Screwing themselves

Posted on December 8, 2012 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

Workers of Michigan!

Did you vote Republican?

The Republican-run Michigan Legislature just passed right-to-work legislation that will ban closed shops. Without discussion, without committee meetings or public hearings, the Legislature stole from citizens the right to bargain with employers for contracts requiring workers either to join a union or pay a fee equivalent to union dues.

The Legislature screwed most workers, union or not. Union contracts elevate working conditions and wages for everyone who’s not a millionaire.

Did you vote Republican?

You did?

How did it feel to screw yourself?

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How to cook muskrat

Posted on December 2, 2012 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

Want to try rat?

I mean muskrat.

I know, sounds bad.

Here’s something to allay your squeamishness.

It’s not really rat.

“Muskrat” comes from an Algonquian Indian word something like “musquash,” according to Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary.

That “rat” suffix in English doesn’t really mean rat, as in those nasty, ugly creatures that spread bubonic plague.

Feel better?

Ready to cook?

Here’s a recipe for sautéed muskrat straight from chef Johnny Kolakowski’s cook book, “Cookin’ Wild with Johnny.” (Metro Media Associates, Clarkston, Mich., 1999)

INGREDIENTS

1 muskrat

Lots of water

1 cup salt

More water

6 bay leaves

1 large can stewed tomatoes

1 can tomato juice

1 large onion

1 clove garlic

Flour to thicken

1/4 tsp. soy sauce

2-3 Tbs. Butter

1/2 garlic clove

2 ounces Liebfraumilch, white wine or beer

Kolakowski calls for one rat per person.

Skin the rat. Take off all fat, using a knife and your thumb.

Spread hind legs. Musk sacks are on the thighs running from base of tail to knee. Remove musk sacks.

Bring 2-3 gallons water to a boil. Add 1 cup salt. Add rat.

Bring back to a boil. Remove rat. Put 2-3 more gallons cold water in pot. Dip rat in cold water. Take out. Using thumbs, push away fat and blood.

Put 2-3 gallons water in pot. Add bay leaves. Bring to boil.

Put rat under water. Remove rat when water boils.

In a second pot, put 2 quarts water, tomatoes, tomato juice, onion and garlic. Bring to boil. Put rat in and boil.

Legs connected to spine on backside will crack. That means rat is done.

Strain sauce from last boiling. Put some sauce in pan, bring to boil. Add flour for gravy. Set aside, keep warm.

Heat saute pan, add soy sauce and 2-3 tablespoons butter.

Put rat in pan, add garlic and Liebfraumilch. Brown rat on both sides. Serve with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut and gravy.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

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Rat on the run

Posted on December 1, 2012 by admin

Those were the days.

When you could phone out for finely-prepared muskrat and have the delicacy delivered right to your doorstep.

I wrote about that delicious moment in time when I was a reporter with the Detroit Free Press.

A recent Detroit Free Press story about dining on muskrat  was way too short to waft the essence of muskrat into the reader’s mouth.

This is the second in a series of posts dedicated to muskrat cuisine and designed to fill an appetite that has gone unsated far too long.

Here, published with permission of the Detroit Free Press, is another of my stories meant to catapult the muskrat from the lowly swamp to the terra firma of haute cuisine.

By Joel Thurtell

This was only a test.

The chef, a florid-faced man  with wild, white curly hair, tossed  chunks of butter and garlic into a  fry pan whose bottom was tickled  by a tall blue flame. Next came the piéce de resistance, two chunks of dark brown meat that began to simmer as the cook swished the pan over the fire.

If this had been the real thing, the cook would have needed to have his main dish finished and neatly wedged alongside mashed potatoes, gravy and sauerkraut and delivered to the customer inside 30 minutes to beat the competition.

While the main course was ready – hot in its plastic sealed plate within 10 minutes – the rest of the test was cancelled.

On this particular afternoon there were no orders phoned in to Kola’s Food Factory in Riverview for this particular menu item.

Muskrat.

Or, as proprietor Johnnie Kolakowski put it, “Rats on the run.”

It’s a first for Downriver, or for that matter, anywhere, Kolakowski contends.

Who ever heard of home-delivery muskrat?

And the competition?

Domino’s Pizza for one. Or any other pizzeria that offers delivery.

“The others only do pizza,” notes Kolakowski. “What have we got?” Besides muskrat, he has alligator, perch, shrimp, hamburgers, kielbasa, baby back ribs and other regular offerings.

