Detroit: Now under emergency management

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ilwrath

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http://www.detroitnews.com/article/...n-Detroit?odyssey=mod|breaking|text|FRONTPAGE

Gov. Rick Snyder on Friday declared Detroit's financial problems too deep for the city to fix on its own and said he believes an emergency manager is the best way to reverse the downward spiral.
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Oh, I've been looking forward to this one for months. The popcorn is ready.:jerry:

I really hope Gov. Snyder can pull this off, and we can get some less dysfunctional leadership in Detroit. Detroit is so completely broken, it'll take something at least this large to start to try to fix it. It's going to be a complete and utter shitstorm heading there, though.

Greg Bowens, a political expert and former press secretary for former mayor Dennis Archer, said an emergency manager would be a devastating blow for the morale for the people of Detroit.
"In the end, it means the governor does not have the faith in the people of Detroit to govern themselves in a responsible manner," Bowens said. "It means that in some measure a failure of the system to be able to produce the kind of leaders that is needed to hold a city together. The impact that it will have on everything from the elections to the outlook that people have about the future could not be overstated."
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For sure.
 
well... that... and the new emergency manager rules they approved allow for the city of detroit to sell off its parks and other city assets to private companies....
 
Don't worry, the rest of the US is next.
 
well... that... and the new emergency manager rules they approved allow for the city of detroit to sell off its parks and other city assets to private companies....
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Yeah, though I'm of two minds on this one. On one hand, I agree that some things discussed, like selling the Detroit Public Works water department just reeks of corruption...

But, there are quite a few other things in Detroit I would have loved to see sold instead of closed. Belle Isle, in particular. This should be a crown jewel of the city of Detroit. Instead, it's a run down husk, with an abandoned boat house, the abandoned Belle Isle zoo (closed for over a decade, now), and a beautiful Albert Khan building that once housed the oldest continuously running aquarium in the United States, and an important fresh water research facility, until they closed it a couple years ago. (The aquarium has since "reopened" in a very limited form under non-profit conservancy.) But the rest of that island is ruins. And it shouldn't be. There's plenty of groups who want to do things with the land. But the completely dysfunctional Detroit City Council keeps blocking them.

And this isn't isolated. The big Detroit Zoo was slated to be closed, as well. The only reason it still exists is because the state managed to rezone it to Royal Oak. The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) only exists because the rest of Wayne/Oakland/Macomb county managed to overrule Detroit's attempts to close it. And the list goes on and on. The Detroit "leadership" would rather close a facility that everyone in the region uses, rather than work with their neighbors on solution.

Basically, the only reason Detroit has anything at all is because of the money of the suburbs. And yet, the complete vacuum of leadership in Detroit constantly resorts to pitting the city against the suburbs, instead of working with them to accomplish things that will help everyone.

It really is a microcosm of what's heading for the rest of the US. Detroit has had a terrible vacuum of leadership for many years. That same dysfunction has seeped into the national level of politics. Unless we can clean house soon, in another couple decades, it won't be pretty.
 
so, "austerity" doesn't work, eh?
 
so, "austerity" doesn't work, eh?
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Meh. Austerity doesn't help. But the real root of Detroit's problems aren't as much money based as they are about racism and decades of poor leadership choices. There's plenty of things to be done to work around a lack of money. Much less can be done to work around a leadership that thrives upon dividing the public and turning neighbors against each other.
 
ilwrath said:
Meh. Austerity doesn't help. But the real root of Detroit's problems aren't as much money based as they are about racism and decades of poor leadership choices. There's plenty of things to be done to work around a lack of money. Much less can be done to work around a leadership that thrives upon dividing the public and turning neighbors against each other.
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I've lived very nicely on very little money because I know how to budget and be frugal. These idiots could learn something from me
 
cecilia said:
I've lived very nicely on very little money because I know how to budget and be frugal. These idiots could learn something from me
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Ya, but, isn't that a self imposed austerity? Some people call it fiscally conservative but really it's just self discipline. The problem is we live in a culture that doesn't value self discipline and in fact treats it as a negative.
 
ilwrath said:
There's plenty of things to be done to work around a lack of money.
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But the problem isn't a lack of money, it's a surfeit of debt. Without money you can organize work and resources on other lines. With debt you have to repay it in money and if you don't have money then you have to sell whatever you can to get it - and since you are a motivated seller you will not be getting fair value. The problem is borrowing.

