Detroit mayor cuts jobs, threatens state takeover

Things aren't looking to good in Detroit...The Mayor said if concessions cannot be met to avoid bankruptcy then an appointed emergency financial manager (EFM) with the power to void union contracts and unilaterally impose spending cuts will happen.

Source

Detroit Democratic Mayor Dave Bing threatened unions Wednesday with a state takeover of city finances if they do not agree to massive concessions to help close the city’s budget deficit. Bing is demanding city workers accept 10 percent pay cut, increased health care costs and changes to work rules. He is also calling for a “voluntary” reduction in benefits by the city’s 22,000 retirees and the layoff of 1,000 of the city’s 11,000 public employees.

reply to post by Daedal


I wonder if this includes himself and all State government officials as well.. Police Officers, Mayors...

Wait... How does a mayor threaten a whole state? Isnt that kind of power reserved for a govenor?

As a mayor, he had FAILED big time by threatening a state takeover.

1. It had been his job to oversee the health of the State, and with bankruptcy looming, it only points to his inadequecy and stupidity through the oversight of State funds. He should and must be held first and foremost ACCOUNTABLE for the affairs of state today.

.
2. It is INCONCEIVABLE that with the size of human capital and land resource, he is unable to DO ANYTHING intelligent to nurse the state to health, not with draconian measures, but with solutions that can win for everyside instead of a quick surrender back to the Federal gov. It is only a matter of economics and I seriously doubt that they arent any capable economist in Detroit, or be hired from other states.

That he did not do so, is another failure ON HIS part as an elected official. He should resign, pay back his salaries accrued during his term to the next beholden, demo or gop, whom can do a better job rectifying his mistakes. It's nothing to do with partisan politics. Democrat or GOP, if you screwed up, you screw up big time and get the boot unless you are willing to admit to mistake, for no mortal is perfect, learn from errors and correct them with help from all sources.

increased health care costs

reply to post by Daedal


Get rid of healthcare being associated with the workplace.

Tell people to take care of their own health and insurance needs.

If implemented I bet their woes will be no more.

reply to post by Daedal


Ah Detroit, a Liberal Bastion that is crumbling to pieces by its own weight.
Not surprised, not one bit.

Originally posted by Daedal
Things aren't looking to good in Detroit...The Mayor said if concessions cannot be met to avoid bankruptcy then an appointed emergency financial manager (EFM) with the power to void union contracts and unilaterally impose spending cuts will happen.

Source

Detroit Democratic Mayor Dave Bing threatened unions Wednesday with a state takeover of city finances if they do not agree to massive concessions to help close the city’s budget deficit. Bing is demanding city workers accept 10 percent pay cut, increased health care costs and changes to work rules. He is also calling for a “voluntary” reduction in benefits by the city’s 22,000 retirees and the layoff of 1,000 of the city’s 11,000 public employees.

Detroit won't even change until the people living within the boundries change.

They don't seem to want to....both white and black.....so the ignorance continues....the murders continue, the uneducated stay uneducated and pass along that ignorance to every generation after.

The city is big enough to have 4 million people living their easily.......with room to spare.....yet only 700,000 people live in there.....

About 20 minutes north of their I live in the suburbs.....my area has over 100,000 people in just our area......

Everybody left and has been gone since the 70's...

They need to help move people out......Demolish the 100's of useless buildings that have been vacant for years and actually rebuild a brand new detroit city......One in which all citizens would want to live.


We are like the only state without a major city to go into. The only time people go downtown is for Redwings, Lions , or Tigers Game......Pistons play out in the burbs so nobody goes to the D to watch them.


It's sad really because their are people in the city stuck ......and with no way of bettering their lives...

Yet there are a good 100,000 in the city who are just leeches of the system......Both white and black and asian and arab, latino...ect....

Instead of cutting jobs, the mayor should have tried to find ways to create sustainable jobs for Detroit.

Detroit is a great and major city. It once was known as the Automobile hub of USA. It can be made great once again.

Today, there is a demand for space travel, even if for only sub-orbital flight, with people willing to fork out $200,000 a pop for that can-ride. Research and test flights had proven it feasible, and within the next few months, the very first sub-orbital flight will take place.

