Obama Administration Proposes Child Labor Laws Down on the Farm
“A proposal from the Obama administration to prevent children from doing farm chores has drawn plenty of criticism from rural-district members of Congress. But now it’s attracting barbs from farm kids themselves.
The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land.
Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work “in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.”
“Prohibited places of employment,” a Department press release read, “would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.”
The new regulations, first proposed August 31 by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, would also revoke the government’s approval of safety training and certification taught by independent groups like 4-H and FFA, replacing them instead with a 90-hour federal government training course.
Rossie Blinson, a 21-year-old college student from Buis Creek, N.C., told The Daily Caller that the federal government’s plan will do far more harm than good.
“The main concern I have is that it would prevent kids from doing 4-H and FFA projects if they’re not at their parents’ house,” said Blinson.”
Comments »“If I Wanted America to Fail”
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ-4gnNz0vc 450 300] Comments »
Supreme Court Justices Express Support for Arizona Immigration Law
“Supreme Court justices expressed support for the Arizona immigration law at oral arguments today, according to CBS’ chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford.
Even some of the court’s liberal justices seemed to support the most controversial part of the law: the part that requires officials to check the immigration status of people during routine traffic stops and anyone detained or arrested. From NBC:
Based on comments during Wednesday’s oral arguments on the case, even some of the court’s liberal justices seemed to find no strong objection to the most controversial part of the law, which requires local police to check on the immigration status of anyone they detain or arrest.
It’s another blow to the Obama administration, which last month endured the fallout from a more skeptical than anticipated Supreme Court on the Affordable Care Act. ”
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Romney launches his campaign as presumptive nominee
“(Reuters) – Mitt Romney was to launch himself as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee after an expected sweep of five primaries on Tuesday, turning his attention to the November general election showdown with President Barack Obama.
In a speech in New Hampshire, Romney planned to pivot to the campaign against Obama and lay out his vision for the country and his differences with the incumbent.
“After 43 primaries and caucuses, many long days and not a few long nights, I can say with confidence, and gratitude, that you have given me a great honor and solemn responsibility,” Romney will say, according to excerpts released by his campaign.
“A better America begins tonight,” he said in the excerpts.
Obama and Romney already have engaged in heavy combat in recent weeks, which will likely increase in the six months of campaigning heading up to the November 6 election to decide whether to give Obama another four years in the White House.
Romney effectively won the Republican race on April 10 when his top rival, Rick Santorum, suspended his White House campaign, but he planned to claim victory in Tuesday’s speech in the general election battleground state of New Hampshire….”
Comments »Government Subsidies Gone Wrong
Equity Killer: French President Elect Hollande Pledges to Reverse Austerity Measures
“French Socialist presidential candidate Francois Hollande’s campaign pledge to reverse Europe’s austerity drive met German resistance, pointing to tension between the region’s two biggest economies.
Hollande, who polls show will oust incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in May 6 elections, yesterday said the absence of economic growth prospects explained the record score for anti- euro National Front leader Marine Le Pen in the April 22 first round….”
Comments »The GOP’s New Southern Strategy
“North Carolina State Senator Eric Mansfield was born in 1964, a year before the passage of the Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the right to vote for African-Americans. He grew up in Columbus, Georgia, and moved to North Carolina when he was stationed at Fort Bragg. He became an Army doctor, opening a practice in Fayetteville after leaving the service. Mansfield says he was always “very cynical about politics” but decided to run for office in 2010 after being inspired by Barack Obama’s presidential run.
He ran a grassroots campaign in the Obama mold, easily winning the election with 67 percent of the vote. He represented a compact section of northwest Fayetteville that included Fort Bragg and the most populous areas of the city. It was a socioeconomically diverse district, comprising white and black and rich and poor sections of the city. Though his district had a black voting age population (BVAP) of 45 percent, Mansfield, who is African-American, lives in an old, affluent part of town that he estimates is 90 percent white. Many of his neighbors are also his patients.
