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First Detroit, Now Flint Warns Bankruptcy "Train Is Headed For The Cliff"
Flint may be Michigan’s second city to plunge into bankruptcy unless retirees accept cuts in health benefits that threaten to unravel a balanced budget. As Crain's Detroit reports, Emergency Manager Darnell Earley (Flint’s third emergency leader since it was placed under state control in 2011) warned "If we have no ability to mitigate the cost of retiree health care, that’s going to make it very difficult for the city to remain financially stable over the next few years." As Eric Scorsone notes, "Flint's at the forefront, but a lot of cities are on the same train, and that train is headed for the cliff."
As Detroit draws worldwide attention for its record $18 billion bankruptcy, Flint demonstrates the plight of U.S. cities where unfunded post-retirement costs rival or exceed pension liabilities. In Michigan alone in 2011, municipalities had nearly $13 billion in health-care liabilities for retirees, compared with about $3 billion for pensions. Flint is among 17 cities and school districts under some form of state control.
More than 80,000 Flint-area residents were employed by GM in 1978. Now, that number is about 7,500, according to a 2011 report by Michigan State University. In the past two years, the municipal workforce has been cut 20 percent and employees have taken a 20 percent pay cut.
Emergency Manager Earley warns...
Like Detroit, which a year ago this week filed the largest U.S. municipal bankruptcy, Flint has struggled with loss of population, jobs and revenue. The birthplace of General Motors Co. has only half its population of 1960.
“If we have no ability to mitigate the cost of retiree health care, that’s going to make it very difficult for the city to remain financially stable over the next few years,” Earley said in an interview at City Hall. Without changes, retiree pension and health expenses would consume 32 percent of the $55 million general fund.
“You can stabilize things by making sure that you’ve got the best systems in place for delivering services,” Earley said. “We haven’t had that in Flint for a number of years. We haven’t had that in Detroit for a number of years.”
The retirees are not happy...
The city’s accumulated deficit is $12.9 million, though its budget is balanced through June 30, 2016. Allowing higher insurance co-pays and deductibles for retirees will save $5 million this year, Earley said. That would make retirees’ coverage equal to that of active employees, he said.
Retirees already have made wage and pension concessions, and now will pay hundreds of dollars a month for prescriptions and co-pays, their attorney, Alec Gibbs, said in an email. He said retirees on fixed incomes will face life-threatening choices.
“Think of the position that they are putting these guys in: Pay for your health-care costs and starve, or use your fixed and paltry income to eke out a painful, shortened life,” Gibbs said.
Blaming retirees is unfair, said U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee, a Flint-area Democrat who founded the Center for Community Progress, a Washington, D.C.-based advocate for urban revitalization. More culpable, he said, are shrinking local revenue and the state’s cumulative $54.9 million reduction in aid to the city since 2003, according to the Michigan Municipal League.
“It’s a conspiracy of bad news,” Kildee said. “The state balanced its budget by unbalancing city budgets.”
This is systemic...
“If Flint were to go to bankruptcy, that would highlight that this legacy-cost problem has to be addressed more globally,” said Eric Scorsone, a Michigan State University economist. “Flint’s at the forefront, but a lot of cities are on the same train, and that train is headed for the cliff.”
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Nuke it from space, just to be sure.
Maybe use tactical nukes,
just to be accurate;)
Used to live real close to Flint.
Shithole then, and that was in the '60's
When it was prosperous.
Demographics strikes again. Let me guess, Pontiac next?
Not just demographics,
effnicity.
Government keeps the people and the economy in its claws right to the very end.
Just like any self-respecting parasite.
"Flint may be Michigan’s second city to plunge into bankruptcy unless retirees accept cuts in health benefits that threaten to unravel a balanced budget."
So, are we making odds on that? Or has the most naive person left on the face of the earth already died?
Forget about health benefits, wasnt a town in Rhode Island or Alabama that slashed pensions by like 60% not too long ago.
Rhode Island. Central Falls.
Thank goodness we've killed the 10th amendment.....I'm sure the feds will bail them out.....somehow.
Everyone gets a trophy.....and bad policies need to be rewarded.
What Flint needs is hope.
If only the people of flint had listeded to the Dear Leader's words of hope they wouldn't be in such a predicament today.
b--b-b-ut... wasn't Obamacare supposed to fix this?????
