Posted on 05/15/2013 8:02:33 AM PDT by mandaladon
After a tumultuous four years overseeing a city long riddled with blight, corruption, crime, and historic financial issues, mayor David Bing has had enough, telling a stunned audience at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History Tuesday that he’d leave when his term ends in December. The 69-year-old Bing, a hall-of-fame NBA player who spent most of his career with the Pistons and then was a successful businessman in Detroit had never ran for office before narrowly winning the 2009 race to replace Kwame Kilpatrick, who in less than a term in office had gone from rising Democratic star to scandal-embroiled mayor to convicted felon. After winning a full term the same year, Bing tried to turn around a city that has been losing population and sinking into an ever-deeper economic hole for decades, with a City Council resistant to his plans for radical changes to save Detroit and the looming prospect of the Republican governor appointing an emergency economic manager who would effectively take control of the city’s finances from its elected officials. When Governor Rick Snyder in March ended months of deliberation by appointing Kevyn Orr emergency manager, with sweeping powers to modify contracts and sell city assets, Bing, whose frustrations had been mounting, had enough.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
His new job will be to work with Obama on his jump shot.
let it go down the drain....clear the old houses, plant crops and grow trees for pulp....I don't know where they'll find the workers though...
Bing did a great job of bringing honest competency to the city that was run by Coleman Yong and then by the young scion of the corrupt Kirkpatrick political/crime family.
If you were from Detroit you would know. Bing is a former NBA star who spent his career there. His intent was his love for a city that once was. For those of us who grew up in that once great city, we understand. Bing did not need the city’s mayorship to get rich. He came in rich as a successful business man after his successful sports career. The city was in dire need of a capitalist instead of the train of greedy politicians which caused the downfall.
I returned to the city last spring for a Tigers game at Comerica park. There as been an effort to rebuild the downtown area centered around the stadium area. This area draws people in who would never come downtown otherwise.
Detroit’s strongest bond seems to be the sports teams. For a city that has become a smoking crater, the teams are still holding strong. Even as a former resident, now living in the South, the love for Detroit sports runs through our veins...like SEC football does in the veins of Southerners.
It explains how a conservative could be elected for a mayor Detroit.
Actually he seems to be one of the few real liberal black politicians and not the usual race racketeer they seem to devolve to once elected.
Well “Conservative” would probably be pushing the point further than it can go, but he is not a crook, recognizes that most of the problem with Detroit is the government of the city, and its municipal unions. So that’s a good start, but I doubt Conservative social issues are on his agenda.
Don’t blame him.....talk about a thankless job.
Bing strikes me as a reasonably decent man in impossible circumstances. But you’re right, he won’t be going to jail, and that’s refreshing.
I think non-crook is a great place to start. It means we have a level playing ground.
Dave Bing has a pretty impressive history of acting on his own without running to the usual plantation masters for help.
As an NBA player a bank wouldn’t give him a loan to buy a house. Instead of running to the NAACP or something, he took a job with the bank in the off season as a local PR man.
Ronald Reagan also gave him the minority businessman of the year award.
Contrary to what the shill piece sez, Bing *wanted* the Gov’nor to cut the legs out from under the jackass city council. Partisan Media Shills ping.
Thanks mandaladon.
In my opinion, the ideal thing would have been to pass the tougher version of the emergency manager law and make Bing himself the emergency manager.
That way you at least have the cover of an elected official in the position of temporary “dictator”.
That would have been a good idea, but Bing might have turned it down.
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