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THE WORLD NEEDS MORE MEN LIKE DETROIT’S MAYOR—DAVE BING

I remember listening to Dave Bing play ball on the radio….I may have seen Dave Bing on the basketball court. I remember reading about Dave Bing in my sports magazines, and admiring his skill….but I didn’t admire him nearly as much back then, and certainly for nothing as important, as I do today.
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Why did Dave Bing run for mayor of Detroit? Cassaundra says simply, “He felt he had to.”....Yes, people know Detroit is in bad shape ... but what do they really know? Do they know that the graduation rate for African-Americans in the Detroit Public School district is 20%? Do they know that the unemployment rate in the city was recently measured at 27%—and that by some estimates the actual number may be 20 to 25 percentage points higher? Do they know that the turnout in the May 5 special election to replace Kilpatrick, in which Bing first won the mayoralty, was only 15%?

Then there is the city’s deficit, estimated to be approximately $325 million. And the city’s median income, which in 2008 was $28,730—the lowest of any major city in the country.

Are you having fun yet, Mr. Mayor?

Dave Bing is a multi-millionaire businessman and an ex-All Star basketball player.
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Dave Bing is 67 years old…...

“He didn’t know the whole scope of it until he actually got in there,” Yvette says. “He knew it was bad, but he didn’t know it was as bad as it is.”

.... Bing usually arrives at his office by 7 a.m. Some days he gets there before most of his staff. The first thing he does is make the coffee: pot of regular, pot of hazelnut. Bing does not drink hazelnut coffee. But some of his staffers do, so he makes it….

After his victory became official, Bing held a brief press conference downstairs at the Doubletree. Somebody asked him if he would reach out to the unions. “It needs to be reciprocal,” Bing said.

Bing doesn’t see the world through the prism of “the tribe”....he expects the best of himself, and if you’re working for him, that’s “needs to be reciprocal”.

Hadn’t these union leaders ever heard of George Trapp? He was one of Bing’s Pistons teammates, and after they both retired, Bing hired Trapp to work for one of his auto-parts companies. Trapp wasn’t getting his work done. Bing fired him.

What about Campy Russell? He was another friend from Bing’s NBA days. Bing hired and fired him too.

Curtis Rowe, same thing: He played most of his career with Bing, went to work for him at Bing Steel, then got fired.

Bing told them all, and dozens of others, when they were hired: Do your work or you’re gone. It needs to be reciprocal. If they wanted a free ride, they were on the wrong train.

Some of these guys, and others, expected a break from Bing because they were ex-teammates - members of the tribe. But that really isn’t the way Bing sees the world, because it isn’t the world he grew up in.
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They should have known that about Bing. Where was his free ride when he ran down a street in his Washington, D.C., neighborhood, tripped and fell, and a nail plunged into his left eye? He was five years old. He has had fuzzy vision in that eye ever since.

He earned a basketball scholarship to Syracuse with that bad eye, became the second pick of the 1966 NBA draft, made three All-Star teams. Then, in a 1971 preseason game with the Pistons, Bing got poked in his right eye. He had a detached retina. People said his career was over. Who plays guard in the NBA with two bad eyes? Bing came back three months later.

His old teammates say he was never the same player again after the eye injury. He had blind spots in his field of vision. It was most apparent on the fast break, when he couldn’t even see some open teammates. No, Dave Bing was not the same player after that second eye injury. But he did play seven more years and make four more All-Star teams….

“I’ve not once in my life ever heard him complain about it,” Lanier says. “I mean, not one time.”

Dave Bing asks nothing of others that he hasn’t practiced himself….
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Can Bing bring Detroit back? Nobody knows. Some days even he seems to have his doubts. Detroit is a big city with more big problems than he can count. Bing can’t fold all the laundry and make all the beds.

But he will try. He says he thinks of himself as a statesman, not a politician. He seems almost to take pleasure in telling people what they don’t want to hear.

He will take on the unions and slash the city payroll. He will try to put more cops on the streets. He has pledged to improve school safety and keep more kids in the classroom; to cut the number of city bank accounts in half and reduce discretionary spending; to maximize federal stimulus dollars; to diversify the city’s economy; and to consolidate and reduce city-owned real estate.

What you know about Dave Bing is that he will give it everything he has…and that he’ll hold his people to the same tough standards that he holds for himself and for his family….
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Because Dave Bing is a mensch, and A MENSCH doesn’t do things any other way. You can (and you should) READ THE WHOLE STORY HERE. It’s very much worth your time, since this is the blueprint for the comeback of the black community in this country…..in fact, it’s the blueprint for the comeback of our entire country - the path to renewed greatness. If we don’t follow something very close to the path that Dave Bing is blazing for us, we’re going to end up on the ash heap of history, just as Nikita predicted.

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