City In Ruins

By Jeff Simpson

What happens when a group of people with similar ideologies gets together with a single purpose?

  

  



There are so many other, legal, ways to destroy a city that does not include violence.  

Stand With Detroit

From the inbox:

“Are we really discussing whether elderly people who depend on their pensions for food, shelter and medicine, who have few, if any, opportunities to earn money otherwise, ought to make do with less?”
—Detroit Free Press editorial, Aug. 1, 2013

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Detroit is the largest city to file for bankruptcy in American history. But it is not the only city in economic crisis, and what happens there matters—it matters to AFSCME members and all workers and retirees across the country.

That’s why we launched a national campaign to support our AFSCME sisters and brothers in Detroit called: “Stand with Detroit!” We need you to show your support and go to www.StandwithDetroit.orgright now and sign our petition.

There is no argument that Detroit is in fiscal distress. The question on the table is who pays? Will it be the city workers who labor each day to keep the city running and who already took huge reductions in pay and benefits? Will city worker and retiree pension benefits—benefits that were already earned—be slashed? Or will the bond insurers and Wall Street types who treated the city like an ATM for years be required to face the consequences of their actions?

The collapse of the city’s industry during the past 40 years is not the fault of the modestly paid public service workers. Detroit’s workers and retirees worked in good faith to reach an equitable solution and avoid bankruptcy in the first place. The non-uniformed workers had their future pension benefits reduced by approximately 40 percent last year. Now, the governor’s hand-picked emergency financial manager wants to reduce the average $19,000 yearly pension benefit that was already earned. In addition, workers took a 10 percent pay cut during the past fiscal year.

Meanwhile, Gov. Rick Snyder slashed the city’s share of state revenues by $160 million.

The Detroit Free Press described it well: “A financially solvent city that is paid for at the expense of workers and retirees is an equation that doesn’t balance—in Detroit or anywhere.”

Will you stand with Jeanette Fitts, who retired after 35 years—working in accounting for the city of Detroit—and fears a cut to her pension or medical coverage will be devastating?Jeannette pays more than $100 a month for a half-dozen medications, and much of what remains from her pension payments goes toward her housing and other necessities.

“If they cut it, I’m not going to be able to pay my rent. I’m not going to have money. I’m going to be homeless. I’m going to be living out of my car, I guess.” 

Yet, while workers and retirees wonder how they will put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads, Governor Snyder recently announced $444 million in taxpayer money to build a new hockey arena for the Detroit Red Wings—money that would otherwise have gone to Detroit’s public schools or other essential services.

AFSCME will not stand by and let Detroit, or any American city, die. We will not let our sisters and brothers become pawns to corporate greed. President Obama, Congress, and the leadership of Michigan must stand with us, and with the people of Detroit. 

Please join us by going to www.StandWithDetroit.org and signing our petition. 

In solidarity,

LEE SAUNDERS President		LAURA REYES Secretary-Treasurer

A Contract Is A Contract

Over the weekend, there was a flurry of news coming from the State of Michigan, where Governor Rick Snyder is making the first power play for the pensions of Detroit workers.

Stemming from that is this wonderful article from Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, which gets right to the issue:

It is striking that so many people in the media are acting as though this clause does not exist. Part of the story is undoubtedly a belief by many reporters that Detroit workers got overly generous pensions. The pensions of Detroit’s workers are almost certainly better than private sector pensions, which have been rapidly disappearing. However, research shows that most public sector workers incur a wage penalty relative to private sector workers with the same education and experience. Better pensions and other benefits essentially even the score.

But even if Detroit’s workers got a good deal with their pay and benefit package, so what? A contract is still a contract. Workers put in their time in exchange for a specific package of pay and benefits, how can the government arbitrarily change the terms of the deal after the fact.

There are businesses that end up getting very good deals from the government all the time. How often does a state or local government end up selling a parcel of land for a price that turns out to be hugely below its true value. Or they may give tax concessions to lure businesses that prove to be overly generous. It looks like the City of Chicago made a really bad deal in leasing its parking meters to Morgan Stanley for three quarters of a century. Does Chicago get to just rewrite the terms of the contract?

In these cases involving businesses, somehow a contract is a contract, end of story. The relationship is sacred and no one suggests changing the terms after the fact. However, in the case of the pensions for city workers, these are just office workers, custodians, or garbage collectors. The media would have us believe that contracts with these sorts of people aren’t real contracts. If they prove inconvenient, then they can be changed.

While that may be the view that the media is trying to push, the rest of us should insist that the law and the constitution be respected. Detroit’s city workers have as much right to have their contracts respected as the Wall Street bankers making millions and billions off contracts that are often far more questionable.

This is class war at its ugliest. The elites have to learn that they don’t get to change the rules as they go along, if they want their contracts to be respected they will have to respect contracts that protect working people as well.

And even though I shouldn't need to remind the gentle reader, don't think for one minute that Scott Walker or Chris Abele aren't already looking at doing something similar with our pensions.

