-65 percent of the retail price. Let’s say I set the retail price at $15 per book and I allow distributors and bookstores to split 65 percent of that figure. I’d be giving up $9.75 per book. I’d get to keep $5.25 per book, from which I’d have to pay $17 per book to the printer without consideration to other costs.

Talk about deficit spending!

If I paid the printer $17 per book, I’d be losing $11.75 each before I got around to paying editors, designer, typesetter, proofreader and incidental expenses involved in writing and publishing a book. You know, postage, packing materials, paper for printing drafts, printer ink and a host of costs that run the expenses up.

The project was dead. No way could I afford to subsidize the sale of my book.

Enter China.

The first bid from a Chinese printer was 68 cents a copy.

Think about that: Sixty-eight cents a copy is 1/25th what the U.S. printer wanted.

The high Chinese bid was $3 per book.

Suddenly, the project went from an impossible dream to something I could accomplish with some hope of, at least, breaking even.

If I ordered these books from China, I could afford to pay editors, designers, artists and the various expenses involved with producing a book. In other words, income from the project would go to U.S. vendors. Professionals who would otherwise not see a dime from this project would be paid. I might even make a profit after all the bills were paid, which would mean that I too would have created a job for myself.

All thanks to the cheap Chinese currency.

While Hardalee Press is still thinking about the Chinese option, other U.S. publishers — including some academic presses — are having their books printed in China. I imagine they’ve done the arithmetic and realized that printing in China can revive otherwise dead publishing projects and create livelihoods for Americans.

It’s hard for me to see a problem with the renmimbi.

I say leave it alone.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

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At last, peace and quiet for JC

Posted on March 13, 2010 by hro50ta1

By Joel Thurtell

No question why Monica Conyers flunked the Michigan bar exam four times.

The wife of U.S. Rep. John Conyers, Democrat of Detroit, misbehaved so badly March 10, 2010 in U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn’s courtroom that you’d think she’d never spent a minute in a law school class.

For anyone who’s looked even briefly at the Conyers menage, Monica’s last-minute attempt at withdrawing her plea of guilty to corruption charges together with her thuggish comments to the judge came as no surprise.

How did she manage to sit for the bar exam four times and fail it each time?

Stupid.

Here’s a better question: How’d she manage to earn a Juris Doctor degree from the University of District of Columbia School of Law?

But Monica’s lamebrained behavior is not the real story.

Monica is a red herring.

Sure, as an elected Detroit city councilwoman, she treated the municipal trust as a cash flow pump, acting like bribes were her own private entitlement.

But bribe-taking is only one form of corruption.

It would be good to reflect on her role model.

I mean the good congressman, her husband, John Conyers.

How did it happen that hubby got off scot-free, while Monica’s going to occupy a federal prison cell for three years and a month?

I wouldn’t be surprised if JC were privately high-fiving her sentence, his only regret being it wasn’t the full five years the judge could have handed his felon helpmeet.

Assigning congressional attorneys to tutor Monica in her law classes, as JC did, is a breach of House ethics and potentially criminal.

John Conyers did this under his authority as congressman and as either ranking minority member or now chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee.

Monica got her free legal lessons courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer, because they occurred on government time.

Sydney Rooks, a lawyer and former member of U.S. Representative Conyers’ staff, told me she was ordered by the congressman to tutor the Mon in hubby’s Detroit congressional office, on government time.

Congressional aides campaigned on government time for Monica and other Democratic candidates. They used government office equipment for campaign work, in violation of congressional ethics rules and federal law.

Why, once I telephoned a Conyers staffer who was supposed to be organizing a forum in Dearborn on health care reform. Where did I reach the staffer? In the Chicago campaign office of a Democratic presidential candate. I confirmed that he received federal pay for his campaign work.

We exposed these Conyers abuses in a set of Detroit Free Press articles on November 21, 2003. Later, we exposed the fact that Conyers was routinely assigning his congressional staffers — on government-paid time — to babysit his kids and chauffeur them to and from school.

The Washington Post devoted a brief to the Conyers abuse story.

The newspaper of record, by which I mean The New York Times, breathed not a word about it.

The House Ethics panel took it up and after some months put it down.

The Justice Department was made aware of the story months before I wrote about it.

Zilch.

Another Detroit congressman, Charles Diggs, went to prison for assigning staffers to work in his family funeral home while receiving federal pay. Among other things, federal prosecutors said what he did was fraud.

No doubt about it, Monica is a crook and deserves every minute of prison time she gets.

But her role model, her mentor, her husband the congressman, what does he get?

No loudmouth, pistol-brandishing Monica to spoil his naps.

Peace and quiet for 37 months.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com

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