LeDuff: Nojay would return money if he were a true conservative

By CHARLIE LEDUFF
MyFox Detroit Reporter

DETROIT (MyFox Detroit) -- In the spirit of full disclosure, I am a conservative.

Not a big "C" conservative. Not a Republican conservative. Not a Tea Party conservative. Not a Big Business conservative.

I am a little "c" Midwestern Gentleman conservative.

What does that mean? It means you are competent. You are consistent. You are honest. You take care of your kids. You stay out of people's business. You show up to work and put in an honest effort. And if there is anything left over from your efforts, you share with the less fortunate.

Regardless of political affiliation, most men are conservatives if you ask them.

So imagine my surprise when I looked at the Detroit News earlier this week and saw a front page story about a guy named Bill Nojay, the man hired to turn around the decrepit Detroit bus system.

Turns out Nojay may have been a virtual no show. While he was supposedly working for Detroit city, he was busy running for the state House of Representatives … in New York.

And when he wasn't campaigning, he was blathering on the radio as host of one of those crackpot talk shows, reaching 10 markets in upstate New York -- where he lives.

Routinely Nojay rails on the collapse of decent society on his radio program -- once calling New York a "crumbling socialist New Age penal colony populated by malingerers, criminals and self-serving grievance groups perennially attached to the teat of a bloated and indifferent government."

So where's he get the time to do that when he's supposed to be in Detroit fixing the busses? I called the mayor's office, which hired a private company which hired Nojay's company to fix the mess. That cost us $2 million, but Dave Bing's people have no idea how often Nojay showed up for work or what exactly he did.

Nine months later the busses are still a disaster. The wait is still about an hour in many cases and school hasn't even begun.

The bus union bosses say they haven't seen Nojay in five weeks. Five weeks!

So much for believing that the $1,000 silk-suit private industry types are the best doctors for the public ills. Who's keeping an eye on these guys? Obviously not the government.

Nojay has been fired. He sent me an email saying he couldn't comment on the situation, which is funny for a guy with a big mouth. He did say he loves Fox 2 News. So that's nice.

But if Nojay were a true conservative then he would return our money.  Because as Nojay himself might say, there's nothing worse than a welfare pimp double-dipping on the withered teat of grandma government.