Dateline NBC Special on Detroit

[lafayette]

"Everyone else seems to be doing just fine on DTE's power."

No, they aren't. Communities all along 275 have major service problems with DTE. Lots of news coverage on this.

And it's the opposite of provincialism to support public ownership of utilities. It's the system used by many developed municipalities worldwide, and most of them are unionized and run much better than many U.S. systems, public or private. So, please don't say unions are the reason public systems don't work.

I'll guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one because I have different values when it comes to basic utilities and the importance of community. You place a premium only on a perceived cost benefit. There's much more at stake in utility ownership in my view, but you sneer at those issues, and I'm not going to try to convince you to care about them.

[ndavies]

"Everyone else seems to be doing just fine on DTE's power."

No, they aren't. Communities all along 275 have major service problems with DTE. Lots of news coverage on this.

And it's the opposite of provincialism to support public ownership of utilities. It's the system used by many developed municipalities worldwide, and most of them are unionized and run much better than many U.S. systems, public or private. So, please don't say unions are the reason public systems don't work.

I'll guess we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one because I have different values when it comes to basic utilities and the importance of community. You place a premium only on a perceived cost benefit. There's much more at stake in utility ownership in my view, but you sneer at those issues, and I'm not going to try to convince you to care about them.

Sorry, I belive in the city actually providing services that would create community. Like running the schools, Providing adequate police, fire, ambulance services, fixing the roads in the neighborhoods.

Since it's a choice between fire fighters and police or electric power generation workers, I'll subsidies police and fire.

When the primary responsibilities of the city are covered then you can dabble in your market manipulation.

I'll leave power generation to the professionals that know how to do it on a cost competitive basis.

And you'll have to post some links to all those 275 electrical problems. I haven't seen any of them.

[Detroitnerd]

Proponents of privatization come in two types.

There are the disingenuous types who know that it's just a way to get people to pay more in the long run while the contractors eliminate union labor, drive down living standards, provide shoddy services, make obscene profits, and leave the people holding the bag in the form of externalities, socialized losses, capital debt high taxes and poor service.

Then there are the other type, who honestly believe all the Reaganomics they've heard their whole life: That the rich are "wealth creators," that government should be shrunk to a paymaster for private firms, and that everything after privatization is cheaper and better.

Personally, you're going to have a very hard time changing either of these types of people's minds. But I think you have a better chance with the latter type, if they will actually look at the facts of privatization.

The facts seem pretty clear to me: Government is not business, and vice versa. Not every function in life is or should be profitable. There is no such thing as a free lunch, meaning you cannot expect to contract out civic functions to middlemen and not expect some price to be paid down the line, whether financial, social, environmental or ethical. Businesspeople, when they meet with each other, don't trust each other at all; they both think the other person is out to screw him good and hard before he can do same; why should we have any more faith in businesses than they do in each other?

[lafayette]

Well said, Detroitnerd.

[ndavies]

Well, nicely said. By someone trying to protect his job form the cutting block when it's obvious they are costing the system way too much money. Whenever someone about to lose a contract they switch to the ethereal "Values " of what they provide rather than the meat of what they are supposed to be doing.

The only purpose of the City lighting department is to keep the city lights on. It's not to provide a safety net for union workers. If they can't keep the lights on with the budget they have and someone else can, the should be outsourced.

[ndavies]

Well said, Detroitnerd.

So no links to articles about the poower problems along 275

[Detroitnerd]

Well, nicely said. By someone trying to protect his job form the cutting block when it's obvious they are costing the system way too much money.

That's an interesting perspective, ndavies. So it isn't the individual who is important, but the system that must be protected from the individual? That point of view corresponds neatly with "economic fascism."

http://www.banned-books.com/truth-se..._3/ts213l.html

Whenever someone about to lose a contract they switch to the ethereal "Values " of what they provide rather than the meat of what they are supposed to be doing.

Which values are ethereal, ndavies? Are they the numbers, the blots of ink on paper or the bits of data in a hard drive? Or do we base our values upon the people who hunger and are not fed, the people who are not sheltered and die of exposure? Which values are ethereal and which are undeniably real?