“The kids can order pizza, but maybe the parents want rat,” said Kolakowski.

The key question, of course, is how far will Kolakowski ship his rats.

Sorry, Grosse Pointers – you’re out of luck, as is Bloomfield Hills.

“All of Southgate, Wyandotte, Riverview, Trenton and maybe Grosse Ile,” Kolakowski said.

“I don’t know what I can do to elevate the rat any higher than this,” declares Kolakowski.

Hey, if it catches on, maybe he’ll open another Food Factory restaurant to serve Woodhaven, Gibraltar and Brownstown Township, says Kolakowski.

And if that’s a go, who knows? Plymouth? Northville? Mackinaw City?

Some might construe that as a warning.

Those who are a bit faint of heart should know that muskrats
are strictly vegetarian.

The taste? A lot like squirrel. The meat is dark and succulent.

Don’t know what squirrel tastes like?

Too bad.

Moving on, this modern convenience of home-delivered muskrat is made possible by Kolakowski’s recent union with Capri Pizza, a company that bakes its pizza in Kola’s restaurant, but offers delivery, too.

To demonstrate, Kolakowski shoves the plastic-sealed plate with the hot and ready to eat muskrat into an insulated pizza delivery bag.

It fits.

So this home delivery of muskrat is, well, feasible.

The service began this week.

The key question, of course, is: Who needs it?

Customers, says Kolakowski. That’s who.

In the past two weeks since the restaurant re-opened after a summer hiatus, maybe two dozen people have ordered muskrat. Not bad, since the rodent is most popular in the winter, especially during Lent.

While the standard rat fare comes with potatoes and kraut, there are other possibilities, in theory.

Why not muskrat benedict?

Not a problem, says Kolakowski. “Instead of ham, you just lift the rat meat off the bones and put it on poached eggs and hollandaise sauce.”

Rat entrees are not new.

Colonial French fur trappers from Quebec introduced muskrat eating to southeastern
Michigan in the 18th century, according to Dennis Au, A descendant of French colo- nists in Monroe County. Au wrote about the French muskrat custom in a 1987 Smithsonian magazine article.

In a paper written for Michigan State University, Au wrote, “More than any other food, muskrat identfies French folk culture in Monroe.”

“The culinary appeal of a good muskrat supper…has spread beyond” Monroe, and at one time reached as far north as Port Huron, Au wrote. In Monroe it still is a major feature of political and charity fundraisers, wrote Au.

Few places serve it today, admits Kolakowski.

The rat was dealt a blow in the late 1980s when state Department of Agriculture officials tried to ban it, saying it could spread giardia lamblia, a nasty intestinal disease. Kolakowski fought back, as did the lte Jerry Bartnik, then a state representative from Monroe County.

According to Au, violence and disruption of life during the War of 1812 prompted many people to rely on muskrat, and there is a tradition that the French settlers appealed to their bishop to allow them to substitute muskrat for fish on Fridays, arguing that because muskrat live in the water, they should be
declared a fish.

In the late 1980s, there were still Monroe people who considered the muskrat a fish and often cooked and ate it, according to Au.

“God bless dee mushrat, she’s a fish,” the oldtimers would declare.

English-speaking settlers derided them as “mushrat French,” while meanwhile adopting the delicacy.

The French generally served muskrat with creamed corn.

Kolakowski’s combination of rat with kraut and potato is more German or Polish.

The key to cooking muskrat is removing the musk sacs from the carcass to reduce the oiliness and gaminess of the meat.

Kolakowski recommends boiling the rat three times, first in salt, then in bay leaves and finally in tomatoes, onions and garlic.

Customers who order rat generally are older people who have eaten muskrat all their lives, or their children who are learning to like it, said Kolakowski.

For all his ebullience about muskrat, the chef is not immune to some ribbing in his own restaurant. As he posed for a picture, holding a stuffed muskrat with its snout aimed at the freshly-cooked entrée, a regular customer wise-cracked, “You gonna feed him?”

“Muskrat to go,” chuckles Kevin Brown, one of Kolakowski’s partners in the pizza/muskrat delivery scheme. “We figure we’ll give the muskrat an address and he’ll make his way there.”

Maybe even muskrat on pizza, wisecracks Brown. Sure thing.

Well, maybe not for sure.

Brown is not about to eat rat.