Here's a plan... Turn the lights out in Michigan, turn the keys over to the Chinese and they wipe our debt clean... The Chinese clean up the mess made over the last 100 years and we wipe the slate clean.. Sounds like a plan to me!!!!!
Those broke retirees' should at least save a few $$$ for a torch and pitchfork.
Somehow this article conveniently skipped over "public workers" getting big fat paychecks at the expense of taxpayers while everything around them declines. God help us all. Save the greed gov't worker!!!!
Good, they should get rid of them alltogether. Then we could maybe send more than just a paltry few billion per year to aid Israel, they are the chosen people after all.
I don't understand this dilemma....I thought the Affordable Health Obama Care act was going to fix all this.
Not demographics....
DEMOCRATICS stike again.
Coming to a democrat metropolis next to you soon.
Demographics strikes again. Yes indeed. But you'll hear evert possible alternative excuse offered instead. If you ignore the cause of a problem you cannot solve it.
Detroit, Flint, Benton Harbor, Pontiac, Gary, yea we know the drill.
I grew up in Pontiac in the 70’s when they integrated the schools. The segregated schools (before 1971) had grammar sentence structure, math at grade level, and advanced time frames, maybe 5 or 10 minutes, to stimulate advanced students. When intigration happened the grammar went away, we were allowed to read for a while, but that went away also.
By year four (8th grade for me) the teacher had to read out loud books to the class in the hope some of our nonreaders would learn how to read. It was dumb down city. Everything became a joke.
Education had stopped.
We played sports and pretended to go to school.
The minorities became the majority and in the process brutalized the white kids. Minorities were taught at a very early age to blame and hate white people. It was ingrained in them like Muslims are ingrained to hate Jews. Violence was a daily occurrence, drugs, rape, and when spanking was outlawed discipline completely disintegrated. Anyone with money got their kids the hell out fast.
It was a complete route of the middle class out of these communities. It was very intentional government policy, just like the destruction of the family, so to was the destruction of these communities. Intentional government social engineering.
“For the Age has itself become vulgar, and most people have no idea to what extent they are themselves tainted. The bad manners of all parliaments, the general tendency to connive at a rather shady business transaction if it promises to bring in money without work, jazz and Negro dances as the spiritual outlet in all circles of society, women painted like prostitutes, the efforts of writers to win popularity by ridiculing in their novels and plays the correctness of well-bred people, and the bad taste shown even by the nobility and old princely families in throwing off every kind of social restraint and time-honoured custom: all of these go to prove that it is now the vulgar mob that gives the tone.”
Oswald Spengler
1918
Man is a beast of prey.
The animal of prey is the highest form of mobile life. It implies a maximum of freedom for self against others, of responsibility to self, of singleness of self, an extreme of necessity where that self can hold its own only by fighting and winning and destroying. It imparts a high dignity to Man, as a type, that he is a beast of prey.
-OS
Maybe they wouldn't hate white people' if you had not taken them from their homeland and enslaved them.
Your ideas are crude, worthy only of an ignorant neo nazi.
The governmant is happy that you 'hate' other people. Divide and conquer only makes the government stronger.
Arabs and Jews ran the slave trade. Later Europeans and the English entered. It was the English who eventually ended it. Prior, Africans regularly conducted slave raids for themselves and to supply the trade. It's funny that no one ever blames Africans for supplying the slaves.
The best thing that ever happened to blacks was being brought to the west. Otherwise, they'd still be running around with bones in their noses. Average IQ of Africans is 70 which in the west is borderline retarded.
Most of the African slaves were delivered by African Muslims.
Don't think the Jews were ever slave traders. Certainly West Africans were...and Arabs.
Rhode Islanders were big time. So obviously were Virginians. Jefferson cut off the Slave trade externally...but that didn't stop slavery from expanding internally. The estates in Mississippi just prior to the Civil War were truly impressive.
the jews were the biggest slave traders actually
Apologists for blacks are pure evil.
Well Whites in America would be just thrilled at the thought of y'all heading back to your African homeland. In fact they'd contribute generously to the relocation costs, I have no doubt.
