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Republicans faulty dogma of Failing Detroit!!

Diving Mullah

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n the wake of Detroit’s bankruptcy, you may be wondering: How could anyone be surprised that a city so tied to manufacturing faces crippling problems in an era that has seen such an intense public policy assault on domestic American manufacturing? You may also be wondering: How could Michigan officials possibly talk about cutting the average $19,000-a-year pension benefit for municipal workers while reaffirming their pledge of $283 million in taxpayer money to a professional hockey stadium?
These are fair questions — and the answers to them can be found in the political mythology that distorts America’s economic policymaking.
As mythology goes, the specific story being crafted about Detroit’s bankruptcy is truly biblical — more specifically, just like the fact-free mythology around the Greek financial collapse, it is copied right from the chapter in the conservative movement’s bible about how to distort crises for maximum political effect.
In the conservative telling of this particular parable, Detroit faces a fiscal emergency because high taxes supposedly drove a mass exodus from the city, and the supposedly unbridled greed of unions forced city leaders to make fiscally irresponsible pension promises to municipal employees. Written out of the tale is any serious analysis of macroeconomic shifts, international economic policy failures, the geography of recent recessions and unsustainable corporate welfare spending.
This is classic right-wing dogma — the kind that employs selective storytelling to use a tragic event as a means to radical ends. In this case, the ends are — big shocker! — three of the conservative movement’s larger long-term economic priorities: 1) preservation of job-killing trade policies 2) immunity for corporations and 3) justification for budget policies that continue to profligately subsidize the rich.

1) Detroit isn’t just any old city — it happens to be the biggest population center in the state hit the hardest by the right’s corporate-written trade agenda. Indeed, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the state lost more jobs than any other from NAFTA (43,600, or 1 percent of its total job base) and lost another 79,500 jobs thanks to the China PNTR deal. And that’s just two of many such trade pacts. Add to this the city’s disproportionate reliance on American auto companies which made a series of horrific business decisions, and Detroit is a microcosmic cautionary tale about what happens when large corporations are allowed to write macro economic policy and dictate the economic future of an entire city.


2) That brings us to how this all plays into the right’s push to enact ever more regressive tax cuts, protect endless corporate welfare and legislate new reductions in workers’ guaranteed pensions.
These latter objectives may seem unrelated, but they all complement each other when presented in the most politically opportunistic way. It’s a straightforward conservative formula: the right blames state and municipal budget problems exclusively on public employees’ retirement benefits, often underfunding those public pensions for years. The money raided from those pension funds is then used to enact expensive tax cuts and corporate welfare programs. After years of robbing those pension funds to pay for such giveaways, a crisis inevitably hits, and workers’ pension benefits are blamed — and then slashed. Meanwhile, the massive tax cuts and corporate subsidies are preserved, because we are led to believe they had nothing to do with the crisis. Ultimately, the extra monies taken from retirees are then often plowed into even more tax cuts and more corporate subsidies.We’ve seen this trick in states all over America lately. In Rhode Island, for instance, the state underfunded its public pensions for years, while giving away $356 million in a year in corporate subsidies (including an epically embarrassing $75 million to Curt Schilling). It then converted the pension system into a Wall Street boondoggle), all while preserving the subsidies.
Similarly, in Kentucky, the state raided its public pension funds to finance $1.4 billion a year in tax subsidies, and then when the crisis hit, lawmakers there slashed pension benefits — not the corporate subsidies.

So, for instance, from the administration of right-wing Gov. Rick Snyder, we are hearing a lot of carping about the $3.5 billion in pension obligations that are part of the city’s overall $18 billion in debt. The focus leads casual onlookers to believe that — even though they on average get a pension of just $19,000 a year — municipal workers’ supposed greed single-handedly bankrupted the city. What we aren’t hearing about, though, is the city and state’s long history of underfunding its pensions, and using the raided money to spend billions of dollars on corporate welfare...

