Subject: Detroit: Socialism's Theme ParkHang on! Chicago and Illinois are not far behind.Government Motors Is Alive And Detroit Is Dead 07/19/2013Bankruptcy: The fundamental transformation of Detroit is complete, as socialism's theme park succumbs to government run amok, a reminder that government isn't the solution to our problems but their cause.The wisdom of President Reagan's words have been lost under an administration that believes government is the entity from which all blessings flow. So has Margaret Thatcher's observation that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money.Last Oct. 13, President Obama boasted in a weekly address about the bailed-out auto industry that, "We refused to throw in the towel and do nothing. We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt. I bet on American workers and American ingenuity, and three years later that bet is paying off in a big way."Less than a year later, the American auto industry is indeed surviving, bolstered largely by Ford that refused government assistance and foreign transplants located in right-to-work states. Even General Motors has been forced to pay the free market some lip service, lest its customers go elsewhere, even as it accepts Chevy Volt subsidies.Detroit, however, is dead, and unions and government killed it. Michigan recently became a right-to-work state, but it was too late to save a city that had become beholden to unions. As the United Auto Workers helped destroy the auto industry in and around Detroit, it's no accident that Mercedes-Benz decided to build its flagship SUV in a shiny new facility in Vance, Ala.Labor overhead was an albatross around Detroit's neck. Until recently, total pay and benefits for a full-time worker at the Big Three averaged $140,000 a year vs. $80,000 for their foreign competitors. Add an estimated $2,000-plus per car for retiree health care and pensions for the Big Three, and you wonder not why Detroit failed, but why it didn't fail sooner.Detroit's response to a declining business climate was more taxes, fewer city services and bloated pensions for workers in the only growth area — government.The city's $11 billion in unsecured debt includes $6 billion in health and other retirement benefits and $3 billion in retiree pensions for its 20,000 city pensioners, members of the public sector unions that helped bring Detroit to its knees.In the face of government incompetence, it was the people of Detroit who went on strike. Detroit lost a quarter-million residents between 2000 and 2010. A population that in the 1950s teemed with 1.8 million is struggling to stay above 700,000. Much of the middle-class and scores of businesses also have fled, taking their tax dollars with them.Detroit is the rotten fruit of uncontested progressive socialism. In 1960, Detroit had the highest per capita income in the U.S.; today, it's the poorest of our large cities. An estimated 78,000 of the city's homes are unoccupied, and in 2011 half the occupiers of its 305,000 properties did not pay any tax. Some 40% of the street lights do not work.Detroit has 264,209 households, and 91,204 — or 34.5% — get food stamps. Only 54.3% of Detroit residents participate in the labor force. This is how America is beginning to look. If we continue down President Obama's path, America will become Detroit, only with a press to print money.Indeed, the scary part is that Detroit is what Obama wants to fundamentally transform America into: a place where wealth is redistributed, not created, and where government picks winners and losers in an economy in which we all ultimately lose.Speaking at Ohio State University in May, he told graduates not to listen to "voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that's at the root of all our problems."Detroit didn't. We should.
Fw: Fwd: Detroit: Socialism's Theme Park
8/06/2013 08:27:00 AM
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DETROIT,
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20 comments:
Ya, it had nothing to do with white flight or industry flight. It was all about "unions", who managed to secure such outrageous pensions for their workers, some ups to *GASP* 190000 a year! For a pension?!? That's just CRAZY that anyone would think a pension could be so rich. What the hell did they do to deserve such a HUGE payout (besides work hard their whole lives)?
Couple things: wasn't Mitt Romney's dad Governor of Michigan during the 60s? Like, during the time that Detroit began its decline? Maybe their problem is they elected a Romney.
Also, if legal bankruptcy isn't possible provided you avoid the "evils" of progressiveness, then can someone explain how Orange County California, the very beating heart of the right wing Republican beast, filed for bankruptcy almost 20 years before Detroit did?
Ha! 190000 a year would certainly be an outrageous pension. Of course I mean 19000, not 190000.
I wonder how long it will take for my typo to become a right wing talking point.
So, Jefferson county Alabama filed for Bankruptcy in 2011. According to Wikipedia this was “the second most expensive municipal bankruptcy ever in the US (after Detroit, Michigan)”. What happened in AL? I’m pretty sure there are no unions to ruin everything there. Shouldn’t Alabama be humming along like a well-oiled capitalist machine? I mean they did get a lot of the jobs from Detroit. Where is the right-wing outrage about a red state costing the U.S. $4.2 billion?
On another note, Unions comprise 7.6% of the entire private workforce in the entire U.S. If you were to listen to Right-Wing propaganda, then 7.6% is destroying the other 92.4%. God forbid a factory worker makes a decent salary, but hey we need to give tax breaks to the guy making 3 billion a year. Finally if Unions are so terribly bad, why are cities like Chicago and Philadelphia not filing for bankruptcy? They seem to be doing better than a lot of cities in right-to-work states.