“I’ve tried a lot of other things, but that one doesn’t hit my palate,” said Brown.

Kola’s Food Factory is at 17168 Fort St. in Riverview. To order your rat, call 734-281-0447.

[Actually, don’t try. Restaurant closed, number no good.]

Contact JOEL THURTELL at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

 

 

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Let them eat muskrat!

Posted on November 25, 2012 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

“Muskrat Mania” hat courtesy Johnny Kolakowski.               Joel Thurtell photo.

Hey, Zlati — I’d like to cook a rat for you!

And then I’d like to thank you, Zlati Meyer of the Detroit Free Press, for giving me an excuse to run those muskrat stories I wrote eons ago.

Well do I recall the rat stories I wrote back during the Great Muskrat War of the 1980s, when the government tried to stop us muskrat-lovers from eating rat.

For my own taste, sorry to say, the story by Zlati in the November 25, 2012 Detroit Free Press was just too darned brief to do justice to the noble rodent who saved many a pioneer family from starving, and gave me a great dinner topic that I have not tired of in more than three decades of hashing over rat.

Therefore, with permission of the Free Press, here is the article I wrote in 2007 upon learning that muskrat maestro Johnny Kolakowski was closing his restaurant.

By the way, I’m trying to reach Johnny, and his old phone numbers don’t work. If you read this, Johnny, would you please drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com?

Zlati needs me to cook her some rat.

Headline: IS YOUR MOUTH STILL WATERING FOR MUSKRAT?

Sub-Head: RIVERVIEW EATERY IS CLOSED, BUT AQUATIC RODENT AVAILABLE

Byline:  JOEL THURTELL

Pub-Date: 7/8/2007

Memo:  DOWNRIVER

Correction:

Text: Tradition has it that rats flee the sinking ship, but not at Kola’s Food Factory, a Riverview restaurant famed Downriver for its muskrat dinners.

At least not for now.

Proprietor Johnny Kolakowski assured me that he’ll still be cooking muskrat even though he’s closed the restaurant and put the building at 17168 Fort Street up for sale.

Whew!

For the more than two decades that I’ve lived in Metro Detroit, I’ve rested easy knowing that I needed only to journey Downriver to Kola’s for the repast of my dreams: broiled muskrat.

When I heard he’d closed the restaurant, I feared the worst – what would life be like without Kola’s special rat?

You think I’m joking?

Hey, back in the 1980s, when Kola’s was in a Wyandotte bowling alley, I took my young sons down there on a Sunday morning for a terrific breakfast. We bowled, and then I scored what I’d come for – raw muskrat carcasses and a chunk of beaver tail. My older son, Adam, was supposed to provide some game for a wild feast in his fourth-grade class.

I followed the Kolakowski recipe and boiled the rats three times – first in salt, then in tomatoes and finally in bay leaves. Then I roasted them. Can’t recall exactly how I cooked the beaver tail.

What I remember, though, is thinking that there would be plenty left for us to eat the evening after the feast. Guess again. Those kids in Plymouth’s Bird Elementary School gorged on my rat and scarfed up beaver. There was none left for me.

I’ve had a hankering for some time to fix rat and beaver again.

That’s why I was pleased when Johnny said he’s not out of the rat business, even though he’s closed the restaurant.

“You can still buy rats,” Johnny says. “I can still do special orders; that’s no problem. It won’t be table service. You can preorder ‘rat to go.’ I’ll still have the rats and ‘coons and turtles I fought so hard to get.”

In the 1980s, the Michigan Department of Agriculture banned muskrat dinners because there was no approved source of muskrats. Some chefs of high rat cuisine defied the prohibition. Back in the day, I went to an Erie Veterans of Foreign Wars fund-raiser expecting to see state officers order the men to shut off their broilers. Instead, I ate some of the tastiest and greasiest muskrat I’ve ever had.

Johnny worked out an agreement whereby he imports muskrat carcasses from Canadian trappers and inspects it himself.

So why did he close the restaurant?

“I couldn’t justify it anymore,” he told me. “I’m paying $16,000 a year in property taxes. The economy has changed. People are not going to restaurants like they used to. People are buying $5 pizzas. How do you pay $16,000 in taxes with $5 pizzas? I bid on a brand-new cafeteria to open at Severstahl Steel, and it looks like I’m gonna get it. I got 200 people to feed lunch every day, plus street-fair business.”