Read more

Don’t buy the right-wing myth about Detroit - Salon.com

[/quote]

To the idiot, ignorant blind and deaf, this is basically progressive agenda imploding. But most who actually understand the follies of Supply Side economics commonly know and Reaganomics and more affectionately called Voodoonomics. This is a preferred outcome for the conservatives agenda. Take something profitable, splits its assets and liabilities. Liquidize the assets and make a profit., push the liabilities on the American Worker, auction the remainder and blame the worker for subsiding the corporate welfare system

Sadly Detroit won't be the last that falls and, there will be more... and more squeezing the blood of the american worker and middle class to feed the lavishes of the corporate welfare. After all we have become the country of that is only for the rich and of the rich.

Diving Mullah
 
n the wake of Detroit’s bankruptcy, you may be wondering: How could anyone be surprised that a city so tied to manufacturing faces crippling problems in an era that has seen such an intense public policy assault on domestic American manufacturing? You may also be wondering: How could Michigan officials possibly talk about cutting the average $19,000-a-year pension benefit for municipal workers while reaffirming their pledge of $283 million in taxpayer money to a professional hockey stadium?
These are fair questions — and the answers to them can be found in the political mythology that distorts America’s economic policymaking.
As mythology goes, the specific story being crafted about Detroit’s bankruptcy is truly biblical — more specifically, just like the fact-free mythology around the Greek financial collapse, it is copied right from the chapter in the conservative movement’s bible about how to distort crises for maximum political effect.
In the conservative telling of this particular parable, Detroit faces a fiscal emergency because high taxes supposedly drove a mass exodus from the city, and the supposedly unbridled greed of unions forced city leaders to make fiscally irresponsible pension promises to municipal employees. Written out of the tale is any serious analysis of macroeconomic shifts, international economic policy failures, the geography of recent recessions and unsustainable corporate welfare spending.
This is classic right-wing dogma — the kind that employs selective storytelling to use a tragic event as a means to radical ends. In this case, the ends are — big shocker! — three of the conservative movement’s larger long-term economic priorities: 1) preservation of job-killing trade policies 2) immunity for corporations and 3) justification for budget policies that continue to profligately subsidize the rich.

1) Detroit isn’t just any old city — it happens to be the biggest population center in the state hit the hardest by the right’s corporate-written trade agenda. Indeed, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the state lost more jobs than any other from NAFTA (43,600, or 1 percent of its total job base) and lost another 79,500 jobs thanks to the China PNTR deal. And that’s just two of many such trade pacts. Add to this the city’s disproportionate reliance on American auto companies which made a series of horrific business decisions, and Detroit is a microcosmic cautionary tale about what happens when large corporations are allowed to write macro economic policy and dictate the economic future of an entire city.


2) That brings us to how this all plays into the right’s push to enact ever more regressive tax cuts, protect endless corporate welfare and legislate new reductions in workers’ guaranteed pensions.
These latter objectives may seem unrelated, but they all complement each other when presented in the most politically opportunistic way. It’s a straightforward conservative formula: the right blames state and municipal budget problems exclusively on public employees’ retirement benefits, often underfunding those public pensions for years. The money raided from those pension funds is then used to enact expensive tax cuts and corporate welfare programs. After years of robbing those pension funds to pay for such giveaways, a crisis inevitably hits, and workers’ pension benefits are blamed — and then slashed. Meanwhile, the massive tax cuts and corporate subsidies are preserved, because we are led to believe they had nothing to do with the crisis. Ultimately, the extra monies taken from retirees are then often plowed into even more tax cuts and more corporate subsidies.We’ve seen this trick in states all over America lately. In Rhode Island, for instance, the state underfunded its public pensions for years, while giving away $356 million in a year in corporate subsidies (including an epically embarrassing $75 million to Curt Schilling). It then converted the pension system into a Wall Street boondoggle), all while preserving the subsidies.
Similarly, in Kentucky, the state raided its public pension funds to finance $1.4 billion a year in tax subsidies, and then when the crisis hit, lawmakers there slashed pension benefits — not the corporate subsidies.

