Not unexpected but still sad.
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Not to be flippant, but it seems kind of scary that the Robocop movie seems more truth than fiction right now.
Having lived in Detroit, I take a certain level of offense to the thread title.
This was a long time coming. If you have a chance, look at a lot of the reporting done by WDET and Michigan Radio.
The bigger matter was what was going down about 6-8 weeks ago. Long story short, the city owns a number of the assets in the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), nationally recognized as one of the top ~5 collections in the country. Being in the financial situation Detroit was in and being under emergency financial manager (EFM), the EFM had to look at all the assets to attempt to create solvency. Had the DIAs collection been put up for auction, the DIA would have effectively been destroyed: no contributions would make their way into the DIA if there was a chance they could be sold off to pay municipal debts. Read more here.
Not to be flippant, but it seems kind of scary that the Robocop movie seems more truth than fiction right now.
Haven't you heard? Detroit is getting a RoboCop statue soon! LINKY!
EDIT: Actually, many of the local businesses and families have been helping out. Ford and GM (I think) donated police cruisers and ambulances, the Illitches help immensely in revitalizing the area (not to mention spending some money to make the baseball and hockey teams competitive), and the Eastern Market group is amazing. Outside of government corruption, most of the residents are upstanding people. Except Matty Maroun: he can walk off his bridge for all I care.
Having lived in Detroit, I take a certain level of offense to the thread title.
This was a long time coming. If you have a chance, look at a lot of the reporting done by WDET and Michigan Radio.
The bigger matter was what was going down about 6-8 weeks ago. Long story short, the city owns a number of the assets in the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), nationally recognized as one of the top ~5 collections in the country. Being in the financial situation Detroit was in and being under emergency financial manager (EFM), the EFM had to look at all the assets to attempt to create solvency. Had the DIAs collection been put up for auction, the DIA would have effectively been destroyed: no contributions would make their way into the DIA if there was a chance they could be sold off to pay municipal debts. Read more here.
Sorry if it came across disrespectfully, not at all my intention. Just meant to say matter-of-factly that the city is in dire straits. I was horrified to read about the DIA.
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I don't think windmills are the solution.Not unexpected but still sad.I have offered them my solution...
How Shortsighted...given they can suck the great lakes dry turning water into profit.
welcome to the future of america!
I don't think windmills are the solution.Not unexpected but still sad.I have offered them my solution...
Windmills along the river mixed with the Red Bull air-race things from a few years ago could be. I don't think there is enough wind in the general Detroit area to make it viable except in a 100+ year plan. At this point, I still am of the mind that the "right sizing" plan is best, provided the land remains mostly mostlyunder the ownership of noncommercial industries. Preferably, the land would be used for agriculture where possible.
Jocundthejolly, no personal offense taken. Its a bit overblown to say the demise. Listen to WDET today around 10am (they stream from their site) for what is effectively the best Michigan-centric program in Michigan.
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welcome to the future of america!
Unfortunately this is likely true. We will be seeing more major cities go bankrupt due to the billions in unfounded liabilities owed in the form of pensions. Here in CA lucrative gov't worker pension deals were signed at the height of the dot com boom based n assumptions the market would now be 100% higher an it currently is. Then the bust came and everyone realized that was all pie in the sky, everyone except the politicians none of whom have the fortitude to take the issue on.
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It will be interesting to find out RL Detroit's version of OCP. ;)
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What the hell?
If I give someone a check for 50 bucks a week over a 30 year career for a pension fund you can't just say "oops sorry I spent the money"
My backup plan is international proletarian socialist revolution.
In the meantime: Detroit’s Bankruptcy and America’s Future: Robots, Race, Globalization and the 1%
If you want to know my backup plan, that would be my plan to work until I am 80.
A lot of people, much against their will, are getting laid off at 55 and then find out they're "too old" to be hired by anyone else after that.
There's also a pretty good chance they'll have to sell off a lot of assets, leaving them in worse shape in the long run. Especially when they have to rent them back as some cities have done.
Losing pensions and medical care is going to be devastating for a lot of people.
