Given Detroit's financial problems, you'd think the prospect of a convention bringing thousands of people to town to stay in hotels, eat in restaurants, drink in bars, and otherwise spend their money would seem like a good thing. But not to the
Detroit News. Or, anyway, not to a
Virginia-based,
Koch-funded hack the
Detroit News gave op-ed space to attack Netroots Nation for coming to Detroit. And not just any Koch-funded hack, but the very same one who started the lame Netroots Nation imitator Right Online. So what is Right Online founder Erik Telford's problem with Netroots Nation going to Detroit? Unions!
Um, whut? See, it's like this: Several unions are among the sponsors of Netroots Nation, and union issues are discussed on panels and such. And unions ... well:
Since 1937, when the United Auto Workers labor union rose to power, Detroit has gracelessly fallen from the ranks of the world’s leading cities into crippling depression.
Yeah, if you skip over the 1940s and 1950s and pretend white flight isn't a thing, you can totally say that Detroit has been in decline ever since, and because, the UAW came to town. Also, Rome was a small city at the beginning, and then its whole empire fell. Not to mention, Apple started in a little teeny garage and look at their stock falling today.
That's about representative of Telford's logic throughout: The auto makers were in no way responsible for their product losing ground, that was all the union workers. Detroit's public workers and their $19,000 pensions, not decades of population loss and giant economic shifts, are responsible for the city's problems. He's just using Netroots Nation as a really bizarre back door to go through to attack Detroit's unions, past and present. In fact, Eclectablog points out that Telford thinks Netroots Nation is fantastic, writing just this week in Politico that:
This past June’s edition of Netroots Nation was a shining example of what Democrats are doing right and where Republicans are falling short.
Koch hacks are gonna wank. That's who Erik Telford is. He wants a corporate-funded, far-right imitation of Netroots Nation, but that doesn't mean he's going to let any chance to attack workers pass him by. The
Detroit News, though? No matter how right wing of a scab newspaper it is, you'd think a Detroit newspaper would celebrate any infusion of money into a city that so badly needs it. Or at least not outright attack it.