Recently, there has been a media frenzy in response to the nasty
tape recording released by County Executive Mark Hackel in an attempt
to distract the public from what amounts to a crime. While it is clear to
most that this an attempt to silence and intimidate Warren Mayor James Fouts who
cried foul on County Executive Mark Hackel who gave the green light to
his “favorite” contractor to illegally dump at
least 150,000 yards of road excavation dirt at the Freedom Hill closed
landfill without
any required permits or approval. While County
Executive Mark Hackel admitted
that he did not have any written agreement with
the contractor for the illegal dumping, the issue escalated when the Mayor of the
3rd largest City in Michigan publicly
requested that the AG conduct an investigation into what could have resulted in
an environmental disaster in Macomb County. Known for weeding out
public corruption, Mayor
Fouts insisted that such illegal actions by
public officials must have consequences to
avoid actions like this in the future.
No stranger to playing “dirty”
politics, the County Executive Mark Hackel “leaked” a morphed and engineered
audio file of the Mayor in an attempt to pull the proverbial “wool” over the
eyes of his constituency, by encouraging a network of media contacts to quickly
go after Mayor Fouts in an attempt to disparage and discourage the citizens of
Macomb County from pursuing the complaint raised by the Mayor of
Warren regarding the cover-up of the illegal dumping at Freedom
Hill and the systemic corruption plaguing
Macomb County.
Received anonymously and with no indication of the time, date,
or even the location of where this recording took place, County Executive Mark
Hackel himself
admits that the tape was edited, and is unsure of the number of
edits/splices this recording underwent.
While Mayor Jim
Fouts questions not only the validity of this AWFUL tape, but
the context of the tape, and who was also speaking and where this speech was
recorded, and according to multiple sources, the contents of this tape
clearly DO NOT reflect Mayor James Fouts' attitude towards the special
needs community, the
public outcry was as expected, severe.
In a statement on his Facebook page, Warren Mayor James Fouts
responded to this attempt to silence him by stating: "This recording was
not me. He (County Executive Mark Hackel) will stop at
nothing which already includes name calling and intimidation. Expect the worse!
When Mark doesn't have the facts Mark attacks."
According to anonymous sources, County Executive Mark Hackel has
the expertise available to him to electronically engineer
audio recordings, in a technique commonly known as audio morphing and
modulation, to serve his own political agenda in a vicious attempt to discredit
his political rivals. The software, referred to as voice cloning, has
been on the market since 2001, and
is easily capbale of synthesizing anyone’s voice by using just a few voice
samples of anyone “simply
talking somewhere out in public, during mobile phone calls, in videos posted on
social networking sites,”. Examples of which are Google’s DeepMind, Adobe’s
Project VoCo, and many
others.
While it is clear that the fallout from the illegal dumping at
Freedom Hill clearly has nothing to do with the diversionary
tactic used by County Executive Mark Hackel, the
Mayor of Warren is prepared to use this opportunity to advocate and assist the
special needs community and by raising awareness regarding the challenges faced
by some members of our society every day.
In addition to donating a
sizeable contribution to fund the Awareness Building Campaign
initiated by Lt. Governor Bryan Calley, Mayor Fouts publicly
commented on his Facebook page that “If anything positive comes out of this, it
is that there is more public attention on the issue.” In a Facebook post,
Mayor James Fouts stated that he “want(s) to make things better going forward,
and will certainly do (his) part!”
While the county heals, it is important to remember this
incident was a great learning opportunity for those of us unware of the
challenges faced by certain members of our society. It is important to
remember that these individuals are the everyday heroes and champions that
triumph over adversity on a daily basis setting an example for the rest of us.