VOICE OF DETROIT: The city's independent newspaper, unbossed and unbought

Tax Day protest outside main Detroit post office April 18, 2011

Is There An Answer to the Deficit Dilemma?

By Mark Brenner

June 3, 2011

Labor Notes

While today’s report of nonexistent job growth has the media in a tizzy, working people didn’t need the latest temperature check to tell them the economy’s still flat-lining.

Protest in Albany, New York

But somehow the debate in Congress still isn’t about how we’re going to get people back to work or bring homeowners back above the water line. Beltway politicians from both sides of the aisle can’t stop talking about government deficits and the national debt.

Do these twin issues actually threaten our national well-being? There’s a two-part answer: No, not much, compared with the wailing in Washington. Yes, but both are fixable if Congress would go where the money is.

Leading the charge is Representative Paul Ryan, who wants to cut $4.5 trillion in government programs over the next decade. His “Path to Prosperity” claims the sky is falling and that unchecked government spending is the problem. Ryan’s solution is to privatize Medicare and have the poor take the brunt of the cuts, about two-thirds in total.

Paul Ryan

Most economists and policy analysts agree Ryan’s numbers don’t add up. But despite the fuzzy math, Ryan’s looking less like Chicken Little and more like trickster Brer Rabbit, having helped Republicans extract $38 billion in budget cuts last month.

The fiscal tug-of-war nearly forced a federal government shutdown. What’s in store once 2012 electioneering kicks into high gear could be even worse.

YES, IT’S BIG

There is no question federal deficits in recent years have been high by historical standards—about 10 percent of total economic activity (Gross Domestic Product, or GDP). In the 35 years prior to the financial meltdown, deficits averaged about 2.5 percent of GDP.

But since the 2008 economic collapse, government has been running up red ink. Together these annual deficits have added to the national debt, which will top $10 trillion by year’s end.

Is the problem as bad as Ryan and others claim?

Bush tax cuts--relief for all Americans who are white and wealthy

Not really, because the main drivers of today’s deficits are temporary. They include:

• lower tax revenues, owing to high unemployment and the extension of the Bush tax cuts
• the money spent on stopping the 2008 financial freefall, first the bailouts and then the stimulus package
• relief for those left in the recession’s wake, including unemployment insurance and food stamps
• the spiraling war budget (this one doesn’t look temporary).

The Congressional Budget Office says the annual deficit will drop considerably as the economy recovers, to average about 3.3 percent of GDP by 2013. This is lower than Reagan’s deficits, which averaged 4.2 percent.

IS THE U.S. BROKE?

Steady deficits, even small ones, can build up to create large-scale debt. Conservatives point to Greece and warn of eventual U.S. default.

Nearly 60 percent of U.S. taxes go to the military budget

But if they were serious about avoiding the apocalyptic scenarios they predict, they’d acknowledge how we got here: Bush’s tax cuts and war spending, which wiped out the surplus the country had 10 years ago.

Pull back from those expenses and the national budget looks a lot prettier.

Instead, conservatives are pushing to undo the paltry financial regulations put in place last year to avoid another meltdown and locking in the Bush tax cuts that mostly benefit the richest 1 percent.

It’s easy to believe the nation is broke when most state and local governments are in a hole.

But the country isn’t broke. Tax policies allow some people to hoard huge wealth—which would be available to fund schools, firefighters, and bridge repairs if politicians had the will to tax corporations and the rich.

Corporate profits 2010

Last year corporate profits exploded, jumping 29 percent to $1.65 trillion. CEO salaries saw a similar bounce, and Wall Street executives raked in $21 billion in bonuses, the fifth-highest payout ever. Individual taxes, particularly on the wealthy, are lower than they’ve been in 60 years.

The GAO, the federal auditing agency, said recently that two out of every three corporations are paying zero federal income taxes, and most of the Fortune 500 pays a lower proportion of their earnings in federal taxes than working people.

Just enough wealth is lavished on politicians to ensure those fortunes stay in corporate coffers and billionaires’ bank accounts. That’s why most states are choosing draconian cuts.

State governments are forbidden by law to run deficits, they’re abandoned by Washington, and they’ve shouldered the recession’s costs, like unemployment insurance and services for 25 million people who can’t find work (or enough of it). Most say there’s no alternative but to cut.

United for Oregon March 6/7/09 Photo from SEIU Local 503

Oregon proved states can go the other way: a 2010 referendum backed by a union-community alliance saved essential services by increasing taxes on corporations and the top 3 percent of earners. Oregon’s richest angrily vowed to move out of state, but surveys show they’ve stayed put.

