The Detroit bankruptcy and the assault on democratic rights

[Octafish]

22. Zen Throat-Cutting in Detroit

When Capital comes to collect, laws don’t matter; even unjust laws are being broken to speed the process of stripping Detroit of its last “asset.” The question must now be raised: “At what point do you destroy a city to satisfy the creditors?”

by Tom Stephens
Black Agenda Report,

"Now look, I’m a trial attorney. I can cut somebody’s throat and leave them to bleed out in the gutter with the best of them. But I didn’t want to do that. That’s not my role in this job. My role in this job is sort of the zen of emergency management." -– Detroit Emergency Manager Fascist Kevyn Orr <1> (June 10, 2013) -- Emergency managers make unjust laws; they don’t follow them.

What laws, if any, do Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, the Jones Day law firm and Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr 2[2] think they are working under? The answer is apparently none. Not even the requirements of their own “emergency management” legislation, rammed through a compliant lame duck legislature without any democratic process at all – no hearings or amendments or debate allowed – in December 2012. This was their replacement for Snyder’s previous “dictator” statute, rejected by Michigan voters in November.

Because according to the terms of that bastard legislation, in February 2013 a state-appointed February Financial Review Team was supposedly studying Detroit’s financial crisis and making recommendations to the Governor. And they were meeting and claimed to be studying the situation, all right. But we now know that at that time in the background the Governor was secretly offering the job of Detroit Emergency Manager to Jones Day bankruptcy lawyer Kevyn Orr.

Meanwhile, and also in secret, Orr’s giant 2,400-lawyer corporate law firm was negotiating a lucrative contract for itself as Detroit’s “restructuring counsel.” The race to impose self-interested corporate “solutions” on Detroit was on.

SNIP...

Most recently, Orr held a heavily publicized meeting with Detroit’s creditors on June 14, 2013 at Metro Airport. He announced that he will screw workers and retirees, supposedly for the benefit of residents.


CONTINUED...

http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/zen-throat-cutting-detroit