Speaker at Washington, D.C. home rule rally/ Photo by Greg Thrasher
By Greg Thrasher, VOD Washington Bureau, contributing editor
December 4, 2011
Many of the readers of Voice of Detroit know that for a number of reasons I have relocated to the DC region. I look forward to continue my role as a contributing editor for Voice Of Detroit to offer my opinions, commentaries and advocacy on behalf of Detroit and those facing the dailiy realties of injustice and oppression. I will be your Voice of Detroit correspondent in the nation’s capital.
DC protesters demand democracy/Photo by Greg Thrasher
The similarities between the District of Columbia and Detroit and the common denominators at a social and political level are eerie and interesting. With regard to how the residents of both cities are treated, the powers who govern these urban areas often provide these residents with inferior leadership and stewardship. There is an intentional disregard for the plight of those living in urban venues and quite often this mindset is reflected in public policies and public governance.
In America too often the function of local, national and federal policies has reflected and exhibited a systematic legacy of contempt for people of color , including the disenfranchisement of voters who as residents are often non-white. It is quite tragic to witness that, in the most powerful country in the world where democracy is the weapon used to invade foreign nations, the residents of the District of Colombia are often as powerless as those in third world nations living under a despot or a dictator.
In the District of Columbia, chants of statehood, home rule and self determination are everywhere from radio talks show to posters and bumper stickers protesting the absence of voting rights for the residents of the district in the congress. Residents of both Detroit and the District are suffering from both lousy political leadership but also a failure of the emergence of progressive leaders outside of the normal organizations. As with Detroit many of the non-profits and activist groups in the district are impotent and add little value to the agenda of the poor and oppressed. Too often many of the so-called allies of the poor and oppressed are nothing more than conduits of ego and self empowerment at the expense of the poor’s fate and circumstances.
Rally for DC home rule/Photo by Greg Thrasher
What is also a farce is how both venues suffer from the oversight of other government agencies, In Detroit you have an inept and corrupt county government that is layered with a dysfunctional and marginal state government apparatus seeking to insert an emergency manager to control Detroit’s finances, when both of these government entities are lacking and failing in handling their own fiscal budgets. In the District of Columbia the federal government is legally responsible for many of the fiscal responsibilities of the district, yet our federal government is in a meltdown and hardly a beacon of sound financial standards and principles.
Our urban venues in this nation are deserving of the best services a nation as great as America can offer and provide. The residents of our urban cities are worthy of superior pubic services as well as premium educational outcomes and systems for their children. It is therefore imperative that policies must be developed and implemented to protect and support the very existence of life in our urban cities. Stay tuned to my column where I will report and offer up solutions and paradigms that enhance not only the quality of life for both the people of Detroit and the District but all urban citizens in our nation .
Greg Thrasher in Lansing April 13
FROM DETROIT TO D.C.
VOD welcomes our contributing editor’s move to the nation’s capital, where he can report first-hand on events that impact not only D.C. and Detroit, but the entire country.
SLAVEMASTER SNYDER USES PA 4 LASH AGAINST MICHIGAN'S MAJORITY-BLACK CITIES
INVOKES “DICTATOR ACT” PA 4 AGAINST DETROIT, LARGEST BLACK-MAJORITY CITY IN WORLD OUTSIDE AFRICA
Councilwoman JoAnn Watson demands right to self-determination
Chokwe Lumumba calls move part of world-wide colonialism
By Diane Bukowski
Dec. 2, 2011
Detroit – Detroit’s leaders are standing united against Michigan Governor Rick Snyder’s announcement that he will begin a 30-day review of this 86 percent Black city’s finances under Public Act 4 (PA4), known variously as the “Local Government and School District Financial Accountability Act” and “The Dictator Act.”
Councilwoman JoAnn Watson with Mayor Dave Bing at her right, UAW President Bob King to his right, during Dec. 1, 2011 press conference
Snyder has initiated such reviews exclusively in other majority Black cities across Michigan. They have invariably led to the appointment of an emergency manager (EM). The EM has the absolute power to disincorporate the city, sell its assets, remove its elected leaders, privatize or eliminate services, and break union contracts, among other measures.
“Detroit is the largest majority Black city in the world, outside of Africa,” Detroit attorney George Washington noted significantly at a Dec. 1 forum on PA 4.
Snyder’s main excuse for the review, to begin Dec. 6, is the city’s current alleged $150 million deficit. The deficit results largely from the fact that the city has paid $529 million on its debt to the banks in 2011 alone, half of that in interest, according to a recent financial report by Ernst & Young. While Snyder and other government officials have demanded that workers sacrifice, they have made no demand for the banks to come to the table.
