DetNews: Detroit Pension Trustees “Effectively Robbed” Funds

[Wesley Mouch]

Oh let's not talk morality. Bankruptcy has nothing to do with morality. I argue that it is immoral to make a vow to retirees and not keep it. I am considered naive - at best - because of that. Morality is that you keep these kinds of promises even when it is tough to do so.

Since retirees received COLA, I don't think they ever should have received these bonus checks, even when the funds were doing well. But they didn't steal it or cheat to get it.

Yet uou are trying very hard to create a moral universe where its possible to keep all vows intact. Your moral logic of vow-keeping only remains solid if you can find a scapegoat. So you do. Orr and Co.

Your repetition that bankruptcy was unnecessary is hallow.

It might have been possible to avoid bankruptcy. Except it didn't happen. Like saying that there was nothing keeping that train in Spain fro making it around that corner -- except that it was going too fast.

Detroit did not do the things you say could have avoided bankruptcy. Does not matter that they could have. They didn't. The engineer could have slowed down. He didn't. He liked going fast.

[Locke09]

Yet uou are trying very hard to create a moral universe where its possible to keep all vows intact. Your moral logic of vow-keeping only remains solid if you can find a scapegoat. So you do. Orr and Co.

Your repetition that bankruptcy was unnecessary is hallow.

It might have been possible to avoid bankruptcy. Except it didn't happen. Like saying that there was nothing keeping that train in Spain fro making it around that corner -- except that it was going too fast.

Detroit did not do the things you say could have avoided bankruptcy. Does not matter that they could have. They didn't. The engineer could have slowed down. He didn't. He liked going fast.

I have expressed my views about vows at length and they do not boil down to creation of a moral universe where scapegoats are needed. I haven't created any scapegoats and don't need to, since I'm not interested in punishment or sacrifice of the innocent, but in preventing unnecessary harm. It's others who are interested in punishment and they are the ones who rail daily against the scapegoats that they have created on these forums and in the press, to justify the course of action they want taken.

Don't know what the train in Spain has to do with anything either. Guess I'm just not very good with analogies that have no relevance to the issue at hand. For instance, the train cannot be uncrashed, but Detroit still has time to not stiff the people it made vows to. I'm one of those people who will keep yelling slow down until the train has crashed.