I'm also very skeptical of the way it was done: Snyder appointed an emergency manager under a law quickly passed to replace one vetoed by referendum in November. This version isn't quite so egregious as the previous one, but it's still the state usurping local control.
The elected government of Detroit didn't decide to take Detroit into bankruptcy. That decision was essentially made by the Governor, when he appointed a bankruptcy attorney as Emergency Financial Manager.I predict harsh times for residents, retirees and unions along with a fire sale for anything the city owns. Lots of opportunities for corporations and cronies to pick up assets on the cheap. Privatization of whatever services remain, which will promise great savings which will never materialize.
Yep, a pretty bleak picture. Aside from the b-ing & moaning, however, I'm still not seeing a lot of realistic alternatives being presented in this thread. It's a crappy plan but at least it's attempting to address the issue rather than just flushing more money down the toilet by following the policies that dug the whole in the first place.
And if people want to keep Detroit as the only, rather than just the first city to go down this whole, the entitlement mindset of this country is going to have to give way towards a renewed interest in self-reliance.
And no, I don't think paying into a pension and expecting to receive a return on those payments is an entitlement mentality. However, I think anybody who thinks of their pension as a sacrosanct guarantee is kidding themselves.
I also think that if people feel entitled to unsustainable pension benefits that were negotiated by unions and political lobbies based on unrealistic expectations of future prosperity and will consider NO adjustment for local, national, or global economic realities, then those people are engaged in fantasy role-playing on an exponentially higher level than anything the RPG community has put forward in its history.
It's a crappy situation with similarly crappy alternatives. It was also largely avoidable.
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What the hell?
If I give someone a check for 50 bucks a week over a 30 year career for a pension fund you can't just say "oops sorry I spent the money"
Haven't been exposed to government officials much have you?
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What the hell?
If I give someone a check for 50 bucks a week over a 30 year career for a pension fund you can't just say "oops sorry I spent the money"
Haven't been exposed to government officials much have you?
I'm always curious about the mindset which suggests that government officials are somehow the least trustworthy of people.
Admittedly, I'm not American, but I've been ripped off by private business a bunch of times (well, sometimes I've caught them at it and avoided being ripped off but... y'know). I've never (so far, touch wood) been treated in the same way by a public official.
The PPI mis-selling scandal is a good example. Even when the government stepped in and forced the banks to start paying people back we got private scammers trying to get a cut out of people's paybacks.
I'm not saying that government workers can't be shiftless and untrustworthy, but they're not uniquely so.
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You're not from America. We've had 30+ years of propaganda pushing the "Government is bad" meme at us. From Reagan's "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." through to the tea party.
Actually the "government can't be trusted and works best when limited" meme has been around since, I don't know, the founding of the nation.
Most memes are better than the prevailing one we've had for the last 40-50 years where "disastrous results don't matter as long as our intentions were good".
You're not from America. We've had 30+ years of propaganda pushing the "Government is bad" meme at us. From Reagan's "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." through to the tea party.What the hell?
If I give someone a check for 50 bucks a week over a 30 year career for a pension fund you can't just say "oops sorry I spent the money"
Haven't been exposed to government officials much have you?
I'm always curious about the mindset which suggests that government officials are somehow the least trustworthy of people.
Admittedly, I'm not American, but I've been ripped off by private business a bunch of times (well, sometimes I've caught them at it and avoided being ripped off but... y'know). I've never (so far, touch wood) been treated in the same way by a public official.
The PPI mis-selling scandal is a good example. Even when the government stepped in and forced the banks to start paying people back we got private scammers trying to get a cut out of people's paybacks.
I'm not saying that government workers can't be shiftless and untrustworthy, but they're not uniquely so.
On top of this, we have the fact that we DO have a lot of less-than-respectable government employees, many of whom - even after public revelation of their misdeeds - somehow keep managing to get elected or otherwise not removed from their positions. If this happens with a private company, the offending person gets fired, and/or you stop giving them your business. When the government goes bad, you don't have those options, especially if the scumbag still gets people to vote for him/her. Your options basically become "move somewhere else" (not always feasible, especially if the infraction is at the federal level) or "deal with it".