Detroit youth demand self-determination at Feb. 23 rally on Lansing capitol steps
“It was the law in the United States that Africans were three-fifths of a person, that we could not vote, could not own property,” said Detroit City Councilwoman JoAnn Watson during a public hearing Dec. 1. “It was against the law for us to escape from slavery, but it was the unpaid slavery of Africans on which this country was built. We have the right to self-determination and freedom, the right to control our own destiny. No way in heaven are we going to let somebody come in from Lansing and take our city.”
Detroit leaders rally at AFSCME Council 25 headquarters Dec. 2 to step up campaign to repeal PA 4.
Watson added that Snyder was moving quickly to take Detroit over before a referendum campaign against PA 4 freezes the act. The Michigan Forward Coalition of labor, community and religious leaders has said it will have enough signatures to do so by mid-December. Once the signatures are certified, the act is held in abeyance until the Nov. 2012 election. Michiganders are expected to vote overwhelmingly against PA 4 then.
Coalition members said they are stepping up their efforts to gather the remaining signatures during a rally Dec. 2. Coalition founder Brandon Jessup was interviewed by WDET’s Rob St. Mary (http://wdet.org/news/story/AntiEFMInterview/). He noted particularly that the cities of Jackson and Allen Park in Michigan, which are a majority white, actually petitioned the state for an emergency manager but were turned down.
Snyder and State Treasurer Andy Dillon, who initiated the takeover move after failing to get the Mayor and City Council to ask for an EM, ignored its racial implications.
Their representatives did not respond to requests from this reporter for explanations regarding why only the majority Black cities of Benton Harbor, Detroit, Ecorse, Flint, Inkster and Pontiac have been hit with PA 4, as well as the majority Black school districts of Detroit and Highland Park.
Dozens of majority-white cities and school districts in Michigan are in deficit, but they have not yet been subjected to the PA 4 plantation owner’s lash.
“It is critical that we work and move forward together in these tough and challenging times,” Gov. Snyder said in a statement. “Unity – not division – is the way to ensure that we can collectively and collaboratively ensure a revitalized, strong and successful Detroit and Michigan. We stand ready to be a supportive, constructive resource.”
State Treasurer Andy Dillon was the official who initiated the action, since PA 4 does not allow the governor himself to do so.
Snyder appoints Andy Dillon (l) as state treasurer prior to taking office.
Among other alleged violations of PA 4, including the city’s low Wall Street bond rating, Dillon cited, “An ongoing inability of the executive and legislative branches of the city government to work cooperatively in respect to the financial management of the city; the existence of recurring operating deficits that essentially have been beyond the ability of city officials to resolve; and the imminent likelihood that the city will deplete its cash during the spring of 2012.”
His last contention was based on a cash flow report by the global accounting firm Ernst & Young, which the firm’s representatives discussed in a closed session with the Mayor and Council, in violation of the state’s Open Meetings Act, on Oct. 26.
The states of New York and New Jersey have lawsuits pending against Ernst & Young which contend the firm collaborated in cooking Lehman Brothers’ books before its downfall and the resulting 2008 Wall Street mortgage meltdown.
The Snyder-Dillon move follows on the heels of a Sept. 9 order issued by U.S. District Court Judge Sean Cox that severely diminishes the city’s control of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, the third largest such facility in the country, and Detroit’s most valuable asset, serving 436 communities in eight counties. It has never run a deficit and has AAA bond ratings. Cox is a right-wing Federalist appointed by President George W. Bush.
Mayor Dave Bing, most Council members, and community, business, labor and religious leaders trounced the Snyder-Dillon contentions during a joint press conference on the evening of Dec. 1, particularly Dillon‘s assertion that the executive and legislative branches of the city could not cooperate. They pointed to other ways the state could support the city if it wanted a “collaborative” relationship.
Billboard for $220 million Powerball
“We’ve asked the state to see what they can do about the $220 million owed to the city of Detroit that helped put us in this position in the first place,” Bing said. “Also we’ve requested the state’s assistance in the collection of the city’s income taxes, a service Lansing could provide that would help us collect approximately $155 million in additional revenue on an annual basis. This is our city. We are Detroit. Detroit needs to be run by Detroiters. We know what needs to be done and we stand ready to do it.”