So, for instance, from the administration of right-wing Gov. Rick Snyder, we are hearing a lot of carping about the $3.5 billion in pension obligations that are part of the city’s overall $18 billion in debt. The focus leads casual onlookers to believe that — even though they on average get a pension of just $19,000 a year — municipal workers’ supposed greed single-handedly bankrupted the city. What we aren’t hearing about, though, is the city and state’s long history of underfunding its pensions, and using the raided money to spend billions of dollars on corporate welfare...

Read more

Don’t buy the right-wing myth about Detroit - Salon.com



To the idiot, ignorant blind and deaf, this is basically progressive agenda imploding. But most who actually understand the follies of Supply Side economics commonly know and Reaganomics and more affectionately called Voodoonomics. This is a preferred outcome for the conservatives agenda. Take something profitable, splits its assets and liabilities. Liquidize the assets and make a profit., push the liabilities on the American Worker, auction the remainder and blame the worker for subsiding the corporate welfare system

Sadly Detroit won't be the last that falls and, there will be more... and more squeezing the blood of the american worker and middle class to feed the lavishes of the corporate welfare. After all we have become the country of that is only for the rich and of the rich.

Diving Mullah
[/QUOTE]

Sorry to focus on just one portion of your informative link. But I do not believe for one MOMENT that the average pension is $19,000. Not for one moment.

I will be amazed if anyone's pension is cut by a nickle. It's possible that promised increases may not happen...or that healthcare benefits promised may be cut. But the monthly stipend? I say no way.

People ten years from retirement? I think they're likely to see a change in their future though.
 
There hasn't been a conservative mayor over Detroit in 50 years! How is this possibly conservatives fault?
 
n the wake of Detroit’s bankruptcy, you may be wondering: How could anyone be surprised that a city so tied to manufacturing faces crippling problems in an era that has seen such an intense public policy assault on domestic American manufacturing? You may also be wondering: How could Michigan officials possibly talk about cutting the average $19,000-a-year pension benefit for municipal workers while reaffirming their pledge of $283 million in taxpayer money to a professional hockey stadium?
These are fair questions — and the answers to them can be found in the political mythology that distorts America’s economic policymaking.
As mythology goes, the specific story being crafted about Detroit’s bankruptcy is truly biblical — more specifically, just like the fact-free mythology around the Greek financial collapse, it is copied right from the chapter in the conservative movement’s bible about how to distort crises for maximum political effect.
In the conservative telling of this particular parable, Detroit faces a fiscal emergency because high taxes supposedly drove a mass exodus from the city, and the supposedly unbridled greed of unions forced city leaders to make fiscally irresponsible pension promises to municipal employees. Written out of the tale is any serious analysis of macroeconomic shifts, international economic policy failures, the geography of recent recessions and unsustainable corporate welfare spending.
This is classic right-wing dogma — the kind that employs selective storytelling to use a tragic event as a means to radical ends. In this case, the ends are — big shocker! — three of the conservative movement’s larger long-term economic priorities: 1) preservation of job-killing trade policies 2) immunity for corporations and 3) justification for budget policies that continue to profligately subsidize the rich.

1) Detroit isn’t just any old city — it happens to be the biggest population center in the state hit the hardest by the right’s corporate-written trade agenda. Indeed, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the state lost more jobs than any other from NAFTA (43,600, or 1 percent of its total job base) and lost another 79,500 jobs thanks to the China PNTR deal. And that’s just two of many such trade pacts. Add to this the city’s disproportionate reliance on American auto companies which made a series of horrific business decisions, and Detroit is a microcosmic cautionary tale about what happens when large corporations are allowed to write macro economic policy and dictate the economic future of an entire city.