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You're not from America. We've had 30+ years of propaganda pushing the "Government is bad" meme at us. From Reagan's "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." through to the tea party.Actually the "government can't be trusted and works best when limited" meme has been around since, I don't know, the founding of the nation.
This is the other thing, GE.
The USA is founded on the idea of "don't trust your leadership, keep a careful eye on your rulers because they do not usually have your best intentions in mind, and be willing to get rid of them if they don't do their job right". Most European countries don't have that mindset, or if they did they left it behind long ago.
We're just becoming, as the years roll on, less and less good at the latter part, because the leadership is getting better and better at appeasing, duping, or misleading the right people.
And because of the extreme schism of our nation politically, we - as a whole - can't even decide who the "right people" are.
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I'm always curious about the mindset which suggests that government officials are somehow the least trustworthy of people.Admittedly, I'm not American, but I've been ripped off by private business a bunch of times (well, sometimes I've caught them at it and avoided being ripped off but... y'know). I've never (so far, touch wood) been treated in the same way by a public official.
The PPI mis-selling scandal is a good example. Even when the government stepped in and forced the banks to start paying people back we got private scammers trying to get a cut out of people's paybacks.
I'm not saying that government workers can't be shiftless and untrustworthy, but they're not uniquely so.
Corruption can occur anywhere. While I'm not giving corporations run by corrupt people a pass, I don't view corporations as monolithic repositories of evil.
There are plenty of good people in government. There are also plenty of cronies, petty bureaucrats, crooks, and incompetents that are able to hide within the halls of government and enjoy job protections that the private sector doesn't have.
That said, my comment was directed at government's willingness to waste or misappropriate taxpayer money. I work with customers in both the private and public sector across multiple states and I've seen how both sides handle money. As evidenced by Detroit, one can be fiscally irresponsible very easily and for a protracted period of time if the government culture will allow it. Sadly, Detroit is just one example of fiscal irresponsibility writ large.
What the hell?
If I give someone a check for 50 bucks a week over a 30 year career for a pension fund you can't just say "oops sorry I spent the money"
Haven't been exposed to government officials much have you?
I'm always curious about the mindset which suggests that government officials are somehow the least trustworthy of people.
Admittedly, I'm not American, but I've been ripped off by private business a bunch of times (well, sometimes I've caught them at it and avoided being ripped off but... y'know). I've never (so far, touch wood) been treated in the same way by a public official.
The PPI mis-selling scandal is a good example. Even when the government stepped in and forced the banks to start paying people back we got private scammers trying to get a cut out of people's paybacks.
I'm not saying that government workers can't be shiftless and untrustworthy, but they're not uniquely so.
Australians have a deep mistrust and disrespect for Politicians
Politician = wanker, public servant = lazy and overpaid.
To be admired, or respected you have to earn it very few do.
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In an era of Secret Kill Lists, Wikileaks revelations and Stasi-level surveillance of, um, everybody, "don't trust the government" seems pretty reasonable to me.
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What the hell?
If I give someone a check for 50 bucks a week over a 30 year career for a pension fund you can't just say "oops sorry I spent the money"
Haven't been exposed to government officials much have you?
I'm always curious about the mindset which suggests that government officials are somehow the least trustworthy of people.
Admittedly, I'm not American, but I've been ripped off by private business a bunch of times (well, sometimes I've caught them at it and avoided being ripped off but... y'know). I've never (so far, touch wood) been treated in the same way by a public official.
The PPI mis-selling scandal is a good example. Even when the government stepped in and forced the banks to start paying people back we got private scammers trying to get a cut out of people's paybacks.
I'm not saying that government workers can't be shiftless and untrustworthy, but they're not uniquely so.
Both private businesses and government are often corrupt, but there are two major differences.
1) Businesses can (usually) only ask nicely for my money. The government can take it by force.
2) Businesses are completely predictable in their aims; they're trying to generate the highest revenue possible, with the lowest cost possible. The government, on the other hand, is a swirling vortex of cross-purposes, secret prejudices, and ulterior motives.
