{"id":34852,"date":"2013-03-06T22:06:36","date_gmt":"2013-03-07T04:06:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=34852"},"modified":"2013-03-06T22:06:36","modified_gmt":"2013-03-07T04:06:36","slug":"emt-for-the-313","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=34852","title":{"rendered":"EMT for the 313"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus<\/p>\n

“We Hope For Better Things; It Shall Rise From the Ashes.” – City of Detroit’s motto<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Those words were written in 1805 to memorialize a Detroit school burned to the ground. \u00a0208 years later, Detroit still hopes for divine intervention, this time from the Michigan capitol.<\/p>\n

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Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s proclamation of a “financial emergency” in Detroit<\/a> was the culmination of a decades-long municipal car wreck. \u00a0Between 2000 and 2010, the city lost 237,500 inhabitants \u2014 an estimated 1\/4th of the population. \u00a0One in 20 homes were foreclosed upon during the height of the recession. \u00a0The city remains $327 million in the red with $14.9 billion in unfunded city pension plans. \u00a0By comparison, the entire state of Michigan’s biennial budget is $49 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

While Detroit has been slowly crashing into a wall of economic reality, a busload of corrupt and incompetent city officials have rubber-necked their way past the myriad of issues confronting the city. \u00a0In the last decade, Detroit saw 131 convictions of government officials, a number defined by the reign of ousted Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. \u00a0Even the federal government last year withheld millions in grants from Detroit over concerns of corruption. \u00a0The city’s reaction? \u00a0We’re not as bad as Chicago when it comes to corruption, so what’s the big deal?<\/a><\/p>\n

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The Roosevelt Warehouse or Detroit School Book Depository. A fire in 1987 did some damage to the building but was abandoned despite most of the inventory being usable. No effort to recover science and sports equipment, scissors, crayons, and books was ever made and now all sit on the floor in ruin<\/p><\/div>\n

Synder’s appointment of an “emergency manager” to oversee the Detroit budget and pension plans has elicited howls of protests from\u00a0the usual suspects<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“[Emergency managers] can unilaterally tear up union contracts, take over pension funds, make and repeal laws, sell public assets, the list goes on,” he said in\u00a0an earlier interview with The Huffington Post<\/a>. “Imposition of the EM must be understood in the context of the many other methods conservatives are using today to suppress democracy \u2013- especially among people of color and people in poverty.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But the decision to go the EM route has also gained critics on the Right, with one National Review writer declaring Snyder’s decision, in hyperbolic form, a\u00a0“uniquely American way to dictatorship.”<\/a><\/p>\n

The Emergency Manager legislation has gone through a number of iterations over the years, including one version, Public Act 4, that was opposed by the unions and defeated on the ballot last November. \u00a0PA 4 would have allowed EMs to effectively run cities, with their authority superseding that of city officials. \u00a0Instead, with PA 4 defeated, Snyder is falling back on the format of an older PA – one that while still not allowing EMs to be fired by the city, doesn’t grant them the power to\u00a0abrogate collective bargaining or dissolve local governments.<\/p>\n

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The United Artists Theater. The theater is actually part of an 18-story high rise built in 1928. The historic building was such an embarrassment that the exterior was refurbished before the Super Bowl in 2006. The interior remains as seen.<\/p><\/div>\n

Despite the fact that no one will be declared dictator, or even Pontifex Maximus<\/a>, Snyder’s decision has prompted Detroit’s City Council to fight tooth-and-nail against any EM, filing an appeal against the state. \u00a0One official\u00a0who isn’t planning on fighting Lansing<\/a>\u00a0is surprisingly Detroit’s Mayor Dave Bing. \u00a0Like the rest of the city government, Bing isn’t happy about Snyder’s power play, but unlike the rest, Bing is willing to work with any EM. \u00a0Speaking at a City Hall press conference, Bing stated that\u00a0“we need to stop BSing ourselves,”<\/a>\u00a0a quote perhaps applicable to more than just an acknowledgment that an emergency manager would be imposed on Detroit whether they liked it or not.<\/p>\n

An emergency manager invites micro concerns – with\u00a083 cents of every Detroit police and fire payroll dollar being\u00a0spent on pensions by 2017<\/a>, what use is an EM without the ability to unilateral restructure pension and\/or contracts? \u00a0But the macro concerns of the decision are far more troubling. \u00a0How do you save a city that won’t save itself?<\/p>\n

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The Lee Plaza Hotel lobby. The Lee Plaza is on the United States National Register of Historic Places.<\/p><\/div>\n

H.L. Menchken famously declared that “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” \u00a0Detroit has certainly being getting it “good and hard” for decades, and like an S&M enthusiast whose forgotten their safe-word, doesn’t know how to stop. \u00a0Bankruptcy may be an option, but it doesn’t address the billions in underfunded liabilities<\/a>. \u00a0And considering all bankruptcy would do is force Detroit and its creditors to negotiate, there’s not much more that an EM would do for the situation except provide a political scapegoat for the necessary hard choices to come. \u00a0It should be little wonder that Mayor Dave Bing isn’t fighting Snyder’s executive decision – he’s probably relieved someone else will being taking the slings and arrows (in Detroit; statewide, the move is very popular<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Yet what happens after the dust settles? \u00a0Even if Snyder’s EM hacks Detroit’s budget into the black, will the political machinery or populace live with the decisions? \u00a0Or, having avoided any connection to the policies implemented to take Detroit on the long road to fiscal solvency, will the business of City Hall simply revert to usual?<\/p>\n

Snyder’s technocrat lean may be well-intended, but in the case of Detroit, is only delaying the city and its voters coming to terms with their decisions. \u00a0Although on the plus side, Snyder’s move is the first job created in Detroit in years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speramus Meliora; Resurget Cineribus “We Hope For Better Things; It Shall Rise From the Ashes.” – City of Detroit’s motto. Those words were written in 1805 to memorialize a Detroit school burned to the ground. \u00a0208 years later, Detroit still hopes for divine intervention, this time from the Michigan capitol. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s proclamation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,234,122,74,73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-ringer","category-modern-plagues","category-oh-the-humanity","category-the-great-recession","category-western-civilization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34852"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34866,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34852\/revisions\/34866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}