But after the 2010 census and North Carolina’s once-per-decade redistricting process — which Republicans control by virtue of winning the state’s General Assembly for the first time since the McKinley administration — Mansfield’s district looks radically different. It resembles a fat squid, its large head in an adjoining rural county with little in common with Mansfield’s previously urban district, and its long tentacles reaching exclusively into the black neighborhoods of Fayetteville. The BVAP has increased from 45 to 51 percent, as white voters were surgically removed from the district and placed in a neighboring Senate district represented by a white Republican whom GOP leaders want to protect in 2012. Mansfield’s own street was divided in half, and he no longer represents most of the people in his neighborhood. His new district spans 350 square miles, roughly the distance from Fayetteville to Atlanta. Thirty-three voting precincts in his district have been divided to accommodate the influx of new black voters. “My district has never elected a nonminority state senator, even though minorities were never more than 45 percent of the vote,” Mansfield says. “I didn’t need the help. I was doing OK.”
Mansfield’s district is emblematic of how the redistricting process has changed the political complexion of North Carolina, as Republicans attempt to turn this racially integrated swing state into a GOP bastion, with white Republicans in the majority and black Democrats in the minority for the next decade. “We’re having the same conversations we had forty years ago in the South, that black people can only represent black people and white people can only represent white people,” says Mansfield. “I’d hope that in 2012 we’d have grown better than that.” Before this year, for example, there were no Senate districts with a BVAP of 50 percent or higher. Now there are nine. A lawsuit filed by the NAACP and other advocacy groups calls the redistricting maps “an intentional and cynical use of race that exceeds what is required to ensure fairness to previously disenfranchised racial minority voters.”
And it’s not just happening in North Carolina. In virtually every state in the South, at the Congressional and state level, Republicans — to protect and expand their gains in 2010 — have increased the number of minority voters in majority-minority districts represented overwhelmingly by black Democrats while diluting the minority vote in swing or crossover districts held by white Democrats. “What’s uniform across the South is that Republicans are using race as a central basis in drawing districts for partisan advantage,” says Anita Earls, a prominent civil rights lawyer and executive director of the Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “The bigger picture is to ultimately make the Democratic Party in the South be represented only by people of color.” The GOP’s long-term goal is to enshrine a system of racially polarized voting that will make it harder for Democrats to win races on local, state, federal and presidential levels. Four years after the election of Barack Obama, which offered the promise of a new day of postracial politics in states like North Carolina, Republicans are once again employing a Southern Strategy that would make Richard Nixon and Lee Atwater proud.
The consequences of redistricting in North Carolina — one of the most important swing states in the country — could determine who controls Congress and the presidency in 2012. Democrats hold seven of the state’s thirteen Congressional seats, but after redistricting they could control only three — the largest shift for Republicans at the Congressional level in any state this year. Though Obama won eight of the thirteen districts, under the new maps his vote would be contained in only three heavily Democratic districts — all of which would have voted 68 percent or higher for the president in 2008 — while the rest of the districts would have favored John McCain by 55 percent or more. “GOP candidates could win just over half of the statewide vote for Congress and end up with 62 percent to 77 percent of the seats,” found John Hood, president of the conservative John Locke Foundation….”
Comments »A Look at Who is Bank Rolling Superpacs
Obama, Romney and Goldman Sachs – 2012
[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWBzUuo9_eo 450 300]
Comments »EPA: Pollution or Politics?
Comments »WASHINGTON (AP) — A polluted drainage ditch that once flowed with industrial waste from Lake Charles, La., petrochemical plants teems with overgrown, wild plants today.
A light-rail line zips past the spot where a now-defunct Portland, Ore., gasoline station advertised in 1972 that it had run out of gas.
A smoking Jersey City, N.J., dump piled with twisted, rusty metal has disappeared, along with the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan that were its backdrop.
Forty years after the Environmental Protection Agency sent an army of nearly 100 photographers across the country to capture images at the dawn of environmental regulation, The Associated Press went back for Earth Day this year to see how things have changed. It is something the agency never got to do because the Documerica program, as it was called, died in 1978, the victim of budget cuts.
AP photographers returned to more than a dozen of those locations in recent weeks, from Portland to Cleveland and Corpus Christi, Texas. Of the 20,000 photos in the archive, the AP selected those that focused on environmental issues, rather than the more general shots of everyday life in the 1970s.
