In Detroit Bankruptcy, It's the Poor Who Lose

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/07/19-4


A third of all square mileage in Detroit sits empty in a city beset with poverty (Photo: Flickr Creative Commons/Chris Tobins)


The Detroit emergency manager's filing of city bankruptcy Thursday sparked fears that the impoverished municipality will suffer an accelerated race down the path towards privatization and the erosion of public services that have already devastated its poor communities.

In the largest Chapter 9 bankruptcy case in US history, the move will allow the city to decimate benefits and pensions for city workers and retirees—the city's 'unsecured' lenders— while gutting public services and diverting public dollars to pay off the big banks who own much of the city's debt.

Unions charge that emergency manager Kevyn Orr—with the support of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder—rushed into bankruptcy to subvert democratic process and avoid the Michigan constitutional mandate requiring municipal governments to keep their word on pension contracts with retirees. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees president Lee Saunders declared in a statement released immediately after the decision:

Governor Snyder’s plan to suspend democracy, drive one of America’s largest cities into bankruptcy and deprive workers of their hard-earned retirement security, moved dangerously closer to reality today when without a single negotiation with unions, workers or retirees, Snyder authorized Detroit’s financial manager to file for bankruptcy.
Orr—appointed by Governor Rick Snyder last March—has already been blasted for advancing a Republican-led state takeover of city government and pushing a corporate agenda of privatization that further devastates Detroit's poor and disenfrachises the city's majority African-American voters.

[leftstreet]

1. Wall Street = Bailout. Main Street = Fuck You

DURec

[SoCalDem]

2. Aaaw..all they need (the gov & his henchmen) is a way to get rid of all those pesky poor folks

(aka 82% of the population) and then Detroit will be available for the looters to show up & gentrify it..

I bristled when I heard his "manager" refer to New Orleans, as a model & how Detroit school kids in CHARTER schools were A-okay..

If you can "ship out" your poorest people, and lay waste to what they were forced to leave behind, you have a pretty good chance create any society you want.

The tricky part is that without a hurricane to drown some, and an aftermath where there is chaos & you can bus them to other states , you have to actually work things out..

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. You think Bloomberg is not looking to do the same in NYC???