Find an example of a first-world nation WITH A STABLE GOVERNMENT whose majority ethnic group is black whose government is also led by blacks. While you are at it, explain why blacks test 1 standard deviation below whites on IQ and 1.5 standard deviations below asians. Explain why black commit such a disproportionate amount of violent crime relative to their population contribution - in both the US and London, UK. Finally, looking at country-by-country violent crime/100,000 citizens, why do countries with the highest proportion of blacks also have the highest rates of violent crime?
Dude. Nobody took the blackies lands away from them in Ponytiac, gary, etc.
They got shit on the cheap, FFS
In agreement about the social engineering/destruction, but the point I'd like to add is: Education has been dead longer than since the 70s. The trivium (and quadrium) have not been taught since the community schoolhouse (if even then).
John Taylor Gatto's books will actually support the rest of your thesis about social engineering the destruction of family.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivium
http://www.triviumeducation.com/interviews/start-here-gene-odening-inter...
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/
The exact same thing happened in Berkeley with integration. I got a decent education but my younger siblings were back in third grade. It was just like you said, with the white kids being brutalized but nobody complained because that would be "racist ".
"In Michigan alone in 2011, municipalities had nearly $13 billion in health-care liabilities for retirees, compared with about $3 billion for pensions"
and that is precisely why there are Municipal Bonds, duh.
$13B - $3B = $10B, so that's how you right-size your bond, Michigan cities.
sheesh.
plus, GS will help you structure your bond vehicles for maximum advantage.
hugs,
the city of birmingham
If Detriot would pay off it liabilities they would have 30 million in cash, plus a whole. Lot of assets paid for. Checkout Walter Burien, & CAFR1.com???
"Think of the position that they are putting these guys in: Pay for your health-care costs and starve, or use your fixed and paltry income to eke out a painful, shortened life,"
Oh, fuck you. Welcome to the reality that MOST Americans face every day. Go get a goddammed Obamacare policy then, since they're so fucking fantastic. I'd be damned glad if just the pension was money-good in the long term.
You were LIED TO, OK? Don't give me that "we were promised" bullshit. You knew who was making the promise, you should have known better. Nobody else out here was promised shit and doesn't expect shit, so get the hell in line.
You were LIED TO, OK? Don't give me that "we were promised" bullshit. You knew who was making the promise, you should have known better. Nobody else out here was promised shit and doesn't expect shit, so get the hell in line.
YEP
& they all knew it
now they want to stick it to the taxpayers who havent got it
now watch the teachers hold their hands out for a 20 - 30 % raise like they are trying to do up here
you are over payed now ( for a government babysitting job ) get over it
you are not worth what you think you are worth
Just a little FYI to any
Teachers - Police & fireman & city workers
you
are not "SPECIAL"
you are just like the "REST OF US"
get over your selves
the system is going to fuck you like they are fucking us
so wake the fuck UP
I knew the promises were shit, but I was still forced to pay for them.
Join the club
you now know what it means to be
a
US TAXPAYER
remember an illegal alien's well being depends on YOUR
tax dollars
Yes, they ALL knew it, but not one (not a fucking one!) stood up to suggest they not kill the Golden Goose.
That Goose died a long, arduous, cancer-ridden death, but no worries, the fed.gov will simply fiat another Goose into place, just please don't mind if your breakfast is black pellets instead of white ovoids.
+1K! And, we're all lied to about our "health-care" costs. Stop taking the pills and eating the poison, DO something for a few minutes a day and you'll feel better in 48 hrs, I promise. You can take 2 aspirin in the morning too, if you want.
Don't let the secret out about aspirin....you can actually take more at once and get into second order reaction kinetics that helps most ailments. But for .10/day medical treatment, that just will not do in our 'system'....
It's a blood, turnip thing, the result of 40 years of public contracts that did not support a long-term, multi-generational plan for success.
I've seen the same story play out on a small scale on sports teams and in scouting. One group puts in a fiscal plan to strengthen the organization and within a few years, new leadership wants to maximize the experience for their own kid and blows all reserves within a couple years.
So, we are left to save and plan at the family level because most people of all walks of life want the biggest promise they can negotiate - the one that can't be kept.
At the family level, you move when your locale gets too greedy with taxes. Those with their lives staked to the pension promise stay. 10-20 years ago, the politicians and city finance people knew what the numbers were saying, but said and did nothing. You can get reelected telling people things they don't want to hear.
And so it plays out. Health insurance now, but I'll bet even the pension promises themselves can't be met.