In a country that prioritizes securitheatre and foreign wars above everything else, this is what happens. Worldwide, nobody has any money except spies and militaries and various megacorps wannabes. Stop the spying, stop the wars, and America's future might not be quite so bleak.
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I'm always curious about the mindset which suggests that government officials are somehow the least trustworthy of people.
Particularly ironic in a thread in which *government workers* in Detroit are the ones being totally screwed out of their pensions here.
Ah, the glamorous life of a government worker, where you can have a lifetime's worth of retirement savings stolen to cover the financial shenanigans of privately held banks, lendors, realtors and insurance companies, and some private citizens cheer the looting, because 'government is bad, m'kay?'
It's all people. People getting screwed. People doing the screwing. Some on both sides draw a government check, some don't. Some joke that they'd never run for office, because it would be such a huge pay cut.
I'm not sure many people equate public sector workers with government officials, but point taken.
The USA is founded on the idea of "don't trust your leadership, keep a careful eye on your rulers because they do not usually have your best intentions in mind, and be willing to get rid of them if they don't do their job right". Most European countries don't have that mindset, or if they did they left it behind long ago.
And that's why the American people are up in arms about the Snowden revelations while the Greeks, Portuguese, Spanish, Italians, etc., etc. have been sitting idly at home twiddling their thumbs these past few years.
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It was also founded on the rather radical concept of Goverment of the people, By the People, and For the People. (A certain Illinois lawyer would expound on this in a famous short speech a few decades later.) Which was different as government of the descendents of the barbarian warlord of the region. (as all noble houses traced their descent to.) And it was in the main government for the benefit of said houses of nobility.
And you can tell how seriously they meant it by their system of Electoral Colleges, Senates, abolition of slavery, and establishment of universal suffrage.
However Comrade Anklebiter is the last person I'd expect to be arguing on behalf of corporate control if he was a real socialist.
Um, where did I argue anything like that?
Also, the Declaration of Independence was written by a guy who raped his slaves, the Constitution was an attempt to centralize power by the plutocracy after Shays' Rebellion, and the Bill of Rights was a concession to those popular masses who were able to vote, who had already made it clear that they wouldn't have approved the Constitution without it. And then they passed the Alien and Sedition Acts...
What the hell?
If I give someone a check for 50 bucks a week over a 30 year career for a pension fund you can't just say "oops sorry I spent the money"
Haven't been exposed to government officials much have you?
I'm always curious about the mindset which suggests that government officials are somehow the least trustworthy of people.
Admittedly, I'm not American, but I've been ripped off by private business a bunch of times (well, sometimes I've caught them at it and avoided being ripped off but... y'know). I've never (so far, touch wood) been treated in the same way by a public official.
The PPI mis-selling scandal is a good example. Even when the government stepped in and forced the banks to start paying people back we got private scammers trying to get a cut out of people's paybacks.
I'm not saying that government workers can't be shiftless and untrustworthy, but they're not uniquely so.
Australians have a deep mistrust and disrespect for Politicians
Politician = wanker, public servant = lazy and overpaid.
To be admired, or respected you have to earn it very few do.
Same here, in Poland.
Active and constant introduction of laws harmful to society and national economy does not help their image.
However Comrade Anklebiter is the last person I'd expect to be arguing on behalf of corporate control if he was a real socialist.Um, where did I argue anything like that?
Also, the Declaration of Independence was written by a guy who raped his slaves, the Constitution was an attempt to centralize power by the plutocracy after Shays' Rebellion, and the Bill of Rights was a concession to those popular masses who were able to vote, who had already made it clear that they wouldn't have approved the Constitution without it. And then they passed the Alien and Sedition Acts...
As if the Founding Comrades were paragons of kindness and virtue. Comrades Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Molotov and Mao are at least as bad - if not considerably worse - than the U.S. Founding Fathers.
And what bearing does that have on the contradiction between the United States of America being founded on Government Of, By and For the People and it taking half a century to establish even universal white male suffrage?
But, to address your points: I'm no fan of Stalin, Molotov or Mao; and although, no, Lenin and Trotsky weren't exemplars of kindness, they never raped their slaves.