By Joel Thurtell
Rather than heaping insults on billionaire Matty Moroun, we should be grateful to him.
We should name Matty “Educator of the Year.”
Who else but Matty has demonstrated so clearly how corrupt and venal our political system has become?
It took a man with deep, deep pockets and no moral scruples — this is Matty — to teach us how public policy can be perverted to serve the interest of one greedy family, the Morouns of Grosse Pointe.
By now, most sentient beings are aware that a committee of the Michigan Senate voted 3-2 with two abstentions to deep-six a proposal for a long-needed new bridge linking the United States and Canada at Detroit.
We all know that the Moroun family owns the only bridge that allows truck traffic between the US and Canada. To protect their lucrative monopoly from competition, the Morouns deployed public relations specialists and millions of dollars in “donations” to members of both houses of Michigan’s Legislature.
Six of the seven members of the Senate Economic Development Committee took “contributions” from Matty.
Far be it from me to call these gifts “bribes.”
Why, under Michigan law, the packets of money were perfectly legal.
The people who took money from Matty were the people who had the power to promote or block the New International Trade Crossing.
Legislators who swore oaths to uphold state laws.
There was a time when Matty could pull strings in the dark.
After 9/11, using the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in Manhattan as a pretext, Matty stole a section of a city of Detroit park that he needed as part of the U.S. site for his planned “twin” bridge to replace the old and decrepit Ambassador. For years, that theft remained unreported, and in fact to this day it remains unreported by Detroit’s mainline newspapers.
Early this year, the new Republican governor, Rick Snyder, announced that building the new bridge was a top priority for his administration.
That got everybody’s attention.
Matty heard the governor loud and clear.
But now, with the governor pushing the bridge and the Legislature reacting, Matty’s shenanigans — hiring super-flack Dick Morris, showering large amounts of money on legislators and inundating media with tsunamis full of lies — the bridge became a hot story. It was hard to ignore the crassness and megalomaniac egotism of Matty’s behavior.
His mantra was simple: “Billionaires have it their way.”
It worked.
Sort of.
By proving that money talks louder than truth, Matty also taught a powerful lesson: Money corrupts, and absolute money corrupts absolutely.
When you are a billionaire whose resources dwarf those of the state and its elected governor, and when you buy off a large portion of the people elected to look after the public welfare, and when you do your corrupting in full view, you have suddenly bcome, unwittingly, a Professor of Venality.
You have taught us a powerful lesson, Matty.
You, Matty Moroun, are bigger than the state.
You, the Titan of the Bridge, have bested the governor.
Your problem now, Matty, is that it would have been better if you had not made it so obvious how fully you were corrupting our government.
The good old days when you could padlock a public boat launch and seize part of a city park without anyone knowing it are over.
Professor Matty, you have taught us a powerful lesson.
You have shown how completely you and your bully-boy big bucks can subvert the common good.
Now, those of us who have been your rapt though unwilling students must ask ourselves a question:
What are we going to do with the knowledge you have given to us?