16 cents on the dollar is the Detroit solution template, and this still needs to play out for many cities in the U.S.
40% of the tax dollars in my old town go to pension and health benefits for retirees. Cops taking in $90k a year, teachers between $70-80k. Most of them under 60. Many will take a pension far longer than they actually worked.
Schools can't hire new teachers because pensioners are taking too much of the budget. Then the fuckers double dip and work as substitutes. I know a few retired teachers pulling in a $75k pension and then taking in an extra $30k working part time. Makes me fucking sick because my wife can't get a job because the fucking greedy sob's won't give it up. Then the non working pensioners complain that they aren't getting enough.
Fuck them all. Public sector retirement is impossible to fund, just like SS. Teachers in Ohio actually believe the teachers pension funds are fully funded for the next 30 years. The only thing worse than a blatant lie is people that actually believe it.
All that money goes to the Bank and Wall Street.
The State itself does appear vulnerable to me as all of this is being paid for by the issuance of more debt which is not being bought because the Fed is buying up all the treasury issuance thus killing any hope for recovery.
The private sector has already responded by moving hundreds of billions to low to no tax jurisdictions leaving State and municipal authorities facing a crisis of epic proportions.
"Amazon Prime" alone is going to wipe out every State in the Union save NY.
Living in a dump it's a put on...
Maybe Michigan should sell the upper peninsula to Wisconsin. It should be ours anyway!
NO
give us to Kanada
Chease heads suck
Ehhhhhhh
Fuckin yooper....prolly a timber nigger.
Now
now
play nice or I make ya watch Escanaba In Da Moonlite
ehhhhhhhh
The history of the UP is really fascinating actually...there was a huge legal fight over that piece of property which most historians regard as pure comedy...most historians being poor and dumb.
There was a native "sacred relic" in the UP that turned out to be a twenty ton boulder of purely refined copper sitting right on top of the land. Look it up some time...along with "copper mining", "Welsh pumps" and "natural gas." There's a reason why the bulk of America's industrial output ended up in Michigan and Ohio...and why that will remain true for a long time to come.
Remember the Edmond FitzGerald!
OOOOOO-K
& your point is?
The whole thing is a wreck...
Only if we dont bitch slap them back in place
$80,000 a year to be a baby sitter is INSANE
to teach crap like common core liberal math
no friggen way
it's a $25,000 a year job at best
Maybe $500 a year off the internet.
I am good with that
ya know what they say
those that can do - those that cant
teach
that pretty much covers it
common core esssss - plains it
wacky liberal BS thinking
Those that can, do.
Those that can't, teach.
Those that can't teach, teach teachers.
And oh yeah, like the rest of .gov, administration is the finest example of the Peter Principle in action.
Once your taught the alphabet, how to read, basic arithmetic , and HOW to learn, other than testing, why even have schools?
"A ship it went down,
And ever-y-body drowned
That's the tale of the Edmond Fitzgerald."
- Gordon Lightfoot's first draft.
Thousand foot long ore ship...fully loaded actually.
"At 7 PM the main hatchway gave in and he said fellas it's been good to know ya!"
We don't need an interstate highway system. We don't need internal combustion engines. We don't need public schooling. We don't need fighter jets that cost 200 million each.
It would be ironic indeed that what blew the system up was interest rates that were too low...especially given the debt that has been incurred for all this "largesse." Don't call economics "non scientific" as a consequence however. Or "the internet."
Winston, your miserable comment is nuked. Most of these GM retirees are on Medicare now. Blame the looters in the governor's mansion and their cronies who are running Michigan into the ground, helped by the mostly corrupt Bankruptcy Court judges who bend over fast for the likes of Goldman Sachs.
Retirement and post retirement medical health care beneifts are the big drags. Same as any other city with few exceptions.
On my last visit to Flint, I certainly got the impression that nuking it would
be considered urban renewal by most.
Perhaps we can locate all the young illegals up there, causing a massive
change of heart ,and voluntary repatriation back to central America, it safer and
cleaner there after all.I saw a better shanty town ,outside Mumbai airport, made of
refuse..
GM retirees aren't the problem, the problem is all the City worker retirees that are retired from the bloated years of GM manufacturing boom times.
