The Detroit City Council are fighting Mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. on transferring Cobo Hall over to a regional authority. This is a no-brainer.

My position on this issue? Turn it over to an authority or sell Cobo Hall. Here is why.

1. The city cannot afford the $15 million in annual maintenance fees.

2. The city cannot afford to complete renovations necessary to keep the North American International Auto Show and the 16,000 jobs it brings.

3. An authority would pump an immediate $20 million into Detroit's treasury.

I said region not just the city. Since people like Barbara Rose-Collins want to get on people like Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson by calling him racist what about the number of Blacks who live in Oakland County who moved away from crazy people like Collins? Again, we are a region. A tri-county area. A metropolis not just an island called Detroit. Blacks live everywhere in Southeast Michigan.

The present Detroit City Council are the most unintelligent human beings I have ever encountered. Some of those council members do not even have a college degree. Most are not married but hypocritically talk about improving the quality of life.

We have a Democratic City Council that are still living in the past. I would like to see some Republicans get on that council personally.

We must work hard to get rid of the following council members who are causing all of this headache.

Monica Conyers
JoAnn Watson
Martha Reeves
Barbara Rose Collins

We do not need a ghetto fabulous council president, two Black Nationalists living in the past, and a Motown singer on the council. The four are the cancer of the city council. Kwame Kenyatta can go too because his goes where the wind blows on issues and we do not need Black Nationalism on the City Council. OK, that's three Black Nationalists on the City Council.

The bigger problem is that none of these Detroit leaders do not fully understand that the atmosphere of our city is ripe for a riot. The Michigan's jobless rate, which soared to a 25-year high at 11.6 percent in January, is driving a record number of state residents to sign up for Medicaid, the state's health care plan for the poor.

Detroit is ripe for civil unrest. Look at the reality of the City of Detroit and why we are headed towards anarchy.

1. Unemployment: 17%.
   
2. Graduation High School rate: 24-38%.
   
3. Adult illiteracy: 55%
   
4. Bachelor's degree or higher: 11.0%
   
5. Graduate or professional degree: 4.2
   
6. Never married: 43.6%
   
7. Now married: 31.2
   
8. Separated: 4.2%
   
9. Widowed: 8.3%
   
10. Divorced: 12.7%

11. Rank #3 in the nation in violent crime.

12. Wayne County, Michigan, lost more than 89,000 residents from 2000 to 2006 -- a loss of 4 percent of the county's 2 million residents.

13. A third of the population in Detroit lives in poverty.

14. Detroit Public Schools did not make AYP.

15. The City of Detroit is $300 million in a deficit. The Detroit Public Schools are $400 + in a deficit.

16. Detroit has 871,121 residents down from 951,270 in 2000 and 1, 027,000 in 1990.

17. 12.3% of the residents in Detroit are White while 81.2% of the residents in Detroit are Black.

18. Looking at the Black population in Detroit only we get this...

You begin to see why we keep voting by name recognition. It does not matter who gets into the City Council or Mayor seat next here in Detroit. We are going to keep voting people in with failed policies that do not work, vote by name recognition and vote for people who caters to the unions because the unions are the power brokers in this city.

Our city will never look like Washington D.C., Chicago, New York, or even San Francisco as long as we have leadership that brings up charges of racism in the council chambers. Between failed policies, weak leadership, too much estrogen at the council table, no political diversity, no economic diversity, and no right spirit our city is prepared for a riot SOONER THAN LATER.

General Motors is going belly up as we speak. People who are white-collared workers at GM can only use one package of copying paper per month, share a trash can (called a communal trash bin) instead of keeping wastebaskets under their desks and no voice mail on their phones. GM is going to file bankruptcy and when GM goes the City of Detroit will go with it.

Unless we have leadership that is ready to come into the 21st century.

It's time to realize that the old Democrats under the mode of civil rights and Black Nationalism in this city cannot get the job done. They are living on a old and ancient civil rights/Black power platform that is outdated and is not with the current times. It's time for urban conservatives to come out and take control of the situation at hand.

After GM goes bankrupt and our city goes through its cycle of violence with an urban riot we must be able to pick up the pieces and rebuild Detroit.

