A lot of unbuilt swamps. And a lot of BUILT swamps. It is Florida, after all.
The Detroit Public Lighting Department which provided low-cost electricity to Wayne State, RenCen, Cobo Hall, and to the Detroit Public Schools has been shut down, but never fear, the private industry (DTE) will take over operations with new and improved prices!
Revenue Sharing from 2009 - 2013:
2009: $268.95 million
2010: $239.21 million
2011: $239.21 million (no change)
2012: $172.53 million
2013: $181.86 million (Projected)
Keep in mind, this is for a city with a budget of $3.1 billion dollars. The $68 million reduction was done to manufacture the current crisis: Keep reducing aid over the decade, squeezing the city until it pops like a pustule. To put this in perspective, next year, the U.S government will give Columbia $323 million dollars while only giving Detroit 108.2 million grant only for blight reduction. This year, we’ve increased our aid to Israel to an all-time high of $3.2 billionwhile, at the same time, decreasing the amount of money we give our own American cities by millions of dollars. It is theft, pure and simple: stealing from the poorest of our own country to enrich the richest of an already prosperous country.
If Mr. Snyder gave a damn about the lighting situation in Detroit, he would’ve provided the funds to the Department to replace stolen copper wires and light fixtures. It’s a damn shame that Jimmy Carter has such a terrible reputation because he’s the last President to have any inkling on what urban renewal was. If you believe that federal money gets “wasted in Detroit”, please, please, please, I invite you to visit Cobo Hall, the Renaissance Center, Hart Plaza, and Joe Louis Arena - all were built thanks to direct federal investment; in fact, the inner core of Downtown Detroit as well as the New Center owe their high property values to Mr. Carter.
- Honesty
and the People Mover!
One long-term solution to the pension problem mentioned by the OP is to go to Defined Contribution plans for public servants, instead of Defined Benefit plans.
DC plans do not contain any future payments; they’re pay-as-you-go. The employer makes the contribution with each pay cheque, not 20 or 30 years in the future, and has no ongoing obligation.
Switching to DC plans for all new hires does not address the current issue, but it also doesn’t affect the vested pension rights of former employees on the DB plans, a valid concern mentioned by Honesty.
The switch could be imposed prospectively by the state governments on municipal governments, by requiring them to go to DC plans by a certain date for all new hires.
This is a remarkable comment.
You yourself don’t have the time or talent to research Honesty’s charges, but yet you try to make a point out of the fact that other people have not addressed his comments. Have you considered that perhaps other people, much like you, don’t have the time or talent to look into them?
Or perhaps your point is that in your case, despite admittedly not having actually looked into the facts, you still decided to post in support of Honesty’s comments anyway. So you have this expectation that other similarly ignoarant people should have rushed in to post their own ignorant opinions, as you did, and the fact that they haven’t done this proves that they’re ignoring the important issues of the day.
But maybe that’s not it. By odd coincidence, you currently have a Pit thread in which you castigate someone else for posting about a subject that he was ignorant of. So perhaps the other posters here are doing as you say, not as you do.
I’m with Fotheringay-Phipps. The claims that Detroit was deprived of $200 million of promised revenue by the State of Michigan sounds interesting. I’d be happy to read the reliable source for that claim, if there was one.
Argent Towers, is that you???
Absolutely, you only have to ask guys. 
Source #1
The Detroit tax rates were rolled back but they never received the money, in fact, because the deal between Archer and Engler wasn’t written into the actual law, there was nothing the City could do legally to compel the State to give those promised funds.
Source: #3
If you or anyone else need anymore cites on this issue (or any other issue I brought up in my posts), please ask.
- Honesty
You mean businesses that monopolize vital services and choose the amount of revenue they take from “customers” and anyone else they want?
Governments don’t go broke because they can tax (legally extort) funds at will.
Wow!!! Your comment is invalid in almost every particular.
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I specifically admitted ignorance up-front. That’s rather the opposite of pretending expertise I do not have.
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I do spend quite a bit of time reading books and Googling, both for my own projects and in order to make informed posts at SDMB. But there are only 24 hours in a day.
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Honesty’s charges were quite specific. If they were false, I’d have expected to have seen them easily refuted. If unrefuted, I’d expect Dopers to get curious. I can point to several SDMB threads where I’ve invested time to fight ignorance. Is it so much to plead for other Dopers to pick up the slack?
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Independent of the specific charges in this case, there is a general world-wide problem of similar corruption. This is “well known,” yet I think many people, even Dopers, are unaware of the extent of the problem.
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Individuals generally lack the time to develop arguments from primary sources. That’s why the best answer to, or an observation on, a question is often to just point, as I did, to books by Chomsky or Naomi Klein.
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With experience one gets an ear for the “ring of truth.” I’ll say no more on that topic as detractors would find much to ridicule in any summary of that other than a very long essay.