Thus there is a niche for space travel, and thousands, if not millions of jobs can be created - manufacturing, service and supply chains for the entire infrastructure. A sub-orbital plane do not last forever, nor even to that of a car. Within a year it would need to be replaced.

With that kind of money people will pay, it would mean opportunities for capitalism to step in, to get the cost cheaper so that more can take such flights. Many crafts would be needed. As safety is paramount, such crafts and its supply chain CANNOT be entrusted to low skilled slave labour to manufacture. It will have to come from advance nations such as US.

Plenty of laid off NASA and ESA technicians and engineers, along with new grad students in such fields awaiting for such opportunities, along with private investors with far too much hoarded wealth gathering dust or burnt by bailing out banks.

Much crafts and labour would be needed to meet this need of mankind, to at least witness for themselves the beauty of space once in their lifetime, and after that would addictive, beginning with the well -heeled and then when the quantity is there, the middle classes to take such flights.

Labour can be brought down in the manufacturing process by automation, which means an end to assembly lines, but more opportunities for skilled technician classes to manufacture more machines and its maintenance.

As for the poor, we must advance our 3 D tech in spartial space, to give a realistic version of immersion on the ground, better than the 60s tech used by James Cameroon for his film Avatar, so that the poor will not be left behind. Which also means more jobs awaiting to be created.

Orbital flights are but only the beginning into commercial space flight, following in the footsteps of how we mankind conquered the seas. It began then with the canoe for simple fishing to feed the village, then progressed into greek tiremes/arabian dhows and into the massive cargo and passenger liners we see today.

So too will space flight be similar in developement

Then the great city Detroit, with its already existing manufacturing infrastructure - cables, comms, factories, roads, etc, will become known as the Spacecraft hub of USA,and will be the last tag for the city as we mankind venture into Detroit WORLDS to build space cargo liners.

It all begins with a vision and a dream. Utopia too is a dream. So too was multi-culturalism, and look at how far Martin Lulther King had come in USA today.

reply to post by macman


Detroit a liberal bastion?

Ignorant as usual.

Detroit was about as red-necky as a place can get, blue-collar middle class workers who supported gun rights, corporations, and the yay! American Way, to the extreme, last I checked.

Oh, damn, forgot, they also supported those hideously socialistic commie unions. I guess that would make them squishily liberal, after all.

Originally posted by apacheman
reply to post by macman

 

Detroit a liberal bastion?

Ignorant as usual.

Detroit was about as red-necky as a place can get, blue-collar middle class workers who supported gun rights, corporations, and the yay! American Way, to the extreme, last I checked.

Oh, damn, forgot, they also supported those hideously socialistic commie unions. I guess that would make them squishily liberal, after all.

Who has been in charge there? For how long again?


Oh, just read your last sentence. You corrected yourself.

Amazing how some think that money woes render tyranny acceptable.

To send an appointed master to negate the people's duly elected representatives and to take control of their money and laws is nothing short of tyranny.

Should the President do that to the state and send his appointee to replace the governor of that failing state to change their laws and contracts without regard to their rights or concerns?

Same difference.

What the governor is doing and has done smacks of ancient Rome, not the US of A.

Btw, whatever happened to the right wing's "sanctity of contracts" claptrap? I guess contracts are only sacred when they apply to executive bonuses, not unions.

Originally posted by apacheman
Amazing how some think that money woes render tyranny acceptable.

To send an appointed master to negate the people's duly elected representatives and to take control of their money and laws is nothing short of tyranny.

Should the President do that to the state and send his appointee to replace the governor of that failing state to change their laws and contracts without regard to their rights or concerns?

Same difference.

What the governor is doing and has done smacks of ancient Rome, not the US of A.

Btw, whatever happened to the right wing's "sanctity of contracts" claptrap? I guess contracts are only sacred when they apply to executive bonuses, not unions.

I'm sorry, all I read was "blah blah blah blahhhh".