Governments rarely bust alongside the private sector--they continue to extrapolate the peak of booms indefinitely into the future. Flint, MI private sector went bust 25 years ago and Flints government is just now(pretending to) facing the music?
faces of collapse
Darnell Earley is an American politician and the current city manager of Saginaw, Michigan and emergency financial manager of Flint, Michigan. He served as interim mayor of Flint, Michigan after the recall of Woodrow Stanley.
Yep, in my city every time the economy slumps of course the tax revenues are not what was expected. What do they do? Tighten their belts? FUCK NO. They raise income tax rates! Fucking assholes.
When the economy "improves" ( thanks Bernake, sarc), do they rescind the income tax rate increase? FUCK NO. Fucking asshole politicians.
City, state, federal... all fucking thieves.
I think all the people who enabled this need to be hanged when TSHTF. Every last one of them.
A career politician is primarily after power, followed by self-interest, not government efficiency.
Jesus, THAT guy is city manager at Saginaw??? I'd count my fingers after I'd shaken hands with him.
Junction,
You still don't see it? This has to do with "the Elitist Connected".
You were misinformed that any "union" or "government" would protect you from the depredations of the elites. They are one in the same.
Did it ever occur to you as odd, that the union boss is as fat as the CEO? That they had a better house or drove a better car than you or that their pension is locked in for life? That the President of the United States, could fly around the world on lavish vacations (pension secure) while protesting CEO's that also fly around the world taking lavish vacations (wealth secured)?
I just don't get the disconnect with reality I guess ;-)
Okay then, let them stiff all the bondholders -- oops, those bondholders are the pension funds!
Yeah, exactly. "Homey gonna phuck the banker instead the hymie sticks if up his ass."
Even true in the White House! "Kill all the Palestinians you want!"
At first glance you would think this is a parody...nay, veerily...tis total default indeed. Interestingly "these are states with actual economies." If Michigan is well nigh worthless...what about Illinois et al?
http://detroitisstillcrap.blogspot.com/
Grand Funk Railroad would be upset.
"God help us save Funt"
Funt sounds like a charming place.
Yep, it is time to pray.
Thank you. A word of sanity.
We own this human condition.
GOD HELP US SAVE "FUNT"???
I though Allen was already dead: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Funt
CANDID CAMERA IS NOT TERRA!
SAVE FUNT! SAVE FUNT! SAVE FUNT!
Can you say Clint Eastwood?
I see what you did there.
Not to his face...I like having my teeth.
Funt: (n.) ~ someone who finds it very difficult to get a loan because they have a poor credit history.
Fitting...........
Come on and join the bankruptcy party!
Greece is going on it's 3rd bailout. Don't worry about fixing you financial problems just run up the charge card and get bailed out each time.
Infinite bailouts with print money. So serious finaincial restraints.
Banksters like to party as well. Siphon reserves from your institutions, off-shore them, then claim your in bad shape and get bailed out. Rinse and repeat.
Bankruptcy is just another opportunity to BTFD.
Watch while they sell the debt for pennies on the dollar to big banks and hedge funds, only to be gauranteed by the tax payer.
Winning
It's a gas.
South Stream and TAP Adriatic pipeline.
Greek Throughways for the Western Front.
In the past two years, the municipal workforce has been cut 20 percent and employees have taken a 20 percent pay cut.
Next year in the parasite's capitol of Vichy DC....
Wishful Thinking?
The number of workers and their pay decreases.
That don't help cut the benefits burdens of the large chunk of change, the retirees.
This is a national phenomenon.
I keep telling my liberal government employee buds that if they're old enough to retire or to take early of at all disposed, to do it NOW before any bennies get cut.
And them of "active retirees" is sooner or later gonna take a hit, too.
Math, the New Incontinent Truth.
This is another one that I keep being told that I don't know about, dumb ass, tin foil hatter, CT, etc.
Uh huh. Just wait, folks
und den der damn Fedschisters...
Bwa, ha,ha,ha,ha,ha...
Can't be, Barry is touting how strong the economy is.
Speech! Speech!
green pukes
All aboard !!!!
Last person out of Flint please turn out the light.
I am SHOCKED. I am trembling with the thought of a municipality going banktrupt. What can we do?
/s
we can bend over and grab our ankles my Dad warned me 30 years ago and well at 46 I see he was right
Open the Books fuckers and let's see which tentacle GS / JPM or .GOV has shaken you mugs down.