‘ENTITLEMENTS’

It’s true that both Social Security and Medicare project long-term financial shortfalls. But Washington’s hysteria is misplaced.

We could largely eliminate Social Security’s problems by scrapping the cap which lets income over $106,800 go untaxed by Social Security.

Medicare is indeed extremely expensive, and getting more so. But that’s because of double-digit cost increases in the overall health care system. Medicare is sideswiped by that, even though its administrative costs are a fraction of the costs of for-profit insurance.

Medicare for ALL: HR 676

Medicare’s problem is that government controls too little of the health care system. If Medicare covered everyone, the government could save big time by cutting out the bloated insurance industry and negotiating lower costs for drugs and care.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration, along with most of Congress, showed no appetite for confronting insurers, for-profit medical chains, and pharmaceutical companies in the 2009 health care reform debate. Imagine where we’d be if they had.

De’Jaun Correia, nephew of Troy Davis, who has mentored him all his life

Photos/Jen Marlowe

by Jen Marlowe

Wednesday, June 1 2011, 9:00 AM EST  http://colorlines.com/

“De’Jaun, come over here, I want to talk to you.”

De’Jaun Correia, a slender 13-year-old with thick corn-rows in his hair, sat down next to his uncle Troy Davis in the corner of the room. Troy described to De’Jaun what to expect now that he was approaching adolescence. “Your body’s gonna be changing…. Women, they go through things, and us guys, we go through things, too. The same thing happened to me when I was a young boy growing up.”

Troy and De'Jaun

De’Jaun listened intently as his uncle explained the birds and the bees. It wasn’t the first time De’Jaun and Troy had had an intimate one on one. De’Jaun was more comfortable talking to his uncle, a sturdily built man with warm brown eyes, than anyone else.

Martina Davis-Correia, De’Jaun’s mother and Troy’s older sister, encouraged the close relationship that Troy had with her son. Troy helped Martina chastise De’Jaun if he got in trouble at school. “You don’t go to school to talk in class, you go to school to learn!” Troy would scold the boy. And then, once he felt sure that De’Jaun got the message, Troy grew gentle. “Now come here, and give me a hug.” Nephew and uncle embraced.

“He gets his discipline [from Troy],” Martina said. “But then he gets his love to back it up.”

Those uncle-and-nephew exchanges could be deemed ordinary, if not for their setting. The interactions took place in a narrow concrete room with locks and bars on its only door in the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison, where Troy Davis is a prisoner on death row. When De’Juan was still little, death-row inmates and their visitors could be in the visiting room together; contact visits were taken away a year and a half ago. Now, De’Jaun receives his uncle’s counsel through phones mounted on either side of a plexiglass window.

Troy and De'Jaun as he grew up

Davis is on death row for the 1989 murder of white Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail. On Aug. 19, MacPhail was gunned down while rushing to the rescue of a homeless man being pistol-whipped in the parking lot of a Greyhound bus station. The day after the murder, a man named Sylvester “Red” Coles told the police that Troy Davis was the shooter. Davis was arrested and was convicted in 1991, primarily on the basis of eye-witness testimony.

There is no physical evidence linking Davis to the crime. The murder weapon was never recovered. Yet, Davis was sentenced to death. He has remained on death row for 20 years, despite the fact that the case against him has completely unraveled. He now awaits an execution date, which could be set any moment, having had his final appeal rejected by the Supreme Court.

Major human rights and civil liberty groups, including the NAACP, Amnesty International, and the ACLU, have taken up Davis’s case, and individuals ranging from President Jimmy Carter to Archbishop Desmond Tutu have spoken up on his behalf.

Davis’s case has become an emblem for much of what is problematic about a capital punishment system that is riddled with racism, economic disparity and error. Public capital defenders do not have the resources to properly investigate or litigate their overburdened case loads. Those with the means to hire decent legal representation are unlikely to end up on death row. Over 130 death row inmates have been exonerated since 1973, demonstrating just how many innocent people are convicted and sentenced to death. 

Meanwhile, there’s considerable evidence of a racial imbalance in who the government decides to kill. According to a 2001 study from the University of North Carolina, a defendant whose victim was white was 3.5 times as likely to receive the death penalty in North Carolina than if the victim were non-white. A 2005 study in California found the defendant of a white victim three times as likely to be penalized by death. Growing realizations of these problems have led more and more states to question their death penalty policies. Earlier this year, Illinois became the 16th state to abolish capital punishment.