Who has been in charge of that city for the last, I don't know, 10 years or so?

reply to post by macman


Still unable to debate upon any level higher than "I don't HEAR you, blah, blah ,blah" I see.

You didn't address the tyranny of a state governor unilaterally voiding the expressed wishes of the voters of various municipalities, having an foreign (as in non-local) political appointees usurp the people's right to control their own monies and contracts.

Could it be that you support tyranny so long as it is Republican in flavor and attacks unions, which you seem to hate for some reason?

What is it you are doing overseas again? Is it possible you have a vested interest in supporting tyranny? Are you a mercenary, sorry, the pc word these days is "contractor", as your avatar implies? I'm pretty sure whatever it is you do, it doesn't generate much good or goodwill for the US as a whole.

Originally posted by apacheman
reply to post by macman

 

Still unable to debate upon any level higher than "I don't HEAR you, blah, blah ,blah" I see.

You didn't address the tyranny of a state governor unilaterally voiding the expressed wishes of the voters of various municipalities, having an foreign (as in non-local) political appointees usurp the people's right to control their own monies and contracts.

Could it be that you support tyranny so long as it is Republican in flavor and attacks unions, which you seem to hate for some reason?

What is it you are doing overseas again? Is it possible you have a vested interest in supporting tyranny? Are you a mercenary, sorry, the pc word these days is "contractor", as your avatar implies? I'm pretty sure whatever it is you do, it doesn't generate much good or goodwill for the US as a whole.

That's funny, as I do recall asking you a direct question before yours.
SO, what say you?
Who has been in charge of that city for the last 10 years or longer?
Who said I was overseas?

And as always, your wild assed assumptions are wrong.................again...........................


How about you just answer the question?

reply to post by macman


Um, you stated you were working overseas in the thread about high-speed rail in California when you refused to identify what state you live in to determine whether that state was a donor or donee state.

So far as I can tell, a lot of the mayors of Detroit have been incompetent crooks for the last few years. Google doesn't make it easy to find the answers as to which political affiliations they represented, but I'd suspect a lot were Democrats, who are just as crooked as Republicans, just in different ways.

That isn't germane to the discussion of the usurpation of local rights, though: it doesn't much matter which set of crooks helped get Detroit into the mess that it is in, a large part of the problem is Detroit's dependence on a single product, cars, and the abandonment of the city by the corporations that thrived there once. They abandoned it because of a desire to increase profits at and accelerated pace by outsourcing to production slave-labor countries with no labor laws, resulting in crappier, sub-standard products no one wanted to buy.

Be all that as it may, it still doesn't justify the governor's approach. Recall is the more appropriate action, as well as raising taxes. Sending in an economic hitman to selectively void contracts for political, not economic reasons is tyranny.

Originally posted by apacheman
reply to post by macman

 

Um, you stated you were working overseas in the thread about high-speed rail in California when you refused to identify what state you live in to determine whether that state was a donor or donee state.

So far as I can tell, a lot of the mayors of Detroit have been incompetent crooks for the last few years. Google doesn't make it easy to find the answers as to which political affiliations they represented, but I'd suspect a lot were Democrats, who are just as crooked as Republicans, just in different ways.

That isn't germane to the discussion of the usurpation of local rights, though: it doesn't much matter which set of crooks helped get Detroit into the mess that it is in, a large part of the problem is Detroit's dependence on a single product, cars, and the abandonment of the city by the corporations that thrived there once. They abandoned it because of a desire to increase profits at and accelerated pace by outsourcing to production slave-labor countries with no labor laws, resulting in crappier, sub-standard products no one wanted to buy.

Be all that as it may, it still doesn't justify the governor's approach. Recall is the more appropriate action, as well as raising taxes. Sending in an economic hitman to selectively void contracts for political, not economic reasons is tyranny.

edit on 1-12-2011 by apacheman because: grammar

No, no I did not.
I never stated I was overseas. You made another......wrong........assumption.


As for who has been in charge over the last 10 years???
It would be Democrats.
en.wikipedia.org...

From 1962 to today. With the state not doing as bad as the city.