I lived in Michigan for 6 years, that entire state has no chance.
You should see Benton Harbor!
Is James Coburn from around those parts?
"Blaming retiress is unfair". Well, it's called mathematics. Most government employees apparently have problems with math.
Some to most Republicans and ALL Democrats can't do math.
To be able to do math, you have to want to get the answers. Most do not. A $5 calculator can deliver more bad news than an oncologist.
"...but a lot of cities are on the same train, and that train is headed for the cliff.”
All abooooooooaaaaaarrrrd!!!!!!!!!!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJMVj04lfyo
Larry Flint is the ONLY Flint I was ever willing to assist.
"...unless retirees accept cuts in health benefits..."
Why reward the insurance companies and corporate hospitals?
Why make the most vulnerable and least able to defend themselves suffer?
Because the U.S.A. is sliding into a feudal kleptoligarchy of cronies and mandarins served by us serfs.
Have health insurance or corporate hospital or big pharma CEO's taken a pay cut?
Have any legislative bodies passed tort reform?
Of course not! Bleed the plebes!
Crony capitalism at it's worst.
Its almost like people are being lied to.
really your just realizing that? 1 more awakening great deal
How does cutting health benefits reward the insurance companies and hospitals? They both lose volume/revenue with the cuts.
Hosptials can charge pretty much what they wish and like funeral director shops they get their customers at one of their low points in their lives.
Increased co-pays and deductibles for the retirees, which means they pay more, insurance company covers (pays) less.
That seems to make sense, at least for the insurance companies. The problem is that the operative contract (which we don't have a copy of) is between the benefit provider and the insurance company, not the benefit recipient and the insurance company. If it is the benefit provider which is demanding the contract change (for example because the fund doesn't want, or can't, cover its share of the cost), then the fund is at fault.
And don't forget Govt bailouts, paid to Ins. Co's, created from thin air/printing press, then repayed by working class taxpayer.
Exactly, and thank you. This is a retroactive pay cut. For 20 years pension funds of all kinds have been allowed to ludicrously, criminally, underfund pensions and other retirement-related cost funds and then just claim empty pockets. Yes, to fund them properly would have required some tax hikes. Yes, perhaps the elites would only be 10 times richer than us plebes, rather than 20 or 50 times as rich. But those were the deals that were cut. Take this much less in wages today, in return for this much more after you can't work anymore. And, as we see, this is the result. The criminals have run out of actual money to steal as our finance system implodes. They've even run out of future money to steal. Now they're stealing wage income from the past.
Starting to realise the bad guys are not the Russians, the bad guys are your own "leaders"? Your leaders will always, every time look after their own pockets first.
Yet is anyone else in any different shape? People have been paying into SSI their whole lives to find that they will likely be means tested out of their promises, just like they will be means tested out of their heathcare. People are seeing their savings devalued through inflation with no way to preserve orprotect them without risking it all in the casino of wall street. And these promises were rather modest in comparison to what most government employees were promised. So while I have some empathy for these people, not much. They should have known better, just like the rest of us.
Spot on EB....FUCK EM!
Move from Flint, you Flintstones!
Oh....and one more thing. Flint is the hometown of the bulbous Michael Moore.
Where the fuck is that fat fuck when the Flintstones need him.
The buffet you say? Vasoline'd lips wrapping around the meat trough?
Oh.....OK.
Living in a dump it's a put on...
i can't put out your fire
i know it's too late
i can't be up for hire
it's not my best trait
the gallow glass is cracking
it's starting to smash
how can you cry
without blinking a lash
you're feeling cross and wavy
on the edge of the cuff
you're pushing and popping
you can't get enough
you wish that it was over
you never slow down
you're looking for kicks
there's nothing around
You can't hold on too long, It's alright
You can't hold on too long. It's alright
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvmjLXnKh4U
I'm starting to think none of this matters at all, other than to the pensioners losing out on their benefits. I always think of that Simpsons 'flash forward' episode where Marge and Homer are sitting in bed watching TV and Marge says 'you know, FOX changed to a hard-core porn station so gradually, I hardly even noticed'.
This evolving collapse in slow-motion, under full propaganda cover to minimize the visibility, will take so long that in 20 years people will be looking back and saying 'I can't believe the majority of the population used to just be able to borrow money and buy whatever we wanted, eat whenever and wherever we wanted, travel wherever we wanted'.