The rebuilding process begins with the SILVER RIGHTS MOVEMENT of the 21st century if we have a shot of rebuilding our city. The people running our local government do not understand the role of government. The appropriate role for the government is to establish and enforce objective standards of law, demand honesty and accountability from market participants, and protect people from force and fraud. It is not supposed to prevent willing, informed individuals from making personal decisions about what to do with their money. This is what our Detroit City Council is doing daily.

Detroit must become a free enterprise city by becoming a free market similar to what is shown in international places such as Hong Kong and Seoul, South Korea. We must allow people and corporations the possibility of failure if we are to give them a shot at success. We also must realize that taking responsibility for failures, learning from them, and overcoming them, is a vital part of development as a productive citizen in a free society.

As financial markets become simpler and more accessible with much lower transaction costs, they provide newer and more powerful opportunities for all levels of society to participate and share in the country's prosperity. Detroit's leadership must allow all individuals to share in the benefits of risk-sharing and sound investments is one of the best ways to increase prosperity for the State of Michigan.

Detroit must become the educational hub of the Midwest. Any effective education policy will need to acknowledge the importance of family involvement in the education of children. Family members will usually have a stronger understanding of each other than any outside bureaucrat, and this connection is a vital tool in passing on knowledge, tools, and values. Parents both deserve and need to be involved in our educational systems, for the good of the students, the teachers, the community, and the families themselves.

Choice, accountability, and an emphasis on results generate high quality choices in the private sector - these same principles need to be applied to our public schools. Bureaucracies and teacher unions that exist for their own sake will never be able to provide the kind of education that our children deserve.

In addition..without using the Covenant for Detroit model..our city leadership must act on the following:

Detroit must consolidate the Detroit Police Department with Wayne County Sheriffs.

Turn Belle Isle over to Metro Parks or Wayne County Park System and charge a fee to get on the island.

Break up Detroit Public Schools into seven smaller school districts for accountability.

Open the doors for Wayne County Community College to charter schools with a theme based curriculum.

Add a code to the Michigan School Code to allow charter schools to be authorized by the Michigan State Board of Education and non-profit organizations.

Privatize trash and public lighting.

Privatize a portion of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. Allow a management company to run the day-to-day operations of the water system.

Create a regional bus system similar to what you see in Nashville, Tennessee and Washington D.C.

Create high speed rail system from Benton Harbor and Muskegon to Detroit using public/private dollars. Activate a commuter rail between Ann Arbor, Port Huron and Detroit.

Urban agriculture should be promoted to reduce health issues in our community. A Michigan State University Experiment Station would pump in dollars for the local economy.

City Council should be elected by districts, two terms only and make a maximum of $40,000 or less. It should be about service not individualism.

Final outcome of long civil rights Democratic control in Detroit: the median price of a home in Detroit is $7500; no major grocery chain, two movie theaters (Phoenix and Renaissance) and no major appliance stores.

Reject a $3.8 million earmark from Congress for preservation and redevelopment of a public park and related business activities in the Corktown Neighborhood." That would be the old Tiger Stadium. That is a waste of taxpayers money.

Detroit Planning and Development needs to get out of the real estate business. Detroit City Planning should place a freeze on block grants until there is forensic audit of where the money is actually going.

Detroit (and Michigan) should privatize Head Start and fund only income qualified students where the money follows the child to any accredited school. This allows wealthy parents the right and responsibility to pay for their own children, lowers the overall cost of education by way of competition and improves performance.

Urban areas can eliminate school busing for income qualified transit access and contract handicap transport.

City government should only conduct oversight in education standards, accreditation and transparency. We can do this by changing the Detroit City Charter.

Encroaching in the private health market is wrong and a conflict of interest in which the patient becomes a secondary consideration in a system that provides a medical services, taxes for it and conducts its own oversight over itself.

When you allow the free market to flow in Detroit you will see a tremendous difference. Detroit will be considered a REAL COOL CITY if we have the right leadership in place and raise our educational attainment.

It's time to get rid of the old Civil Rights/Detroit City Council format and replace it with a Silver Rights/City Council format.