Will he serve rats to the Severstahl crew?

Does a muskrat swim in the river?

But the days of the table-served rat definitely are over. And that is sad.

“I’ve got so many loyal customers, and nobody really does it,” Johnny lamented. “It looks like the rats are going to disappear. I hate to see that happen.”

But if you want carryout rat, call Johnny at 734-281-0447 [no good 11-25-2012 — JT] . He’ll fix one or a dozen, or sell you the raw carcasses to cook at home.

Contact JOEL THURTELL at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com.

Caption: 2004 photos by MARY SCHROEDER / Detroit Free Press
Left: Johnny Kolakowski, 60, of Wyandotte, proprietor of Kola’s Food Factory in Riverview, in his restaurant with a stuffed muskrat that was trapped in Gibraltar.  Below: Muskrat was served daily at Kola’s, which is now closed – but customers still may order carryout muskrat  either cooked or ready-to-cook. Just call 734-281-0447 [no good.].

Illustration:  PHOTO

Edition: METRO FINAL

Section:  CFP; COMMUNITY FREE PRESS

Page: 5CV

Keywords:

Disclaimer:  THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION MAY DIFFER SLIGHTLY FROM THE PRINTED ARTICLE

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Lowell’s oddball bridge

Posted on November 18, 2012 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

My late mother, Ruth Thurtell, views Main Street dam at Lowell. Photo by Joel Thurtell 9-5-2008.

My late mother, Ruth Thurtell, views Main Street dam at Lowell. Photo by Joel Thurtell 9-5-2008.

LOWELL, Mich. — It doesn’t attract as many tourists as Italy’s Ponte Vecchio, but Lowell’s Main Street Bridge bears a certain similarity to that 14th-century pedestrian span over the Arno River in Florence.

Lowell’s bridge, barely 100 years old (remember, folks, I wrote this story in 1979!), not only links separate halves of the Kent County town but serves as a retail district for its 3,000 residents.

The Ponte Vecchio is lined with small stalls specializing in jewelry and souvenirs, while the Lowell structure supports two barbershops, a dress boutique, a television store and an auto-parts outlet.

This building facing Lowell's Main Street is built on pilings that support it over the Flat River. In the 1930's, it housed my grandfather Martin Houseman's meat market. In winter, my Uncle Charlie Houseman used to walk from the store to school over the ice. This building now is part of the Main Street Inn.Photo by Joel Thurtell 9-5-2008.

This building facing Lowell’s Main Street is built on pilings that support it over the Flat River. In the 1930’s, it housed my grandfather Martin Houseman’s meat market. In winter, my Uncle Charlie Houseman used to walk from the store to school over the ice. This building now is part of the Main Street Inn.Photo by Joel Thurtell 9-5-2008.

A visitor intent on window-shopping here might not even notice that M-21, Lowell’s main artery, crosses the Flat River 15 miles east of Grand Rapids. Facing the bridge, the stores extend north and south from Main Street and are supported by concrete and wood pilings planted in the river bottom.

Although a central location is important to merchants anywhere, it is difficult to understand why Lowell’s pioneers erected shops over water, unless perhaps they anticipated a fire and wanted a ready source of water. That hasn’t always been helpful, however.

An early wooden span was swept by fire in 1904. Shops were rebuilt in the same locations, but a year later the Grand River backed up over a wide region of western Michigan and forced tributaries such as the Flat to rise so forcibly that sections of the bridge were torn away. Historians cannot determine why Lowell’s elders constructed stores along the bridge in the first place, then rebuilt there after two disasters.

Lowell’s Main Street dam is on the right. The building on pilings once was the site of my grandmother Harriet Thurtell’s dress shop. Photo by Joel Thurtell 9-5-2008.

One explanation is that in the 1880’s real estate prices were relatively high, so some merchants chose sites where they would not need land titles. Another guess goes like this: In the mid-19th century the Flat River was a narrow, shallow, fast-running stream, but just before the Civil War grain millers began damming it for a source of power. One dam went in where the bridge now stands (and a successor mill remains there). As the water level rose, shopkeepers who had built close to the embankment faced gradual flooding and either moved their stores or put pilings under the buildings.

Despite all the water below, a big mill was gutted by fire in 1943. In 1958, six stores and a tavern burned out. Nor is fire the only hazard.

In 1955, old pilings under the Kroger store collapsed from rot and caused the entire sugar stock to float away in the Flat.