2) That brings us to how this all plays into the right’s push to enact ever more regressive tax cuts, protect endless corporate welfare and legislate new reductions in workers’ guaranteed pensions.
These latter objectives may seem unrelated, but they all complement each other when presented in the most politically opportunistic way. It’s a straightforward conservative formula: the right blames state and municipal budget problems exclusively on public employees’ retirement benefits, often underfunding those public pensions for years. The money raided from those pension funds is then used to enact expensive tax cuts and corporate welfare programs. After years of robbing those pension funds to pay for such giveaways, a crisis inevitably hits, and workers’ pension benefits are blamed — and then slashed. Meanwhile, the massive tax cuts and corporate subsidies are preserved, because we are led to believe they had nothing to do with the crisis. Ultimately, the extra monies taken from retirees are then often plowed into even more tax cuts and more corporate subsidies.We’ve seen this trick in states all over America lately. In Rhode Island, for instance, the state underfunded its public pensions for years, while giving away $356 million in a year in corporate subsidies (including an epically embarrassing $75 million to Curt Schilling). It then converted the pension system into a Wall Street boondoggle), all while preserving the subsidies.
Similarly, in Kentucky, the state raided its public pension funds to finance $1.4 billion a year in tax subsidies, and then when the crisis hit, lawmakers there slashed pension benefits — not the corporate subsidies.

So, for instance, from the administration of right-wing Gov. Rick Snyder, we are hearing a lot of carping about the $3.5 billion in pension obligations that are part of the city’s overall $18 billion in debt. The focus leads casual onlookers to believe that — even though they on average get a pension of just $19,000 a year — municipal workers’ supposed greed single-handedly bankrupted the city. What we aren’t hearing about, though, is the city and state’s long history of underfunding its pensions, and using the raided money to spend billions of dollars on corporate welfare...

Read more

Don’t buy the right-wing myth about Detroit - Salon.com


To the idiot, ignorant blind and deaf, this is basically progressive agenda imploding. But most who actually understand the follies of Supply Side economics commonly know and Reaganomics and more affectionately called Voodoonomics. This is a preferred outcome for the conservatives agenda. Take something profitable, splits its assets and liabilities. Liquidize the assets and make a profit., push the liabilities on the American Worker, auction the remainder and blame the worker for subsiding the corporate welfare system

Sadly Detroit won't be the last that falls and, there will be more... and more squeezing the blood of the american worker and middle class to feed the lavishes of the corporate welfare. After all we have become the country of that is only for the rich and of the rich.

Diving Mullah

A couple of nits to pick here. Where did you come up with $19K/year for an average Detriot city worker's pension? While your post ranks high for its volume, it makes no case for Detriot being the only city that would have suffered from your numerous causes listed, or why no action was taken to react to a trend that started 50 years ago.
 
n the wake of Detroit’s bankruptcy, you may be wondering: How could anyone be surprised that a city so tied to manufacturing faces crippling problems in an era that has seen such an intense public policy assault on domestic American manufacturing? You may also be wondering: How could Michigan officials possibly talk about cutting the average $19,000-a-year pension benefit for municipal workers while reaffirming their pledge of $283 million in taxpayer money to a professional hockey stadium?
These are fair questions — and the answers to them can be found in the political mythology that distorts America’s economic policymaking.
As mythology goes, the specific story being crafted about Detroit’s bankruptcy is truly biblical — more specifically, just like the fact-free mythology around the Greek financial collapse, it is copied right from the chapter in the conservative movement’s bible about how to distort crises for maximum political effect.
In the conservative telling of this particular parable, Detroit faces a fiscal emergency because high taxes supposedly drove a mass exodus from the city, and the supposedly unbridled greed of unions forced city leaders to make fiscally irresponsible pension promises to municipal employees. Written out of the tale is any serious analysis of macroeconomic shifts, international economic policy failures, the geography of recent recessions and unsustainable corporate welfare spending.
This is classic right-wing dogma — the kind that employs selective storytelling to use a tragic event as a means to radical ends. In this case, the ends are — big shocker! — three of the conservative movement’s larger long-term economic priorities: 1) preservation of job-killing trade policies 2) immunity for corporations and 3) justification for budget policies that continue to profligately subsidize the rich.