Gone are the many obvious signs of pollution — clouds of smoke billowing from industrial chimneys, raw sewage flowing into rivers, garbage strewn over beaches and roadsides — that heightened environmental awareness in the 1970s, and led to the first Earth Day and the EPA’s creation in 1970. Such environmental consciousness caused Congress to pass almost unanimously some of the country’s bedrock environmental laws in the years that followed.
Today’s pollution problems aren’t as easy to see or to photograph. Some in industry and politics question whether environmental regulation has gone too far and whether the risks are worth addressing, given their costs.
Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney has called for the firing of EPA chief Lisa Jackson, while GOP rival Newt Gingrich has said the EPA should be replaced altogether. Jackson has faced tough questioning on Capitol Hill so often the in past two years that a top Republican quipped that she needs her own parking spot.
“To a certain extent, we are a victim of our own success,” said William Ruckelshaus, who headed the EPA when it came into existence under Republican President Richard Nixon and was in charge during the Documerica project. “Right now, EPA is under sharp criticism partially because it is not as obvious to people that pollution problems exist and that we need to deal with them.”
Environmental laws that passed Congress so easily in Ruckelshaus’ day are now at the center of a partisan dispute between Republicans and Democrats. Dozens of bills have been introduced to limit environmental protections that critics say will lead to job losses and economic harm, and there are those who question what the vast majority of scientists accept — that the burning of fossil fuels is causing global warming.
In the 1970s, the first environmental regulations were just starting to take effect, with widespread support. Now, according to some officials in the oil and gas and electric utility industries, which are responsible for the bulk of emissions and would bear the greatest costs, the EPA has gone overboard with rules.
For instance, Documerica photographers captured a wave of coal-fired power plants under construction. Republicans and the industry now say environmental regulations are partly to blame for shuttering some of the oldest and dirtiest coal plants.
Jim DiPeso of ConservAmerica, a group that recently changed its name from Republicans for Environmental Protection, says the EPA is caught in the center of a perfect storm. “This time of greater cynicism about government, more economic anxiety and the fact that the problems are not immediately apparent, has created this political problem for EPA,” he said.
In an interview, Jackson said she believes that people in the United States still want to protect the environment. “There’s a large gulf between the rhetoric inside the Beltway to do everything from cut back on EPA to get rid of the whole place, and what the American people would actually stand for,” she said. “It’s very easy to make rash statements without thinking about what that means to the health of everyday Americans.”
A 2010 Pew Research Center survey showed that 57 percent of those questioned held a favorable view of the EPA, compared with a 1997 poll that showed 69 percent with a positive view of the agency. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll taken last year found that 71 percent of people surveyed said that the government should continue provide money to the EPA to enforce regulations to address global warming and other environmental issues.
“We are not done. We still have challenges we have to face,” Jackson said.
Japan Forgives $3.7 Billion of Myanmar Debt
Comments »TOKYO (AP) — Japan said Saturday it will take steps to forgive about 300 billion yen ($3.7 billion) of Myanmar’s debt and resume full-fledged development aid as a way to support the country’s democratic and economic reforms.
The government made the announcement after a meeting between Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda and Myanmar President Thein Sein following a summit with leaders from the five nations of the Mekong River region.
Myanmar’s military junta last year handed power to a nominally civilian government that has surprised the world with a series of sweeping political and economic reforms, including releasing prominent political prisoners and allowing democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi to contest recent parliamentary by-elections.
“Reforms in Myanmar are steadily moving forward. As Myanmar approaches a crucial stage in its democratization, Japan will all the more encourage Myanmar’s efforts to reform,” Noda said at a news conference with Thein Sein. “We hereby pledge to strengthen our assistance to the country so that the Burmese people will be able to enjoy the fruit of its reforms.”
Myanmar, also known as Burma, owes Japan about 500 billion yen from past development loans.
Of that amount, the Japanese government said in a statement that it will cancel 127.4 billion yen in loans due after April 2003. It will also forgive 176.1 billion yen in overdue charges accumulated over the past two decades after one year’s time as the two countries jointly monitor reforms.
