Man Can't Sue Judge Who Had Affair With His Wife During Child-Support Case

 

That's the ruling of the Sixth Circuit Appeals court in a case brought by a Detroit man against disgraced Wayne County former judge Wade McCree Jr.

McCree, the son of the first black Justice to sit on the Sixth Circuit was disrobed and lost his judgeship for cute tricks like propositioning bailiffs, having sex in his chambers, trading sex for judicial rulings, sending inappropriate selfies and other misconduct was being sued by a Detroit man who the former judge slapped with outrageously high child support payments - while Judge McCree was having an affair with the other litigant in the case, the man's former wife. Mccree was sexting her from the bench, having sex with her in his judicial chambers and actively enjoying an affair that ultimately ended in an abortion.

 

The Michigan Supreme Court removed him from the bench and he was subsequently suspended without pay for 6 years, something the Michigan Supreme Court imposed because they honestly thought McCree could easily win reelection on racial grounds in Wayne County regardless of his carrying on.

But the Sixth Circuit held that Judge McCree couldn’t be sued civilly for any harms he caused while on the bench, regardless of his record.

According to the strict letter of the law, they're correct. Judicial civil immunity was upheld in Bradley v. Fisher, 80 U.S. 335, 348 (1871):

If civil actions could be maintained… against the judge, because the losing party should see fit to allege in his complaint that the acts of the judge were done with partiality, or maliciously, or corruptly, the protection essential to judicial independence would be entirely swept away.

Since then, courts have consistently ruled against plaintiffs attempting to sue judges.

There have been a few successful cases (In 1996 in Tennessee, a juvenile court judge who was accused of violating the civil rights of three women by sexually assaulting them and threatening to take their kids away if they reported it was denied judicial immunity by the same 6th Circuit) but not many.

Detroit attorney Joel Sklar, who represented the plaintiff in this case wants to take it to the Supreme Court.

“This conduct is absurd,” Sklar said. “It’s so beyond description. A judge uses his chambers to have sex with a litigant? ... If this isn’t too far, what is too far?”

There has been a movement, albeit a small one to waive judicial immunity in cases where a judge's misconduct has caused him to be removed from th ebench. We'll see if the Supremes hear this one.
 

Obama To Spend $100M In Taxpayer Dollars In Stealth Bailout Of Detroit

President Obama has decided to secretly bail out Detroit and make its corrupt pension plan whole at the rest of the nations' expense.Which of course, means he lied about his commitment not to do so.

In order to sneak this past the American people, the regime is labeling this as 'blight remediation,' but the fine print allows the new city manager to shove it into the city's pension funds, which were looted over several decades by Detroit's Democrat politicians and corrupt public employee union bosses.

As the Detroit Free Press reported, the money's coming from a secret $7.6-billion slush fund the Obama Administration established called the the Hardest Hit Fund designed to help those 18 states hardest hit by the real estate collapse. Surprise, surprise, 11 of those 18 states (and the ones getting most of the cash) are either deep Blue enclaves or battle ground states with predominantly black urban Democrat populations. And the 7 of those states that are Red States likewise have significant black populations, like Georgia's urban Democrat stronghold in Atlanta. There's also looks like there might be an interesting correlation here between the areas hardest hit and a population of certain borrowers who received loans from Fannie and Freddie they weren't really qualified for normally based on those sharply reduced, politically correct underwriting standards doesn't there? And while the Democrats who controlled congress after January 2007 fought off any attempts at oversight of Fannie and Freddie during the Bush years.

Michigan is already the recipient of almost half a billion taxpayer dollars, and Detroit already received $320 million of your tax dollars in a separate bailout, so this $100M specifically earmarked for Detroit's pension funds is lagniappe, (a little extra) as they say in N'awlins.

So aside from the fact it's being done in secret without congressional oversight, why is this so outrageous?

First off, because it's racial politics written in big letters and a blatant political bribe to Detroit's public employee unions with the midterms coming on.

Second, because it sets a horrific precedent.Lots of cities whom have been Democrat ruled for decades have underwater pension funds. Looking at what Detroit's getting, what we're looking at is the old 'train pulling' logic..'hey sweetie, you did it for him, ain't I good enough?'

And finally, because of the nature of how Detroit's pension fund was looted. You see, while the politicians and union officials got the biggest , the rest of the pension recipients shared in the swag, receiving a '13th check' every year instead of any profits being re-invested to keep the fund solvent. They received it as what amounts to a political bribe to keep voting the some politicos and union bosses back into power no matter whether the fund did well or poorly.The constant looting of the pension funds was largely covered by simply raising taxes or diverting other revenues into it.

