Detroit files for bankruptcy (bet you thought it already was bankrupt)
The city of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection in federal court Thursday, laying the groundwork for a historic effort to bail out a city that is sinking under billions of dollars in debt and decades of mismanagement, population flight and loss of tax revenue.
The bankruptcy filing makes Detroit the largest city in U.S. history to do so.
No one could have seen this coming, except Dewey:
Hmmm … this can’t be coincidence:
Michael Moore files for divorce from wife http://t.co/EsCd2p67aQ
— Wash. Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) July 18, 2013
Most clueless Detroit bankruptcy tweet of the day:
So I heard that Detroit file bankruptcy ??? Any details why? Strange
— Joelle M (@JoelleMackey7) July 18, 2013
Elsewhere:
Turn Detroit into a national park, to show our kids the wonders of "Government Help."
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) July 18, 2013
#Detroit filed for bankruptcy. Well, it's about time something bad happened during Obama's second term.
— Joe Cilio (@JoeCilio) July 18, 2013
Detroit officials tell residents not to panic over the bankruptcy. They don't expect any disruption to the city's cocaine availability.
— Blaise Miller (@BlaiseInKC) July 18, 2013
Detroit is a prime example of Thatcher's 'At some point you run out of other people's money.' #tcot #UniteBlue #p2
— Ross . (@indyrallen) July 18, 2013
I'm just disgusted at the political and divisive attempt to make the failure of a city about the people who have run it for half a century.
— Charles C. W. Cooke (@charlescwcooke) July 18, 2013
Has Detroit considered raising taxes?
— Frank J. Fleming (@IMAO_) July 18, 2013
Update:
Where have I heard this line before?
Email from conservative reader: "They told me that if I voted for Romney that Detroit would go bankrupt. And they were right!"
— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) July 18, 2013
Comments
Detroit may become a beneficiary of Obama’s regionalism initiative. Merge it with its surrounding counties and soak those who escaped to subsidize Detroit.
Atlanta is already trying to do it to its surrounding counties, or at least prevent them from voting against taxes that would be taken from those counties to benefit Atlanta.
Yes, and annexing the suburbs will just keep pouring money down the money pit. The main problem with these cities is that if they get more money, they immediately hire more people to do very little but drive a government car and collect a government paycheck. To heck with police, fire, infrastructure, etc., they give out jobs and apparently have no concerns about the future. I guess because money is always there, or they’ll just raise taxes.
[…] Read more at Legal Insurrection. […]
The following link is to the bankruptcy recommendation of Kevyn Orr, the EM appt. to Detroit by the Gov. I find it interesting that Mr. Orr, a Democrat and a regional fund raiser for Obama out of Washington DC(and an experienced bankruptcy attorney)stated the following in the document.
” In any event, Detroit cannot survive and grow if it remains a high tax, low service city.”
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130718/SPECIAL01/130718003/Read-Kevyn-Orr-s-bankruptcy-recommendation-Gov-Snyder
Obama is right on target. (No hyperbole.)
I think this will have a long term affect upon ‘unsecured bonds’ in liberal cities.
Detroit Mayor, Dave Bing, spotted going into American Jewelry and Coin (Hardcore Pawn)
http://www.trutv.com/shows/hardcore-pawn/index.html
Can’t wait for this episode to air:)
I might be the only one…
After watching the press conferences, and local reactions, and news coverage, etc….
I have come to the opinion that this Detroit bankruptcy is “good” for Detroiters, and “bad” for everyone else.
I say don’t let them, refuse the bankruptcy.
Make them pay their damn bills. No clean slate.
Detroit needs Marion Barry.
[…] http://legalinsurrection.com/2013/07/detroit-files-for-bankruptcy-bet-you-thought-it-already-was-ban… […]
Just summarizing a few of the cogent comments here it appears many folks “get it” about Detroit…the place where I’ve lived most of my life, now on the western border.
emjayar said …
And whether or not the unburdened city can evolve into the bustling metropolis that it once was or will it revert back to its old ways and elect the wrong leaders who will take it back into a financial mess again.