Japan does not have sanctions on Myanmar, although it cut most government aid in 2003 after Suu Kyi was put under house arrest, which ended last November. Japan was Myanmar’s largest aid donor until 2003 and has continued small amounts of humanitarian grass-roots aid in health and education.
“On behalf of the Myanmar government and its people, I would like to express my gratitude to Japanese government officials and the people of Japan,” Thein Sein said. “The resolution of Myanmar’s debt issues as well as our cooperation and aid will be effective and helpful for the people’s efforts for the development and reform of Myanmar.”
Japanese companies had held back from investing in resource-rich Myanmar because they didn’t want to upset relations with the United States and the European Union, which have imposed sanctions on the country, and due to the lack of transparency in business laws.
Sarkozy, Hollande Heading To Run Off Election
Comments »PARIS (AP) — Socialist Francois Hollande and conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy are heading for a runoff election in their race for France’s presidency, according to partial official results in a vote that could alter the European political and economic landscape.
French voters defied expectations and handed a surprisingly strong third-place showing to far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who has run on an anti-immigrant platform aimed largely at Muslims. That could boost her influence on the French political scene, hand her party seats in parliament and affect relations with minorities.
With 75 percent of the vote counted, Hollande had 27.9 percent of ballots cast and Sarkozy 26.7 percent, according to figures released by the Interior Ministry after final polls closed.
Le Pen was in third with 19.2 percent of the vote so far. In fourth place was leftist firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon with 10.8 percent, followed by centrist Francois Bayrou with 9.2 percent and five other candidates with minimal support.
Turnout was also surprisingly high, projected by polling agencies at about 80 percent, despite concern that a campaign lacking a single overarching theme had failed to inspire voters.
Hollande, a 57-year-old who has worried investors with his pledges to boost government spending, pledged to cut France’s huge debts, boost growth and unite the French after Sarkozy’s divisive first term.
“Tonight I become the candidate of all the forces who want to turn one page and turn another,” Hollande, with a confidence and stately air he has often lacked during the campaign, told an exuberant crowd in his hometown of Tulle in southern France.
French Elections Begin With Strong Voter Turnout
Comments »PARIS (AP) — French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s career was on the line Sunday as voters turned out in solid numbers for the first round of France’s presidential election, a contest that could shake up Europe’s political landscape and approach to myriad economic troubles.
The first-round balloting will trim down a list of 10 candidates from across the political spectrum to two finalists for a May 6 runoff.
Polls for months have shown that conservative Sarkozy and Socialist Francois Hollande are likely to make the cut — and suggest Hollande would win the campaign finale. Many voters are turned off by conservative Sarkozy’s flashy style as they worry about jobs and the economy.
The Interior Ministry said early turnout figures showed an impressive 70.6 percent of France’s 44-million-plus voters cast ballots by 5 p.m. local time (1500 GMT) — less than the 73.8 percent in 2007 at the same time, but more than in the four previous races. Overall turnout in the 2007 first round was nearly 84 percent, the highest figure since the 1970s.
The campaign has been marked by frustration with the incumbent and the rise of the extremes. Voters may hand higher-than-expected support to far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen or Communist-backed firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon.
While they are not expected to win, a strong performance by one or all of them could influence the second-round vote. Centrist candidate Francois Bayrou may take votes from the mainstream, while the other five candidates are expected to receive low single-digit support.
Sarkozy and Hollande have pushed for a strong turnout on the idea that it would help the political mainstream and dilute the impact of more ideological voters.
“This is an election that will weigh on the future of Europe. That’s why many people are watching us,” said Hollande after voting in Tulle, a town in central France. “They’re wondering not so much what the winner’s name will be, but especially what policies will follow.”
“I am in a competition in which I must give new breath of life to my country and a new commitment to Europe,” he added.
Netherlands’ Politics Casts Cloud On Future EU Support
Comments »AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The Netherlands, a core euro zone member, was drawn into Europe’s debt crisis at the weekend when the government failed to agree on budget cuts, making elections almost unavoidable and casting doubt on its support for future euro zone measures.