Two stores remain where once a row of stores extended from the east to the west banks of the Flat River. Fire destroyed several stress on the right, and emotion took buildings on the left. A few stories remain on pilings. Photo by Joel Thurtell 9-5-2008.

Two stores remain where once a row of stores extended from the east to the west banks of the Flat River. Fire destroyed several stress on the right, and emotion took buildings on the left. A few stories remain on pilings. Photo by Joel Thurtell 9-5-2008.

Some shops could become a nuisance to the millers, too. At the turn of the (20th) century, the owner of a produce store sold bananas picked from tough, many-branched stems. When these were empty, he tossed them out a back window into the river, forcing a nearby mill to open its dam, lower the river and remove the debris from turbine machinery every few weeks.

Norton Avery, who operated a photographic studio on the bridge before World War I, recalls sending an assistant to the front door to make sure no horse-drawn carriages were approaching when he was about to make portraits. The vibration of buggies on the plank roadway of that era caused his equipment to tremble and could ruin his pictures, he said.

Now 85, Avery (again, recall I wrote this in 1979; Norton Avery is either very old or very dead) saw his former shop razed recently, after its roof began sagging away from an adjacent building toward the river.

But enough others survive to make a trip to Lowell an interesting diversion for tourists.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

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Don’t count Matty out

Posted on November 12, 2012 by admin

Happy billionaire. Joel Thurtell photo.

Do you think the bully billionaire of Grosse Pointe’s dream of holding onto his international bridge monopoly is dead?
That just because 60 percent of voters torpedoed his Prop 6 attempt at patenting his Ambassador Bridge in the Michigan Constitution, the troll will go away?
I have two words for that fantasy:

PORT AUTHORITY.

Moroun controls an entity that could build an international bridge.

It is called the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority.

Here’s the warning I published on February 1, 2012:

Ambassador Bridge. Joel Thurtell photo.

By Joel Thurtell

The answer: Morounopoly.

The question: How do you spell Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority?

According to Gongwer News Service, Gov. Rick Snyder might use the port authority to bypass the Legislature in his quest to build a new international bridge between Detroit and Windsor.

Gongwer reported in Volume #51, Report #1, Article #3, Tuesday, January 3, 2012:

Exactly what option the (Snyder) administration might pursue is unclear at this point. The options said by one source to have been under closest review are, in no particular order, an intergovernmental agreement between Canada and public entities in Michigan, using the Detroit-Wayne County Port Authority or turning the project over to the federal government.

The chief obstacle in the Legislature has been all the pressure Ambassador Bridge owner Matty Moroun has put on state reps and senators using that ever-so-persuasive policy argument, his check book.

Matty Moroun. Joel Thurtell photo.

So, when the governor thinks of working around the Legislature, he needs to remember that what he’s REALLY trying to sidestep is not lawmakers, but the BILLIONAIRE, Manuel “Matty” Moroun.

That being the case, using the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority would NOT be a good way to avoid the heavy hand of Matty.

The Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority and Matty Moroun are pretty much the same thing.

Oh, I know, the port authority has a grandiose title, making it sound governmental. And it was established under some 1978 state law allowing local governments to establish port authorities to promote transportation.

All the same, Matty owns the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority.

How can that possibly be?

Doesn’t the governor appoint one of the authority’s board members?

Aren’t the other four members appointed two each by the Detroit City Council and Wayne County Board of Commissioners?

Those are good questions, given the fact that a fair number of elected and appointed officials have been complicit in handing over control of this potentially lucrative and powerful body to the billionaire, Matty Moroun.

There is much to question in the contract between Matty and the port authority, because the governing document setting up Matty’s Ambassador Port Company as “master concessionaire” for the port authority is shrouded in secrecy.

“CONFIDENTIAL” — that warning is typed on the header of each page of the “Master Concession Agreement by and between the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority and the Ambassador Port Company.”

We the citizens were not supposed to know about this cushy deal made in 2005 when Kwame Kilpatrick was King of Detroit and hardly anyone knew who owned the Ambassador Bridge.

According to the Research and Analysis Division of the Detroit City Council, the Master Concession Agreement may violate the Michigan Open Meetings Act.

Despite its labeling, the contract can’t be confidential, because the open meetings law requires that “all decisions of a public body be made at a meeting open to the public” and “all deliberations of a public body constituting a quorum of its members shall take place at a meeting open to the public.”