Meanwhile Americans with private pensions and 401K's aren't getting any bailouts and are getting hammered by higher and higher taxes to pay for the excesses of places like Detroit...and the other mismanaged Blue urban strongholds and public employee unions that are going to get in line behind Detroit for their share.

China's Newest City: Detroit?

 

A federal judge has ruled that Detroit's bankruptcy proceedings can move forward, in spite of the attempts at sabotage by the city's all black, all Democrat city council:

A federal judge ruled on Tuesday that Detroit could proceed into bankruptcy and cut pensions to address its fiscal woes.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Steven Rhodes affirmed that the Motor City was indeed insolvent and certified that it could move forward with plans to eliminate nearly $20 billion in debt. Half of that shortfall comes from the city’s defined benefit pension system, which was designed to guarantee workers a portion of their salary for life.

Rhodes said Detroit must provide a pension haircut in order to address the budget deficit.

“It has long been understood that bankruptcy law entails the impairment of contracts,” Rhodes said, while pledging that he “will not lightly or casually exercise power […] to impair pensions.”

Ordinarily, I would have a great deal of sympathy for retirees here. A pension is a contract, and should be honored. In this particular case, I do not, because of the way Detroit's politicians, in collusion with the public employee unions collaborated to create a fiscal disaster.

Detroit's politicians, starting when  five term Mayor Coleman 'I don't know nothin' about no Krugerands' Young took over in the 1970's set out to pillage what was at one time the most prosperous city in America with sweetheart deals  to various cronies, raising the tax base and rewarding the public employee unions with ever more opulent contracts and pension plans ..which in turn fattened their own coffers, either as campaign contributions or outright bribes.

Now that the bankruptcy has been approved,state appointed  Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr can restructure the ridiculous pension plans, and the ruling also allows Orr to restructure the union contracts.

Exactly how Detroit's pension plans got into this state is another reason I have little or no sympathy about their being restructured.

The theory behind pension plans is pretty simple. An employer and its employees contribute funds every month that are invested in certain vehicles like stocks and bonds, with the idea that retiree benefits with be eventually paid out of the profits. It's similar to an old, time tested strategy known as dollar cost averaging - you commit a certain percentage of your earnings to investment, and with even normally competent management, good years average out with not so good years to give you a decent profit on your investment over time.

Once Mayor Young took over as Detroit's first black mayor, Detroit started doing things differently. When the investments did well, instead of leaving them in the fund and re-investing them for further profit, Detroit paid its retirees a 'thirteenth check'. When the investments didn't do so well, that 13th check continued anyway, so there was a constant looting of the pension funds that was largely covered by simply raising taxes or diverting other revenues into it. And the ruling powers in Detroit, including the union bosses had a personal incentive to keep the status quo going, as many of them were dipping directly into the pension funds. That is one of the reasons former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is now a guest of the federal government.

Most of the current retirees voted en masse for politicians like Young and Kilpatrick, quite possibly on racial grounds. And as long as the money kept rolling in, no matter whom it was stolen from, they were content. Now, there's going to be a reckoning because there has to be.

So what does this have to do with China?

As I pointed out before, Detroit's problems are systemic, and are a result of the city's current population and a certain way of thinking. Orr won't be there forever, and the next election will see the current city council or others like them re-elected.

However, there may be change in the air. Forbes reports that Detroit is the fourth most popular destination for Chinese real estate investors:

“While the bankruptcy is viewed as a bad thing elsewhere, it raised the exposure level of Detroit’s real estate market in China,” says Evonne Xu, a Michigan attorney catering to Chinese purchasers. {...}

Chinese shoppers can’t resist a bargain. Where else can you buy a two-story home in the U.S. for $39? China Central Television, the state broadcaster, in March reported that two houses in Detroit cost the same as a pair of leather shoes. No wonder a poster on Sina Weibo, the Twitter-like service, asked, “Seven-hundred thousand people, quiet, clean air, no pollution, democracy—what are you waiting for?”

Who says the Chinese are waiting? Dongdu International Group of Shanghai bought, sight unseen, two downtown icons, the David Stott building for $4.2 million and the Detroit Free Press building for $9.4 million, both at auction this September.

Moreover, Chinese purchasers are making bulk purchases of “inexpensive properties”—those selling for $25,000 or less—in the rings surrounding the city center. “They’re banking on the downtown resurgence spiraling out into those rings,” explains Kelly Sweeney of Coldwell Banker Weir Manuel. Mainland parties often buy at tax and foreclosure sales, hold their property, and patiently wait for appreciation.

