No National Honor Given Finley: Taking Down Detroit’s Public Schools is a Civic Crime

Response to Nolan Finley in "Roberts must be demo man for Detroit Public Schools" in the Detroit News on May 15, 2011.

Dead-end pundit, Nolan Finley, has grown giddy breathing in all that anti-public sector gaseous blather of a cadre of defeatists and self-aggrandizing right-wing ideologues who have for years lived in and around Detroit and have succumbed to (even aided in) Detroit's slow psychotic swirl of social, economic and civil death.

Nolan is part of a group of so-called Libertarians ("Just leave us alone" trolls), who have no positive pro-active program for Michigan's largest urban area. His years of willful intellectual neglect have made the death spiral of its infrastructure and purpose as a dwelling place, a dead end. Nolan's outlook and advice have made Detroit worse not better, read on with the News blog's comments who daily expand and laud Finley's brand of brazen indifference.

"Give Detroit to Canada" has been the wise-guy mantra. Working every day in a news building since his early days as a copy boy, Nolan's finally charred and burned out. Not that he isn't featured in the social news of Detroit in black tie and tails or featured amid the "beautiful people" or that he isn't an Adonis back in Cumberland County, Kentucky where he is greatly admired as a local boy having achieved success.

Nolan expresses his willingness, license, to bemoan the implosion of a great city, give up and dance on its grave; defending his sacred right to ignore the "willful" poor, with such bromides Finley uses as:

"Our poor in Detroit are rich by comparison to people in sub-Saharan Africa."

This kind of intentionally misleading assertion does not account for what it means to be poor and unemployed, or worse yet, a foster child, mentally ill and/or unemployable in present day Detroit.

Hectoring does not assuage the Detroit/Mackinac Center News from culpability and responsibly in Detroit's accelerated- terminal slide-into a failed city abyss. .

Food banks, homelessness, and re-sale shops. which now abound testify to real needs of our urban neighbors. The growing blight and seedy/greedy "licensed to steal" trade shops e.g. the Cash Advance and the Auto Title Loan Outlets are covering old main streets like a black-leafed kudzu.

Boldly the Great Seer Finley calls out the final challenge: It's "Demo" time! Take down all of Detroit's public schools and sell them off. Privatize and profitize the education of the remnants who dwell in a civic hell of municipal dysfunction and crime.

Sez Dead End Nolan:

"If Roy Roberts is to succeed as emergency manager of Detroit Public Schools, HE MUST SEE HIS MISSION NOT AS SAVING THE DISTRICT, BUT DISMANTLING IT. DPS can't be saved. It pushed beyond the tipping point years ago, and must be allowed to slide into oblivion."
(See: Finley, "Roberts must be demo man for Detroit Public Schools", 5.15.11, DetNews)

There is no National Civic Medal of Honor bestowed on such an advocate of corrupted capitulation to the darkside of rigid-conservativism and racially-tainted conclusions such as this one: "...ALLOWED TO SLIDE INTO OBLIVION." Read that and weep for the children.

Years ago, a word of caution was spoken by one of Michigan's Appellate Court judges: What is Wall Street's view of Michigan? It is a state with the city of Detroit, which historically has a low threshold for racial tension and violence.

The National Census has shown us that a sizable portion of the exodus of population from Detroit is made up of middle class people of color. Those left behind, in this troubled city, will not long suffer the humiliation and disrespect of those who would take the city further down; while skimming tax monies off to private school vendors and profiteers backed by a highly partisan TeaPublican majority and propaganda mills such as Koch Brothers' CATO/Americans for Prosperity or Engler's Mackinac Center-all currently on a rip, bolstered by the unchecked, powerful and shameful abuse of one-party majority rule.

Original Post.

The History of Pension Raiding During the Reagan Era

America: What Went Wrong, a chilling account by Donald L. Barlett & James B. Steele, was published in 1992. Their book was a thorough presentation revealing the graft and corruption endemic to greedy 'corporatists' then and it still stands as an even sterner, more penetrating warning for today.
Clips:

"While tens of millions of workers have fared poorly under the existing system, corporate managers and takeover artists have profited handsomely from it. They did so by raiding pension funds-a practice made possible by the way the federal government wrote the rule book.

"During the 1980's, nearly 2,000 businesses dipped into their pension funds and removed $21 billion. That is enough to provide pensions of $800 a month to a quarter-million retired workers. And their spouses. For the rest of their lives. The $21 billion does not count the billions that businesses diverted to other uses after substituting inferior pension plans for the plans that had been in place for decades.