Goddamn Al, you're depressing. And, I like the way you think.
"This evolving collapse in slow-motion, under full propaganda cover to minimize the visibility, will take so long that in 20 years people will be looking back and saying 'I can't believe the majority of the population used to just be able to borrow money and buy whatever we wanted, eat whenever and wherever we wanted, travel wherever we wanted'. "
They won't actually remember it. They'll think they saw it in a movie or on tee-vee.
Imagine in about 75 years children asking grandpap to tell them a bedtime story about what it was like when he was a boy.
"Tell us about how dollars were made of paper and there were coins called money you could actually hold in your hand."
"Tell us about how you could get in your own vehicle called a car and drive werever you wanted to without permission and...no check-stops every 100 kilometers with strip-searches at each one."
"Tell us what it was like when you could buy chocolate bars and the price was the same each year because we were on the gold-standard and had almost no inflation."
"Tell us about what it was like when you could actually trust a police officer because they obeyed the law."
"Tell us what it was like when politicians kept their promises." (answer "Sorry, your great, great grandfather might have been able to tell you but he's been dead for years.")
why not take the flyby politicians and make them live a shortened life,bend them over, then empty their bank accounts and put the retires money back. you know anybody who actually believed this ponzy scheme would work is STUPId but look around at all these boomers that think social security is solvent.
hey Peeps wake the fuck up and grow a pair and take your country back. the constitution lays out what WE THE PEOPLe can do about these crooks!
What's the point blaming the politicians? Fucking partisans gave the sociopaths their power and are too blind/ignorant/self-righteous to see through the lies they're being told.
'The People' got the government they voted for....rest in peace, sheep.
No sympathy for these rat-voting UAW slime.
Didn't know there was a city named Flint. That's a dumb name for a city anyhow.
Zelienople now that's a name that any city would be proud to have.
So now Flint is going into recivership of the Bankers?
When the banksters have got it all, they'll still want more.
Everything, plus 5%
These cities used to be icons of US industrial might now their serve as icons of the decline of the US.
From a bankrupt city to a bankrupt presidency and country.
LOL, sure Barry...
Obama Brags on Saving Detroit
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/07/20/A-Short-Primer-on-Obama-and-Minions-Insistence-He-Saved-Detroit
For years,sane and logical people have said " wait until the people who pay the bills have enough, and get the fuck out" .
Well, they've had enough, they're dead, they left, or you fucking tax whore parasite pieces of shit running every goddamn government from here to Timbuktu have sucked them fucking dry.
......and..it's gone.
Atlas is shrugging!
Isn’t this where the brothers and sisters who voted for hope and change live? How's that hope and change working out for ya all?? Keep the Immigrants pouring in so this filth can bankrupt a few more places.
Naggers are in the bag. LBJ saw to that and he was right when he proclaimed, " I'll have them votin' Dem for the next 100 years".Now they need to create another parasite class, devoid of drive, victimized by Whitey and firmly latched onto the Government tit for life. You know, just for insurance votes.
Every Lib I know posses the same trait. They all feel soooo sorry for the little guy, and then ride the moral high train, because they want to help. Fucking elitist arrogant assholes have no idea where dignity and self sufficient work ethics come from.
Yes, Central Falls, Rhode Island (one square mile area) recently filed for bankruptcy and cut public employee pension benefits.
But then the state legislature voted a few weeks ago to pay the Central Falls retirees what they lost in the bankruptcy. http://www.rinewsfeed.com/central-falls/house-committee-approves-4-8-mil... The state is in very poor financial shape, as well.
Central Falls was, in the 1980s, a major cocaine distribution hub for the Mexican cartels and may still be.
You can't make this stuff up.
Most elected politicians in RI have had the plague for years.
Learn how to vote Tea Party; Dumb asses....
No worries, just give them Obamacare.
elections have consequences
But election fraud, on the other hand, does NOT have consequences.
Isn't that one of those ghetto cities?
It's simple. Espirito Santo can back Flint's bonds. Win-win.
Wait a minute. Wouldn't that raise their credit worthiness? Bah ha.
While it is a sign of the death spiral of the DC US and their Petro$ and by extension, the American country, I have no sympathy for ex-government parasites.