1) Detroit isn’t just any old city — it happens to be the biggest population center in the state hit the hardest by the right’s corporate-written trade agenda. Indeed, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the state lost more jobs than any other from NAFTA (43,600, or 1 percent of its total job base) and lost another 79,500 jobs thanks to the China PNTR deal. And that’s just two of many such trade pacts. Add to this the city’s disproportionate reliance on American auto companies which made a series of horrific business decisions, and Detroit is a microcosmic cautionary tale about what happens when large corporations are allowed to write macro economic policy and dictate the economic future of an entire city.


2) That brings us to how this all plays into the right’s push to enact ever more regressive tax cuts, protect endless corporate welfare and legislate new reductions in workers’ guaranteed pensions.
These latter objectives may seem unrelated, but they all complement each other when presented in the most politically opportunistic way. It’s a straightforward conservative formula: the right blames state and municipal budget problems exclusively on public employees’ retirement benefits, often underfunding those public pensions for years. The money raided from those pension funds is then used to enact expensive tax cuts and corporate welfare programs. After years of robbing those pension funds to pay for such giveaways, a crisis inevitably hits, and workers’ pension benefits are blamed — and then slashed. Meanwhile, the massive tax cuts and corporate subsidies are preserved, because we are led to believe they had nothing to do with the crisis. Ultimately, the extra monies taken from retirees are then often plowed into even more tax cuts and more corporate subsidies.We’ve seen this trick in states all over America lately. In Rhode Island, for instance, the state underfunded its public pensions for years, while giving away $356 million in a year in corporate subsidies (including an epically embarrassing $75 million to Curt Schilling). It then converted the pension system into a Wall Street boondoggle), all while preserving the subsidies.
Similarly, in Kentucky, the state raided its public pension funds to finance $1.4 billion a year in tax subsidies, and then when the crisis hit, lawmakers there slashed pension benefits — not the corporate subsidies.

So, for instance, from the administration of right-wing Gov. Rick Snyder, we are hearing a lot of carping about the $3.5 billion in pension obligations that are part of the city’s overall $18 billion in debt. The focus leads casual onlookers to believe that — even though they on average get a pension of just $19,000 a year — municipal workers’ supposed greed single-handedly bankrupted the city. What we aren’t hearing about, though, is the city and state’s long history of underfunding its pensions, and using the raided money to spend billions of dollars on corporate welfare...

Read more

Don’t buy the right-wing myth about Detroit - Salon.com



To the idiot, ignorant blind and deaf, this is basically progressive agenda imploding. But most who actually understand the follies of Supply Side economics commonly know and Reaganomics and more affectionately called Voodoonomics. This is a preferred outcome for the conservatives agenda. Take something profitable, splits its assets and liabilities. Liquidize the assets and make a profit., push the liabilities on the American Worker, auction the remainder and blame the worker for subsiding the corporate welfare system

Sadly Detroit won't be the last that falls and, there will be more... and more squeezing the blood of the american worker and middle class to feed the lavishes of the corporate welfare. After all we have become the country of that is only for the rich and of the rich.

Diving Mullah

Yes, Detroit lost a lot of revenue when factories closed and so on. Yes, they offered companies tax breaks to try to attract and hold business. But so what? The issue now isn't what caused the city's economic downturn, it's not how industry reacted to economic incentives, it's how the city government adjusted to it. And to make a long story short, Detroit did not adjust. That is on the heads of the people who have been running the city government all this time, Democrats all, and the voters.

Is there any dispute about the fact that the city kept spending well beyond its means? Is there any dispute that they ran up a huge debt as a result? Is there any dispute that they don't have the means to pay pensions and other obligations? Is there any question that people continued to vote for politicians who offered them benefits the city could not afford, who told them what they wanted to hear, instead of any sort of sane fiscal policy?

When one factors in the corruption, it seems to me that it was the city government and unions who busted out Detroit, carting off pieces of it for themselves the whole way to the detriment of all the other citizens.
 
A couple of nits to pick here. Where did you come up with $19K/year for an average Detriot city worker's pension? While your post ranks high for its volume, it makes no case for Detriot being the only city that would have suffered from your numerous causes listed, or why no action was taken to react to a trend that started 50 years ago.

From New York Times...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/u...lans-to-cut-pensions.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

and as I mentioned Detroit won't the first and last other cities would soon to follow...

