You may or may not have been following the Republican destruction of democracy in Michigan, and especially the efforts by the Republican-appointed "Emergency Manager" to sell off the assets of the Detroit Institute of Arts and loot the pensions of the city workers to pay off the banks, but I just came across a piece that deserves wider attention.
A little background. Detroit is in a financial mess. I'm not going to attempt here to explain why or how Detroit got into this position, but the Republican response to the problems of Detroit and other Michigan cities and towns was to throw out the democratically-elected city government and replace it with an appointee with virtually unlimited powers.
The first time the Republican-controlled Michigan state legislature passed the emergency manager law, the people rose up and threw it out in the following general election. That didn't stop the Republicans. They just passed the law again. On March 14, 2013, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appointed Kevyn Orr, a $700/hour Jones Day bankruptcy lawyer, to be Detroit's emergency financial manager.
Under the re-passed law, Orr had extraordinary control over all of Detroit's finances, including the power to force the city to declare bankruptcy. At Orr's recommendation and with the approval of Governor Snyder, the city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy on July 17, 2013, literally minutes before lawyers for city workers and their pensions were about to secure an ruling preventing that tactic.
Some of the city's assets that the emergency manager wants to liquidate are paintings by Van Gogh, Cezanne, Degas, Bruegel, Rembrandt, Matisse, and others. Orr hired Christie's to appraise the collection.
The plan created by Orr is said to "give the edge to retirees over bankers," but the "retirees" -- Detroit's municpal workers -- don't see it that way at all.
The current issue of The Washington Spectator has a long article explaining that in Michigan, the winners are those who broke the rules and the losers are those who didn't: Shock in Detroit: Workers Lose in Bankruptcy Court. It's worth reading.
What caught my eye, however, was not the main article but the words of Mark Phillips, one of the members of the AFSCME Local 98 Retirees Executive Board, that appear on the back page of the newsletter. The column is titled Mad as Hell, and you ought to read it all. Here are some excerpts:
The Emergency Manager, Kevyn Orr, and the governor decided to give these people a pass. Which include, to give you a little history, Mr. Mike Ilitch. Ilitch, if you are not aware, is the owner of the Detroit Tigers. He owns the Detroit Red Wings. His wife owns the Motor City Casino. He owes back taxes.
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Now the way we see it, they are looking to build Detroit up on the backs of retirees and taxpayers, pensioners. You understand?
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There is a provision within the state Constitution, now I didn’t say city, I said state, voters within the state of Michigan voted to say that pensioners should be able to maintain and keep their pensions until they die. You get that?
Now the governor and that House up there decided they’re going to go to the feds and trump that because you got these people that think the rich people should not pay and we should.
Because what Mike Ilitch doesn’t own downtown, another millionaire by the name of Dan Gilbert owns.
We don’t own nothing. We just pay our taxes.
With respect to the law that empowered Orr to do all this, Mr. Phillips had the following to say:
The citizens of this state, again not this city, they had this emergency manager law, the citizens voted [in a statewide referendum] to cancel it.
What did the governor do? He went back to the Legislature, they met in secret session and passed a new emergency manager law granting the man even more power than he had.
And guess what? When people brought it up and said we want to vote, they said “no.”