"That said, it has a fighting chance of improving on the status quo, which suggests just how bad the status quo is."

I'm not so sure it will be an improvement.

As I've described in other posts here on this topic (I contend) he needs to line out a plan that addresses repairing the market effects by the main culprit in the conflict. It is obvious that he knows what that is by his hyper sensitivity evidenced in the "open reporting" issue.

I appreciate the practical and pragmatic and political limits to what he can say about them (and just about all of the other nasty nitty-gritty details) at this juncture but the "half stepping" he is doing instead and as described in the plan will end up being worse
because it pushes us toward an alternative to this culprit that is distasteful to so many including his own supporters.

You can't have your cake and eat it too Mr. President.

Hey can Obama, Federal funding and a baltimore native fix the Detroit Police Dept.?
From Detroit Freep

Sheryl Robinson Wood, the federal monitor overseeing the Detroit Police Department's efforts to reform, resigned Thursday because of “meetings of a personal nature” with former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick
U.S. District Judge Julian Cook issued an order today accepting her resignation.

•PDF: Read the judge's order.

The order said Wood had “engaged in conduct which was totally inconsistent with the terms and conditions of the two consent judgments in this litigation.”

He said she had “engaged in undisclosed communications, as well as meetings of a personal nature, with the former City of Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick during the term of the consent judgments, which included inappropriate discussions with him about this lawsuit.”

Cook, who is overseeing the police department's consent decree, said he reviewed documents in secret during a July 22 status conference in the case that prompted him to ask Wood about her ability to remain effective.

It was not immediately clear from the judge’s order what document the judge saw, or where it came from.

After a phone call with Wood, and based on a review of the documents, Cook accepted her resignation effective 5 p.m. Thursday.

The order Cook issued today suspended all court monitoring of the department and ordered the city and the Justice Department to submit names of prospective replacements by July 31.

Councilwoman Sheila Cockrel called the revelations a “cascading cancer.”

“People were upset when I called the Kwame Kilpatrick administration rotten to the core,” she said. “Well, now we know it reeks at its core.”

Cockrel said the impact of Kilpatrick’s tenure as mayor “is outrageous.”

Link to Freep Story:
http://www.freep.com/article/20090724/NEWS01/90724070/Feds--police-monitor-quits---personal--ties-to-Kilpatrick-are-cited