Many U.S. cities face the same problems as Detroit - KansasCity.com

Like most financial problems Detroit is also not attributed to one single problem, but what truly broke Detroit back was NAFTA. according to the Economic Policy Institute, the state lost more jobs than any other from NAFTA (43,600, or 1 percent of its total job base) and lost another 79,500 jobs thanks to the China PNTR deal. And that’s just two of many such trade pacts. Add to this the city’s disproportionate reliance on American auto companies which made a series of horrific business decisions, and Detroit is a microcosmic cautionary tale about what happens when large corporations are allowed to write macro economic policy and dictate the economic future of an entire city.

Also not to mention other moronic decisions like...spent $55 million of taxpayer money in 1975 (or a whopping $180 million in inflation-adjusted dollars) on one professional football stadium, then spent another $300 million on yet another football stadium, then sold off the original stadium for just $583,000. Or, just note that Detroit is the largest city in a state that, according to the New York Times, spends more per capita on corporate subsidies — $672 or $6.6 billion a year — than most other states.

And of course who can forget the Republican Governor to forgo public vote and someone who has not been elected by the people a bankruptcy lawyer for the city manager jobs and the save the city from Bankruptcy and of course the this bankruptcy lawyer "has No choice" but to declare chapter 9 for the city. What a Shocker!

Diving Mullah

Diving Mullah
 
From New York Times...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/22/u...lans-to-cut-pensions.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

and as I mentioned Detroit won't the first and last other cities would soon to follow...

Many U.S. cities face the same problems as Detroit - KansasCity.com

Like most financial problems Detroit is also not attributed to one single problem, but what truly broke Detroit back was NAFTA. according to the Economic Policy Institute, the state lost more jobs than any other from NAFTA (43,600, or 1 percent of its total job base) and lost another 79,500 jobs thanks to the China PNTR deal. And that’s just two of many such trade pacts. Add to this the city’s disproportionate reliance on American auto companies which made a series of horrific business decisions, and Detroit is a microcosmic cautionary tale about what happens when large corporations are allowed to write macro economic policy and dictate the economic future of an entire city.

Also not to mention other moronic decisions like...spent $55 million of taxpayer money in 1975 (or a whopping $180 million in inflation-adjusted dollars) on one professional football stadium, then spent another $300 million on yet another football stadium, then sold off the original stadium for just $583,000. Or, just note that Detroit is the largest city in a state that, according to the New York Times, spends more per capita on corporate subsidies — $672 or $6.6 billion a year — than most other states.

And of course who can forget the Republican Governor to forgo public vote and someone who has not been elected by the people a bankruptcy lawyer for the city manager jobs and the save the city from Bankruptcy and of course the this bankruptcy lawyer "has No choice" but to declare chapter 9 for the city. What a Shocker!

Diving Mullah

Diving Mullah

That NY Times article never mentions what the average Detriot pension amount is. BTW does the "average" year now have only 10 months? The "star" of the article made $1,900/month ($22,800/year) and likely gets many other non-cash retirment benefits like medical insurance as well.

http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/23/retirement/detroit-pensions/index.html

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130703/METRO01/307030033

The average social security pension is $1230/month, or $14,760/year.

http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/ans...-social-security-benefit-for-a-retired-worker
 
Last edited:
There hasn't been a conservative mayor over Detroit in 50 years! How is this possibly conservatives fault?

Yeah. I also kind of doubt that the poster is "very conservative". Unless he is like Mitt,who called himself "severely conservative".
 
The rightwing noise machine worked overtime to come up with its stupid "Detroit is failed liberalism" meme. It's what it does. And just look at the minions here, repeating it, without a thought in their head.

Best OP of the month.
 
LOL Detroit has had ONE non democrat Mayor since 1957. They've had ONE non democrat city council person since 1970. Yep!! It's George Bush's fault.

Gadda love the low information crowd.

Unions, especially public sector unions, which are a giant oxymoron in and of themselves, along with the crony liberal politicians running the city into the ground, are only a sign of the future of our entire nation.

