What Rick Snyder Talks About When He Talks About Detroit

Pretty good article on Deadline Detroit...

http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/artic..._about_detroit

Clear language indicates lucid thought and honest speaking.

Kudos to McGraw for diagnosing murky language as a symptom of something deeper.

Understanding politicians and businessmen is old hat to a reporter like McGraw. But there's a chuckle in there for the astute:

It's a safe bet that Snyder and company have privatization plans, because they already have pat answers to questions about privatization.

By that same cynical token, it's a safe bet Snyder and company have no real plans about public safety. Or else they would have had soothing denials at the ready.

Never believe anything until it's officially denied. ;)

Excellent points, nerd. McGraw's article asks the questions the main stream media isn't. If the Snews and Sheep Press still had reporters like this, I might still read them.

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Originally Posted by Detroitnerd

Clear language indicates lucid thought and honest speaking.

Kudos to McGraw for diagnosing murky language as a symptom of something deeper.

Understanding politicians and businessmen is old hat to a reporter like McGraw. But there's a chuckle in there for the astute:

It's a safe bet that Snyder and company have privatization plans, because they already have pat answers to questions about privatization.

By that same cynical token, it's a safe bet Snyder and company have no real plans about public safety. Or else they would have had soothing denials at the ready.

Never believe anything until it's officially denied. ;)

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Privatization absolutely should be on the table. When publicization fails, its the only alternative. Or you could try publicization again? That would be pretty stupid.

The whole idea here is that the public sphere has failed in its obligations to the citizens. Let someone else do this until the public sphere gets its act together and starts doing things efficiently.

say that again next year when your water bill is doubled.

Because, if you say you want 1000 new cops walking the streets, and you only manage to get 800, then you've failed. If you want a 10% increase in economic activity but only get 8%, then you've failed.

Someone is actually expecting a politician to be specific about something? That's rich.

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Originally Posted by compn

say that again next year when your water bill is doubled.

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For most, the more likely reason for an increase in water bills would be the suburban cities surcharge on their residents going up to pay for a $100k+ pensions.

I think it's unreasonable to expect him to give a lot of details at this point.

The position he's in, is that it's bad for him to talk about the plans, because what he says could impact the appeal process. It could also impact public opinion.

But at the same time, he can't lock himself away from the media because that would look horrible and would make people suspicious and distrustful and everything. And then he also needs a venue to do as much positive spin on it as possible, and he needs the media for that.

So he's in a position where he needs to do media things, but can't really talk much about the efm, and also has to give it a good spin, and that's basically what we saw.



Privatization is an option that should be looked at, but imo it should be strongly avoided.

The thing that makes reforming the different departments and services is that the city is a very large bureaucratic political complicated organization. But the efm has the ability to cut through that.

The benefit that private companies have, is that while they are also large complicated political [[in the non-government sense) organizations, the people in charge have more direct power to run the operations as they think is best.

But the downside to privatization, and why I think it should be avoided, is that the companies need to make a profit, and however much cheaper they're providing the service, the true cost of the service is sizably less than what the city would be paying them. And since we have an efm, we should be able to directly implement the methods that the private companies use that are cheaper.

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Originally Posted by Jason

...snip...
Privatization is an option that should be looked at, but imo it should be strongly avoided.

The thing that makes reforming the different departments and services is that the city is a very large bureaucratic political complicated organization. But the efm has the ability to cut through that.

The benefit that private companies have, is that while they are also large complicated political [[in the non-government sense) organizations, the people in charge have more direct power to run the operations as they think is best.

But the downside to privatization, and why I think it should be avoided, is that the companies need to make a profit, and however much cheaper they're providing the service, the true cost of the service is sizably less than what the city would be paying them. And since we have an efm, we should be able to directly implement the methods that the private companies use that are cheaper.

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I agree. Avoid it unless it costs less than providing directly including profit. Government should avoid being a vehicle for private profit, but not at all costs. Where reasonable reforms can't be implemented for whatever reason, privatization should be the last option. Leaving privatization on the table where it makes sense for the citizens best interest, will encourage public departments to implement the efficiency the citizens rightly deserve.

There are radicals who believe in privatization in all cases. I think they're wrong. Where possible, government should deliver core services 100% with government employees who are compensated fairly and without union representation.