Obama & Detroit....

In June, 2012 BO claimed he saved Detroit....one year later Detroit files bankruptcy!

Do we really need Obama to save us?

 

You beat me to it!

 

Yep. Listen to him in his own words:

 

Here's a story from earlier this year that explains Detroit's troubles:

Detroit Gave Unions Keys To The City, And Now Nothing Is Left​

We keep hearing that the car industry in Detroit is “on the rebound” or that “Detroit is back.” In fact, the city itself is on its back, and it’s bounding toward bankruptcy or a state takeover. How did one of America’s most storied cities land in this predicament? While the city population has shrunk (from a peak population of 1.8 million in 1950 to 714,000 in the last census), it has hardly reduced the government that serves it. All you really need to know about Detroit, which is facing a $327 million budget gap, is that last year it was discovered to ​

still be paying ​

a“horseshoer” (or farrier) on the Detroit Water & Sewer Department (DWSD) payroll. This individual costs some $56,000 in pay and benefits, despite the city not having any horses to shoe in his department.​

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Union bosses insisted the DWSD (average compensation: $86,000) needs more, not fewer, such unionized employees, a view associated with a broad spectrum of thinkers from Jimmy Hoffa to the Keynesians running the United States. The DWSD has more than twice as many employees per gallon of water pumped as that other paragon of Midwestern governance, Chicago. An independent report said four out of five employees in the bloated department were redundant and discovered a thicket of union regulations driving up costs.Plumbers complained that, due to union work rules, they had to wait to fix pipes until duly authorized “operators” came along first to shut them off.​

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The Detroit Federation of Teachers, which enjoys rich pay packages (corrected for purchasing power, Michigan teachers are the best paid in the nation, reported the Mackinac Center for Policy Policy), would do the UAW proud. Its employees pay only ten percent of the cost of their insurance premiums. While they take extravagant numbers of sick days or personal days — 8 per teacher — they also cash in on “unused sick days” to the tune of $14.5 million a year. What other industries are so surprised when you aren’t sick that they pay you a bonus? Then again, we’re talking about a group that paid people to quit — $4.1. million in “termination bonuses” were handed out to teachers’ union members in 2010-2011. And last December the city inexplicably sent out archaic “longevity bonuses” ranging from $150 to $750 depending on years of service for non-union municipal employees, even though the benefit was removed for unionized employees in 2009.​

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The Detroit Service Employees’ International Union did even better, soaking individuals for its own purposes. It arranged to corral thousands of people receiving Medicaid payments to care for sick friends or relatives into its union, for the purpose of charging these people dues, which it siphons directly from the Medicaid checks. So far SEIU has raked in $34 million this way.​

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From 2008 to 2011, health insurance costs for Detroit employees and retirees have jumped 62% to $186 million a year, the Detroit Free Press reported. Pension contributions in that period jumped 140 percent, from $50 million to $120 million.​

To fight for their lavish compensation, unions have proven prepared to fight back with any weapon at hand. Appointing emergency financial managers is “just like being in the slave days,” complained Iris Salters, the president of the Michigan Education Association.​

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Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has 30 days to decide whether to appoint a city emergency manager to try to save Detroit from the catastrophe presided over by elected officials. Such a fixer would have the power to break Detroit’s union contracts and fire political figures. Snyder means business: He’s already interviewed candidates.​

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Eminem famously said, in a Super Bowl commercial, “This is the motor city, and this is what we do.”​

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What Detroit does is give unions the keys to the treasury until nothing is left. That day has come, and their own success is killing unions. What can save Detroit? Nothing, probably, though a group of waggish libertarians proposed buying the Detroit river’s dilapidated park Belle Isle for $1 billion (goodbye, budget deficit! For a couple of years, at least) and turning it into a lightly-regulated capitalist wonderland: Macau of Michigan. The New York Times predictably mocked the scheme (because, obviously, Hong Kong and Singapore are doing so badly) but what other plan could make Detroit safe for capitalism again? Detroit is already a union wasteland. It could hardly do any worse if it became home to Galt’s Gulch.​

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kylesmi...ons-keys-to-the-city-and-now-nothing-is-left/

 

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Detroit after it was saved by BO!!!!

 

Bankruptcy is the best option Detroit has and will probably enable it to get back on its feet one day. No one will ever convince me that it wasn't the Democrats and the unions who caused the problems in the first place, however. This is the same, old tired story of Democrats and unions leading viable enterprises down the path of ruin.

 

Are you guy's saying that Detroits problems are all Obamas fault?

 

A month ago I met an old fella interested in one of my bosses' properties next to his. We hit it off rather well and we had an interesting discussion about health issues and politics in general. He used to work in Detroit for a car manufacturer. He's 75 now, and retired. The restructuring cost him his health insurance and other pensions.

They want to blame Obama for this, of course, but obviously Obama wasn't the President when the recession occurred, Jr. was. The restructuring was horrible, true, but it did save jobs, at the cost of pensions for past union-workers.