According to a March 17, 2006 report of the council’s research agency, it is unclear whether the 2005 contract was adopted in an open meeting.

If it was adopted openly, then it can’t be confidential. If it was adopted secretly, then its legal standing could be challenged.

Why would Matty and his public official cronies want to hide this document?

Matty with mouthpiece Ken Mogill. Joel Thurtell photo.

Because it gives the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority to Matty!

The pretext for this legalized piracy was a roughly $2 million debt the port authority owed.

Kind-hearted Matty stepped in to pay off the debt.

Then Matty worked a deal to repay himself — for a price.

His price was control over the operations and revenues of the port authority for 25 years, renewable three times for up to a century.

That’s right — for 100 years Matty agreed to pay the port authority a paltry 2.5 percent of gross revenues.

Well, not exactly 2.5 percent.

You see, there are deductions for interest costs.

The Master Concession Agreement is 30 pages long.

Lots and lots of words.

Remember, the port authority is supposedly a public body.

Not only is it subject to the Michigan Open Meetings and Freedom of Information laws.

But it is required under the state Constitution to be run for the benefit of the public.

Which is to say, for the good of you and me, taxpayers and citizens of Michigan and the United States.

The port authority was not meant to be given away to a pirate like Matty whose every intention — you can read it in the contract’s wording — is to milk the bejesus out of the port and line his billionaire’s pockets.

What happens to the remaining 97.5 percent of the port’s gross revenues? Matty has control of that, too.

So, Matty could actually reap more than 100 percent of port revenues. That’s because whenever he needs to invest in the port, he gets to charge the cost of construction or equipment or whatever to the port authority — that is you and me! — plus 6 percent interest.

Matty — excuse me, the port authority — uses the Nicholson Dock and Port Company to move freight, so-called “stevedoring” work. Matty gets to charge Nicholson “a percentage” of Nicholson’s revenues.

Whatever Matty wants, he gets.

Translated to the Master Concession Agreement lingo, “The Authority shall not unreasonably withhold the Authority’s consent to any Budget, Master Plan, Price Schedule, Operating Procedures or other proposals or requests of the Concessionaire.”

If Matty orders the authority to do something and it declines, it better be ready to defend its reasoning.

Nobody else can make such a request. Not you. Not me. That makes Matty the port authority’s one and only head.

As I said, Matty and the port are the same thing.

The port authority has 30 days to respond to Matty’s requests. If the authority fails to respond within 30 days, according to the contract, Matty gets his way.

The Authority can’t “pledge, sell, assign, let, lien, option” port authority property — public property! — without Matty’s permission.

The port authority gave up its right to sue Matty for breach of fiduciary trust.

Yes! Can you believe that?

In other words, Matty gets to screw them and they get to smile.

Public officials actually agreed to this language:

 

 

The Authority understands and acknowledges that master Concessionaire or its affiliates owns real property in and around the Premises that Master Concessionaire is interested in incorporating into the operations of the Facility and has agreed to perform the Facilities Work in part for the purpose of maximizing the value of such other properties and the profits to current and future business operating thereon. Preference shown to such other properties owned by master Concessionaire or its affiliates over the Facility shall not constitute a breach of any duty of Master Concessionaire hereunder or a breach of the Facility Operation Standard. The Authority, hereby waives any claim for breach of fiduciary duty or other cause of action in connection with any actions taken by Master Concessionaire or any Facility Operator whereby other property owned or controlled by them receives disproportionate benefits to the Facility. (Emphasis added)

The “emphasis added” was done by the author of the “confidential” contract, by the way, not by JOTR.

So what does the public get from this deal?

Not taxes: The contract exempts Matty from paying real estate taxes.

Matty’s whole purpose is “maximizing the value” of his own property, and if that happens to hurt the public, hey! It may have happened in secret, but we know this much — we got screwed.

Matty has the exclusive right to run a port in Wayne County.

Want to start a harbor at Detroit?

Fine, as long as you don’t mind Matty’s thumb on your business.

What if you wanted to spend a few hundred billion on a modern railroad tunnel under the Detroit River?

Great idea, as long as you don’t mind handing Matty the keys.

If the port authority wants to sell property to an outsider, first it has to offer the same deal to Matty.

Not surprisingly, the city council’s researchers had a few problems with this contract.