Councilwoman Watson first raised the demand for the $220 million payment from the state, due since a 1998 agreement between former Mayor Dennis Archer and former Governor John Engler. In exchange for reducing the city’s income taxes, particularly on non-residents and businesses, Engler agreed to increase its state revenue sharing amounts but never did.
Lansing, Michigan is deadbeat zone
Councilwoman Watson said the total loss to the city under that agreement has been $580 million. Snyder has so far refused to honor the debt.
Mayor Bing’s adoption of her demand apparently triggered Snyder’s invocation of PA 4. Previously, Snyder and Bing had cooperated in drafting the Act, according to a lawsuit filed by a top aide to Bing after he fired her earlier this year.
Jackson, Mississippi City Council member Chokwe Lumumba called Snyder’s attack on Detroit, Jackson and Gary, Indiana a continuation of colonialism. He was the featured speaker at a forum called by Concerned Teachers United the evening of Dec. 1.
Attorney Chokwe Lumumba speaks at Detroit forum Dec. 1, 2011
“Colonialism is our problem right here in America, as Malcolm X said in his last speech in Detroit, before his murder,” Lumumba said. Lumumba, a nationally-renowned attorney, co-founded the Republic of New Africa in Detroit in the 1960’s, and currently leads the Malcolm X Grass Roots Movement. Most recently he headed the successful effort to free the Scott Sisters.
“Rich, greedy people use any kind of apparatus they can to subjugate poor people;” he added/ “They will bomb and kill people around the world as they did in Libya, which had a higher literacy rate than the United States, and where they killed Africa’s hero Muammar Gadhafi. It is a phenomenon, not a person. President [Barack] Obama is also part of this phenomenon. The answer to colonialism is self-determination, and we must instill that belief in our youth.”
Gov. Snyder, Mayor Bing and most of the City Council originally sought to lay the blame for the city’s alleged economic crisis on the backs of its majority Black workers. Bing called for 1,000 lay-offs while the Council wanted 2,300, in addition to numerous other cutbacks in health insurance and pension benefits.
Public workers from AFSCME and CBTU protest Bing's earlier attempt to raid pension funds
The Council voted 6-3 Nov. 29 to cut retirees’ annual “13th check,” a small amount paid from excess earnings on their own pension funds’ investments.
It was largely due to the indefatigable efforts of Councilwoman Watson that the majority of the Council joined with the Mayor and labor leaders in the Dec. 1 press conference. After his statement, Bing brought Watson to the podium next. She said angrily, “It is outrageous that a state which has its own deficit in a country that has its own deficit has the nerve to be point fingers at our city.”
Watson along with attorney Herbert Sanders of AFSCME Council 25 organized the first mass labor and community protest against PA 4 legislation at the state capitol in Lansing in February.
She pressed for the public hearing the morning of Dec. 1, during which union leaders and city workers presented numerous ways that the city could solve its financial problems without forcing the workers into further sacrifice.
Ed McNeil, Michigan AFSCME Council 25 Executive Assistant, at right
Ed McNeil, executive assistant to Al Garrett, President of Michigan Council 25 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and attorney Richard Mack presented a joint report from many of the city’s unions to the Council.
The report cites the costly practice of contracting out city work for the profits of corporations, many of whom are not withholding city income taxes from their workers or paying corporate taxes to the city. It says nearly $637 million is spent from the city’s general fund alone on expenses that likely go to contractors. It calls for the establishment of a general database of all contracts to allow city and union officials to examine whether they are necessary or productive.
McNeil said, “The media is saying the unions have not been to the table. We have been to the table and brought cost savings ideas year after year to city administrations.”
He called for the city to dump Blue Cross Blue Shield as its health care administrator, and instead make agreements with major Detroit-based hospital chains to offer workers the option of signing directly with the chains for their medical care, instead of going through insurance companies, for a savings of $14 million.
The unions also called for the city to participate in the AFL-CIO Employer Purchasing Coalition (AEPC) to reduce prescription drug costs. It has so far refused to do so.
“This would mean an annual savings of $19 million for AFSCME members’ drugs only,” Attorney Mack said. “AFSCME workers are only 22 percent of the payroll. The savings would amount to $86 million for the entire city.”
Mack also said the state could underwrite portions of the city’s debt, lessening payments because of the city’s poor credit ratings. He added that the city could sell or give away the 60,000 parcels of vacant land it owns to families who need homes, which would bring in at least $1,000 per home in property taxes, or $60 million.
City income tax collector Michelle Wesley
City Council members reacted with astonishment to city income tax collector Michelle Wesley’s description of how corporations rob the city blind.