Most pleasing is picturing the ex gun and badge thugs that made a career out of committing treasonous theft, kidnapping and murder against the American people now being robbed themselves by their ex political and bankster masters.
Ha, fucking ha, ha and Yippee ki-yay, motherfuckers!
Al, I will guess you might be in my age range. I am 59. I grew up in Michigan on the west side of the state. I now live in Chicago due to job transfer. I saw school desegregation and the ruins it brought to our suburban high schools. I saw the dumbing down of educaion. I missed out on a state job as a game warden due to Affirmative Action program. I have lived in Detroit and St Joseph, city adjacent to Benton Harbor.
America as I knew it has died. I don't recognize our culture. I don't regonize my nation when I go to a city park and hear more spanish than English. Anyone who is aware and somewhat awake just needs to look around and see the empty stores, the empty and for sale or rent commercial and industrial properties. There has been a systematic and ruthless plan in place to cut America off at the knees and it started before Obama. Big union run cities are broke. You cannot tax the people enough to fix it. Chicago proper now is porposing sales tax on service businesses. I am in home remodeling. Add 8.9 percent to an 8K window replacement and what you get is 100 more small remodeling companies out of business as people just say no to ordering thier windows.
We are broken. WE are not fixable. Empty billboards in Chicago on the main expressways is my financial leading economic indicator. By the way to whomever ws saying teachers don't earn their keep, my daughter has a Masters in Education and teaches in a small gang banger wanna be high school for 39K a year so fuck off. She works hard. She was taought to work hard. She didnt go into teaching for the money. 7th in her class of 690 kids in high school. There are good teachers and bad teachers. They are not heroes as neither are cops or fireman. A five year patrolmen in your average NW suburb of Chicago maked 85K a year. That is truly F ed up.
Al,,, it won't take 20 years to look back and say wow I can't believe we could eat what we want, live where we wanted and travel and borrow money. it is much closer than we think, wake up ,, look around everyone. It is coming and it will be like opening a door to a hurricane. That quick. have a great weekend everyone.
"Anyone who is aware and somewhat awake just needs to look around and see the empty stores, the empty and for sale or rent commercial and industrial properties."
Absolutely! I see an increase in empty storefronts almost monthly. I have seen some poker places open but their empty. People are broke and getting poorer by the year. The financialization game is the last one being played. And now a flood of illegals will come in and take it all down faster as they apply for EBT, medicaid and welfare to accelerate the decline.
My wife had to take a job teaching dropouts and drug pushers in Cleveland making $25k because none of the school districts were hiring because the pensioned teachers took up the entire budgets.
It was a worthless job and none of the kids cared. They only did enough to keep them from going to jail. My wife worked hard and was exhuasted every day. For what? Then a kid she failed came to school with a knife planning to hill her. Good thing the security guard who did pat downs did his job. The fucking ghetto trash strapped the knife to the inside of his thigh thinking he wouldn't be pat down there for fear of sexual harassment.
So she finally had enough and she learned her lesson. I tried telling her not to take the job, but she felt she could help these poor kids. She was paid $25k to risk her life but a fucking 20 year teacher in a cakewalk district gets paid $75k to come to work drunk every day.
Many people in my family are teachers. My aunts and uncles who taught are all lazy selfish assholes thinking they had the toughest job on planet earth. All of them have massive pensions and they complain about money. I've got in arguments with them, saying how can you complain about getting $80k to sit on your ass at 60 years old. My cousins that teach have to deal with unbelievable amounts of bullshit thanks to no child left behind and are lucky to make $30k doing the same job.
Could my uncle take a $10k cut in his pension so his kid could make $40k. Of course he could and make out just fine. No way in hell that he will because he believes he is owed his pension for working.
Some teachers do work hard but it is still a cakewalk job compared to just about anything else. The fact that there are teachers who work for less than nine months a year making far more than a skilled machinist is insane.
Hiya 'all, I used to live in Michigan and the only good thing is that we have forests, lakes and hunting. Oh and the Michigan Militia! Now the comments from former Rep Dale Kildee would be the perfect commercial for the CONSERVATIVE option: "
The only reason these politicians exist is to figure out how to make one person pay for another's expense (and get their cut of course). The "public welfare" has been perverted to mean redistribution. Its these "middlemen" who the ones fucking us.