On July 8, the Detroit City Council announced that it was supporting the public bridge to Canada, the "New International Trade Crossing", or NITC. According to one report, the cost for this bridge sits at right about $3.5 million. That's public money, folks. Government money. You can bet that the Council will be wading right into the bidding process again to find bridge construction companies who want to get fat off the coffers of this bankrupted city.
Bidding processes in Detroit have always been, let's say, creative, especially when Councilman Gordon Hosea Jackson is involved. He's got more friends in the construction and demolition industries than Kwame Kilpatrick has bad debts. It seems strange to this investigator that one of his best buddies has the demolition contract on five different major buildings that are being torn down. These are all old buildings, formerly architectural jewels in Detroit's crown, and they're all being pulled down to make room for... what? Nobody knows. Nobody knows when the bidding process on these demolition jobs got started, either. What people do know is that when the city planning commission had its meetings with Grand River Construction, the company that got the contract (and which happens to be a big contributor to Mr. Jackson's re-election campaign), the doors were closed.
Jackson is preparing for the 2012 elections already, and nobody thinks that he'll be content with staying in the city council. He's got his eyes on the prize, people, looking at Lansing and eventually Washington, D.C. He's got the charisma and the backers to make it. Just check out the long list of fund raisers that are being scheduled in his honor. He's planning a big push in the near future, and for that, he needs lots of cold, hard cash.
It couldn't be more obvious. Jackson and his City Council cronies are just like all the other Detroit politicians who came before them: lining their pockets and the pockets of their friends with money that belongs to all of us. This bridge is going to be just another prime project that'll land in the coffers of Grand River Construction and other campaign donors. Jackson and the Council are corrupt, and they've got their fingers in everybody's pies.
This is not lost on me. I'm the Motown Investigator, and I've got my eye on you.
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