How I feel

I have so many mixed feelings about Detroit and my personal position I really do not know how to express them all. With the pronouncement of a few sentences a federal judge allowed the financial bankruptcy to move forward and took away the only protection Civil Servants in 6 states specifically and 44 others through precedent had as protection of an earned, deferred payment called a pension.

In that ruling the court not only gave all government entities a way out of not funding their pension shortfalls he also said that pensions currently being paid could be reduced through negotiation. In Detroit it is particularly heinous for those that retired from being police and firefighters. They were not given the right to pay into the FICA tax which would have given them Social Security and Medicare. Which means the city medical plan and their pension is their only monthly income that was by the state constitution guaranteed to be stable. Their average pension is $30,000 before monthly deductions for medical & life insurance.

Here's the worst of it for retirees, the pension shortfall for both grunt workers like me and police and fire is 3.5 billion dollars but the healthcare shortfall is 5.8 billion both equally roughly half of the debt the city is trying to bankrupt out of. The reasons for the shortfall is not because we, the workers, did not pay into the system, we did. We worked for roughly 1/3 less than a skilled tradesman or clerk in the private sector, taking 1-2% raises spread over the life of a contract or giving back 10% during the lean years with the understanding that city would make a yearly contribution to cover pension fund shortfalls.

About 15-20 years ago was the last time the city paid a dime into the fund, diverting the owed money instead to tax abatement's for developers, securing bond sales, and just outright theft through the pay to play scams that Kwame Kilpatrick went to jail for 28 years over.

Now that the judge has ruled that Detroit is not only eligible for bankruptcy but the government should have done it years ago before the problem turned into an 18.5 billion dollar elephant. As it has always been in every governmental fiscal need the workforce past and present are the low hanging, easiest to reach fruit, so we will be plucked first. Just like when Wall Street crashed the economy the banks responsible after Lehman Brothers was allowed to be the sacrificial goat for Goldman-Sachs theft through manipulation; the banks got paid back their losses dollar for dollar.

You learn so much in life. The court also ruled that pensions were contracts but unsecured by anything of value, but the banks had cut deals with the city to market the bonds that secured them with different revenue streams. What that means is that some of the money that exists currently in the two pension funds (about 5 billion dollars) will be taken from current and those ready to retire within 5 years or so and it will be used to pay those creditors as opposed to using the tax stream they were secured by.

Now here is the real kicker, the Emergency manager who is literally a one man government, a man who does not have to answer to anyone has said Detroit is insolvent but that we are going ahead to fund a new hockey arena and district around it with 434 million dollars of public money. No money for police, firefighters, workers, pensioners, lights (50% of which do not come on at night) but money for anew place for the privately owned Red Wings to play.

Exactly in the area where the least expensive housing is for them who, once pushed out (happening as I write this ), will not even be able to afford an apartment in one of the other slum districts because the 50 year plan has those most impoverished areas being bought up and primed for gentrification to draw young urban college educated whites back to live in Detroit. But those souls who have been pushed out of their $300 per month rooms in apartment buildings now are moving into the non targeted areas around me and others in the ring neighborhoods to live in houses wih no heat or lights and in some cases no doors or windows.

People tell me it has to be this way, that I am insane if I think this is some kind of state government plan. I may be insane but as soon as the court made it's ruling the state of Illinois which also secured it's pensions with the constitution and not an insurance policy both houses of their legislature sent two near equal bills to committee for reconciliation and Governor Quinn a democrat will cut all public pensions and wipe out $100 BILLION of pension and retiree healthcare costs owed to them who worked in the state for the state.

The governor of Michigan, former investment/hedge fund player who dismantled Gateway computer piece by piece selling the proprietary technical information and the name to the Chinese. If you are reading this on an ACER computer that technology in it was built on the information Snyder sold them. Furthermore he leveraged the pensions of the workers with debt, took those loans as profit for his investment firm and used the employee pension fund to be split up in Gateway's bankruptcy among the secured creditors. Of course before entering bankruptcy he sold off the physical property gateway owned which was one of the few American manufactured computers and took that money as profits.

Most of the howling to sell off our wonderful 122 year old world class art collection has stopped now that the auction house, Christi's, appraised the pieces that could be sold at less than 1 billion dollars. The judge cautioned against doing that  in his 146 page statement as not wanting to de-culture the city that will rise from the ashes of bankruptcy.

i was born in this city and have lived here my entire life except for my military time and Walking Man time. I was born while it was still at peak population and the nations 5th largest city. Not the loss of manufacturing, the rising taxes, crime, murders, falling services and depopulation and everything else has ever been enough to make me want to leave, but now i don't want to leave but then i do not want to pay some of the highest by percentage property taxes in the nation and certainly the highest in Michigan to this city.

And there is the rub, it could easily become to expensive to leave here and too expensive to stay.

Detroit may look like Mogadishu, that is a fact but it is an American city abandoned by America. We lent Israel 300 Billion dollars and are holding it in our central bank (The Federal Reserve) and allowing them to use the interest to pay back the principal. But Detroit, Cleveland, Montgomery county Al, Illinois---and all the others going down this uncharted path Detroit is now on---encouragement from the Federal Government and a "they're your boots pull 'em up on your own."

I am tired of holding onto my bootstraps. My back hurts and my city is dead.