Detroit City Hall Insider

Category: Mayor Dave Bing

Bing: Detroit faces 'A Perfect Storm,' which was a pretty good movie

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing may be changing his mind about moving into the Manoogian Mansion, but the City Hall Insider hopes he isn't vacillating on his vow to do nothing to attract glaciers to Motown.

The promise came during a sitdown the mayor had with comedian Megan Grano, a Grosse Pointe native whose schtick owes more than a little to former Daily Show correspondent Beth Littleford. Bing seems perplexed during much of the clip, but was a good sport, acknowledging that while Detroit faces "a perfect storm," the movie of the same name was pretty good . And hey, the ho-hos at FunnyorDie.com deemed it 80 percent funny. Jerroll Sanders would kill for those numbers.

Check it out.

Category: Mayor Dave Bing

Tom Barrow, Charlie Beckham and the wrongfully accused

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From the files of Only in Detroit: Mayoral challenger Tom Barrow, who served 18 months in the 1990s for felony tax evasion, is mighty miffed that a fellow felon, Charlie Beckham, is now Mayor Dave Bing's right-hand man.

Barrow has beaten the Fire Beckham drum so much that it's almost surpassed Vote for Me! I'm a Lifelong Detroiter and Bing Just Moved Here from Franklin as his unofficial campaign slogan. It's a double-edged strategy. On one hand, it reminds voters that Beckham served two years on claims he used his post at City Hall to accept bribes for a sludge contract eerily similar to an ongoing City Hall scandal involving a sludge contract. On the other hand, it could remind voters that, "Say, didn't this Barrow fellow have trouble with the law himself?"

But Barrow's volley against Beckham could be gaining momentum, just as his campaign is gaining steam after eking past Jerroll Sanders in the August primary to advance. Attorney General Mike Cox is reviewing a complaint from Call 'Em Out Coalition rabble-rouser Agnes Hitchcock -- who is also a convicted grape-thrower (but not a felon) -- claiming that Michigan law bars Beckham from appointed office.

At issue is Michigan Law 750.118, which states that "any executive, legislative or judicial officer" who "corruptly accept(s) any gift or gratuity" "shall forfeit his office, and be forever disqualified to hold any public office, trust or appointment." The law is punishable 10 year or fines of up to $5,000.

Cox's office isn't commenting, and the Insider is vastly unqualified to judge whether the 1931 law applies to folks who've already done their time and are rehabilitated or instead is intended to remove those who've been convicted and are still hanging around.

But since Barrow and Beckham have in the past proclaimed their innocence (Barrow is still fighting his conviction), the Insider feels vastly qualified to humbly offer our Top 10 favorite flicks about the wrongly accused.

(10) Wrongfully Accused This one's a gimme, featuring the most under-appreciated actor of our time: Sir Leslie Nielsen.

(9) Half Baked A young Dave Chappelle leads a gang of marijuana-loving slackers in their quest to free their pot pal from prison after he accidentally kills a police horse by feeding it too many munchies.

(8) The Fugitive and Double Jeopardy Tommy Lee Jones is the king of the wrongly accused flicks, whether he's chasing a framed doctor or framed socialite. Go get 'em, Al Gore's buddy!

(7) Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector Spoiler alert: It wasn't poison in the food. It was French's mustard.

(6) Reform School Girls Scuzzy women's prison movie has it all -- a sadistic warden, redemption, every cliche in the book and the once-too-cool-for-school Wendy O. Williams from the Plasmatics. The Insider is stretching its memory a bit, but odds are one of those girls was wrongly convicted.

(5) My Cousin Vinny Still a hoot after lo these many years, even though it did unleash a flood of horrid Joe Pesci movies on an innocent public.

(4) Summer of Sam An overlooked gem in the Spike Lee oeuvre that features a pre-Oscar Adrien Brody as a punk rock kid mistaken for the infamous serial killer. One quibble: No self-respecting punk in 1977 listened to The Who.

(3) The Count of Monte Cristo. OK, the Insider never saw the movie, but it merits the list because the flick was adapted from a book by Alexandre Dumas and Bing's communications director is named Karen Dumas. Also, the sandwich is the Insider's second-favorite, behind the almighty Big Boy Slim Jim.

(2) Who Framed Roger Rabbit The Insider still has nightmares about Christopher Lloyd as Judge Doom and oh-so-fond thoughts about Jessica Rabbit.

(1) Dolemite With proper respect to Pam Grier, Melvin Van Peebles and Richard Roundtree, this touching account of a man who rekindles his reputation with the help of a warm-hearted brothel owner after being falsely accused by The Man of stealing fur coats is the Gold Standard of blaxploitation. Unfortunately, the Insider couldn't find any safe for work clips, so here's Dolemite, aka Rudy Ray Moore, on Arsenio Hall.

Friday note: Mike Cox has said 'thanks but no thanks' and declined to get involved in the controversy. Actually, Cox didn't even say that much. He dismissed the complaint without comment.