Do you read Chomsky or Klein, Fotheringay-Phipps ? Frankly I think it’s silly the way Dopers study each others’ posts for elisions or misplaced commas, but lack the time to inform themselves reading the informed books of worthy writers.
If you’re claiming you nonetheless have the ability to determine the validity of these things, then it’s very similar.
In that case you should have a lot of things that you can post about in an informed manner, and can afford to leave aside those about which you know little or nothing.
Quite possibly it is. Relatively few Dopers have paid much attention to the details of Detroit’s fiscal history. (In addition, it’s possible that people are used to these types of posts from Honesty, and don’t pay much attention to begin with.)
I agree with your first clause - it’s independent of the specific charges in this case. What we are discussing here is the specific charges in this case.
Or to people like George Will et al.
I would be one of those detractors. An “ear for the rign of truth” just means “fits in with my general worldview and preconceived notions”.
I once read a book by Chomsky (& my opinion of him on that basis is not high). Never heard of Klein.
Exactly.
This wasn’t the first time Detroit faced a fiscal crisis; for example, in 1981, the City of Detroit faced a $131 million deficit, had already laid off nearly five thousand city workers in all departments from 1975. The state-appointed arbiter was clamoring for a state-takeover unless the City independently enacted three reforms: tax increases, short-term borrowing, and employee wage concessions. The City did the last two, but the first one was difficult as the Michigan constitution requires voters to approve of all taxes increases.
And you know what?
The voters overwhelmingly voted (68.8%) for a tax increase, and you know what happened two years after that? The City of Detroit posted a surplus and, you know what happened at the end of the 80’s? The City balanced five consecutive budgets.
The title of the OP is very apt because what occurs in Detroit will occur to a City near you. Let me explain, though I fear another Pit thread may emerge because of it. The U.S government would engage what’s called federal revenue sharing, the federal government would give money to towns and cities to spend as they saw fit (sort of how we give away our money to other countries). Well, by the mid 80’s, Republicans knew that their tax increases weren’t generating revenue, so they began to cut some more to obfuscate an increasing peacetime deficit. By 1986, the Reagan administration shut down the federal revenue sharing program; while, at the same time, pulling back on urban programs and trimming the welfare rolls.
This is a cyclical problem because as federal aid is withdrawn the people in need must rely on State and local governments which may or may not be equipped provide that need. When the State coffers dries up, the people in need rely on their towns and cities, and when that dries up, they go to the municipal bond market, and when that dries up or your bonds are degraded to junk status, your city is appraised and auctioned off piece-by-piece to corporations to pay off the debt. Unfortunately, what majority does not understand is the promotion of the “general Welfare” of Americans is the constitutional job of the U.S government, not the States, towns, cities, and the municipal bond market. It should be the reason we pay taxes.
I have several books in Detroit and have been thumbing through them with great interest as of late. Came across this quote in regards to Public Act 312 from Mayor Young in his book Hard Stuff written in 1994. Coleman surmised that “for its own financial stability and bond ratings, Michigan could not allow Detroit to fall into bankruptcy.” He continued: “Although from my point of view that would have been preferable to State control, which would effectively left Detroit without authority in its own affairs. Antipathy toward Detroit ran high in the State legislature, and I would loath to put my city’s fate into the hands of such a demonstrably unsympathetic body”. He must be turning over in his grave.
- Honesty
That’s a cop-out, everything I’m saying I can provide a cite for it (and have happily done so when asked). While some of my knowledge is from books about Detroit, everything needed to debate the issue is on the Internet. For example, nearly all of the fiscal data was obtained here, which is freely accessible to you or anyone else.
- Honesty
Detroit slips further into the post-apocalypse: Abandoned Dogs Roam Detroit in Packs as Humans Dwindle
You’re missing the context and point.
If people were disputing what you’re saying then this would be relevant. But septimus was commenting on the fact that people are ignoring what you’re saying. My response was that perhaps people gloss over your posts, based on prior experience (especeially WRT race-related issues). As such, you can’t prove anything from the fact that no one has addressed your claims - one way or the other.
The fact that you’re willing to document your claims is not relevant to this issue.
FTR I’m not claiming that you’re wrong. I’m not willing to get involved in Detroit’s history at that level of detail. All I’m making is a logical point: the fact that people have not addressed your post might be because they haven’t really paid much attention to it. That is all.
If the articles that you quoted from are correct, it seems the story is slightly different than the state merely robbing the city of promised money. The state and the city agreed to a deal whereby Detroit would reduce its income taxes, and in exchange for that the state would share a certain amount of revenue. The city cut taxes, but not as much as promised. In response, the state shared revenue, but not as much as promised.
Not being a lawyer, I’m not going to comment and the legal status of what happened or whether the money should have been payed. But it’s not merely a case of the state grabbing the money.
Is the city too strapped to afford even a dogcatcher now?!