“If we were able to do our jobs the correct way, we probably could bring city out of deficit,” Wesley said.
“Everybody who owns businesses in the city of Detroit is not on our tax rolls; they are reporting nothing to us. Most corporations who do report say they owe zero dollars. Workers are telling us that their employers are taking cash from them for city taxes, but never turning it in. Lawyers who do work in our courts, athletes from Detroit as well as outside teams who play in town, and even the news media, Channel 2 and 4 and 7 are here on the City of Detroit’s clock and are supposed to be paying taxes but are not. Then there are the landlords who allow their properties to go into foreclosure and buy them back at auction for a fraction of the taxes.”
Metro Times expose on billionaire Matty Moroun
Yolanda Langston, president of Local 517M of the Service Employees International Union, suggested that the city charge a fee to banks to register their thousands of foreclosed properties in Detroit, and be fined for neglect and blight on the properties.
“We need to increase blight fines for property management companies, and millionaires like Matty Moroun who own a lot of blighted properties,” Langston said. “One day when I was insouthwest Detroit doing an inspection, I saw a truck doing illegal dumping on a vacant lot. I told the driver I was in the process of calling 911, but he said, ‘I own this property and all these others around here.’ Others are doing this. We need to hold these folks accountable.”
Councilwoman Watson set a meeting to plan the fightback against the state takeover for Friday, Dec. 9 at 6 p.m. in her office. For further information, call her office at 313-224-4535.
Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve and the big banks fought for more than two years to keep details of the largest bailout in U.S. history a secret. Now, the rest of the world can see what it was missing.
The Fed didn’t tell anyone which banks were in trouble so deep they required a combined $1.2 trillion on Dec. 5, 2008, their single neediest day. Bankers didn’t mention that they took tens of billions of dollars in emergency loans at the same time they were assuring investors their firms were healthy. And no one calculated until now that banks reaped an estimated $13 billion of income by taking advantage of the Fed’s below-market rates, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.
Occupy Chicago protesters camped in front of Federal Reserve Bank
Saved by the bailout, bankers lobbied against government regulations, a job made easier by the Fed, which never disclosed the details of the rescue to lawmakers even as Congress doled out more money and debated new rules aimed at preventing the next collapse.
A fresh narrative of the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 emerges from 29,000 pages of Fed documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and central bank records of more than 21,000 transactions. While Fed officials say that almost all of the loans were repaid and there have been no losses, details suggest taxpayers paid a price beyond dollars as the secret funding helped preserve a broken status quo and enabled the biggest banks to grow even bigger.
‘Change Their Votes’
“When you see the dollars the banks got, it’s hard to make the case these were successful institutions,” says Sherrod Brown, a Democratic Senator from Ohio who in 2010 introduced an unsuccessful bill to limit bank size. “This is an issue that can unite the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street. There are lawmakers in both parties who would change their votes now.”
The size of the bailout came to light after Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, won a court case against the Fed and a group of the biggest U.S. banks called Clearing House Association LLC to force lending details into the open.
Ben Bernanke featured as Time Magazine's 2009 Person of the Year after he concealed $7.7 TRILLION in loans to banks from Congress
The Fed, headed by Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, argued that revealing borrower details would create a stigma — investors and counterparties would shun firms that used the central bank as lender of last resort — and that needy institutions would be reluctant to borrow in the next crisis. Clearing House Association fought Bloomberg’s lawsuit up to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the banks’ appeal in March 2011.
$7.77 Trillion
The amount of money the central bank parceled out was surprising even to Gary H. Stern, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis from 1985 to 2009, who says he “wasn’t aware of the magnitude.” It dwarfed the Treasury Department’s better-known $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Add up guarantees and lending limits, and the Fed had committed $7.77 trillion as of March 2009 to rescuing the financial system, more than half the value of everything produced in the U.S. that year.
“TARP at least had some strings attached,” says Brad Miller, a North Carolina Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, referring to the program’s executive-pay ceiling. “With the Fed programs, there was nothing.”
Former Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis
Bankers didn’t disclose the extent of their borrowing. On Nov. 26, 2008, then-Bank of America (BAC) Corp. Chief Executive Officer Kenneth D. Lewis wrote to shareholders that he headed “one of the strongest and most stable major banks in the world.” He didn’t say that his Charlotte, North Carolina-based firm owed the central bank $86 billion that day.
‘Motivate Others’
JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon told shareholders in a March 26, 2010, letter that his bank used the Fed’s Term Auction Facility “at the request of the Federal Reserve to help motivate others to use the system.” He didn’t say that the New York-based bank’s total TAF borrowings were almost twice its cash holdings or that its peak borrowing of $48 billion on Feb. 26, 2009, came more than a year after the program’s creation.