Hold on folks it's going to get ugly.

About the only non low information portion of this thread is there are a number of other liberal controlled cities that will follow down the financial drain.
 
The rightwing noise machine worked overtime to come up with its stupid "Detroit is failed liberalism" meme. It's what it does. And just look at the minions here, repeating it, without a thought in their head.

Best OP of the month.

Your right. Detroit failed because of austerity,lack of strong public sector unions,and low tax rates.
 
What this thead points out is that the problem with Detroit is the same as the problem with America in general - namely that Americans refuse to take responsibility for their actions. Shame on us.
 

Diving Mullah[/FONT]

1. You should really change your line from very conservative to something else. Maybe very liberal or socialist.

2. Mayor is an elected office. What happens in detroit, with detroit, the chief blame is the mayor. What party has the mayor been since 1962? Democrat.
 
What this thead points out is that the problem with Detroit is the same as the problem with America in general - namely that Americans refuse to take responsibility for their actions. Shame on us.

Actually the Problem with America in General is the same problem that infects us here.

Here are facts supported by data and conclusion based on those facts. But yet many have simply refused to address or accept, or at least present counter points supported by they own data (except one person). Instead the brilliant rebuttals have been...things like...

"why do call yourself conservative when you banter progressive agenda" to which my reply is... I banter facts supported by data and my lean does not determine the validity of facts.

"ugh! This is Union faults"

"ummm....It is Liberal faults"

"leftwing propaganda machine at work!"

"<Insert your Ad Hom Here>"

Diving Mullah
 
Actually the Problem with America in General is the same problem that infects us here.

Here are facts supported by data and conclusion based on those facts. But yet many have simply refused to address or accept, or at least present counter points supported by they own data (except one person). Instead the brilliant rebuttals have been...things like...

"why do call yourself conservative when you banter progressive agenda" to which my reply is... I banter facts supported by data and my lean does not determine the validity of facts.

"ugh! This is Union faults"

"ummm....It is Liberal faults"

"leftwing propaganda machine at work!"

"<Insert your Ad Hom Here>"

Diving Mullah

The fault belongs to those who have managed the city. Period. Pointing fingers anywhere else is a refusal to accept responsibility for ones actions. The economic environment surrounding Detroit has merely made managing the city difficult. It hasn't caused any of the problems. The managers are responsible for attracting new businesses and running the city on whatever funds are available to it. Plain and simple. Noplace else to point fingers.
 
n the wake of Detroit’s bankruptcy, you may be wondering: How could anyone be surprised that a city so tied to manufacturing faces crippling problems in an era that has seen such an intense public policy assault on domestic American manufacturing? You may also be wondering: How could Michigan officials possibly talk about cutting the average $19,000-a-year pension benefit for municipal workers while reaffirming their pledge of $283 million in taxpayer money to a professional hockey stadium?
These are fair questions — and the answers to them can be found in the political mythology that distorts America’s economic policymaking.
As mythology goes, the specific story being crafted about Detroit’s bankruptcy is truly biblical — more specifically, just like the fact-free mythology around the Greek financial collapse, it is copied right from the chapter in the conservative movement’s bible about how to distort crises for maximum political effect.
In the conservative telling of this particular parable, Detroit faces a fiscal emergency because high taxes supposedly drove a mass exodus from the city, and the supposedly unbridled greed of unions forced city leaders to make fiscally irresponsible pension promises to municipal employees. Written out of the tale is any serious analysis of macroeconomic shifts, international economic policy failures, the geography of recent recessions and unsustainable corporate welfare spending.
This is classic right-wing dogma — the kind that employs selective storytelling to use a tragic event as a means to radical ends. In this case, the ends are — big shocker! — three of the conservative movement’s larger long-term economic priorities: 1) preservation of job-killing trade policies 2) immunity for corporations and 3) justification for budget policies that continue to profligately subsidize the rich.

