Michigan legislative action thread
I must confess. I’d even mentioned even on another thread that I thought a judge would have gone completely in another direction. Mea Culpa, my bad, so sad, slap my ass and call me Suzie.
Good. This business about politicians giving away our future for political favors needs to come to an end.
“Calling pensions a contract, [Judge] Rhodes says that it’s widely understood that bankruptcy allows contracts to be impaired. It seems like he’s laying the groundwork for cuts to pensions, but we’ll see.
Rhodes says that pensions have protections under the Michigan constitution, but don’t have protection in federal bankruptcy court.”
This is a huge precedent. It means that states that protect public pensions with their state constitutions are still subject to bankruptcy like any other contract.
This will get appealed to the court of appeals, and will almost certainly be certworthy after the appeals court ruling.
Give it 50 years or so, but you will have a lot of Chinese speaking black people well trained in capitalism once the lease expires.
“We refused to throw in the towel and do nothing. We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt. We bet on American workers and American ingenuity, and three years later, that bet is paying off in a big way.”
We 401k and IRA holders have to take a hit every time the market tanks, why shouldn’t public sector employees take a hit every time the government tanks?
This will get appealed to the USSC. If the unions lose there, they’ll find some grounds to appeal it again. This will happen five or ten times, by which time the Court will have been stuffed with communists.
Govt pensions should be reduced prospectively but not against those workers who have already earned them. ( That would really be unfair. )
There’s a documentary called Burn. It’s about the Detroit Fire Department. They are by far the busiest urban fire service in the world, running on a shoestring with old apparatus. One fire truck had 175,000 miles on it.
I think they would do well to open an urban fire academy to teach other departments how to fight fires under that level of stress.
Gee, they could actually make some money.
“Elections have consequences.”
bkmk
If this ruling survives the myriad appeals, how long before Washington uses it to reduce Military Pensions, etc.
“Dear retired city employees of Detroit who supported the Democrats: Yes, we Democrat politicians took off with the money and left you with an empty bag, but it is a nice bag. We got it in Tahiti on a vacation that you paid for. See, we’re always thinking of you! So you’ll have less money each month. Big deal. Our champagne was tepid. We all have problems. The only way to fix this is for you to send even more money to the Democrat party! We Democrat politicians will then hold another meeting in Tahiti to figure this out. If you get hungry, just use your Democrat bag to catch some snipe. They’re full of vitamins! See, we’re always thinking of you! Love and kisses, The Democrat Politicians.”
Nice. Sorry about those who were depending on pensions and COLA’s but, this is totally unsupportable.
The article is perfect timing as we were discussing over lunch the possibility of municipal pension failures.
A few people here are retired from government, receive their checks and can’t conceive of that ever happening.
This is good news for “rule of law”.
The union thugs thought they could BS their way with intimidation and absurd pre bankruptcy demands.
This is the people taking power back and away from the thug class.
say what you want but I do feel bad for those that are losing the benefits that were earned over the time of their employment. Even though it makes no sense to pay someone for not working, they did offer it and agreed to pay it as an incentive for employees.
of interest to you.
Maybe this will allow the unthinkable: demolish the city to a far smaller, manageable size and return the areas that used to have buildings back into productive farmland for now. That could be the beginning of a rebirth of Detroit as a viable city in the very long run.