Howard Opinsky, a spokesman for JPMorgan (JPM), declined to comment about Dimon’s statement or the company’s Fed borrowings. Jerry Dubrowski, a spokesman for Bank of America, also declined to comment.
The Fed has been lending money to banks through its so- called discount window since just after its founding in 1913. Starting in August 2007, when confidence in banks began to wane, it created a variety of ways to bolster the financial system with cash or easily traded securities. By the end of 2008, the central bank had established or expanded 11 lending facilities catering to banks, securities firms and corporations that couldn’t get short-term loans from their usual sources.
THOM HARTMANN DISCUSSES BLOOMBERG REPORT ON BANK LOANS
‘Core Function’
“Supporting financial-market stability in times of extreme market stress is a core function of central banks,” says William B. English, director of the Fed’s Division of Monetary Affairs. “Our lending programs served to prevent a collapse of the financial system and to keep credit flowing to American families and businesses.” Continue reading →
The Michigan Welfare Rights Organization sponsored this protest Sept. 29, 2011 against proposed cuts to cash assistance for poor.
Release by UAW Local 6000
More than 900 of Michigan’s poorest families losing cash assistance – and chance to appeal
DETROIT – Here’s something else to be thankful for this Thanksgiving: On Nov. 28, protesters will rally to remind those who support corporations over Michigan’s poor that the 99 percent will not stop fighting until social and economic justice is a reality for all.
Beginning Oct. 1, nearly 12,000 families of Michigan’s poorest of the poor – including over 29,000 children – were thrown off the state’s cash assistance programs to fund tax breaks for corporations. The new law, which limits Michigan residents to 48 months of lifetime welfare cash benefits, was passed by the majority Republican legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Rick Snyder in September.
DHS head Maura Corrigan and Gov. Rick Snyder
The 929 families who believe their cash assistance shouldn’t be discontinued have filed appeals.
But adding insult to injury, the Michigan Department of Human Services (DHS), directed by former state Supreme Court justice Maura Corrigan, instituted the so-called “Rocket Docket” system to quickly dispose of those appeals cases.
Hearings are scheduled for Nov. 28-29 at DHS offices across the state.
UAW Vice President Cindy Estrada
“UAW Local 6000 members are on the front lines every day to work for Michigan families and help them navigate a welfare system that’s getting meaner by the day,” said UAW Vice President Cindy Estrada, who directs the union’s Public Sector and Health Care Servicing Department. “Our members who work at DHS offices as social workers and welfare eligibility specialists are outraged by the new law and the insidious ‘Rocket Docket’ system instituted under the guise of saving taxpayer dollars.
“We don’t want to see 29,000 more of Michigan’s poorest children thrown into deeper poverty,” Estrada added.
Here are details about Monday’s event:
Who: Cindy Estrada, UAW vice president; UAW Local 6000 members; retirees and community leaders; Michigan State Sens. Tupac A. Hunter and Coleman A. Young II; Michigan Reps. Fred Durhal Jr. and Rashida Tlaib.
What: Protest of state’s “Rocket Docket” hearing process to accelerate denial of cash assistance benefits to poor families.
When: Monday, Nov. 28, at 8 a.m.
Where: Michigan DHS office, 14061 Lappin, Detroit, MI 48205 (near Seven Mile Road and Gratiot)
Stop the Corporate Austerity Drive that is Pushing Us into Poverty
Statement issued by public workers unions at November 17 rally at CAYMC
This country is not broke. The top tiers of our nation continue to grow more obscenely wealthy as the gap between the rich, and the poor, working class and even middle-class grows wider each year. The banks and corporations are draining the people like a gang of vampires, intent on lowering our living standards and expectations for decent futures. The richest Americans are concentrating the nations’ wealth and forcing austerity on the rest of us. Draw the line now!
After failing Detroiters as mayor, Dave Bing is now openly campaigning for Republican Governor Rick Snyder to appoint him as the Emergency Manager (Dictator) of the city. He wants this power so he can carry out the drastic down-sizing, down-grading, degrading and racist changes that big business requires from Detroit, including cutting off gas, light and services to huge swaths of the city!
On November 4th, Republican Federal Judge Sean Cox issued an order which was supposed to stop the Detroit Wastewater Plant from polluting the river. Instead, his order cripples Detroit Water & Sewerage Department unions’ ability to represent their members, attacks seniority rights and voids Detroit residents’ legal right to vote on the privatization or selling of the DWSD’s assets. Judge Cox’s order threatens all unions in the public and private sectors with similar attacks, and negates the democratic rights of residents everywhere.