Even pro-death penalty advocates, such as former FBI director and federal judge William Sessions and former Republican Congressman from Georgia Bob Barr, have spoken out against executing Davis, citing “crucial unanswered questions” (Sessions) and a lack of the requisite fairness and accuracy required to apply the death penalty (Barr).

The “crucial, unanswered questions” include the fact that seven of the nine non-police witnesses later recanted or changed their testimonies, many stating that police coercion and intimidation led to their initial implication of Davis. Continue reading →

CFA student at rally May 11

By Nicole Conaway

June 1, 2011

On May 26, Detroit Public Schools Emergency manager Roy Roberts announced changes to the district’s school consolidation and closure plan. 

Claiming it was in response to “broad community input” the modifications are ostensibly to ”cut operating costs and align resources to maximize services to students.”  The plan euphemizes that Catherine Ferguson is one of the buildings  “coming off line”.

Roberts also claims  to be “developing a transition plan for continuing the services” of  CFA and two other alternative high schools to “focus on remediation and return to traditional schools.” The other two schools, Hancock and Barsamian, serve students who have been expelled from other schools, usually for violent offenses. The objectives of those programs are completely different and it is completely inappropriate to put CFA in the same category.

Marching for CFA May 11

Students choose to attend CFA because they are committed to their education and to providing a better life for their children, and require the support services CFA provides in order to to so.

 The truth is that Roberts and his backers don’t have any real plan to continue the service CFA provides. They are trying to ride things out until the end of the school year when they think they will be safe from a public outcry.

To date there has been no public meeting  regarding the future of the Catherine Ferguson Academy.  No one from the Emergency Manager’s office has even visited the school or met with school administration, staff, or students. No accurate information has been shared about the actual cost of operating CFA, the supposed reasons for closing the school, or any plan to continue services CFA provides. We must insist that our voices be heard and the truth be told. 

(Click on http://detroitk12.org/content/2011/05/26/dps-alters-school-closureconsolidation-plan-after-broad-community-input/  to read Roberts’ statement.)

The students and teachers at DFA are demanding a public hearing on their unique school, attended by EM Roy Roberts, before any decision is made on its future. To assist these young mothers, their children, and their supporters in circulating the petition, you can sign online at:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGd4XzNKckt4V2lDdVBEY2VwRXY5X2c6MQ

or click on PetitionforaPublicHearingontheFutureofCFA[1] to download a copy of the petition. For further info, contact nconaway@gmail.com, or click on http://defendpubliceducation.com/.

Keep CFA and all DPS schools open and public!

PETITION FOR A PUBLIC HEARING ON THE FUTURE OF CFA

Whereas:

CFA is a nationally renowned, successful high school that has provided a quality education for pregnant and parenting teen girls for twenty years. CFA offers:

● Small classes to provide a supportive learning environment.

● A modified schedule and dual enrollment night school to allow students to recover creditsand get a head start on college.

● Support services like WIC, healthcare for moms and babies, and early education from birth through pre-K.

● An organic farm and orchard that provide a unique outdoor learning environment. 

CFA is more than the sum of its programs; it is a lifeline for growth, development and abetter future for the young women and their children. Pregnancy is the number one reason girls drop out of school. Approximately 70% of teenage girls who give birth leave school (ACLU.org). All CFA graduates are accepted to community college or university and secured with financial aid. 

In a recent press statement the new EM, Roy Roberts, lumped CFA in with remedial programs at Barsamian and Hancock, but CFA is not a remedial program. Being pregnant is not a crime, and pregnant girls should be supported, not punished and degraded. 

Drivers honked constantly to support CFA throughout protest at charter bidder DABO's HQ May 19

“Transition” back to a regular high school with no infant care and pre-school, no credit recovery program, no parenting classes, no support for the young mothers to continue their education and enhance the education of their children, will force these young women out of school.

 The community supports CFA, and deserves the transparency and accountability that its public school system should provide.

 Therefore:

 We the undersigned, call on EM Roy Roberts to attend a public hearing on the future of CFA, at a time and place convenient to the community, to hear from the CFA students, teachers and community about the importance of maintaining CFA as it currently exists, and to answer questions about the actual costs to DPS, how much is covered by federal funds, and the costs to the students, their children and the community if CFA is closed.