The Chinese certainly have made an impact on the locals in Detroit. “I have people calling and saying, ‘I’m serious—I wanna buy 100, 200 properties,’ ” said Caroline Chen, a real estate broker in nearby Troy, Michigan, to Quartz.com. “They say ‘We don’t need to see them. Just pick the good ones.’ ” Chen reports that one of her colleagues sold 30 properties to a Chinese investor.

Now this is an interesting development.

Here in my local area, I saw a community that was essentially a largely blue collar and middle class bedroom suburb go through a similar transition, as Chinese immigrants and investors bought up the modestly priced properties, refurbished them and began moving in. A local realtor told me that Chinese firms were actually sending brochures and video tours of properties to potential Chinese buyers overseas.

Here's what happened in the space of less than a decade, as the Chinese became the majority in the city:

The real estate and commercial markets soared because of the new demand, with hundreds of new Chinese-owned businesses opening their doors, totally rejuvenating the moribund downtown sections and providing a vast increase in the tax base, which allowed the city to spend more on development, community programs and services.

The city had never had a huge crime rate, but what crime there was plummeted to almost nothing, and after a few years, the local public schools showed a huge increase in test scores.

Local government had its occasional bits of corruption, but they were very small time, detected promptly and stopped. The city's government mostly remained fiscally prudent and responsible.

With the exception of increased street traffic and occasional language difficulties, the small city simply became a much nicer place to live and work.

Now the city I'm talking about had nothing like Detroit's inherent problems, but the effect that the change in demographics made was pretty noticeable. If the Chinese begin moving into Detroit, I think that MoTown actually has a chance of rejuvenating itself.

Culture matters.

Corruption In Action - Detroit Gets $320 Million Federal Bailout

Back when Detroit's financial woes heated up, Detroit City councilwoman JoAnn Watson made a racially oriented demand that President Obama bail them out, saying, "Our people in an overwhelming way supported the re-election of this president and there ought to be a quid pro quo and you ought to exercise leadership on that."



As I wrote at the time, I trust you know exactly whom Ms. Watson meant by 'our people'. And given the almost certain probability of voter fraud in Wayne County, what she meant by 'support'.

Well, it may been a while coming, but President Obama saw to it that his friends in Detroit got a little somethin' somethin'. Shutdown or no shutdown, sequester or no sequester, Detroit just received $320 million of your tax dollars.

Now, the Regime would have it that this is certainly not a bailout. They're calling it a stimulus. But just like Obama's other stimulus,it seems like the money is mainly going as a payoff to the president's political allies rather then being being used to restructure debt or create any actual jobs.

The Obama Administration is being fairly closed mouthed about this. All they'll reveal is that the funds came from FEMA, Homeland Security, HUD and the TARP bailout funds, and no one seems to know who actually authorized it or put the package together.

As the normally Obama friendly Christian Science Monitor reported, another oddity is that most the money is supposedly earmarked for programs already being funded by places like the Ford, Kresge, and Knight Foundations. The reason for the apparent duplication will become evident when you realize where the money is actually going.

As I reported earlier, there has been a running war between the entirely black Detroit City Council and Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr ( who is also black, not that it matters to the Council), who filed bankruptcy after he was appointed to try and sort out the dysfunctional city's finances by Governor Rick Snyder.

Part of what Orr is trying to accomplish involves changing some of the sweetheart contracts the City Council and people like incarcerated Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick made with the public employee unions in exchange for campaign swag and votes that allowed them to rule what was once America's most prosperous city as their personal fiefdom.

Aside from trying to restructure the ridiculously opulent pension plans, the bankruptcy also allows Orr to restructure the union contracts. And therein lies the real story behind the 'stimulus', which is exactly what this is, unless we want to use the more appropriate term 'bribe'.

You see, the majority of the funds come with some interesting strings attached. They require that the city ceases any attempt to change the existing union contracts and pay what are referred to as 'prevailing union wages', thus giving the City Council and the unions a huge weapon to use against any reforms Kevyn Orr might try to push through, since the money's available for the status quo courtesy of the American taxpayer.

Ditto when it comes to the pension plans. The Motor City's pension managers are insisting that the pensions are only underfunded by a mere $634 million, so no reform is necessary. Orr, a bankruptcy attorney originally from Washington DC has reports from his accountants showing the shortfall as a much more realistic $3 billion. With the arrival of the ObamaMoney , the opponents of any pension reform (again, mostly the unions) have another weapon to use.

It's worth mentioning, by the way, exactly how Detroit's pension plans got into this state.

The theory behind pension plans is pretty simple. An employer and its employees contribute funds every month that are invested in certain vehicles like stocks and bonds, with the idea that retiree benefits with be eventually paid out of the profits. It's similar to an old, time tested strategy known as dollar cost averaging - you commit a certain percentage of your earnings to investment, and with even normally competent management, good years average out with not so good years to give you a decent profit on your investment over time.