After illegally laying off public lighting repair workers, Bing and the City Council are paying DTE to repair the lights at a vastly inflated labor costs. The city is appealing a judge’s ruling to reinstate the workers.
After forcing contract concessions on Detroit City workers in 2009-10, Mayor Bing is now insisting on more give-backs, including: a 10% pay cut (to replace furloughs, so he can layoff more workers). He also wants a 300% increase in health insurance pay check deductions for most workers, and dramatically higher out-of-pocket costs. The bleeding of Detroit City workers and the cut-back of services to Detroiters must stop now.
Bus service in Detroit and the surrounding area is constantly being reduced and bus drivers are being assaulted. After cutting the number of bus mechanics, Bing then falsely accused them of “slowing down.” And management still refuses to provide mechanics with the parts necessary to repair the buses.
Wayne County officials have been exposed as corrupt paid puppets of big business, pocketing payoffs while forcing “austerity measures” on County workers which have drastically reduced their living standards and cut social services to county residents.
Years of undemocratic state control of Detroit Public Schools has led to more debt, less public schools, more profit-motivated charter schools, poorer education and attacks on school unions. Much of the school support services have been privatized and workers forced to reapply for their own jobs! The appointed DPS Emergency Manager is continuing his job of destroying public education while receiving open payoffs from corporations.
November 17 Rally Sponsored by AFSCME Locals 101 (Wayne County Road Commission), 207 (DWSD), 345 (DPS Support Staff) & 1659 (Wayne County), Teamsters Local 214, Amalgamated Transit Union Division 26, Peoples Water Board. .
For information on upcoming activities against the cutbacks, call 313-965-1601, 313-995-5691. AFSCME Local 207’s website is www.afscme207.com/
Public workers protest Bing and council attacks Nov. 17, 2011
Are Snyder, Bing, Council and EY conspiring to get concessions or EM?
PA 4 (EM law) may be frozen by mid-December, as referendum petition nears signature goal
Council handing out tax abatements as it demands 2300 lay-offs
By Diane Bukowski
November 26, 2011
DETROIT – Are Mayor Dave Bing and the City Council manufacturing an economic crisis in collusion with Ernst & Young as well as Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder? Are they trying to force “sacrifice” out of the city’s workers and poor while allowing the city’s corporations and banks to make hay while the sun shines?
VOD reader S. Mack said it all in a recent on-line comment.
Nov. 17 protester
“A Forensic Audit is needed to catch these crooks from the past to the present administrations,” Mack noted. “We need an honest outsider to do the Audit. It’s not hard to see things are purposely in place to continue to give away assets and to privatize, regionalize and corporatize the city.
“[It is] also population control to remove one group for another, [and] an attack on the poor, a cause and effect to raise the poverty numbers in this City, while they give the banks, corporations, casinos and big businesses a pass. Tax abatements should be a thing of the past. There are businesses who haven’t paid taxes in thirty years or more, rich taxpayers who don’t live in the city. Millions of federal dollars are sent back instead of being utilized to build economic wealth for the city. You gotta believe things are being done deliberately.”
PA 4 could be frozen by mid-December
The recent sequence of events raises the possibility that there is a deliberate effort to put an EM over Detroit, or at least to bleed concessions out of the unions, before Public Act 4 is frozen. That could happen as early as mid-December.
In a recent release, Michigan Forward said regarding its campaign for a referendum to repeal PA4, “Stand Up for Democracy is announcing it has verified more than half of the 250,000 signatures the group wants to collect. Only 161,304 valid signatures are needed to freeze the emergency manager law and put it on the November 2012 general election ballot.”
Michigan Forward is a state-wide coalition of labor, community and religious leaders. Its founder Brandon Jessupsaid they expect to have enough signatures by mid-December.
Michigan’s Constitution, Art. II, Sec. 9 says, “No law as to which the power of referendum properly has been invoked shall be effective thereafter unless approved by a majority of the electors voting thereon at the next general election.”
Snyder appears rather concerned. After Bing timorously raised Councilwoman JoAnn Watson’s demand that the state repay $220 million it owes to Detroit, the governor suddenly turned from good cop, claiming he did not want an EM for Detroit, into bad cop.
“Based on the mayor’s remarks … and the severity of the situation he described, we anticipate he will be submitting a request for preliminary financial review in the near future,” Snyder said.