As for austerity, it become a matter of necessity if you are to abide by the rules of the game because a city, unlike a country, generally does not have the power to issue its own money and so it is beholden to the authorities that DO control the monetary supply (which is why Greece is in so much trouble because it cannot unilaterally print nor devalue the Euro).

However, municipalities can issue bonds and a municipality can issue bonds for payments to city employees (California did this as a state, which is a similar situation). However, there is no demand per se for the bonds and banks may not want to take them. However, demand can be generated by allowing taxes to be paid in bonds or even to insist that a certain amount of tax be paid in bonds and then establishing a trading system for bonds and a issuing bonds in a wide array of useful small denominations. This would make the bonds a local currency backed by the wealth of the city.
 
tonights episode of cops is brought to you by the kfc/pizza hut/ taco bell/ krispy kreme officers of law enforcement.... :D pfizer and monsanto could surely be trusted to tend to the water supply.... and the pools and parks...
 
monsanto-mike_n.jpg
 
Glaucus said:
Ya, but, isn't that a self imposed austerity? Some people call it fiscally conservative but really it's just self discipline. The problem is we live in a culture that doesn't value self discipline and in fact treats it as a negative.
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it's not "self imposed" in the sense that while I knew starting out that artists don't make lots of money I did not create that situation. I simply accept the reality that art is not valued in American society.

However, as my talents lie in that endeavor. To NOT pursue it would be to live a miserable unhappy life and I'm not willing to accept THAT.

money has little to do with real happiness. yes, having money is convenient, but it DOESN'T create happiness. For me leading a good and happy life means being productive and creative.

accumulating money is a giant bore

There's no real "austerity" in my life. I awake each morning looking forward to whatever adventure I discover. If more people understood that you wouldn't have all these miserable people running after money.

I mean, if madoff had walked up to me and said, "I can make you a shitload of money" - I would have laughed in his face because i know that nothing worth having is Easy to get.
 
stealing "real good" might give you a better job in a criminal organization (it should tho hollywood tells us they also get to go "for a ride" at times), but in the real world it should get you jail time... companies are only as crooked as the people who run them....
 
DB: We’re talking a little bit about what we’re going to lose and who’s going to lose it. Who gains? And there are specific people who are engaged that we need to know about, right?
GB: Well, yes, there’s a lot to gain. As I said, United Parcel Service, Fed Ex, and Pitney Bowes all want the profitable business from their public rival. And so they were probably backing this unconscionable act in 2006 which is now killing the Post Office, very successfully. I would say that Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe probably has a very cushy job waiting for him at FedEx.
DB: That seems pretty obvious.
GB: Oh, I think so, that’s the old revolving door. But the main thing is the press has shamefully fallen down on this. Basically it has not seen the big picture. It occasionally mentions the 2006 act as the proximate cause of why this is all happening. But it hasn’t noticed something very important, and that’s the real estate. These post offices were designed for the centers of every town and city, because it had to be most accessible, and to serve all the businesses as well as the people in those places. So suddenly, what happens, if all of this goes on the market? Well, it’s been conservatively estimated that the real estate portfolio held by the U.S. Postal Service in trust for us, is worth about $105 billion. And if anybody can get their hands on that they are going to make a very nice profit.
So in July of last year, the Postal Service gave an exclusive contract to a giant real estate company called CBRE. CB. Richard Ellis is a giant company which is part of a holding company owned by billionaire, private equity financier, Richard C. Blum, a regent of the University of California, who has been busy privatizing my university. But he also happens to be married to Senator Dianne Feinstein, probably the most powerful senator in Congress. This is an extraordinary conflict of interest but it’s not uncommon in Senator Feinstein’s history. She’s had many conflicts of interests that the mainstream press has not really investigated. But this is a really stinky one. And so CBRE is busy selling our property, and our art is going with it. It’s kind of a package deal often. And the press hasn’t noticed this at all.
DB: Well, conflict of interest here? You know, what’s Senator Feinstein’s position on saving the Post Office?
GB: Oh, well she says she’s really, sort of, in favor of it. The only paper that’s really reported on this was the little La Jolla Light newspaper because their downtown Post Office with a very fine mural is for sale.
DB: Doesn’t she have a house out there, or something?
GB: That’s one of the few places they don’t have a house. They have about seven or eight, I can’t keep track. These people do very nicely. Indeed, their mansion in San Francisco is just below the Getty’s actually, with a fine view of the Bay. But, yeah, her office said that she was actually trying to help the people in La Jolla save their Post Office and its mural. Well, I can well imagine she was because La Jolla is filled with a lot of very wealthy people who are campaign contributors.
DB: They don’t want to lose their beautiful mural.
GB: No. So she’s been very solicitous to the people of La Jolla. But she hasn’t been to us in Berkeley, or Ukiah, or Canby, Oregon, or the Central Bronx, or all those places. She hasn’t been nearly as solicitous about those Post Offices. As a matter of fact she’s been completely silent on them. And I can understand why.
DB: I do want to conclude this interview by giving you a chance to sort of sum up and say what is at stake, what is the heart of the matter here? What is this battle really about?
GB: Well, the heart of the matter is The Public. Everything in our commonwealth is being stolen from us. I was recently threatened with arrest for trying to go into the Philadelphia main Post Office which I found out had been sold. And I said to the guard, I said “They are taking everything away from us.” And he said, “Yes, I know. Now get out of here.” And I was threatened with arrest and confiscation of my camera. This is what is happening. It is the enclosure of our commons, of everything. And, Dennis, The Public is central to a republic. This is what we allown. When it is all taken away from us, we are all immensely impoverished, and They are immensely enriched.
Only a very, very few people will own everything, and govern us. And we see that example in Dianne Feinstein and her husband who are getting in at the hog trough, in taking away what really belongs to all of us, what our parents paid for, what the artists painted, the sculptors sculpted. We can’t allow this to happen. This belongs to all of us and is central to what America, at its very best, once was. We can’t allow them to steal it from us.

