Kevyn Orr, the EM of Detroit with nearly dictatorial powers, has given an interview with the Wall Street Journal in which he insulted the city, its people and its history. It demonstrates the contempt Orr has for the people whom he is suppose to lead to the Promised Land of Fiscal Health.
The Weekend Interview with Kevyn Orr: How Detroit Can Rise Again - WSJ.com
So according to Orr, what was wrong with Detroit was that people could make a good living in a good job, get a pension and health care and that killed the city. Amazing.
As somebody who was born in Detroit and raised in the neighboring city of Dearborn, this shows the complete ignorance of Orr for the true history of the city. What made Detroit hum like a well oiled machine for decades was precisely that people could come here with little education and get a factory job. They could earn a decent living, they could get married, but a modest home, have kids and raise a family in dignity and with a sense of self worth. On the block I grew up on in Dearborn in the Fifties and Sixties, there was not one college educated husband but they all had good jobs and all stayed put to raise their kids and everybody maintained their property and were decent citizens.
Too bad they did not know that instead of thinking of themselves as good citizens they should have realized they were just dumb, lazy and happy. As to the rich part - yeah Mr. Orr, we plead guilty to that. We were rich. We had a father with a decent paying job who packed a family of six or more in a 950 foot home. I used to get awakened every workday at 6 AM to see my dad leave a few minutes later and return every day around 4. He never took a day off and he taught me the value of both hard work and simply showing up. We had mothers who stayed home and loved and raised us. She taught me the value of sacrificing so others could have it better. We actually could buy a new car every five years and if we were lucky we could go camping for a week fifty miles away and call that our annual vacation. And after 35 or 40 years in a dirty factory, our dads could retire for a few years before they died because their job was a union job and that was a negotiated benefit.
Dumb, lazy and rich. We all had the Detroit disease but did not know it.
But I guess its okay because Detroit has been cured of that disease. Everybody knows that today you can't lead a middle class life with a spouse and a family and a new car every five years without any higher education. Today, we have made progress and the Detroit disease has been eradicated as people in those same social positions now learn to say
"welcome to wal mart" or
"you want fries with that burger?" And they get less than ten bucks to do that and if they are lucky they have another such job and maybe a spouse with two of their own also. And together they can work 120 hours a week and hold off creditors and pray nobody gets sick because they have no union or no union benefit contract.
And dreams of retirement? No way Jose. Ain't gonna happen. Its social security for you and thats only if the right does not have its way and we axe that program by the time you are ready for it all in the name of progress.
It must be nice to be Kevyn Orr coming in as a invading carpetbagger and leaving with hundreds of thousand of dollars in his bank account and a new notch on his resume. It must be nice to have dictatorial powers and be able to destroy what is left of fat, lazy and dumb people who worked for forty years to get that pension so you can teach them the hard lessons of life so Detroit can become some kind of experiment in rebuilding.
So much for what Abraham Lincoln called a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
Dumb, lazy and fat. But thank to Kevyn Orr and his plans for you - the rich part of the equation is no longer a fantasy that people are embracing.
Dumb fat and lazy. Welcome to Michigan Mr. Orr. At least we are no longer rich.