Homeowners, think about this: What would your mortgage-holder say if you failed to buy insurance on your house?

Matty’s got that base covered: “If insurance is not maintained by Master Concessionaire or the Facility Operator, such failure shall not constitute an independent cause of action and shall not result in liability of Master Concessionaire to the Authority or any other party for uninsured damages that may occur.”

If one of Matty’s trucks is full of dynamite and blows up, the port — that is, the public — can clean up the mess.

If Matty decides to assign his rights to run the port to someone else, the authority “can not unreasonably deny the Concessionaire’s request to assign its rights under the Agreement.”

Back in December, 2011, Gov. Snyder signed Public Act 258 of 2011 allowing a “public” agency like Matty Moroun — excuse me, I mean the port authority — to team up with a local government such as the city of Detroit or Wayne County to do pretty much any economic development project. In such a partnership, Matty would have the power to levy taxes, condemn property — eminent domain — as well as issue bonds. Matty, who runs ads excoriating government, could BE government, thanks to this new law and the Master Concession Agreement.

According to the city’s researchers, “The entire flavor of this Master Concession Agreement gives ‘preference’ to one business entity for the benefit of paying off the $2 million bonds. It also appears to render the Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority nearly constructively powerless to independently exercise its legal rights, duties and privileges.”

The contract “could relinquish control over the Authority’s options to finance current and future debts,” according to the researchers, who concluded:

“The Concessionaire could build a bridge, then bill the Authority.”

Hear that, guv??

Matty can build that new international bridge.

He doesn’t need you!

 

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Props 1-6: How I voted

Posted on November 2, 2012 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

No on Prop. 1 — emergency municipal managers. Michigan has had an emergency financial manager law since 1990 that has returned many local governments to solvency. The constitutional amendment would give managers power to tear up municipal contracts. It is Republican union-bashing.

Yes on Prop 2 — etch collective bargaining into the Constitution where Republicans will have a tougher time ending it.

Yes on Prop 3 — give Michigan a shot at significant alternative electrical power.

No on Prop 4 — hard to figure why in-home caregivers should be in a union, or why that should be in the Constitution.

No on Prop 5 — it’s hard enough to raise taxes, let alone require a 2/3 majority of voters.

No on Prop 6 — baloney to the amendment that would deter a new, much-needed international bridge at Detroit and constitutionally protect billionaire Matty Moroun’s bridge monopoly.

 

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Hey, Donald — you are full of what?

Posted on November 2, 2012 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

Thank God this is not a family newspaper.

I can report exactly what Chrysler vice president Ralph Gilles tweeted about Donald Trump.

Without resorting to #$&%!

Full of shit.

That’s what Gilles said.

According to the Detroit Free Press for November 2, 2012, Donald Trump, apparently trying to amplify Mitt Romney’s absurdly false claims about Obama and the auto bailout, tweeted that “Obama is a terrible negotiator. He bails out Chrysler and now Chrysler wants to send all Jeep manufacturing to China — and will!”

To which, according to the Freep, Gilles tweeted back: “@realDonaldTrump you are full of #$&%!”

Now, a purist might argue that we don’t really know from the Freep what Trump said, because the newspaper reported only “#$&%!”

In other words, the Free Press reported “shit.”

With this disclaimer: “Ralph Gilles, Chrysler’s vice president for product design, fired back on Twitter using a word that can’t be published in a family newspaper. Gilles later apologized for using profanity.”

It may have been “shit”, but it was Front Page “shit.”

I’m more than tired of the Romney camp’s lies.

I’m sick of watching this smirking, spineless creep Romney pulling back position after position in debate after debate.

Anything Mitt said two minutes ago is inoperative.

Only the Mitt of the here and now is relevant.

By constantly changing shape, Romney defines himself; He has no baseline.

No core persona.

Etch-A-Sketch in the flesh.

Donald Trump simply echoes Romney’s lies about Chrysler in particular and the bailout of Chrysler and General Motors.

The bailout preserved thousands of American jobs.

Romney was against the bailout.

Now, either because he wants to keep appealing to the right wing of the Republican party (is there at this point any other segment left of the GOP?), or because he just can’t stand admitting he was wrong and feels compelled to dig himself deeper and deeper into a huge pile of his own shit, Romney keeps stoking his string of bailout falsehoods.

Donald Trump is just an acolyte to the high priest of dishonesty, Mitt Romney.

