Tag: politics

So Detroit Files for Bankruptcy

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What, it can’t loan money to itself to get out of its hole?

Gov. Rick Snyder justified approving the historic filing by reciting a litany of the city’s ills, including more than $18 billion in debt, maxed-out tax rates, the highest murder rate in 40 years, 78,000 abandoned buildings and a half-century of residential flight. He said the city failed to provide basic services to residents or pay creditors.

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“There were no other viable alternatives,” Snyder told reporters Thursday. “We have a great city but a city that has been going downhill for 60 years.”

Just a coincidence I’m sure, but Detroit hasn’t had a Republican mayor for … sixty-one years.

It will be interesting to see if Obama inserts himself into this bankruptcy proceeding and screws the secured bondholders in favor of the unions.  Again.  (ETA:  Walter Russell Mead says “No.”)

Edited to add:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4ZQooPHHAA?rel=0]
And, of course, this classic from Steven:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hhJ_49leBw?rel=0]
UPDATE #4: Michigan AG challenges judge’s ruling that Detroit bankruptcy is unconstitutional

An Ingham County judge says Thursday’s historic Detroit bankruptcy filing violates the Michigan Constitution and state law and must be withdrawn.

But Attorney General Bill Schuette said he will appeal Circuit Judge Rosemarie Aquilina’s Friday rulings and seek emergency consideration by the Michigan Court of Appeals. He wants her orders stayed pending the appeals, he said in a news release.

There’s more.

Apparently Judge Aquilina is a “wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences,” instead of someone who, you know, cares about rule of law.

Quote of the Day – Jonah Goldberg Edition

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From his NRO review of the book The End Is Near and It’s Going to be Awesome by Kevin Williamson, Leviathan Fail:

While new iPhones regularly burst forth like gifts from the gods, politics plods along. “Other than Social Security, there are very few 1935 vintage products still in use,” he writes. “Resistance to innovation is a part of the deep structure of politics. In that, it is like any other monopoly. It never goes out of business — despite flooding the market with defective and dangerous products, mistreating its customers, degrading the environment, cooking the books, and engaging in financial shenanigans that would have made Gordon Gekko pale to contemplate.” Hence, it is not U.S. Steel, which was eventually washed away like an imposing sand castle in the surf, but only politics that can claim to be “the eternal corporation.”

The reason for this immortality is simple: The people running the State are never sufficiently willing to contemplate that they are the problem. If a program dedicated to putting the round pegs of humanity into square holes fails, the bureaucrats running it will conclude that the citizens need to be squared off long before it dawns on them that the State should stop treating people like pegs in the first place. Furthermore, in government, failure is an exciting excuse to ask for more funding or more power.

RTWT. I had Thomas Sowell’s A Personal Odyssey lined up next in the nonfiction queue, but I think I’m going to have to get a copy of The End is Near and read it next instead. Kevin Williamson echoes some of the things Bill Whittle has been saying of late, but I have some disagreements with Whittle’s optimism, and it seems Jonah Goldberg has some (albeit minor) disagreements with Williamson. I’m looking forward to the read.