After five term Mayor Coleman 'I don't know nothin' about no Krugerands' Young took over in the 1970's, the City of Detroit started doing things differently. When the investments did well, instead of leaving them in the fund and re-investing them for further profit, Detroit payed its retirees a 'thirteenth check'. When the investments didn't do so well, that 13th check continued anyway, so there was a constant looting of the pension funds that was largely covered by simply raising taxes or diverting other revenues into it. Even a drug addled southside crack dealer would have realized that this was unsustainable, especially as the city's tax base moved away to avoid skyrocketing crime and taxes. But the ruling powers in Detroit had a personal incentive to keep the status quo, as many of them were dipping directly into the pension funds. That is one of the reasons former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is now a guest of the federal government.

Another question this raises..a lot of American cities are in trouble. Are federal bailout finds now going to be distributed on a 'party loyalty' or even a racial basis? Congressman Jerry McNerney, the Democrat representative of a district that includes the city of Stockton, California wrote President Obama and asked this question directly without getting a response. He wanted to know why aid was not extended to Stockton, a city which declared bankruptcy last year, “and suffers from many of the same problems as Detroit”.

I wouldn't expect an answer anytime soon if I were Rep. McNerney.

As for Detroit, let's remember something. This was not Hurricane Katrina or 9/11 or Hurricane Sandy . There was no emergency here that required the use of federal funds. This was merely a Chicago-style marker for money and services received, paid out from our tax dollars to President Obama's union allies, nothing less and nothing more.

Detroit's plight is due to over forty years of racial politics and Democrat rule, and the outright theft, greed and criminal mismanagement by politicians the people of Detroit continued to elect for decades, and will likely continue to elect in the future. The unions in particular have no claim on any bailout, since they were part of the same circle of corruption and benefited from it. Even worse, without attacking the core problems of Detroit (which may prove impossible, given th ecurrent population) nothing's going to change no matter how much federal aid pours in.

The Obama Administration has stated that Detroit cannot expect to receive any more federal aid. I'd rate that statement to be as true as President Obama's famous "If you like your doctor and your health plan, you'll be able to keep them."

Especially as we get closer to the midterms.

City Government Detroit Style - Force More Businesses To Close Down!

You would think that in a bankrupt city where the population is fleeing and the tax base is imploding, the city government would be doing its best to encourage small businesses and economic activity.

Not in Detroit!

Instead, the city government is doing its very best to harass and shake down small businesses that have managed to survive the deluge, while making it as arcane and difficult for new businesses to open their doors as possible.

I've said this before, but it bears repeating. Detroit wasn't killed by the decline of industry, or an economic downturn. The decline began in the 1970's after five term mayor Coleman Young, a former member of the Communist Party and the National Negro Labor Council, a communist front group Young started with Soviet agent Paul Robeson was elected. Once the self designated 'chief mutha f***er in charge' and a compliant, mostly black and entirely Democrat city council took over, they proceeded to milk the city dry with a combination racial politics, corruption and and unfettered rule by Democrats and the public employee unions. 

Young essentially presiding over the city's decline. By the end of his fifth term, the population of Detroit had shrunk by more than half as middle class taxpayers and businesses fled, the school system became dysfunctional, and taxes skyrocketed along with the crime rate.

When Mayor Young's close friend and political adviser William L. Hart was convicted for stealing $2.6 million from city funds and when other Young cronies in the police department, school boards, sanitation, and other departments took the fall in what the FBI called 'a large circle of corruption surrounding the mayor', a substantial amount of the evidence they used was from wiretaps on Mayor Young's own home telephone.

The only reason he stayed out of jail is because the Carter Justice Department didn't want to indict a popular black Democrat mayor and risk antagonizing a reliable voting bloc.

Young's successors like Kwame Kilpatrick, now a guest of the State of Michigan continued this legacy on steroids, if not the same ability to get away with it.

Here's the politically incorrect truth. You could flood Detroit with public bail out money and pay off all the city's creditors, but in a few years Detroit would be in exactly the same predicament and be howling for more. To 'fix ' Detroit (if it's even possible) you'd have to get rid of the city's dysfunctional governing class and the mindset they bring with them - and probably a lot of the sort of people that have continued to vote for them while the city they live in fell apart around them.

Detroit Is Going To The Dogs - Literally

As Detroit continues to circle the drain, there's yet another hazard to contend with - an estimated 50,000 stray dogs roaming the streets and vacant homes menacing residents and city workers.

