Every time I push the panic button, this shows up.
Look down with us.
These, our inaugural pavers here at 9591 Iris, are in Detroit’s Cass Farms Green Alley, a demonstration project that transformed a scary, deteriorated concrete alley into a pleasant, useful passageway.
The new alley uses reclaimed historic brick, diverting it from the waste stream, and water-permeable pavers that let rainfall and snowmelt seep into the water table rather than rushing away into the sewers. It reduces the heat island effect. It promotes recycling – a recycling facility is stationed along the alley – it is pedestrian friendly, with long-lasting high-efficiency lighting, and it also is just plain inviting. Since its opening it has become the core of a lively little neighborhood of shops and businesses.
The brass plaque explaining the Green Alley concludes: “Enjoy your walk.” I couldn’t agree more.
This morning, these were the two headlines on the Detroit Free Press home page:
1. Live blog: follow along during Detroit’s first hearing in bankruptcy court
2. Ford earns $1.2B in 2Q profit, beats expectations
By the way, the best-selling car in the world right now: the Ford Focus. In the world.
Let’s compare here.
For years both entities struggled with incompetent administration and stupid, bad decisions. But when the hardest times came, one was deemed too big to fail. For its sins, it was rewarded with lavish funding to turn itself around and, pretty quickly, triumph.
The other, after years of neglect and the systematic withdrawal of capital, now faces the slaughterhouse. Its hard-working middle-class public servants – the backbone of the city for decades – see themselves deemed a bunch of greedy cheats looking for a handout. Or, just as bad, as the ones who will have to just simply take the hit for the greater good.
By the way, I’d like every person who thinks that to experience it personally. Let’s say we are talking about your retirement here. Since that is what you are wishing on fellow human beings, please explain how you like the prospect of extreme austerity for yourself.
Detroit is suffering so much, and why? Because we are dismantling our country, and the experimental phases of it are being carried out here – have been for decades. This is the proving ground for the coming America.
Keep an eye on this whole bankruptcy thing. One of the central questions is what will happen to the pensions of all those public workers. You know, welfare cheats like teachers and firefighters.
A considerable chunk of Detroit’s debt is pension funds for public workers. It is not even a secret, and has not been for ages, that one big goal of a Detroit bankruptcy would be to shed the pensions of all those public workers. Just not pay any of it.
I read an editorial about all of this in a prominent newspaper, and the most amazing thing about it was the comments. Most of the many commenters said, in essence: set ‘em adrift.
No. These are middle-class workers who stayed in Detroit during its long, terrible decline, in the face of the collapse, accepting lower pay than they would have received elsewhere with the understanding – enshrined in Michigan’s Constitution – that they would retire with modest pensions. I bailed on my home town but they did not. They played by the rules, worked hard, tried to hold the line. (For one moment, imagine the life of a firefighter in Detroit, city of Devil’s Night.) But in Bizarro America, this work ethic is trash. The workers of Detroit are now seen as lazy bastards who deserve to be stripped of their assets. They deserve to be destitute.
Betraying and ruining thousands of trusting working folk: if it can be made to happen here then it can happen anywhere, to all y’all.
As Detroit goes, so will go the nation.
Every time I push the panic button, this shows up.
Every time I push the panic button, this shows up.
Every time I push the panic button, this shows up.
9591iris 