"As noted, earlier, Congress wrote the rule book in such a way as to permit companies to terminate a pension plan, by for it workers unguaranteed annuities that will pay the accrued benefits, and keep what is left over. The losers in the transaction were the employees, who virtually always end up with smaller retirement checks than under the older plan. What's more, most companies that terminated their defined benefit plans-plans that promise a specified amount to a retiree-replaced them with defined contribution plan, meaning, in most cases, even lower retirement benefits in the future.

"Under a defined contribution plan, an employer agrees set aside a fixed amount of money for an employee's retirement. How much the employ eventually depends on how well that money is invested. In most cases, it is substantially less than a defined benefit plan would provide. Most significantly, neither the annuities nor the defined contribution plans carry a government guarantee.

"About 23,000 former and current employees at the Cannon Mills Company textile plants in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia learned that lesson the hard way. For years, workers at Cannon Mills, headquartered in Kannapolis, North Carolina, were covered by a pension plan that was insured by the PBGC. That changed in 1982 after a corporate raider by the name of David H. Murdock appeared on the scene.

"Murdock now is chairman and chief executive officer of the Dole Food Company, whose products include Dole pineapples and bananas, and he is a member of the Forbes 400, the Who's Who of the nation's rich. Murdock, with a personal fortune that Forbes estimates at $1.3 billion, is involved in a number of businesses and is a major fund-raiser for the Republican Party. In February 1988, he hosted a $10,000 per person reception at his sixty-four room Bel Air, California, home once owned by the late hotel baron Conrad Hilton. There, donors mingled and posed for photographs with his friend, Ronald Reagan."

Barlett & Steele are still very relevant and on point as this quote labeled Rigging the Game, makes clear:

"Worried that you are falling behind, not living as well as you once did?
"Or expected to?
"That you are going to have to work extra hours, or take a second job, just to stay even with your bills?
"That the company you have worked for all these years may dump you for a younger person?
"Or that the pension you have been promised may not be there when you retire?
"Worried, if you are on the bottom rung of the economic ladder, that you will never see a middle-class lifestyle?
"Or, if you are a single parent or part of a young working family, that you will never be able to save enough to buy a home?
"That you are paying more than your fair share of taxes?
"Worried that the people who represent you in Congress are taking care of themselves and their friends at your expense?
"You are right. Keep worrying.

"For those people in Washington who write the complex tangle of rules by which the economy operates have, over the last twenty years, RIGGED THE GAME-BY DESIGN AND DEFAULT-TO FAVOR THE PRIVILEGED, THE POWERFUL AND THE INFLUENTIAL. AT THE EXPENSE OF EVERYONE ELSE.

"Seizing on that opportunity, an army of business buccaneers began buying, selling and trading companies the way most Americans buy, sell and trade knickknacks at a yard sale. They borrowed money to destroy, not to build. THEY CONSTRUCTED FINANCIAL HOUSES OF CARDS, THEN VANISHED BEFORE THEY COLLAPSED.

"Caught between the lawmakers in Washington and the dealmakers on Wall Street have been millions of American workers forced to move from jobs that once paid $15 an hour into jobs that now pay $7. IF, THAT IS, THEY AREN'T ALREADY THE VICTIMS OF MASS LAYOFFS, PRODUCTION HALTS, SHUTTERED FACTORIES AND OWNERS WHO ENRICH THEMSELVES BY DOING THAT DAMAGE AND THEN WALKING AWAY.

"As a result, the already rich are richer than ever; there has been an explosion in overnight new rich; life for the working class is deteriorating, and those at the bottom are trapped. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THIS CENTURY, MEMBERS OF A GENERATION ENTERING ADULTHOOD WILL FIND IT IMPOSSIBLE TO ACHIEVE A BETTER LIFESTYLE THAN THEIR PARENTS. MOST WILL BE UNABLE EVEN TO MATCH THEIR PARENTS' MIDDLE-CLASS STATUS.

"Indeed, the growth of the middle class-one of the underpinnings of democracy in this country-has been reversed. BY GOVERNMENT ACTION."

[emphasis Added in BOLD]


Original Part 1 and Part 2 of this Posting.

SuperRich Have Become Greedy Vultures, Fattened on the Rest of U.S.

The momentum of the SuperRich is stymied for a game-changing, reflective moment: What's Next?

It's occurring to newly elected Michigan legislators, their offices are at seriously at risk. They've been carried along like hapless flotsam rolled into a propagandist's tsunami. FOX News master-spindully deceiver, Roger Ailes, has myopically overshot the elite's political target, there's anti-Tea Party voter revolt ahead.

The public is rising to push back, hard.