1) Detroit isn’t just any old city — it happens to be the biggest population center in the state hit the hardest by the right’s corporate-written trade agenda. Indeed, according to the Economic Policy Institute, the state lost more jobs than any other from NAFTA (43,600, or 1 percent of its total job base) and lost another 79,500 jobs thanks to the China PNTR deal. And that’s just two of many such trade pacts. Add to this the city’s disproportionate reliance on American auto companies which made a series of horrific business decisions, and Detroit is a microcosmic cautionary tale about what happens when large corporations are allowed to write macro economic policy and dictate the economic future of an entire city.


2) That brings us to how this all plays into the right’s push to enact ever more regressive tax cuts, protect endless corporate welfare and legislate new reductions in workers’ guaranteed pensions.
These latter objectives may seem unrelated, but they all complement each other when presented in the most politically opportunistic way. It’s a straightforward conservative formula: the right blames state and municipal budget problems exclusively on public employees’ retirement benefits, often underfunding those public pensions for years. The money raided from those pension funds is then used to enact expensive tax cuts and corporate welfare programs. After years of robbing those pension funds to pay for such giveaways, a crisis inevitably hits, and workers’ pension benefits are blamed — and then slashed. Meanwhile, the massive tax cuts and corporate subsidies are preserved, because we are led to believe they had nothing to do with the crisis. Ultimately, the extra monies taken from retirees are then often plowed into even more tax cuts and more corporate subsidies.We’ve seen this trick in states all over America lately. In Rhode Island, for instance, the state underfunded its public pensions for years, while giving away $356 million in a year in corporate subsidies (including an epically embarrassing $75 million to Curt Schilling). It then converted the pension system into a Wall Street boondoggle), all while preserving the subsidies.
Similarly, in Kentucky, the state raided its public pension funds to finance $1.4 billion a year in tax subsidies, and then when the crisis hit, lawmakers there slashed pension benefits — not the corporate subsidies.

So, for instance, from the administration of right-wing Gov. Rick Snyder, we are hearing a lot of carping about the $3.5 billion in pension obligations that are part of the city’s overall $18 billion in debt. The focus leads casual onlookers to believe that — even though they on average get a pension of just $19,000 a year — municipal workers’ supposed greed single-handedly bankrupted the city. What we aren’t hearing about, though, is the city and state’s long history of underfunding its pensions, and using the raided money to spend billions of dollars on corporate welfare...

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Don’t buy the right-wing myth about Detroit - Salon.com



To the idiot, ignorant blind and deaf, this is basically progressive agenda imploding. But most who actually understand the follies of Supply Side economics commonly know and Reaganomics and more affectionately called Voodoonomics. This is a preferred outcome for the conservatives agenda. Take something profitable, splits its assets and liabilities. Liquidize the assets and make a profit., push the liabilities on the American Worker, auction the remainder and blame the worker for subsiding the corporate welfare system

Sadly Detroit won't be the last that falls and, there will be more... and more squeezing the blood of the american worker and middle class to feed the lavishes of the corporate welfare. After all we have become the country of that is only for the rich and of the rich.

Diving Mullah

1) Property taxes in Detroit are indeed 50% higher than the average city, and there's little doubt that had something to do with people leaving.

2) High labor costs in Detroit industries made those industries especially vulnerable to competition in foreign countries and right-to-work states, who on the average pay less than half as much for manufacturing labor. High labor costs are the purview of the labor unions.

3) Trade policies that benefit the unions do so to the detriment of everyone else -- business owners, other workers, and consumers. Which is why you won't see any such policies in the forseeable future.

4) To imply that it was some sort of conspiracy that the government was handing out benefits to corporations while underfunding pensions is especially ignorant. State and local governments are attempting to maintain a local business base without which the pensions would be even more poorly funded. By the time they started doing this they are usually already deep in the hole. Detroit had already several times spent hundreds of millions on top down big ticket projects trying to get their economy re-started. It would have to be an especially stupid business leader who would locate in Detroit unless there was a big tax break involved.

5) Fiscal reality supports conservative economic policy. That's too bad for blue policy, but that doesn't make it a right wing "program" or conspiracy.
 
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