Signed:

Cynthia McKinney led another delegation to Tripoli earlier this year for the Jan. 15-17 Pan-African Conference. Bay View Associate Editor JR Valrey, known as Minister of Information JR, Hajj Malcolm Shabazz, grandson of Malcolm X, and former Bay View writer Ra’Shida accompanied her. They met with Africans from all over the continent and across the Diaspora, including Samia Nkrumah, daughter of the great pan-Africanist Kwame Nkrumah and member of parliament in Ghana, Roland Lumumba, son of the heroic Congolese President Patrice Lumumba, and many traditional African kings and chiefs. Here, Haitian activist Da’Vid and international peace activist McKinney lead a panel at the mid-January conference. – Photo: Minister of Information JR

Congressman Dennis Kucinich sponsored legislation calling for U.S. to pull out of Libya

Today, independent journalists from across the United States departed on a truth-telling, fact-finding mission to Libya. This coincides with what was supposed to have been a debate in Congress on U.S. involvement in the war against Libya, but the debate got sidelined due to the fact that the legislation requiring a pullout by the U.S. could actually have passed. Both Democratic and Republican leadership are responsible for pulling the bill at the last minute.

Al Jazeera film footage (below) showsthat Western soldiers have their “boots on the ground” in Libya, overstepping authority granted by the United Nations Security Council for action in Libya. Every day that President Obama contributes to the military action against Libya, he tests the United States Congress and defies the United States Constitution and the War Powers Act which limit presidential acts of war, subject to authorization by the U.S. Congress.

Incredibly, in what yet may prove to be another act beyond the mandate of the United Nations Security Council resolution, NATO extended its operations in Libya for another 90 days.

Because the public has become increasingly unable to rely on embedded media to tell the American people the “whole truth and nothing but the truth,” the DIGNITY Delegation will shed rare light on NATO’s actions inside that country.

According to some estimates, the American people and the global community were lied to 935 times by administration officials and the media in the lead-up to the Iraq War. As Aeschylus said, “In war, truth is the first casualty.” The DIGNITY Delegation is expected to make daily reports while on the ground of the ongoing NATO actions in the country.
 

For more information, contact Don DeBar, dondebar@optonline.net .

This video shows NATO “boots on the ground” in Libya, which is prohibited by the U.N. resolution that permitted the invasion.

(SFBayView Editor’s note: In a new poll, the public seems to back the Kucinich resolution that was postponed today for fear it would pass. When asked by CNN pollsters who should have final authority for deciding whether the U.S. should continue its use of military force in Libya — Congress or President Obama — 55 percent of respondents answered Congress.)

Former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney Returns to Libya with DIGNITY Fact Finding Delegation of independent journalists.

From the International Action Center
NATO has announced it will continue the criminal bombing of Libya for another 90 days. The U.S. Congress has postponed any vote on President Obama’s obvious violation of the War Powers Act. In the face of this, Cynthia McKinney has returned to Libya with a fact finding delegation to meet with Libyans under attack by NATO’s bombs. She plans to bring back to the U.S. documented evidence of NATO war crimes.

NATO bombs have continually targeted Gadhafi and have killed his son and three of his grandchildren. NATO targeted the guest house where a large religious peace delegation of 150 Imams gathered to attempt to meet with opposition leaders to urge a peaceful solution; NATO’s bombs killed 11 imams and wounded another 47. These attacks have destroyed schools, hospitals and essential civilian infrastructure.

Please sign the petition to demand Congress use the War Powers Act to order an end to the criminal bombing of Libya. We cannot allow Congress to put this third U.S. war with large civilian casualties on the back burner.

Tell Congress: Use War Powers Act to stop bombing Libya! End NATO massacres of imams and other civilians!

SIGN online petition at iacenter.org/africa/libyawarpowersact to send messages to House and Senate Foreign Relations Committees, congressional leaders, the Obama administration, the U.N. Secretary-General, Security Council, General Assembly President and member states, and the national and international media

SIGN the online petition at iacenter.org/africa/libyawarpowersact

Read Cynthia McKinney’s reports below of her visit to Libya last week.

From: Cynthia McKinney
NATO: A Feast of Blood
24 May 2011

While serving on the House International Relations Committee from 1993 to 2003, it became clear to me that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was an anachronism. Founded in 1945 at the end of World War II, NATO was founded by the United States in response to the Soviet Union’s survival as a Communist state. NATO was the U.S. insurance policy that capitalist ownership and domination of European, Asian, and African economies would continue. This also would ensure the survival of the then-extant global apartheid.