http://consortiumnews.com/2013/03/01/dismantling-americas-post-offices/

thats what all these emergency managers are about... systematic destruction/privatization of "the public"...
 
@Cecilia,

I was referring mostly to the fact that you seem to have avoided burying yourself in debt. You live within your means, you have what you earn, etc. I wasn't making any comment about your income or profession as that's not relevant.
 
once they've parsed and parceled off detroit you really won't recognize it... need to get the corporations off welfare... they are the biggest drain upon us seconded by the military industrial complex... eisenhower redux

 
once they've parsed and parceled off detroit you really won't recognize it...
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I know what you're saying... But I don't agree with it, in this case. In a functional city, you'd be right. For example, Allen Park has an emergency financial manager, as well. But it has a public education system that kids can attend without facing better odds of being shot than graduating. It has functional police, fire, trash pickup, etc. Allen Park's problems actually are purely financial. They got hit big when the big 3 supplier Visteon pulled out, leaving hundreds of thousands of square feet of highly tax subsidized office space empty. Then, in a panic response to that, their council signed on with the debacle of Michigan movie industry subsidies. They gave all that empty space to film makers, who promptly went bust as soon as Gov. Snyder revoked the entertainment tax breaks. So Allen Park got hit to the tune of millions of dollars of lost revenue over the course of a few short years. Yeah, it was the elected officials fault for letting themselves get pillaged, but outside all the debt they accumulated from those two mistakes, it's still a viable city, otherwise. This city could be ripe for plundering by a corrupt financial manager, as you describe.

Detroit is nothing like that situation, though. Honestly, have you visited here in the past few decades? Parceling off Detroit to the point it isn't recognized might not be a bad thing. Of course, that would only work if someone would actually want the parcels, which is quite unlikely, as they're pretty much all screwed. You can already have your choice of several different Detroit skyscrapers for the cost of part of the back taxes on them. I really don't think the emergency manager is going to be worried about privatizing much of anything. Their big problem will be cleaning house on the City Counsel, Public Works, and every other facet of that bureaucracy. Nepotism and Cronyism are so rampant in Detroit that nothing useful can be done. Look at all the charges that keep coming up against Kwame Kilpatrick. Those aren't isolated incidents. They were the norm under his leadership. And they were the norm under Coleman Young's leadership. (Dennis Archer may have tried, but didn't honestly make any headway in his two terms before declining to continue.) Dave Bing has made limited headway, (and that's probably the only reason any charges at all against Kwame have come to light...) but it is such an uphill fight, he can't make enough progress fast enough to save the city. An outsider with state support may be the only way to really expose the root of the problem, and start to try to rebuild a leadership structure within the city.

It'll be some Jerry Springer entertainment watching all the cronies scamper around for a while. An outsider being appointed to Detroit will absolutely enrage the entire city. It'll be a crazy show for a few. But then it'll be truly interesting to see if there's any real change. Personally, I don't think the odds are good, but it's probably the best turn around chance Detroit has had in my lifetime.
 
ilwrath said:
I know what you're saying... But I don't agree with it, in this case.
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i pray; everyday, to a god that i don't believe in; that the ties that bind us on a human level are enough to hold us together as a nation...
 
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