Detroit Bankruptcy Claim Ruled Unconstitutional

It's no secret that the corporations are setting out to become the only ruling faction of every state in the

nation.  While one can easily see them doing the same thing in state after state, sometimes they employ different tactics, depending on state rules and other factors.

In Michigan, we see this with the implementation of Fiscal Emergency Managers.  These emergency managers would be the same as a hatchet man in the private sector world - someone whose sole job is to shut down the company so that that the vulture capitalists can gorge themselves.

Last week, the emergency manager for Detroit said that he was going to file for bankruptcy immediately because he couldn't or didn't want to pay the city's bills, including the city's workers pension.  In other words, it was a blatant raid on the pension system, stealing from the workers to give to Governor Rick Snyder's corporate masters.

Too bad for them that their pension raid is unconstitutional:

An Ingham County judge says Thursday's historic Detroit bankruptcy filing violates the Michigan Constitution and state law and must be withdrawn.

But Attorney General Bill Schuette said he will appeal Circuit Judge Rosemarie Aquilina’s Friday rulings and seek emergency consideration by the Michigan Court of Appeals. He wants her orders stayed pending the appeals, he said in a news release.

In a spate of orders today arising from three separate lawsuits, Aquilina said Gov. Rick Snyder and Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr must take no further actions that threaten to diminish the pension benefits of City of Detroit retirees.

“I have some very serious concerns because there was this rush to bankruptcy court that didn’t have to occur and shouldn’t have occurred,” Aquilina said.

“Plaintiffs shouldn’t have been blindsided,” and “this process shouldn’t have been ignored.”

Lawyers representing pensioners and two city pension funds got an emergency hearing with Aquilina Thursday at which she said she planned to issue an order to block the bankruptcy filing. But lawyers and the judge learned Orr filed the Detroit bankruptcy petition in Detroit five minutes before the hearing began.

Aquilina said the Michigan Constitution prohibits actions that will lessen the pension benefits of public employees, including those in the City of Detroit. Snyder and Orr violated the constitution by going ahead with the bankruptcy filing, because they know reductions in those benefits will result, Aquilina said.

“We can’t speculate what the bankruptcy court might order,” said assistant Attorney General Brian Devlin, representing the governor and other state defendants.

“It’s a certainty, sir,” Aquilina replied. “That’s why you filed for bankruptcy.”

The Michigan Attorney General has already said that he is going to file appeals on this ruling and on other cases which are in front of the judge. Apparently his argument is that the state and federal constitutions are unconstitutional.

I wish the people of Michigan the best as they take on this latest fight against the corporate overlords.

I would also like to mentally shake each of my fellow Milwaukeeans and Wisconsinites if they don't think that the same thing could and would happen here.

The Hostile Takeover Of Detroit

Last April, news was coming out of Michigan that the corporate owned Republicans in that state had set it up so that Governor Rick Snyder could declare a fiscal emergency for any local government and put impose fiscal martial law:

As bad a shape that Flint is in, it is a garden center compared to Benton Harbor, Michigan. Benton Harbor is the first victim of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder's new law allowing the state to disregard all elections and the Constitution by declaring financial martial law. As we have seen for the past 62 days in Wisconsin, the good people are in an uproar over this egregious stripping of their rights. There are numerous complaints about this being a union-busting measure. (In fact, the "controller" for the Detroit Public School System has already stated he will use this law to hammer the unions there.) This is very well probably true, but I can't help but note that coincidentally, or maybe not so coincidentally, the population of Benton Harbor happens to be more than 92% African American, making me wonder if this could also be the rebirth of Jim Crow.

Now, the unthinkable is about to become a horrible reality with the next victim of this hostile takeover being Detroit:

Michigan Governor Rick Snyder will officially declare a financial emergency for Detroit on Friday, paving the way for a state takeover of the city, a state government source said on Thursday.

At a forum in Detroit, the Republican governor will endorse the February 19 findings of a six-member review team that concluded the city's dire financial situation constituted an emergency, according to the source, who asked not to be identified.

The article goes on to point out how this atrocity is rigged from the get go:

If the state decides to appoint an emergency financial manager, that person could decide the city's only course for survival would be a bankruptcy filing in what would become the largest municipal bankruptcy in the United States.

The emergency manager would be officially chosen by a state board composed of the state treasurer, budget director, and licensing and regulatory affairs director - all of whom are Snyder appointees.
Snyder has publicly discussed qualifications he would seek in the manager and has said he had a short list of candidates for the job.

What it really is all about is that the Republicans are really upset that there is money going to public sector workers and poor people, many of whom are minorities. To these corporate sockpuppets, this is simply unacceptable. That money, in their singularly obsessive way of thinking, should be going to give the wealthy more tax breaks.

In order to make that happen, they are now about to shred any vestiges of democracy by usurping control of a city, removing the elected leaders and imposing martial law, regardless of what the citizens want.

This is simply unconscionable.

At the time that this fascist law was crafted, I pondered whether Scott Walker could or would do that in Wisconsin, with the likeliest target being Milwaukee.

Who'd have ever thought that it was Chris Abele that would prove to be the greedier, more power-hungry fascist?