NATO is a collective security pact wherein member states pledge that an attack upon one is an attack against all. Therefore, should the Soviet Union have attacked any European Member State, the United States military shield would be activated. The Soviet Response was the Warsaw Pact that maintained a “cordon sanitaire” around the Russian Heartland should NATO ever attack. Thus, the world was broken into blocs which gave rise to the “Cold War.” Continue reading →

VANESSA FLUKER

DETROIT, June 1, 2011

Despite the huge turnout at a May 13 court hearing to support attorney Vanessa Fluker, Chief Judge Virgil C. Smith has handed down a ruling denying her request to recuse Judge Robert Colombo from a client’s case and refusing to invalidate $12,200 in fines Colombo hit her with in retaliation for her appeal of an eviction order.

Go to http://voiceofdetroit.net/?p=7335 and http://voiceofdetroit.net/?p=6035  to read about details of the May 13 hearing, and “A Tale of Two Attorneys: Royal Bank of Scotland’s Friend Robert Colombo and People’s Attorney Vanessa Fluker.” A story on Smith’s decision will be forthcoming.

But meanwhile, on Thursday, June 2, 6-8 pm, there will be a rally and fundraiser for attorney Fluker, to help with the costs of an appeal. She will talk about her case and the continuing struggle for a moratorium to stop foreclosures in Wayne County. General Baker and invited community leaders will also speak on the foreclosure crisis and the campaign to pass “The Homeowner Protection and Neighborhood Preservation Act” in Wayne County.

The Act calls for the Sheriff to declare a moratorium on foreclosures in Wayne County. (The bill goes before the County Ways and Means Committee for a hearing on the evening of June 13– details to follow). Light refreshments and music will be provided on June 2.

RALLY THURSDAY, JUNE 2, 2010  6-8 p.m. UAW LOCAL 600, 10550 Dix, Dearborn, MI

 TO SUPPORT ATTORNEY VANESSA FLUKER and

 STOP FORECLOSURES AND BANK ABUSES IN WAYNE COUNTY!!

Click on Flyer– June 2 People Before Banks rally for copy of flier.

Also, on Saturday, June 4, 11 am to 3 pm, Local 600 will host a free legal clinic on mortgage foreclosures. If you or anyone you know is seeking advice from lawyers who represent the community rather than the banks, come to the clinic for free and confidential assistance. Click on Flyer– June 4 legal clinic for flyer.

For more information, go to moratorium@moratorium-mi.org and http://www.peoplebeforebanks.org.



On May 18, 2011, Bank of America, Citi and Chase, three of the largest racist, predatory lenders in Detroit, along with Fannie Mae, the government agency that bails out the banks with every foreclosure and does most of the evictions of homeowners at 36th District Court, sponsored a conference about continuing their takeover of Detroit through their front organization, “NeighborWorks.” Mayor Dave Bing opened the conference, spelling out his agenda of cutting public services and the wages and jobs of city workers to pay off the city’s massive debt service to the banks. Even some of the attendees joined the protest, called by Moratorium NOW!

No cuts by Snyder, Bing, or Council; no EM!

By Diane Bukowski

DETROIT – All over the world, poor and working people are rising up against the International Monetary Fund and the international banks. During the G-20 summit held last June in Toronto, Canada, in the midst of a global economic crisis, government officials announced it was time to reduce multi-trillion dollar budget deficits blowing up like nuclear bombs everywhere.

The simplest way to reduce the debt, of course, would have been to quit paying it, as Third World nations have been demanding for decades. But that was not on the agenda of the G-20. Instead, plans were laid to chop down the very pillars of civilization, services and infrastructure meant to fulfill basic human needs: housing, schools, hospitals, public transportation, even water and food.

Protesters rose up in Toronto, burning police cars and battering banks. Prior to Toronto, and since then, the world’s people have targeted the banks everywhere, in massive protests from Ireland to the Philippines, from Mexico to Africa. They know who the enemy is and they are mobilizing.

But here in Detroit, we have been awfully slow to learn.

An example is the current debate over the city of Detroit budget, taking place with the threat of Public Act 4 hovering overhead like a giant vulture. No matter that Bing is flapping one wing of the vulture while Gov. Rick Snyder flaps the other wing.

Tashi Kiya demands: Cut debt service!