Unlike manufacturing operations, there is no “product” to sell, and little tax base to support an even burden-less re-start. Yes, I am fairly cure Kwame Kilpatrick, and Coleman Young, and Jerome Cavanagh could and would all be re-elected if they ran…Kilpatrick even from Federal Prison where’s headed after conviction on 24 charges….awaits sentencing now.
My unpopular non-PC opinion is simple enough: Privatize Detroit entirely, 100%, under the current major investors Karmanos, Gilbert, and Illitch. These men know how to sell intangibles and services…plus it would be a pioneering step [I think] to literally privatize the entire operation and run it like Dan Gilbert runs his businesses.
Owego said …
Detroit is not out of other people’s money, they’re just coming for ours, now…
See what Randian says next…
randian said …
Detroit may become a beneficiary of Obama’s regionalism initiative. Merge it with its surrounding counties and soak those who escaped to subsidize Detroit.
No “may” about it, they will try in my opinion. It would a war of the worlds, however, to do it…the suburbs are not interested, and barely agree to support a regional bus transportation system. Some of those suburbs, like mine, one of the stronger and cleaner, are now Democratically controlled and are busy spending money hand over fist that they do not have nor have any potential to acquire. First hand I can tell you it is very hard, nigh on impossible to stop the money grubbing once in motion.
Believe it or not, my burg is building [with a federal grant] a new train station [we already have one that works fine and is paid for]modeled after the vacant & shattered disaster that is the old Detroit station famous in photographs everywhere. When the two year federal grant is gone, operations and maintenance falls on the city. Hello? Do y’all think there is a huge new market for train trips to Chicago [under 300 miles] that take 13 hours or so? We have federal and local morons who do.
We are also setting out to spend around $12 million [if truth be told] to renovate and move in to a new city hall to “save” $8 million of O&M costs for the old city hall. New math: 6 – 12 = +4 ? Oh, wait…?
moonstone716 said …
… annexing the suburbs will just keep pouring money down the money pit … they immediately hire more people to do very little but drive a government car …
Do you believe that the City of Detroit’s Common Council still all drive city provided luxury cars? They do. Some chauffeured.
Sally Paradise said …
Detroit needs Marion Barry.
Our previous mega-playa-maya Kwame Kilpatrick makes Marion Barry seem like an amateur politician from May bury RFD.
Stay tuned as someone else said…this can only get more weird. And tragic as the mentality of Detroit moves to the suburbs and ruins them, too.
Detroit’s bankruptcy is national news, many stories including a nostalgic look back at the ‘glory days’ of Detroit. Most of the presented histories were grossly saccharine, a Disney rewrite of Detroit’s history.
Glory days? Lol, OK. I lived there from 1955 to 1979, over fifty years ago, you know, when Detroit was gloriously known as Murder City, USA.
It was 47 years ago my family had to evacuate because of the riots, part of a five-year national epidemic of riots – that immediately followed passage of the Civil Rights Act.
I remember how my walk to elementary school each morning took me past the entrance to a Fisher Body plant, and all those odd ladies dressed up and leaning against the wall at 7 in the morning for some reason, smiling at me and making jokes I didn’t get. Shift change hookers, I later learned. Glorious!
Popular Detroit joke of the ’60s:
“Hey, what’s that dive team looking for in the Detroit River?”
“Water.”
Then again, I remember a coveted trip to Bob-Lo Island, which held a nice little kid’s amusement park and you got to ride the ferry over and back, big time for an 8 yr old. Between announcements, live music played over the park loudspeakers, on this day the amazing R&B singing of some kid named Stevland Morris, better known later as Stevie Wonder. The ‘Motor City’ meme has tended to overshadow Detroit’s rich history for lunch bucket rock and roll and Motown R&B.
Sure, every American city has its pros and cons and has had its ups and downs, but Detroit was never the prettiest girl at any dance. It has always been a tough working man’s town, the kind of place where nothing is denied the man with enough cash to pay for it.
Many cry out, “see what happens after 50 years of black rule?”, but it was policy, not skin color, that killed Detroit. Democrats killed Detroit, plain and simple. Milked the cow dry, never fed or watered it, left it for dead.
