Well…just read that, with the blessing of our wonderful governor, Rick Snyder, the city of Detroit is going to start shutting off the water to people who can’t pay their water bills…and the estimate is that there will be 3,000 homes and businesses per week…yep, per week that will lose their service…and now, since our gov won’t do anything, there are organizations the have had to appeal to the UN to get the US to adhere to the treaties we have signed that say you just can’t do that, that water is a human right and that it can’t be shut off for profit. But, that is what Detroit is doing…as part of the “grand bargain” to try to save Detroit that was just signed by Snyder…the Detroit water department has to cut it’s costs and one way that they will do it is by not supplying water to people who can’t pay. What the hell kind of country do we live in when you can continue to give tax cuts to the rich so there are no tax revenues left to fix the schools, fix the roads, or provide life saving water to the citizens? This is the repub dream in action folks…if you can’t pay, you die…geez…
Tag Archives: detroit
Still don’t understand it…
Well…I still don’t understand the adamant refusals to help Detroit out of it’s financial difficulties in any way…starting with, of course, repub senators, but then all the way up to Obama…what makes Detroit different than the bailouts that are regularly given for natural disasters? If the country can afford to give 60 billion dollars for repairs after Sandy, why can’t we afford a few billion to help the transition in Detroit? I contend that what has happened in Detroit is just a slow motion natural disaster that has unfolded over a few decades but it is no less devastating than a hurricane…and the people there deserve no less support than Florida get every year during hurricane season. What the hell is wrong with us as a people if we can’t help our fellow citizens in their time of need….isn’t Detroit as deserving as Iraq, or Israel, or any other country that we give foreign aid to? I just hope that we can smarten up and help…geez…
Schuette is still an idiot…
Well…with the bankruptcy filing in the city of Detroit, I was extremely surprised to hear that our AG, Bill Schuette, has come out to say that the state will defend the public sector pensions of the retirees of the city. Must have been a really hard thing for this tea party idiot to say since he normally picks and chooses which laws to enforce and almost always lets his personal beliefs dictate what those laws are. The thing is, though, the courts always slap him down and tell him he is wrong, and that is a good thing….and, I am going to make a prediction in this case that his true colors and his hatred of unions and the middle class will shine through….here’s what I predict: he will present a half-hearted defense of these constitutionally protected pensions; making sure that he he screws it up just enough so that the courts will slap him down, again…then, he will call a press conference to say that it’s not his fault…that it is the big, bad federal government that is taking the pensions and he will then go on to rail about socialism, Obamacare, and the fascist in the White House…typical tea party talking points and he will get what he wants…more talking points on how bad unions are since they can’t protect your pensions so you shouldn’t trust them or join them….I may be giving him too much credit for having the smarts to pull this off but with their drive to eliminate any power for the middle class, I would not be surprised….geez…
More republican hypocrisy…
Well…with all of the stories on Detroit’s bankruptcy, the one thing has struck me more than anything else is the height of the repub hate of the city….with Rand Paul spouting that there is no way in hell that he would ever vote to help them out and that has been echoed by the normal group of crazies on the right…and no, that’s not what I don’t understand…I have come to expect nothing but racism and meanness from the repubs…but, these are the same folks that had no problem spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan to rebuild those countries after we destroyed them, but they can’t see why it’s the federal government’s responsibility to help out in Detroit. Well…let me point it out to you…Detroit is part of America! The people that live there are US citizens! What the hell kind of world do the repubs want? One where…oh, yeah, that’s right…they want a world that is winner take all and to hell with everyone who is not connected, white, and Christian….this crap has got to end….geez…
Snyder the liar strikes again…
Well…I wonder if anyone is surprised that there are new revelations that the Snyder administration here in Michigan had no intent in following the law or even good faith in the appointment of the emergency manager for Detroit…these folks went on and on that bankruptcy was the last resort for the city, but new e-mails have just been found that show that all of this was just a sham…that they wanted bankruptcy from the start and tried mightily to cover up that fact…one aide going so far as to ask how they could hold discussions that would circumvent the Freedom of Information act…that would keep their shennanigans secret from the public and allow them to cut back room deals that would lay the burden solely on retirees and workers of the city. But, do you expect anything different from the repubs? If you do after the right to work for less debacle, and all of the other shady deals that have come from this administration, I feel sorry for you…these folks are the typical repubs, jamming their extreme agenda down the peoples throats while working overtime to ignore laws they don’t like….I, for one, have had enough of these folks…they need to go…geez…
Need to talk about Detroit…
Well…with all of the drama going on with the bankruptcy in Detroit, I felt the need to comment with the latest crap from our wonderful governor on the mess there…first, I will say that some of the troubles there are a result of terrible mismanagement of the city by the string of incompetents and thieves…but, the shrinking of the city from over 2 million to under 700 thousand and the flight of most of the manufacturing base has much more to do with it…and then you have ole Snyder saying there will be no state help coming while he taxes retirees and gives almost 2 billion in tax cuts to business who have not created one job for the corporate welfare they received…isn’t Detroit part of the state too? The ones I feel the worst for are the retirees of the city of Detroit who are going to see their pensions decimated; getting only about 10 cents on the dollar that they were promised…and the bitch of it all is that they did nothing wrong…just worked their whole lives while the people in government they trusted screwed them over….but that is the repubs way of things…if you are unlucky enough to live somewhere where this can happen, you are just out of luck…you should have used your connections to get rich instead of working…what a bunch of crap….geez…
