Elected Ignorance
November 17, 2005

Detroit, Michigan. November 16, 2005. Detroit City Councilman Alonzo Lonnie Bates has issues. He has a hard time living in the same reality as the rest of us are forced to do. He somehow feels he is above the law and that he is certainly better than the rest of us.

This reporter is still scratching his head, trying to figure out how this racist, ignoramous was ever elected to office to begin with. He has been in the news several times over the years. Usually having to do with some form of fraud or another. Several years ago, a local news team did an investigsation centered around Bates. FOX 2 News Detroit, found Bates lounging around his house, running errands, shopping and cutting his lawn, all during the time he was on the clock working for the Detroit City Parks Department. They watched, and videoed him for months doing this. But they looked further too. Seems his resume is filled with false statements concerning college education and job titles. When confronted by FOX 2 News reporter Scott Lewis, Bates practicaly physicaly assaulted him and called him a "cracker" and a "white boy" over and over. He also accused Lewis of being a racist, and of course, denied everything.

Of course it did not work and he was first suspended, then later fired from his cushy city job.

But then amazingly, this guy runs for city council and wins!

However, it did not take long for Bates to show his true colors once again. Not long after he was elected, various odd items began cropping up. It seems that Bates felt he could bring much of his family in as contract employees and pay them from city funds. That is not so unusual, except that none of them actually did any work! Not one. Not his illegitament son's mother, or his girlfriend's mother. Well, that is not entirely true. He did pay someone out of city funds, to cut his lawn. Guess he felt he was too good to do it himself while on city time, anymore.

In walks the FBI. In an investigation that took almost three years, the FBI handed over its findings to a federal grand jury. Yesterday, the grand jury handed down a 13-count indictment charging Bates with the following:

• Bates signed city time cards for a Britni Barber, while she was attending full time graduate school at New York University. She was paid $30.00 an hour for doing nothing. A total of $31,920 was paid to her. Turns out she was the daughter of Bates then girlfriend.
• A Verenda Arnold, 46, another girlfriend and mother of his illegitamet son, was paid $42,843 to do nothing as well. In fact, during the time she showed on her city time cards (in which Bates signed), she was actually working full time at a local hospital. Arnold was also charged with fraud in the indictment.
• A man, identified in the indictment simply as "lawn man", was paid $9,345 to cut Bates lawn and perform odd jobs around his home and a rental property. It was also shown that Bates himself many times cashed the checks written to the man, the indictment said.
• Another count alleges Bates paid his brother-in-law $7,750 of city money, to do nothing.
• The final counts charge that Bates failed to file tax returns for four years - 2001 through 2004. A total of about $300,000 of income unreported.

Earlier this year, yet more fraud was discovered by Detroit Auditor General Joseph Harris. In March he found that Bates used city funds to pay a contractor for campaign finance work, which is a violation of law. Harris also alleges that Bates failed to provide evidence of work for six of 12 contractors. Laughably, one of the contractors provided a copy of a school term paper as evidence of what they were paid for!

The fruit does not fall far from the tree, either. His out of wedlcok son, who is just a child, emailed Scott Lewis at Fox 2 News, threatening to kill him and his family dogs if he continued to investigate his Dad.

If convicted (if?) bates faces up to 30 years in prison and a one million dollar fine.

Bates was quoted in HOUR Detroit magainze this month: "This whole thing is trying to hurt African Americans. ...I haven't done anything wrong. And I'll take a polygraph. ...I've done no more than anybody on this City Council has done."

Well, add more babble to Bates history. Harris performed an audit of the entire Detroit City Council and found only minor problems with some hiring practices.

Bates does as he always does - blames his woes on "white media". Race, race, race. It s always a race issue with Bates. Wait, now I understand his point of view. It was white people that forced him to do all of those illegal activities. Now I finally understand.

We have wasted enough time on this creep. He is awarded three out of five OFP News Puke Awards.

- Michael Bowers
OFP News