Koch Brothers-backed, organized and funded falsely-labeled, Americans (Billionaires) For (personal) Prosperity rallies, first in Michigan, then in Wisconsin and now across America are a fizzle. The power of money politics over the rights of we, the people, is been brought low. Sarah Palin and Dick Morris can't even raise newsworthy numbers at their rallies!

The pitiful showing by scant hundreds of arthritics at Tea Party rallies, given top billing with big name "super-patriots" Dick Morris and Sarah Palin, draw small, anemic "cottonhead" remnants of what was previously called the political "new wave."

What's happening in the upper mid-west? The middle class has seen the error of its ways. Laying back and giving in to the politics of regression and fear leads to Depression. The rich get richer, the poor are made poorer!

Clearly, if we want to see the collapse of our states' economies, just press on with the TaxPublican's subservience to the harsh Americans for Prosperity via A.L.E.C. and the far right's, proud tough guys, Norquist/Gingrich. This cabal of authoritarian "no tax" "All cuts" formula mavens' radical agendas are touted by the Tea-publican, the obsequious servants of the SuperRich.

Read the Headlines, Look at the Metrics The god-awful truth is that the harvest of the assets of working families and the middle class by the "smartest" defrauders in slick investment firms, pro-corporate think-thanks, and the mega Banksters has inflicted nearly fatal economic punishment on the ordinary citizen.

While hundreds of billions of "liquid" assets and cash pulled out of the economy, where they are parked on the sidelines, others political hacks (Snyder, Walker and Kasich, backed by the holders of these very funds, are attempting to strip the public of its remaining "civic assets" and destroy its protective associations which are the bulwark against this kind of scandalous abuse.

In 2008, much of America's vital Middle Class was harvested of much of its investments, pensions- and savings (an historic economic harvest of over one trillion dollars) by clever men. These are men, operatives, who knew how to manipulate the strings of power and utilize the "gimmicks" snuck into law over decades by a compliant corporate-controlled Congress and a Republican Party long systemically weak (begun under the exiled Dick Nixon) and corrupted by the boldfaced greed and undue influence of politics' (Abramhoff and a long list including Tom DeLay and aggressive, "wealthy cause" handlers, and "fixers."

Now There's a Shift A moment of realization that the historic gap in wealth is propelling our nation into a sure death of prosperity and a harsh regression beyond our current imitations.
If the public does not fight back and take back the "radical middle"-voters using their vote to put and end to oligarchy and corporate fascism, thereby stopping this downward spiral-he dream we once proudly called

"The American Dream" will have evaporated for a generation, perhaps for ever.

A SERIOUS LOOK AT THE SHATTERED REMAINS OF WHAT WAS A LOYAL WORKER'S GOOD LIFE AND SECURE FUTURE. 

Why things will change or we all go down together in national collapse:

"No jobs, no prospect, no leverage, no shot-term plans, no big ideas to save us. While the bottom four-fifths struggle to stay afloat, and the upper one-fifth cautiously tread water, the top 1 percent continue to accumulate wealth at a staggering rate."

"Thanks to the global engine, there are now more than a thousand billionaires. Oligarchies, "client state" capitalism, wanton deregulation, CEO's earning monster salaries, corporations receiving taxpayer welfare, and half of the U.S. Congress boasting of being millionaires. Meanwhile, personal debt in the United States continues to soar, one person out of ten is out of work, and food stamp usage sets new records every month."

"Yet even with near-record unemployment, the Department of Commerce reported in November 2010 that U.S. Companies just had their BEST QUARTER...EVER. Businesses record profits at an annual rate of $1.66 TRILLION in the third quarter of 2010, which is the highest rate (in non-inflation-adjusted figures) since the government began keeping records more than 60 years ago. SHRINKING INCOMES, FEWER JOBS...BUT BIGGER CORPORATE PROFITS. NOT A GOOD SIGN."

"Yet when you broach the dreaded subject of "class warfare" you get blank stares. When you try to demonstrate, through charts and graphs and scores of real life example, that the system is LARGELY RIGGED TO ACCOMMODATE THE WEALTHY AND THE POWERFUL"and that what we face is AN UNFORTUNATE US-VERSUS-THEM DILEMMA - PEOPLE BACK AWAY."

This spot-on summation was penned by David Macaray, writing last November for America's best political newsletter.

To further punctuate the tax delights of of the SuperRich, this breaking AP newsclip:

"WASHINGTON - As millions of procrastinators scramble to meet Monday's tax filing deadline, ponder this: The super rich pay a lot less taxes than they did a couple of decades ago...The Internal Revenue Service tracks the tax returns with the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes each year. The average income on those returns in 2007, the latest year for IRS data, was nearly $345 million. Their average federal income tax rate was 17 percent, down from 26 percent in 1992."

Original Post.