The answer? Line up a million bulldozers from Wyandotte up to Westland and Livonia, northeast to Southfield, then eastward all the way to St. Clair Shores. Crank those bastards up and scrape the whole city into the Detroit River. Start over.
GO RED WINGS.
This “Shorian” thanks you for stopping the bulldozers just short.
BTW- My one trip to Boblo, a school trip, was a trip I’ll never forget. Surprising I remember more about that, than any of the several trips to Cedar Point.
Yes, “The Shores” should be spared…definitely not typical Detroit. However, you know, as a true Metro-Detroiter that passports are required to cross from west side to east side, and vice versa. Woohwah Avenue is the border of distinction.
Ole ‘enry ‘awkins, in his wisdom, of course has me & my border burg scrapped in to the Detroit River.
If you can’t outrun a bulldozer…. well, it’s a Darwinian thing.
I’ll bet you took a school trip to Henry Ford Museum too, right?
Used to terrorize my sisters whenever we drove through the Windsor Tunnel, pointing out all the water running down the wall. “OMG! It’s cracking! Water’s pouring in!” It’s a brother’s job to give his sisters something to talk to their therapists about later on in life.
Me and my brother, aged 6 and 12, jump a slow freight train at the Fullerton St. freight depot, get absorbed with a dead rat inside the car, and don’t notice the train has sped up, too fast for us get off. Had to walk back five miles, though it felt like fifty back then.
Six of us from the neighborhood, all of us about 12 yrs old, hiding in the bushes, in the midnight dark having snuck out, armed with BB guns, waiting to ambush the Canadian raiders, many of them veterans, who came every night to steal our trash can lids and hub caps, drunk on adventure and maple vodka. Ah, good times, good times.
Also: Vernor’s Ginger Ale. Mmmmmm, especially in floats.
Yes, indeedy.
Could sit and talk “all things Detroit” for hours, eh boy?
Well, I made one of those up, but I am old and the practice is permitted.
“Detroiters”, and white guilt suburban hipsters claim suburbanites want Detroit to fail.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Anything to get Detroiters to stay or move back to Detroit is a good thing.
“Obama saved Detroit” and “Romney lies when he says GM is moving jobs to China” were both big memes during the presidential election.
Like virtually everything that was said by Obama/Biden during the campaign, we see these are both untrue. Sigh, when will there be any accountability for those who spew these untruths and the sycophant media that repeat them?
Detroit failed to diversify when GM/Ford/Chrysler began losing market share to the Japanese and German automakers, and went south tied at the hip to the Big Three.
Detroit failed to acknowledge and address the slow shift from tax-paying to entitlements-taking population.
Detroit employs the ugly money machine that Wisconsin recently addressed, where Democrat city officeholders award $$$ in various ways to unions, who return the favor with campaign donations, all of the $$$ derived from companies and citizens, increasingly with loans. Detroit is the After photo for that destructive Dems/union process.
Detroit is the second best example of what happens when activists/protesters/socialists actually get into office – they have no idea how to build or maintain, only how to destroy. The best example is the Obama administration.
Biggest lie ever told (that’s not Obama’s) is “The collapse of the auto industry was the demise of Detroit.”.
There was no collapse. U.S. auto production has increased every year.
Heard this morning: Despite the bankruptcy, the Big 3 plan to remain in Detroit.
Really?
When was the last time they were actually in Detroit?
Out of the Big 3, there’s a grand total of 1 manufacturing plant, and 1 corporate headquarters (Assuming GM is still in the Renaissance Center)in Detroit.
Yeah, collapse of auto plant jobs within city limits is more accurate, but far from the only reason.
Have you been to Flint lately? Visited there last summer. Holy sh*t. Wasteland.
Thank goodness we’ll always have the Detroit Lions.
I won’t even gas up in Flint. That’s why God made Bridgeport.
You can have the Lions, I’ll take the Wings.
Redistributive (i.e. recycled) change is an economic philosophy with diminishing returns.
That said, wallowing in corruption and providing incentive to corruption and dysfunctional behavior has obvious and predictable consequences.
Detroit’s not broken.
It’s people are.
Once, someone said “They need to rebuild Detroit.”
A very astute man replied, “they already did. They built it in Oakland County.”