Neither Jr. nor Obama is entirely responsible for the recession and recovery, but try telling that to them (points at "them").

Reasoning with "them" is beyond my abilities, so "good luck with that".

 

The only folks who lost their pensions were non-union Delphi folks & that decision was made by the Oduma administration....if any union employee has found themselves without insurance it's only because they chose to take a cash settlement & give up their pensions & other benefits.

 

I would surmise that a few here may be just because that's what they do.

Granted, this is NOT the brightest thing President Barack Obama has said for sure.

However,

Detroit has been failing for DECADES. I read that in the 1950's the population was around 1.8 million. Now it's 700,000.

That's a lot of people and I somehow doubt that has happened in the last few administrations.

Detroit has been a mess for a LONG time.

 

I do not blame Detroit's problems on Obama although his economy probably sped things up a bit. Without his idiotic comment, he probably could have skated free from this one. On the other hand, the Republicans have not had a say in Detroit since long before the 1950's. That leaves the unions and Democrats in charge. They were the one who maintained the "horseshoer" and other such useless people just because. They are where the blame belongs.

 

WORKING MAN'S BLUES: WHAT DEMOCRATS AND UNIONS HAVE DONE TO DETROIT

JULY 21, 2013

Light years seem to have passed between Detroit's June 17, 2013,bankruptcy filing and the warning issued by the city's newly electedMayor Coleman Young in his 1974 inaugural address.

"It is time to leave Detroit. Hit Eight Mile Road. And I don't give a damn if they are black or white, if they wear Superfly suits or blue uniforms with silver badges. Hit the road," he said.

To the first African-American mayor of a major U.S. city, equating the police with criminals was a way of telling his overwhelmingly black constituency that he understood their concerns about police brutality and civil rights.

To the city's white residents, it was a message that he placed those concerns above public safety and civil order. White flight, which began in the late '60s, accelerated.

In 1970, Detroit's population was 1.5 million. Forty-four percent was African-American, 54 percent was white. By 1990, the city's population had fallen to slightly more than 1 million, with African-Americans accounting for 78 percent and whites only 20 percent.

The population shift under Young cemented the Democratic Party's lock on the city. The labor organizer-turned-Democratic lawmaker would serve five terms, stepping down in 1993 at age 74 as his health worsened.

Under him, Detroit became a one-party big city machine. The last Republican mayor, Louis Miriani, was elected in 1957. Since 1970, only one Republican, Keith Butler, was elected to the city council.

As a result, Detroit exemplifies what happens when one political party - and it doesn't matter if it's the Democrats or the Republicans - keeps an iron grip on political power for decade after decade.

Young used the power to reward his base. The police force became 50 percent minority under his watch. Efforts to steer city business to a black-owned company resulted in two federal corruption probes in the early 1980s. Young himself was never charged.

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Other corruption scandals followed. Young's police chief,William Hart, was convicted of embezzling $2.4 million in police funds in 1992.

Young's successor, Kwame Kilpatrick, resigned amid a "pay to play" and sex scandal in 2008. In March, he was convicted on 24 counts including racketeering and bribery.

Meanwhile, the city deteriorated. While Young focused on stopping police brutality, the city's homicide rate doubled from about 30 per 100,000 residents in 1970 to 60 per 100,000 by 1990.

Detroit is now the most dangerous big city in America, according to FBI statistics, with a crime rate five times the national average.

The city's economy crumbled, too. Unemployment was 7.2 percent in 1970 but soared to 19.7 percent by 1990. Today it is a staggering 18.6 percent, far above the national rate of 7.6 percent.

The city is nearly $20 billion in debt. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder appointed an emergency manager in March. It may be decades before Detroit digs itself out of the financial pit into which it has fallen.

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Detroit is now the most dangerous big city in America, according to FBI statistics, with a crime rate five times the national average.’

Young blamed white flight and the decline of the auto industry for the city's woes. Otherwise, he said in his memoir, Detroit's ills were "basically the same problems that beset every American city."

But whites have fled from other places, and other big cities have seen wholesale declines in their economic engines, including Pittsburgh's steel mills and Houston's petroleum industry, without becoming permanent calamities that eroded residents' quality of life.

What sets Detroit apart is that for five decades, sadly, only two hands were on Detroit's steering wheel -- those of Big Labor and the Democratic Party -- and they drove the city into the ditch. To understand why this happened, it's necessary to go back to a spring day in 1941.

 

It was an ugly scene. United Auto Workers had organized a massive walkout at Ford Motor Co.'s River Rouge plantin Dearborn, Mich. Fifty thousand workers marched off the job on April 2, 1941.

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Enforcers for Ford Motor Co. pummel a UAW organizer at the "Battle of the Overpass" outside Ford's River Rouge plant in 1937; workers would stage a massive walk-out strike at the plant four years later.