To make it even more interesting, pit bulls dominate the dog packs, due to the popularity of the breed in the largely black city as watchdogs and for dog fighting.

Many of the dogs have simply been abandoned and left to fend for themselves as the owners move on, something uniquely cruel when it comes the Man's Best Friend.The dogs often roam in packs and shelter in Detroit's abandoned homes, where rats can also be hunted as a food source.

And the bankrupt city, as things stand right now, can't really do much about it.

“With these large open expanses with vacant homes, it’s as if you designed a situation that causes dog problems,” said Harry Ward, head of animal control.

Ward has four officers to cover the 139-square-mile (360-square-kilometer) city seven days a week, 11 fewer than when he first took over animal control in 2008. He has one dog-bite investigator, down from three.

Back in July, the City shelters actually had to stop picking up stray animals for a month because the city hadn’t paid a service that hauls away euthanized animals for cremation at a cost of about $20,000 a year. The freezers were packed with carcasses, and pens were full of live animals until that bill was paid.

In some particularly bad areas, the U.S. Postal Service has had to temporarily halt mail delivery in some neighborhoods because of attacks by aggressive dogs, said Ed Moore, a Detroit-area spokesman. He said there were 25 reports of mail carriers bitten by dogs in Detroit from October through July.

Another problem is that many of the residents of Detroit who still remain and own dogs aren't bothering to get them neutered, are not getting them their rabies or distemper shots and are simply letting them wander. There simply isn't any budget to enforce these measures any more.

Yes, there are a number of jokes I could make here, but to tell you the truth, I feel sorry for the dogs. They at least did nothing to create this and deserve better.

Detroit To Obama: 'We Voted You In..Now Give Us That Obama Money!"

After the voting comes the demands for payment using other people's money, of course:

The city of Detroit faces a major financial crisis and one member of city council thinks President Barack Obama should step in and help.

City Council member JoAnn Watson said Tuesday the citizens support of Obama in last month's election was enough reason for the president to bailout the struggling the city. (Click the video player to listen)

"Our people in an overwhelming way supported the re-election of this president and there ought to be a quid pro quo and you ought to exercise leadership on that," said Watson. "Of course, not just that, but why not?"

"After the election of Jimmy Carter, the honorable Coleman Alexander Young, he went to Washington, D.C. He came home with some bacon," said Watson. "That's what you do."

I trust you know exactly whom Ms. Watson means by 'our people'. And given the almost certain probability of voter fraud in Wayne County, what she means by 'support'.

I love the mention of former Detroit mayor Coleman Young, an advanced practitioner of racial politics. A former member of the Communist Party and the National Negro Labor Council, a communist front group Young started with Soviet agent Paul Robeson, Young was Detroit's first black mayor who used to habitually refer to himself as 'the chief muthaf**ker in charge'.

He served five terms as the city's demographics changed, essentially presiding over the city's decline. By the end of his last term, the population of Detroit had shrunk by more than half as middle class taxpayers and businesses fled and the crime rate was far higher than it was before he became mayor.

And bacon? Whatever Young got from President Carter, he and his cronies certainly cut themselves a healthy slice. When Coleman's close friend and political adviser William L. Hart was convicted for stealing $2.6 million from city funds and when other Young cronies in the police department, school boards, sanitation, and other departments likewise took the fall in what the FBI called 'a large circle of corruption surrounding the mayor', a substantial amount of the evidence they used was from wiretaps on Mayor Young's home telephone.

The only reason he stayed out of jail is because the Carter Justice department thought it inadvisable to indict a popular black Democrat mayor and risk antagonizing a reliable voting bloc.

Young's successors like Kwame Kilpatrick, now a guest of the State of Michigan have continued this legacy with gusto, if not the same ability to get away with it.

For that matter, there are certain rumblings about Councilwoman Watson's own tax situation.

Detroit is flat broke,after decades of Democrat rule, leftist high tax and spend policies, corruption and racial politics.

But because it is essentially a black-run city, any attempt to step in with an intervention has led to charges of racism.

Michigan Governor Rick Scott actually tried to set up an $80 million bail out of Detroit in exchange for the creation of a nine-member Financial Advisory Board to oversee the city's financial restructuring,with six members appointed by the Governor and two by the city council. As an example of how corrupt the current city council is, instead of the money going directly through their hands it was to be put into an escrow account that could be drawn on after expenditures were approved by the committee.

The city council turned it down, and the city attorney, Krystal Crittendon, sued the State of Michigan for what she claimed where monies owed by the state to Detroit.The suit was tossed out of court, and Detroit's situation is essentially in limbo.

The idea of bailing out the current city government of Detroit and throwing good money after bad is not something that inspires confidence.