Both Mayor Dave Bing and the City Council are busy laying the blame for the city’s alleged budgetary crisis at the feet of public workers, their wages, pensions, and benefits, and the money spent on services for Detroiters. Meanwhile, even some so-called progressives are diverting the fight by creating imaginary castles in the air where Detroiters will live in green spaces, return to farming, and resurrect underground creeks flowing to the Detroit River that were covered over more than a century ago.

The City Council as a whole wants to cut even more from the budget than Bing, a scenario that has happened for several years now. Oh, for the days when Maryann Mahaffey and others did battle with the Mayor to advocate for the people and the workers.

Today, both the Mayor and the Council are missing the elephant in the room.

After a huge set-to with the Council, Bing finally coughed up a 440 page “Deficit Elimination Plan,” mainly filled with mind-boggling charts and diagrams that will lead to permanent crossing of the eyes if studiously read all the way through.

“Our latest forecast . . . . shows that if we take no action our annual deficits will grow from the $53MM projected in 2010/11 to $337MM by FY 2016; with an accumulated deficit of $1.5 B by 2016,” Bing says.

Bing and bosom buddy Snyder

“ . . . .We have shared the data with Council members and met with budget staff early in the debate. We have also met with State Executive Officials including the Governor, the Treasurer, and their team to communicate our analysis, the 2012 budget and the deficit elimination plan.”

Bing then proceeds to unveil his plan, the Bing-Snyder plan. It boils down to getting more out of the little people by hook or by crook or by PA 4.

Bing plans to turn the city around and end up in surplus status by 2015 through the following measures:

• 

  AFSCME protest 2010

  First and foremost, reducing pension and medical costs; if the unions don’t agree by Sept. 1, 2011, the PA 4 vulture will darken the skies. Remember, many pensioners make only a few hundred a month if they retired before 1994, and many current workers are at poverty-level wages after years of wage concessions. The pension systems have already agreed to defer this year’s payments due from the city.

• More lay-offs, wage cuts and furlough days, further reducing available services as well as the city’s tax base.
• Increasing property tax collection by $5 million at a time when Detroiters continue to be thrown out of their homes right and left by the banks.
• A gain of $17 million by hiking the income tax rate for individuals back to 2.5 percent, under an agreement with Snyder, through legislation introduced by Rep. David Nathan (D-Detroit). What income? The plan says the official unemployment rate in Detroit is 22 percent, but we ALL know that MOST of the folks in poor communities are out of work.

• 

  Federal assistance line in Detroit

  Compuware (wonder how much Bing is paying them to do so) is coming up with a plan to shake loose $154.9 million from resident non-filers, $21.8 million from corporations, and $6.5 million from commuter non-filers. Again, how many residents are working?

• Taxing the casinos more? Don’t be fooled. Bing is not talking about taxing casino PROFITS, but about taxing INDIVIDUAL WINS. Poor little senior citizens.

• 

  DTE protest Photo by Daymon Hartley

  Restoring the utility tax of 5 percent. That’s NOT a tax on the utilities like DTE, which makes billions every year in profits. That’s a tax on the utility USERS. Is Bing insane? How many Detroiters have their utilities shut-off now because they can’t afford to pay their bills, let alone pay an additional tax?

• Outsourcing Public Lighting Department (virtually already done, with Detroit paying DTE big bucks for its power.)
• Outsourcing DPW—more profits for mob-controlled waste management companies.
• Regionalizing D-DOT and reducing the city subsidy to this enterprise agency. What will happen to the jobs of D-DOT workers and the taxes THEY pay? What will happen to Detroit commuters and their routes—who will control where the routes go and who gets the jobs?

• 

  City and county workers protest Bing, Ficano

  Consolidation of Health Department, Buildings and Safety, police lock-ups with Wayne County. Ficano is already at war with his workers—more of the same, fewer jobs.

• Combining the Recreation Department with DPS, already experiencing dissolution.
• And etc.

 The one thing Bing makes clear he will not cut is (bated breath here) – THE CITY’S DEBT PAYMENTS TO THE BANKS.

And herein lies the true insanity. If there was ever a time for a solution posed by former Detroit Mayor Frank Murphy during the Depression years of the 1930’s – a moratorium on debt to the banks, IT IS NOW!  If not now, when? When the banks are blazing in the skies, having fallen victim to the just wrath of the people?

Just look at the city’s own figures on its debt, taken from the 2010 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report. THE CITY’S TOTAL DEBT TO THE BANKS AS OF 2010 WAS $7.7 BILLION, more than seven times this year’s budget of $1.2 billion:

But the chart above does not show the real picture, because it takes into account only the principal on the city’s debt to the banks.