Bing said that he has been in constant consultation with Snyder on the city’s finances since April and that therefore a preliminary review, the first step in naming an EM, is not needed. So does he plan to skip straight to the second step and ask for one? The daily media is saying that folks like the current EM’s of Benton Harbor, Pontiac, and Ecorse are under consideration. A city hall insider told VOD there are also local names in the pot.
A union official who asked not to be named told VOD that his department is paying bills from private corporations within two to three days in an apparent effort to spend down as much money as possible, to verify the claims of a pending cash shortfall made by Bing, the Council, and Ernst & Young.
Frantic meetings Thanksgiving week, turkey and shopping 24th and 25th
Council ate turkey, called for 2300 layoffs
Bing, the Council, and the city’s unions met frantically during Thanksgiving week, claiming that an EM would be named any moment.
The situation could not have been so dire, however. Mayor and Council went home Thursday and Friday to consume their turkey, and take advantage of “Black Friday.” Council President Charles Pugh was spotted by a local TV station shopping his well-heeled self off at an upscale store Friday.
Carl Bentley, Saunteel Jenkins
Perhaps Councilwoman Saunteel Jenkins, who has proposed that city retirees give up their 13th check, was busy snuggling with her presumed squeeze Carl Bentley while filling up on Thanksgiving goodies to add to her steadily increasing girth. The two have been photographed together at numerous society functions.
Bentley works for Strategic Staffing Solutions, a city and county contractor now under investigation by the feds for its role in the Wayne County Business Development Corporation scandal.
Council demands 2300 lay-offs, based on secret Ernst & Young meeting
The City Council sank to new depths of depravity in the sessions it conducted during the first three days of the week. On Nov. 22, they spent the afternoon debating whether a demand for 2300 city worker lay-offs should be number one on a list to present to Mayor Bing, or whether the state’s $220 million debt to the city should go first.
Ernst & Young gets cooking the books award of the 21st century
In the end, NO ONE would give a definitive “NO” vote against presenting the 2300 lay-offs as one option, and only JoAnn Watson appeared to believe that the demand for the state debt repayment was serious.
They also disclosed that actual representatives of Ernst & Young were present during their secret meeting they held with Bing about the city’s finances Oct. 26, in violation of the Open Meetings Act.
VOD is consulting with the On-Line Media Network to obtain legal assistance in filing suit against the Council for holding that meeting. Two other suits are contemplated regarding a closed Council session on the $750,000 DTE Energy contract to repair 500 streetlights, and another on revamping the city’s Privatization Ordinance.
Violation of the Open Meetings Act under state law is a criminal misdemeanor. (Where’s Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy when we need her?)
Happy Thanksgiving! Council hands out tax abatements, not turkeys
Prior to discussing how to bleed city workers, the Council took care of other business, happily handing out holiday gifts in the form of tax abatements. After all, companies like Covanta, witn about $1.7 billion expected in 2011 revenues, can certainly afford to buy their own turkeys.
Marchers demand clean energy in protest outside Detroit Renewable incinerator
The Council voted 5-4 in favor of a $4.1 million brownfield development tax abatement for Covanta subsidiary Detroit Renewable Power, which operates the Detroit and Hamtramck incinerators. The incinerators are reviled by environmentalists and hundreds of people who live in the path of their fumes. Detroit Renewable Power was recently cited by the state for several environmental infractions, as several of the many speakers against the abatement pointed out.
“Covanta Energy is one of the world’s largest owners and operators of infrastructure for the conversion of waste-to energy, as well as other waste disposal and renewable energy production businesses,” the company says on its website. “Covanta operates and/or has ownership positions in 44 energy-from-waste facilities, primarily located in North America, and 20 additional energy generation facilities, including other renewable energy production facilities in North America. “
The company has also been cited for numerous environmental infractions and labor violations.
The five Council members voting for Covanta were Black Friday shopper Charles Pugh, Bentley squeeze Saunteel Jenkins (who got $1,000 from Covanta during her campaign), Gary Brown, Andre Spivey and James Tate. Voting against the tax abatement were Council members JoAnn Watson, Brenda Jones, Kwame Kenyatta, and Ken Cockrel, Jr.
The Council additionally voted 8-1 to give Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano a zoning change so he could build his new county jail.
Walbridge and EDGE are prominently displayed on Wayne County Jail sign on Gratiot and St. Antoine
Councilwoman Watson thought to ask, “Who’s the contractor?” knowing it is Walbridge Aldinger. The FBI has also subpoenaed records from that company, whose CEO John Rakolta sits on the Wayne County Business Development Corporation board and on the EDGE non-profit board. He is an ardent Snyder supporter, and was a major fundraiser for the 2004 Bush campaign.