More on the Emergency Managers…
Well…tried to get out on the bike but the problem seems to be that the rear gears are just worn out and need to be replaced…but that is not why I’m here…with the imminent takeover of Detroit by the state of Michigan with the naming off an emergency manager, I felt it was time to throw a few more details in about how they have worked in the past. First, let me say that the real intent of these anti-democratic actions by the state and the repubs that are running it is to do one thing…to break the unions and move many thousands of people out of the middle class…it’s as simple as that. Sure, Detroit is in financial trouble but it is from population flight, a deteriorating tax base, and the cutting of state revenue sharing that has hit all of the towns and cities across the state…and the revenue sharing has gone down to give tax breaks to business, the repubs one size fits all of governance…it’s raining, cut taxes, revenue is down, cut taxes, if the sky is blue, cut taxes….all the while never even asking business to prove they are creating jobs for all of those tax cuts. The other bad part of this whole mess is that, when you look at the numbers, the cites taken over by them do not get better….but, you know the repubs think facts and numbers have a “liberal bias” and really don’t pay any attention to them…they just hate democracy so much they have to try to rig the system any way they can and this is just another tool like voter suppression to keep them in power…geez…
Have to comment on ole Nolan…
Well…I was just reading the Detroit News (yeah, I know, it will rot my brain but I do need topics) and a little article from ole Nolan caught my eye for its nonsense that blames Democrats and liberals for the financial problems that beset Detroit. Nolan, Nolan, Nolan….how stupid are you? I will admit that Detroit has been looted by mismanagement over the years and has never been a model for good government, but, to blame the loss of population and the shipping of jobs overseas on the democrats is to blame the victim for having his life stolen from him. It is the republican party’s pro business policies that have led to outsourcing; to moving auto jobs to Mexico taking millions of other support jobs that used to pay a living wage but now, what jobs are left, don’t pay enough to pay taxes on let alone add to the tax base that has fled. So, Nolan, your anti labor and anti human screeds are getting tiring…how can you have so much hate inside and still call yourself a human being? Geez….
Wandering around in my head on Friday….
Well….there are quite a few things going on in my head today so I thought I’d just free form it and let them come as they will…oh, free speech and the first amendment….read an article in the Detroit papers about the idiot Terry Jones and his plans to protest Islam outside a mosque in Detroit today…if you remember, he’s the one that burned a Koran in Florida that set off the rest of the idiots in Afghanistan and across the middle east and the protests there killed almost 50 people….so it’s not okay to burn a Koran, but it’s okay to kill 50 people protesting it? I just don’t understand that whole mindset….but, back to Detroit…the government there wants Mr. Jones to post a huge bond to cover the costs of security….since when does the first amendment come with a price tag? While I abhor the supposed preacher and his hate speech…we must all defend his right under the first amendment to that speech…and you do not have to pay for the privilege….so, kudos to the ACLU for defending him….
Hmmm….oh, to all of you who bitched and moaned about the bailout loans made to the auto industry in the meltdown….I have a bit of “I told you so” to throw back at you…the CEO of Chrysler today announced that they will be paying back the remaining 7.5 billion they owe 6 years early…yep, that’s right 6 years early and in full….another success story of the targeted government intervention that I advocate and it just adds to the success of the TARP programs that is going to show a 40-50 billion dollar profit for you and me…and these were things that the free market was unwilling or unable to do…take that repubs….
Anything else? Oh, another myth about taxing the rich fell today….that if their state tax rates rise, they will just move out of that state to another one that has lower taxes….doesn’t happen….the outflow and inflow of rich to those states was exactly the same as it was before the tax increases….so, let’s add this one to the myth that cutting taxes on the rich creates jobs and the corresponding one that says cutting taxes on corporations creates jobs…just doesn’t happen…..but the repubs will just keep lying about this until enough of us start paying attention and pushing back…..
That’s about it….for now, wanted to get this one out before lunch so you’d have something to kill time with when you come back from lunch….it is Friday, after all….
Charter schools…
Well…don’t know if you’ve been following the saga of the Detroit Public Schools, but that district is in danger of failing from flight, falling property values, and mismanagement. The solution that is being sold to Michigan and the people of Detroit is to convert fully half of these schools to privately run charter schools following the repub mantra that the private sector always does thing better than government, but the numbers don’t back that up….that’s never a problem to the repubs anyway….their faith-based system of governance does not rely on numbers or statistics just belief. While some of the charters in Michigan do excel at educating children, on a whole, they perform well below the average in graduation rates, adequate yearly progress, and standardized tests. I will concede that some of the charters take in kids that have failed in other places which will skew the statistics somewhat, but this is small subset of the kids that go to charters both here and across the country. So, what can we divine from these numbers? I don’t want to sound like there is no nuance to this comparison, but one of the biggest reasons that the repubs want charters is that their teachers are overwhelmingly non-union….they care very little about achievement or educating our children…just about scoring political points and furthering their extreme agenda here in Michigan…geez…