Prime Minister Mark Rutte, whose centre-right coalition has been in power since October 2010, said on Saturday that crucial talks on budget cuts had collapsed after his ally Geert Wilders refused to do a deal, and that new elections were inevitable.
In the short term, the government must seek support for budget cuts from the opposition parties.
But uncertainty over the makeup of a new government, and waning voter support for bailouts and austerity measures, raised questions over Dutch backing for a fiscal responsibility pact seen as crucial to helping Europe cope with its debt crisis.
The catalyst for the crisis was Wilders, who refused to agree to 14-to-16 billion euros ($18.5-$21.1 billion) of budget cuts needed to bring a bloated budget deficit under control.
Now the euro-skeptic, anti-immigration politician has threatened to fight his campaign on a European battleground.
“The Freedom Party benches are unanimously against Brussels diktats and the attack on our elderly,” Wilders tweeted on Sunday, later telling Dutch news agency ANP that Europe would be in “sharp focus” during any coming election campaign.
Wilders most recently has lobbied to jettison the euro and return to the guilder, the old Dutch currency, and he is against immigration not only of Muslims but also of Poles and other central and eastern European members of the EU – views that strike a chord with his supporters.
His Freedom Party had a pact to support Rutte’s minority government in parliament, giving it the majority to pass legislation, but after seven weeks of budget talks, Wilders suddenly backed out just when a deal appeared close.
His supporters are against budget cuts, particularly cuts in welfare, health and unemployment benefits.
“This was a package that would damage our economy over coming years and increase unemployment. And all that to meet a demand made by Brussels, accepted by the Liberals, of reaching a 3 percent deficit in 2013,” he said on Saturday.
FRENCH SURPRISE! Le Pen is Mightier Than Le Left Expected
French presidential election: French polling agencies project up to 20% support for far-right candidate Marine Le Pen –
via @AP
More: Polling agencies project Hollande, Sarkozy to advance to French presidential runoff – @AP
Comments »Senate Will Get to the (Colombian) Bottom of this Secret Service Hooker Probe
A Senate committee will expand its probe into the U.S. Secret Service this week following a scandal involving prostitutes in Colombia in advance of a recent trip by the president.
The Homeland Security Committee will send the Secret Service “some questions this week, as the beginning of our broader investigation, asking whether… this was an exception, or is there anything in the records that show this is a pattern of misconduct that has gone on elsewhere by Secret Service agents on assignment, but off-duty?” Sen. Joe Lieberman, the committee chairman, told “Fox News Sunday.”
“Why wasn’t it noticed if that was the case? What’s the Secret Service going to do to make sure it never happens again?”
Some Secret Service members and agents allegedly brought back several prostitutes to a hotel in Cartagena, according to sources familiar with the U.S. government’s investigation.
The Secret Service says 12 members of the agency have been implicated in the incident.
Across the Sunday political talk shows, officials expressed confidence in Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan, saying they believe he has handled the scandal well and will get answers.
“History is full of cases where enemies have compromised” people with security or intelligence information through sex, said Lieberman, I-Connecticut. He added that based on what he has been told so far, “there is no evidence that information was compromised” in this case.
Down the road, the committee will hold a public hearing on the matter — perhaps more than one, Lieberman said.
“Anyone who’s found to be guilty” will lose his job, Rep. Peter King, Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
King told CNN last week that four investigators were assigned to his committee’s probe.
One person who was “partially exonerated” will instead likely face administrative action, King said.
In a letter sent to Sullivan on Friday, King listed a series of questions, including how many employees were aware of the alleged incident and how many total employees were in Cartagena in support of President Obama’s trip to the Summit of the Americas when the incident occurred earlier this month.
“Please provide a comprehensive, minute-by-minute timeline of all known actions, locations, and possible violations of U.S. or Colombia law,” codes of conduct, and directives, King wrote in the letter.
But King and other officials are quick to emphasize that those allegedly involved in cavorting with prostitutes at a hotel in Cartagena are the exceptions.
“In any organization things can go wrong,” President Obama’s chief campaign strategist David Axelrod told CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday. “I must say that in my experience the Secret Service has been completely professional, so impressive. I always felt like they were … willing to do anything to protect the president and the people around the president. And so this was really disappointing.