READ THE CHART BELOW AND WEEP, BUT THEN RISE UP—DEMAND AT LEAST A MORATORIUM ON THE INTEREST ON DETROIT’S DEBT TO THE BANKS!  THE BANKS HAVE DESTROYED DETROIT, NOT ONLY THROUGH FORECLOSURES, BUT THROUGH USURIOUS INTEREST RATES AND OTHER PRACTICES.

Adding the figures below, from the 2010 CAFR, the city paid a total of $433,691,964 in debt to the banks in 2011. Of that, $216,418,043 was in interest alone. THE INTEREST ALONE IS FOUR TIMES MORE THAN FOUR TIMES THE 2011 DEFICIT BING CITES! The U.S. government has bailed out the banks to the tune of trillions of dollars–TIME FOR PAYBACK!



From the Justice for Aiyana Jones Committee (JAJC)

Detroit

• Gross mismanagement
• Lack of oversight
• Passing the buck

Pros. Kym Worthy asks City Council for money for her own crime lab investigation, May 11, 2009; thousands of prisoners are still waiting for their cases to be reviewed; Worthy's office has said it destroyed all of its files prior to 1995

Sounds familiar?  The Justice for Aiyana Jones Committee (JAJC) views the Detroit Police Department Crime Lab debacle as a reflection of the worst aspects that occurred in the Aiyana Jones murder case.   In her public role, Kym Worthy is becoming the Lady Macbeth of Wayne County.  Just like Lady Macbeth tried to minimize the crimes of her famous husband, Kym Worthy is seeking to minimize the problems endemic inside the Detroit Police Department. 

But, just as Banquo’s Ghost returned to haunt the house of Lady Macbeth, so too does Aiyana Jones keep returning from the grave to plead for justice.  Lady Macbeth could not wash her hands clean of her misdeeds, and neither can Kym Worthy wash her hands clean of the responsibility for not providing justice for Aiyana Jones. 

Rodrick Carrington, Lamar Grable, Darren Miller, victims of serial killer cop Eugene Brown

Aiyana Jones

Malice Green

defenseless Detroiters.”  Lawrence goes on to explain that this has created a climate that allows media pundits close to the Bing and previous administrations to spin these tragedies in order to downplay their culpability.  The only good that might come out of all of this is that the community will have a chance to start anew as all of these players, regardless of their rank, status and history, are shown the door.

Voters and Community Groups Intervening in Suit to Ensure that All New Yorkers Are Equally Represented in State and Local Legislatures

May 20th, 2011

Albany, NY – This week, top civil rights organizations filed a motion in New York Supreme Court asking to intervene to help defend New York’s new law allocating people in prison to their home communities for redistricting and reapportionment.

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Brennan Center for Justice, the Center for Law and Social Justice, D?mos, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and the Prison Policy Initiative, representing fifteen rural and urban voters and three statewide nonprofit organizations, are seeking to defend the new law against a legal challenge brought by New York State Senator Elizabeth Little and others. 

The lawsuit, titled Little v. LATFOR, names the New York State Task Force on Demographic Research and Reapportionment (LATFOR) and the Department of Correctional Services (DOCS) as defendants.

Why have Michigan legislators done nothing to count prisoners in home districts?

The new law requires that incarcerated persons be counted as residents of their home communities, in accordance with the New York State Constitution’s provision that incarceration does not change one’s residence. The legislation applies to state and local legislative redistricting, and would not affect federal funding distributions.

Previously, legislative districts with prisons were credited with the population of the disenfranchised people temporarily incarcerated there. This practice, often called prison-based gerrymandering, gives extra influence to voters who live in the district with the most prisons, and dilutes the votes of every resident of a district with no (or fewer) prisons. The new law corrects this bias and assures that all communities in New York have equal representation in our government.

The most dramatic examples of prison-based gerrymandering are in upstate counties and cities.  For example, half of a Rome City Council ward is incarcerated, giving the residents of that ward twice the influence of other city residents. Recognizing the distorting effect of prison-based gerrymandering at the local level, thirteen New York counties with large prisons – including four in Senator Little’s district – have historically exercised their discretion to remove the prison populations prior to redistricting.