Over the past few weeks, the Council has also voted to give 10 and 15 year Renaissance Zone tax credit extensions to the James Group International/OJ Land Development and 1208 Woodward, LLC, in exchange for a guarantee of —ELEVEN JOBS.
Snyder, Bing, Council, Ernst & Young
Meanwhile, the council approved city revenue INCREASES of over $2.7 million from the state, casinos and elsewhere, but said they would be used in large part to pay for the Ernst & Young contract. (Click on Detroit revenue increase slated for Ernst Young.)
So, the question becomes—is there a crisis or not? Previously Wall Street screamed crisis at Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick over an alleged $300 million deficit in 2005. It sent its minions from Standard and Poors and Fitch Ratings directly to the Council table to demand that the city borrow $1.2 BILLION in pension obligation certificates. The Mayor and council caved.
When the city was in danger of defaulting on same, in 2009, Mayor Ken Cockrel, Jr. agreed to turn ALL of the city’s revenue-sharing and casino tax income over to a bank trustee so he could chop off what UBS Financial Services considered sufficient to stave off default on the debt Wall Street demanded.
What other ingenious and eventually catastrophic solution does Wall Street have in mind for Detroit now?
But this morning, there were no signs of attack, although the thousands of rights defenders brace for an interesting time after the clock strikes midnight Sunday when the eviction and police involvement is to occur.
“All was quiet before dawn at Los Angeles City Hall, where “Occupy” demonstrators have been camping since Oct. 1 and are now under threat of arrest if they don’t clear out after noon Monday,” reported the Daily News LA Sunday morning.
There was “no sign that the estimated 500 tents had diminished.”
More than one thousand protesters of Occupy LA hit the streets in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street. They occupied the financial district of Los Angeles and police arrested several of the protesters. RT correspondent Ramon Galindo gives us the latest of the national day of action in LA Nov. 17.
The mayor and city officials pledged to evict Occupy LA from the encampment at City Hall lawn at 12:01 am this coming Monday morning.
“In a press conference yesterday, Mayor Villaraigosa and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck called the ongoing protest ‘unsustainable’ and gave notice of their intention to have Occupy LA dismantled,” reported ANSWER Coalition.
The Daily News reported the mayor wants the people off of City Hall’s “manicured lawns” for “safety reasons.”
But ANSWER Coalition, the metropolitan’s large coalition of human rights defender organizations says they need thousands of recruits to be there late Sunday night to stop the eviction.
“We cannot let this happen,” ANSWER says in its statement urging members and supporters to be there Sunday night through the Monday morning eviction deadline.
“Come by 11 p.m. and be prepared to stay to help stop the eviction. Bring your friends, family and everyone you know, along with any signs or banners you have or wish to make to support Occupy LA.
“If thousands of people come out on Sunday to defend Occupy LA, we will send a strong message to the ruling elite and politicians who desperately want the Occupy movement to end.”
According to ANSWER, despite city officials claiming to support Occupy LA and their passing a resolution to that effect, “they do not and never have” supported it.
“The pending eviction attempt is part of a wave of nationally coordinated state repression against the Occupy movement as a whole.
The blossoming of a new, growing movement of young people, students, workers and unemployed against the wealthiest 1% has challenged the profit-based system that feeds on banker and corporate greed.
Wall Street and the ruling elite in all cities want the Occupy movement gone completely, yet along with others, Occupy LA still stands.”
ANSWER’s rationale is that the people stopped New York City Mayor Bloomberg when he first tried to kick Occupy Wall Street protesters from Zucotti Park.
“Five thousand people answered the call and defended the park, forcing the mayor and city to back down. The same thing can happen right here in Los Angeles,” it says.
“Now is the time to take a stand and defend the Occupy LA encampment, which is comprised of peaceful protesters who are fed up with the rule of the richest banks and billion-dollar corporations–the 1%.
“ANSWER, along with the Occupy LA participants, clergy and other community groups, will be there to support Occupy LA, stop the eviction, and make sure City Hall remains occupied.”
The group is urging people to register for email updates and check the AnswerLA.org website and Facebook page for up to the minute reports.
At least one person admitted to having bought a gas mask in preparation for peaceful resistance Monday morning.
“Click here to pledge to “Take a stand” to defend the Occupy LA encampment,” ANSWER urges.
