Goodbye Auto Show

I'm fairly certain Mon Con and the brain trust they call the Detroit City Council have pretty much sealed the fate of the North American International Auto Show here in Detroit. They voted 5-3 this afternoon to squash the deal that the state and the tri-county powers that be hashed out earlier in the year. Mayor Cockerall had input into the deal, but since city council had none, they felt like screwing all of us.

This show is the single biggest yearly event in southeast Michigan each year. It brings the press in from all over the world and gives positive coverage to an area that otherwise gets nothing but negative press the rest of the year.

Cobo Hall is a pit, barely big enough to hold the yearly cat fancier show. Chicago's McCormick Place on the other hand is massive, and will likely win the coveted #1 car show on earth when they finally decide to leave Detroit. Think about this for a minute...this is the Motor City, the mass produced automobile was perfected here, Ford, Chrysler, Buick, Pontiac, and on and on. The foundation of which our city was built, although crumbling as we speak, will not even have an event to showcase their products. And these ARE world class products that we are designing, engineering, and building here.

This comes on the heels of Detroit voting in a primary for mayor today. They have to elect a new mayor due to the one we had was and is a crook. You would think that in our economic situation, the loss of jobs, shrinking city budgets, city leaders going to jail and being investigated by the FBI, schools that almost have as many shootings as they do graduates (yes, an exaggeration), that the citizens of Detroit would come out in droves to vote their guy in. Of course that is not the case, they will be lucky to get 10% turnout today! 10%! Are you kidding me?! If Kwame was running, they would probably vote him back in.

Without babbling on all day, this could turn out to be a very sad day not just for Detroit, but for all of Michigan. We desperately need to keep the Auto Show in Detroit. The economic impact to this area is huge. I am not going to try and throw numbers out, but we simply cannot afford to lose another staple. We lost the SAE show a couple years ago, now comes the biggie. Come on Detroiters', get off your butt and start getting people who actually care into leadership positions in your city. You deserve better than a city council president who uses cops on the city payroll to send her kid to a private school in the suburbs. How ludicrous is that! Wake up and take back your city before somebody else does.