“Obviously we have to get to the bottom of it, but those problems should not denigrate the efforts of so many who do such a good job.”
Sen. Susan Collins, ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Carolyn Maloney of the House Oversight Committee suggested having more female agents could help avoid such scandals.
“I can’t help but wonder if there’d been more women as part of that detail if this ever would have happened,” Collins told ABC’s “This Week.”
Maloney agreed, and added that she was told 11% of agents in the Secret Service are women. The agency did not immediately confirm the figure to CNN Sunday.
“We probably need to diversify the Secret Service and have more minorities and more women,” she said.
Six Secret Service members have left their jobs in the wake of the incident in Cartagena, Colombia, which came while they were on a security detail in advance of President Obama’s trip for the Summit of the Americas.
One employee “has been cleared of serious misconduct, but will face administrative action,” the Secret Service said.
Five employees are on administrative leave and have had their security clearances temporarily revoked.
In addition, the U.S. military is investigating 11 of its own troops for possible heavy drinking and consorting with prostitutes.
White House staff have not been implicated in the controversy.
After the scandal broke, President Obama called for a “thorough” and “rigorous” invsetigation. “If it turns out that some of the allegations that have been made in the press are confirmed, then of course I’ll be angry,” he said.
Comments »GOP Hopefuls Jockeying for Position as Rubio Plays it Cool
Florida GOP Sen. Marco Rubio, continuing to play down talk of his possible selection as Mitt Romney’s running mate, on Sunday tried to shift the speculation to another Sunshine State Republican: former Gov. Jeb Bush.
Bush recently said he hoped Rubio would accept a potential offer from presumptive Republican presidential nominee Romney to serve on the ticket, calling it “an extraordinary combination.” Rubio said he feels Bush should do the same.
“That’s very nice of Jeb. I hope he’ll say yes if future President Romney asks him,” the senator said on CNN’sState of the Union. “I think he’d be a fantastic vice president.”
Comments »The Top Five Special Interest Groups Lobbying To Keep Marijuana Illegal
via The Big Picture
By Lee Fang posted Apr 20th 2012 at 9:04AM
Last year, over 850,000 people in America were arrested for marijuana-related crimes. Despite public opinion, the medical community, and human rights experts all moving in favor of relaxing marijuana prohibition laws, little has changed in terms of policy.
There have been many great books and articles detailing the history of the drug war. Part of America’s fixation with keeping the leafy green plant illegal is rooted in cultural and political clashes from the past.
However, we at Republic Report think it’s worth showing that there are entrenched interest groups that are spending large sums of money to keep our broken drug laws on the books:
Read the rest here.
Comments »Detroit Nullifies 48 Union Contracts, Mayor Takes Heat
Read here:
Comments »In the end, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing said, he didn’t really have a choice. He had to sign off on a consent agreement with the state or the city would have fallen under the control of an emergency manager.
“It was either sign the agreement or bring in an emergency manager — those were my options,” Bing said. “So with that as my option I had no choice but to sign the agreement.”
Today is the first time Bing has spoken at length about the agreement that was approved April 4. The mayor spoke with reporters this morning via speakerphone. Bing has been at home recuperating from a March 24 colon surgery and blood clots in his lungs.
In his absence members of Bing’s administration negotiated with state officials and crafted a consent agreement that offered the city no short-term bailout cash and demanded that the city rip up tentative agreements with its 48 labor unions. Bing said he is disappointed, especially about the union contracts, and will work to mend fences with labor leaders.
“That’s a personal relationship and I’ll have to get back involved in that,” he said. “I think they’re intelligent and basically good people. We’re going to have to sit down and once again see what we can agree upon…I was very appreciative of the relationship we have established with labor, and labor is still going to play a key role in bringing this city back.”
Under the consent agreement, if new labor contracts are not approved by July 15 the city can impose terms.
Bing said he hold no animosity toward Gov. Rick Snyder or State Treasurer Andy Dillon, because “my approach was and is, try to do what’s right for the citizens of Detroit.”
“It’s about looking forward, not about looking back,” he said.