I do love the deflecting part in your retort.
Blaming the car industry for the woes of the city and city leaders (Term used very very loosely).
When the car industry does go stale, and the City and Its leaders building around that singular industry, what is to be expected?

The city should either sink or retool and swim.
But, instead, lets just blame GM and the like, because they moved.

Originally posted by apacheman
reply to post by macman

 

Be all that as it may, it still doesn't justify the governor's approach. Recall is the more appropriate action, as well as raising taxes. Sending in an economic hitman to selectively void contracts for political, not economic reasons is tyranny.

edit on 1-12-2011 by apacheman because: grammar

Never said it was or wasn't.

I just was making a point as to who has been in charge of the place.

Originally posted by SeekerofTruth101
Instead of cutting jobs, the mayor should have tried to find ways to create sustainable jobs for Detroit.

Detroit is a great and major city. It once was known as the Automobile hub of USA. It can be made great once again.

Today, there is a demand for space travel, even if for only sub-orbital flight, with people willing to fork out $200,000 a pop for that can-ride. Research and test flights had proven it feasible, and within the next few months, the very first sub-orbital flight will take place.

Thus there is a niche for space travel, and thousands, if not millions of jobs can be created - manufacturing, service and supply chains for the entire infrastructure. A sub-orbital plane do not last forever, nor even to that of a car. Within a year it would need to be replaced.

With that kind of money people will pay, it would mean opportunities for capitalism to step in, to get the cost cheaper so that more can take such flights. Many crafts would be needed. As safety is paramount, such crafts and its supply chain CANNOT be entrusted to low skilled slave labour to manufacture. It will have to come from advance nations such as US.

Plenty of laid off NASA and ESA technicians and engineers, along with new grad students in such fields awaiting for such opportunities, along with private investors with far too much hoarded wealth gathering dust or burnt by bailing out banks.

Much crafts and labour would be needed to meet this need of mankind, to at least witness for themselves the beauty of space once in their lifetime, and after that would addictive, beginning with the well -heeled and then when the quantity is there, the middle classes to take such flights.

Labour can be brought down in the manufacturing process by automation, which means an end to assembly lines, but more opportunities for skilled technician classes to manufacture more machines and its maintenance.

As for the poor, we must advance our 3 D tech in spartial space, to give a realistic version of immersion on the ground, better than the 60s tech used by James Cameroon for his film Avatar, so that the poor will not be left behind. Which also means more jobs awaiting to be created.

Orbital flights are but only the beginning into commercial space flight, following in the footsteps of how we mankind conquered the seas. It began then with the canoe for simple fishing to feed the village, then progressed into greek tiremes/arabian dhows and into the massive cargo and passenger liners we see today.

So too will space flight be similar in developement

Then the great city Detroit, with its already existing manufacturing infrastructure - cables, comms, factories, roads, etc, will become known as the Spacecraft hub of USA,and will be the last tag for the city as we mankind venture into Detroit WORLDS to build space cargo liners.

It all begins with a vision and a dream. Utopia too is a dream. So too was multi-culturalism, and look at how far Martin Lulther King had come in USA today.

I agree completely with everything you said!
NASA Employee's - Unemployed in the year 2011?! We should be flying around in Jetson's cars by now! We're in fact trying to end this abomination of worldwide financial recklessness by starting an Employee owned and operated company right here www.abovetopsecret.com... on ATS. I have a background in aviation myself and quite a few idea's for sub orbital craft. How do we get those Unemployed Nasa engineers back in the game? How do we keep these large companies that already provide jobs for Thousands in business?

Detroit is definitely seeing some very ruff times...and now proposals are being made to cut some 10 to 20 percent of the cities workers, while Detroit already has a very high unemployment rate of 50 percent, and 50 percent of it's children live in poverty.

Hopefully this type of austerity won't be used as a broader model to continue the assaults against American workers.


Source

Detroit city officials are proposing to lay off between ten and twenty percent of the city's municipal employees while cutting the remaining workers' pay and benefits. In this video, workers and residents react the cuts, and Socialist Equality Party members Lawrence Porter and D'Artagnian Collier, himself a city worker, place the cuts in context of the broader attack on the working class.