The auto "bailout" saved my small business (and many others). We would simply not have survived the economic disaster that Bush ushered in without the survival of GM. We were down to 25% of normal sales after Sept 2008 and needed every sale we made to limp along. Things are better now. I may not like everything Obama has done, but he saved my company and no amount of right-wing revisionist propaganda can change that.
To Fish: glad to hear that! And good luck to you. I concur that one of the very few good things that Obama did do was the auto bail out. It was too small, but it was better than nothing.
And it is true that it's unlikely that John McCain would've done that. Despite Sarah Palin's caterwauling about "helping citizens," it's unlikely the GOP would've bailed out the Detroit workers, which included related businesses, such as yours. So much for the vaunted GOP talking point about being "for" small businesses... uh, not so much.
I had my own issues with top mgmt at the Big 3 US automakers. IMO, they had all abandoned R&D on better makes & models of cars. They wallowed in their greedy laziness and pushed the US public into buying gargantuan gas-guzzling inefficient planned-obsolescent machines that were poorly made & fell apart rapidly.
Ford was the pick of the litter & turned around the fastest.
Detroit, imo, was run into the ground, at least in part, by LOUSY Management, who paid *themselves* lavishly while refusing to plow profits back into R&D and to develop better, more competitive (with foreign auto makers, like Toyota & Honda) products, eg. better cars & trucks.
Of course, the rightwing think tanks are gonna push push push the b.s. that it's all the fault of evil dreaded unions. Well some of the Auto Unions were corrupt, as well. I cannot argue with that, but OTOH, most of the Union workers were not corrupt. They wanted decent pay for their work & they *deserve* a pension at the end.
A good film to watch is Blue Collar with Harvey Keitel.
Impeach the Marxist-in-Chief! Stop spending our money for your corrupt ventures while people are out of jobs and losing their home!
WHAT OBAMA INHERITED:
AAA CREDIT RATING
7.8% UNEMPLOYMENT
$1.81 GAS/GALLON
$10 TRILLION DEBT
2 WARS
26 WEEKS UNEMPLOYMENT
ANNUAL BUDGET
WHAT WE HAVE NOW!!!!!
AA CREDIT RATING
8.3% UNEMPLOYMENT
$3.69 GAS/GALLON
$17 TRILLION DEBT
3 WARS
99 WEEKS UNEMPLOYMENT
NO ANNUAL BUDGET
"Let me say it as simply
as I can: Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones
of this presidency."
....from his SEALED personal records to his THREE COVER-UPS...FAST and FURIOUS....BENGHAZI...The BOSTON BOMBING. Those are ONLY the tip of the iceberg.
Obama's above quote made:
(1/21/09)
"I had learned not to care."
"Pot had helped, and booze;
maybe a little blow when
you could afford it.
Not smack, though."
- BARACK OBAMA
"Dreams From My Father"
"I WILL STAND WITH THE MUSLIMS
SHOULD THE POLITICAL WINDS SHIFT IN AN UGLY DIRECTION"
----Barack Obama
(The Audacity of Hope)
"THE FUTURE MUST NOT BELONG
TO THOSE WHO SLANDER THE PROPHET
OF ISLAM."
"President" Barack Obama addressing the UN assembly
Wow, Dave: interesting. Your little blog post here is infuriating some rightwing think tank, isn't it?
I do believe that you have attracted a rightwing sock puppet that may actually be paid to come here & hijack these threads.
Way to go, Dave! You've hit the big time, along with hitting some nerves.
Not snark. I'm serious.
I'll say it again: I don't mind discussions with conservatives. But this is just a sock puppet trying to hijack posts with no real content to add to the discussion.
Indicates that someone's pissed off. LOL!!
Keep up the good work, everyone.
Detroit was ground into dust by the segregation of income, pure and simple.
The rich got their gated communities, superior schools, beautiful parks, the best health-care, and first rate services. The left-behind got jack shit.
It has nothing to do with liberalism, socialism, or Marxism, as if conservative dummies even know the difference.
And now Christie's Auction House has been called to review the superior art work at the Detroit Institute of Art. No doubt, it'll be sold for pennies on the dollar to some rich 1%er for their private collection.
Yeah, there's "socialism" in Detroit alright, just as there is nationwide. It's called: socialize the expenses; privatize profits. That's the only "socialism" happening in Detroit and elsewhere.
The 1% get rich and laugh at conservatives who believe nonsense about Obama being a Marxist.
Agree with ferschitz. Someone's hired a sock puppet to try to hijack this site. Interesting.
Desparate, much?
They aren't even remotely desperate. The sock puppets are just ventriloquist dummies. But the guys with their hands up their sock puppets asses? Oh yeah, they are LOVING it.
Bad guys have won. And that became official with Citizens United ruling by SCOTUS.
All that is left is resistance.
So this sock puppet troll is just copying long debunked right wing talking points, many of which appear in other pages ON THIS VERY BLOG, and pasting them in as though they were original or fresh or not long ago debunked as bullshit?
Christ on a cracker, that's one of the more pathetic things you'll find on the Internet, and that's saying something.
Impeach the Marxist-in-Chief. Obama the great Divider.
Sure thing "Steve". We'll get right on that.
http://otherwords.org/by-george-you-dont-get-it/
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