Brutal fights broke out between strikers and strikebreakers. Dozens were injured. A news photo of a union organizer being thrashed by a strikebreaker won a Pulitzer Prize for the Detroit News. The fact that most black employees sided with Ford gave the conflict a racial aspect, as well.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned Henry Ford he would not receive a single military contract if he did not meet with the UAW. Government contracts were crucial to the company's survival after the Great Depression.

On April 11, 1941, Ford agreed to allow a union election. The last holdout in the auto industry against Big Labor was defeated. By May, 58,000 workers voted to join the UAW, another 23,000 voted for the American Federation of Labor. Just 2,500 rejected unionization.

Only a few years before, such a result would have been unthinkable. Henry Ford's innovationsextended far beyond car design and the assembly line. He had a brilliant, intuitive understanding of how markets work, especially labor.

At a time when 50 cents a day was considered a good salary, Ford announced in 1914 he would more than double his workers' pay to $5 for an eight-hour work day.

There was "no charity in any way involved," Ford asserted. It was "one of the finest cost-cutting moves we ever made."

The wage gave Ford his pick of the best workers and their absolute loyalty. Nobody wanted to lose a Ford job. By 1922, the wage was $6 a day. Other companies were forced to raise their wages to stay competitive.


Anybody could work at Ford, too. Ex-cons found their past was not a liability. Ford had no color barrier and even adapted assembly lines so that the handicapped could work.


At the same time, he radically slashed the price of his Model T cars from $850 in 1918 to $300 by 1922. What was once a decadent luxury was now affordable to anyone. Sales soared to 1.8 million a year.

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Thousands of workers made Ford's massive River Rouge plant hum in its heyday; its tool and die shop is shown here in 1944. (Photo: Library of Congress).

Ford was a fiercely independent capitalist. He despised unions. His labor relations chief wasHarry Bennett, a former boxer, who commanded an army of 800 enforcers.

Union leaders failed repeatedly in trying to organize a Ford plant. But the Great Depression and Ford's own advancing age -- he was born in 1863 -- changed everything. Once an innovator, he grew cranky and obstinate as he reached his 70s, resisting calls to update his cars.

By the 1930s, Ford's sales trailed those of General Motors, so Ford cut wages and laid off workers. By 1940, Ford paid less than GM and Chrysler.

The UAW, having already unionized those two companies, stepped up its efforts to organize Ford. The company pushed back hard as the UAW filed complaint after complaint to Roosevelt's newly created National Labor Relations Board.

When the workers walked out at River Rouge, they sang a ditty, "Old Hank Ford, he ain't what he used to be."

When Ford saw the contract his son Edsel had negotiated with the UAW, he was enraged and threatened to close the company. He was told that if he did, the Roosevelt administration would take it over to ensure fulfillment of its wartime contracts. Ford had no choice. He signed. The UAW had won.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/sean-...d-unions-have-done-to-detroit/article/2533313

 

I don't lay the blame on BO either. I just thought it was funny how he, in tyoical BO fashion, tried to take credit for something- in this case "Saving Detroit"- only to have it backfire right back into his face! I also note how the libs were more than happy to let him claim to be the saviour of Detroit but as soon as it failed they were circling the wagons, making sure no one layed the blame at his feet.
So, blame BO? No. Blame decades of liberal control...just like Chicago.

 

Are you dumb asses professionally stupid or do you do what you do out of the pure love for ignorance? I really want to know because I find it hard to believe that anyone can be this stupid and not fall over dead from forgetting to breathe. I'm not as surprised as I am in awe of the level of pure unadulterated brain dead parroting that goes on on your side of the aisle. Having your heads so far up your own behinds is the only explanation that could possibly excuse your total lack of any knowledge of the world around you. Please, just for one second, pull really, really hard and extricate your heads from between your cheeks long enough to listen to this....

When Obama was talking about "Detroit" he was referring to the car manufacturing industry NOT the City of Detroit you complete morons. Sorry Fox tells you to believe otherwise but that is the risk you take for listening to a cable channel that makes it up as they go along. You now know what it means to be Fox stupid because you are.

Geesh! Grow a brain stem you Neanderthals and I think that is an insult to Neanderthals more than anything else!

 

Yep! In his own words which I was told by Fox mean something other than what they really mean. Duh!!!!! Finger in nose thumb in ass...now switch.

 

Why am I not surprised that he beat you to it? Dumb and Dumberer!

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Ummm, how do you seperate Detroit, the city & Detroit, the auto industry? Honestly?
There isn't another place in the world where a city & an industry are so inter-connected.

 

No, folks, absolutely no connection between Detroit and the auto manufacturers. Or the unions. Or democrats. Nothing to see here, folks, move along. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Don't believe your lying eyes, folks.

 

You must be the biggest moron ever born. The financial solvency of the City of Detroit has nothing to do with GM, Chrysler or Ford you ding-dong. They are separate and distinct entities. When someone says Hollywood do you think they mean the movie industry of the City of Hollywood? The depth of your ignorance seem to be limitless.