“Shit” is too weak a word for Romney.

He’s a liar.

 

 

 

 

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QST, CQ push MOUSE CODE

Posted on November 1, 2012 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

The American Radio Relay League sold out its first stock of my new book,  MOUSE CODE. More copies are being printed and rushed to League headquarters in Newington, Connecticut.

Meanwhile, CQ Magazine and its sister publication, Worldradio, have received their first order of MOUSE CODE.

Both publications are promoting MOUSE CODE for the Christmas season.

MOUSE CODE is a children’s book for people of all ages written by yours truly.

MOUSE CODE also is for sale on amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble or any other bookseller with access to Books In Print.

MOUSE CODE is the tale of field mice who “invent” radio to save themselves and their friends the moles, voles, shrews, groundhogs, badgers and yes, even a blue racer, from death by development.

Humans are plowing up meadows and bulldozing trees so they can build houses, shopping centers, gas stations and all kinds of human constructions that displace wildlife.

Enter Hannibal, the wise old field mouse who engineers a system to warn the animals of dangerous human activity.

Hannibal’s disciple, Arthur Mouse, is Hannibal’s loyal foot soldier. At great danger from hawks, snakes, owls and a cat, the two mice steal materials from a ham radio operator so they can build their early warning radios.

MOUSE CODE entertains through its unique story and by offering young people Morse Code as a “secret” language for talking among themselves..

Says ham operator George Petrides Sr., “One test of a story I have always liked is to read it out loud. MOUSE CODE scores a 10 in that category.” Petrides read MOUSE CODE to his 10-year-old grand-daughter, Kaelyn, and reported that she “was instantly captivated by the characters, the plow, the letters V and B, the pompous words, the plight of the mice and (was) able to follow the plot with no difficulty. She could define all of the more difficult words in her own words so she learned vocabulary too. We’re already having fun communicating in simple Mouse Code.”

Veteran book illustrator John Barnhart created the pictures and cover for MOUSE CODE.

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Little brown jug o’ lakes

Posted on October 28, 2012 by admin

By Joel Thurtell

The football rivalry between the Wolverines and the Golden Gophers over the little brown jug isn’t the only bone of contention between Michigan and Minnesota.

[The game will be played at noon Eastern time Saturday, November 3, 2012 at Minneapolis. It will be broadcast on the Big Ten Network.]

For decades, the two midwestern states have argued over who has more lakes.

In the 1930s, Minnesotans scoffed at Michigan, which then claimed 5,000 lakes.

Minnesota’s claim at the time was — and still is — 10,000 lakes.

Why, they chortled, all of Michigan’s 5,000 lakes could be poured into one or two of Minnesota’s lakes.

Hey, do I have to translate this into Scandahoovian? We’re not talking VOLUME!

This is a numbers game, pure and simple.

Who has more lakes?

In the 1940s, the Michigan Conservation Department did a re-count. They came up with 11,037 lakes, trumping Minnesota.

One thousand thirty-seven MORE lakes than Minnesota’s paltry 10 k.

In the 1960s, a Michigan State University agriculture professor, Clifford Humphrys, decided to make a really accurate count.

His study, titled “Michigan Lakes and Ponds,” was all about economics and making sure Michigan knew what its lacustrine resources were.

The professor undertook a re-count. All very academic.

This was the lake count of lake counts. Humphrys devised a formula for calculating the surface area of a lake by weighing the paper cut-out of its outline snipped from a United States Geological Survey map.

Imagine clipping and weighing the map outline of every body of water bigger than 1/10th of an acre in both peninsulas of Michigan.

It took a long time, consumed a lot of student work hours, and cost Humphrys the enmity of MSU administrators. At one point, they shut down the survey, but that didn’t stop the professor.

Humphrys published the definitive inventory of Michigan lakes and ponds in 1965. I once talked to him about his study and mentioned the old Michigan Conservation Department estimate of 11,037 lakes.

“Eleven thousand lakes?” exclaimed Humphrys. “Bull!”

When his workers finished cutting lake outlines, they’d snipped the shapes of thirty-five-thousand-sixty-eight lakes.

That’s correct. His study, still used by state agencies, found 35,068 lakes and ponds in Michigan.

Michigan has three and a half times as many lakes as Minnesota.

Minnesota license plates still brag about 10,000 lakes.

Maybe they should re-count.

I’ll donate my shears.

Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com

 

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