The new law brings consistency to redistricting in New York, prohibiting the state and all local governments from giving extra political influence to districts that contain prisons. Sen. Little’s lawsuit seeks to have the new legislation struck down, the effect of which would require  legislative districts – most notably her own, which contains 12,000 incarcerated persons – to include prison populations in their apportionment counts to the detriment of all other districts without prisons.  Returning to this practice would not only unfairly inflate the districts of those with prisons at the expense of those without but also violate the New York State Constitution.
The organizations seeking to intervene include:

• 

  Hazel Dukes, Pres. New York NAACP

  The NAACP New York State Conference, the state-level body in New York of the NAACP, a membership organization dedicated to protecting and enhancing the civil rights of African Americans and other people of color. The Conference has approximately 90,000 members statewide. “Persons incarcerated in correctional institutions do not participate in the life of the town or county where they are incarcerated,” said Hazel Dukes, president of the NAACP New York State Conference. “Sen. Little and her co-plaintiffs are seeking to reverse one of New York’s most important civil rights advances in the previous decade, which would unfairly dilute the voting rights of New Yorkers in every corner of the state.”

• 

  Susan Lerner

  Common Cause/NY, the New York branch of Common Cause, a nationwide, nonpartisan organization with 20,000 members in New York State that advocates for honest, accountable, and responsive government. “The way legislative district lines are drawn impacts citizens’ ability to participate effectively in our democracy,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause / NY. “Prison-based gerrymandering is a fundamentally unfair practice whose end was met with overwhelming applause. Voters in every region of the state would be hurt by a repeal of the new law.”

• 

  VOCAL members Brian Pearson and Ramon Velasquez speak with Gov. Paterson after he voted at 134th St. and Lenox Ave. on November 2, 2010

  Voices of Community Activists and Leaders – New York, or VOCAL -NY, a statewide grassroots membership organization building power among low-income people who are living with and affected by HIV/AIDS, drug use and incarceration, along with the organizations that serve them, to create healthy and just communities. “Many of our members live in communities that are heavily impacted by the criminal justice system and have a disproportionate number of residents sent to state prison,” said Ramon Velasquez, a VOCAL-NY leader. “Every district that has fewer prisons than Senator Little’s district loses representation from prison-based gerrymandering, but the districts that see many of their members counted in prison lose even more.” 

 
By the CNN Wire Staff

May 22, 2011 11:56 a.m. EDT

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• McKinney says she was invited by the “nongovernmental organization for fact-finding”
• McKinney: “Last thing we need to do is spend money on death, destruction and war”
• McKinney: “I think that it’s very important that people understand what is happening here”
• State TV is fiercely loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi

QUOTE FROM GREEN PARTY LEADER CYNTHIA MCKINNEY IN LIBYA:

“I want to say categorically and very clearly that these policies of war … are not what the people of the United States stand for and it’s not what African-Americans stand for,” she told state TV.

(CNN) — A former U.S. congresswoman slammed U.S. policy on Libyan state TV late Saturday and stressed the “last thing we need to do is spend money on death, destruction and war.”

The station is fiercely loyal to Moammar Gadhafi and her interview was spliced with what appeared to be rallies in support of the embattled Libyan leader.

“I think that it’s very important that people understand what is happening here. And it’s important that people all over the world see the truth. And that is why I am here … to understand the truth,” former Rep. Cynthia McKinney said during a live interview.

She said she was invited to Libya by the “nongovernmental organization for fact-finding,” adding that she intends to bring more people to the country soon so that “they too can understand.”

NATO warplanes have been pounding military targets since March after the U.N. Security Council approved a resolution to protect civilians by any means necessary, as Gadhafi’s forces try to quash a nearly three-month revolt against the leader’s roughly 42 years of rule.

Gadhafi’s government has repeatedly urged the international community to send fact-finding teams to Libya to report what’s happening on the ground.

eAt one point during the interview, state TV cut to what it said were live airstrikes, hitting Gadhafi’s compound.

“Is that a bomb?” McKinney asked.

“I want to say categorically and very clearly that these policies of war … are not what the people of the United States stand for, and it’s not what African-Americans stand for,” she told state TV.

The former Georgia representative also slammed the economic policies of U.S. President Barack Obama and said the government of the United States no longer represents the interests of the American people.

“Under the economic policies of the Obama administration, those who have the least are losing the most. And those who have the most are getting even more,” she said. “The situation in the United States is becoming more dire for average ordinary Americans, and the last thing we need to do is to spend money on death, destruction and war.”

Separately, McKinney appeared on state-run Press TV this week in Iran. She was reported to be in Tehran attending the International Conference on Global Alliance Against Terrorism for a Just Peace.