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Category: Mayor Dave Bing

Barrow benefits from botched Bing press conference

Mayor Dave Bing had a case of the Monday blahs today, when a routine press opportunity turned into a marathon comedy of errors.

Staffers for Bing, who is lobbying unions to accept a 10 percent pay cut, sent word at 8:22 a.m. Monday that he would be at headquarters for the city's biggest union, AFSCME Council 25, for negotiations.

Reporters scrambled to make it to the union's HQ on Lafayette, but Bing arrived five minutes earlier than scheduled and was already chatting with AFSCME honchos by the time most of the media arrived.

The sit-down was supposed to last half an hour -- an hour at most -- but Bing was still inside by 11 a.m. when his rival in the Nov. 3 election, Tom Barrow, arrived at the building to receive the endorsement of the Eastside Community Slate. Like AFSCME, the slate had given the nod to Bing in the primary, but switched because of Hizzoner's calls for deep cuts and iron-glove treatment of the unions.

Barrow, whose press conferences aren't well attended because of his 11 percent showing in the primary, was happy to see reporters outside. So were members of the Eastside Slate, who thought the ink-stained wretches had gathered for their event.

They didn't, but reporters were tired of waiting for Bing and thirsty for news. So when Barrow's endorsement get-together ended, he made his way outside to a bank of microphones and bashed Bing to an eager press corps.

Half an hour later, Bing departed and chatted briefly to reporters, but by that point, the damage was done and his opponent received equal time.

To top it off, the mayor's spokesman, Edward Cardenas, forgot to feed th meter and was slapped by a $20 parking ticket by the city's ever-so-diligent parking commandos. The City Hall Insider isn't in the advice business, but Cardenas perhaps should have taken a cue from the mayor's driver. The EPU officer parked a mammoth SUV outside union offices and let its supposedly environmentally friendly, FlexFuel engine run for three full hours.

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Category: Mayor Dave Bing

Michael Moore: People like Bing

Call him a gutsy gadfly or potentate of propaganda, but Flint's finest, Michael Moore, has some nice things to say about Mayor Dave Bing in an interview posted today on Movieretriever.com.

After wondering aloud if there's any hope left for Detroit or whether "it may be too far down the road or we may have to rethink Detroit in a different way," Moore said Bing could be an agent for change. Perhaps.

The jury's out on him - smart guy, decent guy, people like him. It's all about the jobs though. It's about convincing people to come to Detroit and create jobs. That's what has to happen. And it has to be real jobs. Not casino jobs. Real jobs.

OK, it's not exactly a rousing endorsement, a la "I Like Ike!" or even Oprah's famous coming-out for Obama, but a plug is a plug.

Speaking of the Oscar winner, snoops for the City Hall Insider today spotted Moore's longtime chum Sam Riddle today in Washington D.C.

Riddle, a political consultant who was indicted in July, looked dapper as usual in a blue suit and fancy belt buckle featuring an Olde English 'D' for his beloved Tigers. But atypically for the gifted gabber who is always good for a hells-a-popping quote or two, Riddle wouldn't say what brought him to the capital.

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Category: Mayor Dave Bing

How Bing spends his money

Ever wonder why campaigns for office are so darn expensive? Campaign finance reports indicate Mayor Dave Bing spent $165,935 from July 20 to Aug. 24. Here's an inside-the-balance-sheet peek at where some of it went.

$1,800 for a phone-bank coordinator.

$608.06 to AT&T for a monthly bill for office phones.

$150 for janitorial service.

$10,000 to campaign manager Eddie McDonald.

$4,285 to lease his campaign headquarter on Jefferson Avenue.

$137.94 for the alarm system.

$1,500 to rent office space in the Buhl Building.

$1,043 for Ricoh photocopiers.

$63.60 to rent two-way radios.

$10,000 for fund-raising consultant Giovan & Associates of White Lake.

$532.07 to DTE utilities.

$3,992 to Jackson's Five Star Catering of Detroit for "election night catering."

$2,524 for yard signs.

$825.98 for a "staff appreciation" dinnenr on Aug. 12 at Sinbad's.

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Category: Mayor Dave Bing

Bing to Francis: How was your strike?

Dave Bing and his border buddy, Windsor Mayor Eddie Francis, swapped hellos for the first time Monday. Topic A: How to handle a strike, Francis told told the Windsor Star.

"I shared with him about our (15-week) strike and similar issues we are facing," Francis told the Star. "It was a whole discussion around resources and what both cities are facing."

Bing's interest isn't academic. AFSCME Local 207 workers are rallying Wednesday to stoke the fires for a work stoppage over Bing's 10 percent pay cut plans and concession demands. Strikes, of course, are illegal in Michigan, but that hasn't stopped them -- witness the Detroit teachers' work stoppage in 2006 that solved all the district's problems delayed the start of school.

