And Then We Have The City of Detroit

And then we have the city of Detroit – the automobile manufacturing center of America for decades.  And unfortunately for the city of Detroit, it is in the State of Michigan. 

When Michigan elected an all Republican state legislature and Governor, together they managed beyond all belief to pass a law that allows the Governor to dissolve the duly elected governments of cities or counties (or whatever they call them back there), if the Governor deems the boards or commissions to not be acting in what he believes to be a fiscally responsible manner.  The law gave him the authority to appoint an emergency manager to replace these duly elected boards.  Since I was a duly elected county Supervisor in our county for some eight years, I nearly blew a valve when I read that the Governor had started implementing this law in some six cities in Michigan, ending with the largest being Detroit.   

The final straw for me was when Gov. Rick Snyder appointed Kevin Orr to be the emergency manager.  Why, other than the fact that he was appointed, was I disturbed?  Because Kevin Orr is, or was, a bankruptcy attorney for Goldman Sachs.  And then the city of Detroit files for bankruptcy.  I am shocked, shocked that a bankruptcy attorney would do such a thing! 

The upshot of this is that the judge approved the bankruptcy, with the proviso that the banks and bondholders who hold Detroit’s debt be paid back first, and the city’s assets can be used for this.  The nasty part about all of this is the city’s pension fund is part of the city’s assets.   

Imagine yourself how you would feel if after working as a public employee for any number of years up to 30 years, expecting a pension of a certain amount, adjusting your housing, etc., based on that amount, and then have some outside entity come in, and give half of your pension to some bank which is already too big to fail.  All at the same time that your state government has refused to give your city the funds owed it through revenue sharing with the state.  In Detroit’s case, this amounts to million upon millions of dollars Detroit could really use at this time.  OK.  Detroit is in a sad fiscal state.  Jobs are extremely hard to come by.  Your retirement has been cut in half, and somebody in a silk suit and gold cuff links is telling you that you can augment your pension by getting a job.   

This next is not a change of subject.  We’ll get back to Detroit in a moment.  Last night on All In with Chris Hayes, there was a segment discussing whether Nelson Mandela was a terrorist or not.  One of the panelists claimed that, contrary to what our government was saying at the time, namely Ronald Reagan, was calling Mandela, he was not a terrorist.  A terrorist is someone who kills completely innocent people for some abstract reason.  When a government basically declares war on its people, as the South African government did with its apartheid laws, the people who fight back are fighting for their lost freedoms.  This is not terrorism, and it is sloppy thinking to call it terrorism.  These were ideas I had not heard so clearly delineated before. 

In Michigan with the new rules about restricting the opportunities to vote, cutting funding for education, and other essential services, and now with the decimation of retiree’s pensions, and heaven only knows what else will be imposed on the poor people of Michigan, we all might keep the above definitions in mind.  I think if I lived in Michigan, I would be highly motivated.  For what?  I’m not sure, but I would think of something.