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Category: Mayor Dave Bing

bingformayor.com is no more

In today's digital age, Internet presence is important. But Mayor Dave Bing, who continues to be besieged by Twitter imposters, has been hit by a cyber-gremlin again.

On Aug. 22, he lost his campaign web-page, www.bingformayor.com, because the domain-name registration had expired. At bingformayor.com, there is the message "This domain name expired on 08/22/2009 and is pending renewal or deletion." Instead of text outlining Bing's proposals and pictures of him with citizens are Web links for sites that tout delivery service to New York City, how to be a model and how to buy government property. A call to one of his campaign spokesmen was not returned Sunday.

The City Hall Insider isn't the only one who has noticed the snafu. Others are taking to Twitter to discuss the site's mysterious disappearance.

"DemocratsWin" posted: "campaign website expires! Don't let this happen to you!!!" earlier on Sunday. And there was this Tweet from "Detroit Politics: "Dave Bing's website expired on 8/22/09 (http://www.bingformayor.com) and campaign apparently hasn't noticed yet."

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Category: Mayor Dave Bing

A Barrow-Bing debate? Don't bet on it, says mayor.

Mayor Dave Bing, who is slated to face two-time mayoral contender Tom Barrow on November, may be up for re-election but voters won't likely see a public face-off of ideas between the two.

On his monthly radio call-in show Wednesday evening called "Ask the Mayor" on WJR 760 AM, Bing was blunt and dismissive of the man who lost twice to legendary Mayor Coleman A. Young in the 1980s.

"To be honest with you, here's a guy that won 11 percent of the vote," Bing said in response to a caller's question. "What is there to debate about? He's got his issues, and I've got mine and (I'm) trying to run the city of Detroit.

"It's not so much that I don't want to debate but I don't know that there's any value in it."

Barrow, the cousin of another Detroit legend and late heavyweight champion Joe Louis, is used to this treatment by now. Young refused to debate Barrow back in the day, too.

Category: Mayor Dave Bing

One hundred days of Bing

Happy 100 days, Mayor Bing. Wednesday's milestone -- which the administration early on considered important -- is coming and going with barely an acknowledgement from Bing. He'll celebrate by meeting the pension board and swearing in some appointees. Apparently, Kid Rock was right: Ain't no party like a Detroit party.

As the City Hall Insider waits with bated breath for the long-awaited and slightly overdue recommendations from Bing's volunteer Crisis Turnaround Team, here's a bunch of other nifty things that you can do in 100 days:

Give birth to a beaver or turtle, if you are a beaver or turtle. Yep. Both have 100-day gestation periods.

Lose up to 55 pounds if you don't eat much and follow health guru Linda Spangle's "100 Days Challenge.

Read 100 poems on this dude's blog that featured a new poet every day for Obama's first 100 days. Here's a sample from Pimone Triplett: "Also, my altrostratus, low rolling, keeps coming back, proving cedars in the red, sun leak, worse. Wealth withdraws. And just what codswallop got you here?" Author! Author!

Train for a marathon. Better yet, using only local roads and resting every seventh day, walk to Oralando, Florida, and have time left over to ride the tea cups. That assumes a 15-mile per day clip.

Fully recover from a bone marrow transplant.

Launch a series of offenses to spell the beginning of the end of the Axis powers and free Europe from tyranny during World War I.

Cynics can insert their own punchlines here about things that can't be done in 100 days in Detroit. The Insider would never stoop so low. Instead, here's Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings singing "100 Days, 100 Nights."

Category: Mayor Dave Bing

Own a piece of Detroit's hoopster mayor on eBay

Detroit's problems are well-chronicled. Crime, corruption, education, neighborhoods, the erosion of manufacturing? Check, check, check, check and a depressing check. But among the many positives fancy-pants, out-of-town journalists fail to mention is this: Our city's mayor has basketball cards. Of him. Take that, Chicago!

The City Hall Insider stumbled on a treasure trove of collectibles of Mayor Dave Bing, an NBA Hall of Famer, on eBay. His cards typically go for 49 cents to $155 for this mint, autographed card from early in his career.

The cards are an intriguing time capsule from an earlier, groovier era when men weren't afraid to grow their hair long, wear knee-high socks and hold poses of themselves pretending to pass a ball. This signed card goes for $24.99.

Later in his career, as Bing became an established stud with the Pistons, one of two things may have happened: (1) He either got tired of posing or (2) The card photogs got lazy. Here's a decidedly un-action shot from 1975 that if nothing else stresses the importance of stretching. The price: $11.99.

Then again, at least owners of that card can see Bing's face. This card seems more focused on another part of his body. That may be a reason it's going for 10 cents.

Pistons fans may want to avert their eyes now, but this twilight-of-his-career card of Bing, in his late 1970s, savoir faire cool with the hated Boston Celtics, could be the Insider's favorite. A bargain at 99 cents.

All in all, good stuff. The Insider searched eBay for collectible cards of suburban leaders and occasional Detroit sparring partners Warren Mayor Jim Fouts and Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, but had no luck.