I was reading some Lewis Mumford the other night and he was talking about this economic view of society that shuts out all other values and focuses on the balance sheets. He argues that the economic notion of value tends to be purely abstract and quantitative, with little attention to the factors that sustain and enhance life. Instead, money and finance [[which are, after all, little more than sophisticated fictions that rely upon our belief for their value) are society's "hard facts," while the actual lives of the people under an economic system -- whether they are homeless, malnourished, unable to work their way out of poverty -- are regarded as highly subjective barometers of our success as a society.

This is a serious, fundamental political disagreement, ndavies. You believe the system is what's important, and the bottom line is all that matters. Whether you like it or not, this is not how a democratic government works.

[ndavies]

That's an interesting perspective, ndavies. So it isn't the individual who is important, but the system that must be protected from the individual? That point of view corresponds neatly with "economic fascism."

http://www.banned-books.com/truth-se..._3/ts213l.html



Which values are ethereal, ndavies? Are they the numbers, the blots of ink on paper or the bits of data in a hard drive? Or do we base our values upon the people who hunger and are not fed, the people who are not sheltered and die of exposure? Which values are ethereal and which are undeniably real?

I was reading some Lewis Mumford the other night and he was talking about this economic view of society that shuts out all other values and focuses on the balance sheets. He argues that the economic notion of value tends to be purely abstract and quantitative, with little attention to the factors that sustain and enhance life. Instead, money and finance [[which are, after all, little more than sophisticated fictions that rely upon our belief for their value) are society's "hard facts," while the actual lives of the people under an economic system -- whether they are homeless, malnourished, unable to work their way out of poverty -- are regarded as highly subjective barometers of our success as a society.

This is a serious, fundamental political disagreement, ndavies. You believe the system is what's important, and the bottom line is all that matters. Whether you like it or not, this is not how a democratic government works.

Nope, it's the individual that is important. However the system is protecting the wrong individuals. It wants to protect the people working for the system to the detriment of the people using and paying for the system.

By the city lighting department not doing their assigned job on a cost competiive basis they are sucking valuable funds away from the tasks that would be of much higher use to the citizens of the city. Like schools, fire, police buses, garbage collection and ambulances. By protecting overly expensive solutions they are sucking funds away from departments that could help provide a much better quality of life for it's citizens.

The Cities huge loss of people comes because citizens don't believe their tax dollars are being spent the way it should. The city is hemoraghing people and their tax dollars because of it. The citizens are demanding safe streets and lights that stay on. Protecting workers at a redundant, overpriced, power distribution system is not getting them the safe streets.

Also the city is not the Federal or state government. The cities sole purpose should be providing the best services it's residents tax dollars can afford, not unsustainable job creation.

[Detroitnerd]

Nope, it's the individual that is important. However the system is protecting the wrong individuals. It wants to protect the people working for the system to the detriment of the people using and paying for the system.

As I understand it, you feel that the problems with the system are its inefficiency and the way it is set up as a counterpoint to the more capitalist component of private power [[which is, itself, a sort of state monopoly, although with toothless regulatory enforcement). The latter part of that, that the public lighting system is a countervailing force to private enterprise, is totally acceptable to me. Lots of governments run departments that are there to ensure there is always a public option available.

But the mismanagement is not due to it being government-run. It is not due to it using union labor. It is not due to it being a countervailing force to private firms. It is because Detroit is run by a kleptocracy. In this case, the WORST thing you can do is ask that kleptocracy to sell it to a private firm. That way, the people in charge get kickbacks to select the worst-qualified middleman to run the system. As to whether they will actually make the system work is debatable. But they will not negotiate with unions, and, heck, they may not even do what they claim they will. I don't know of any company who feels anything is more important than profits, even if it comes to doing a job.

By the city lighting department not doing their assigned job on a cost competiive basis they are sucking valuable funds away from the tasks that would be of much higher use to the citizens of the city. Like schools, fire, police buses, garbage collection and ambulances. By protecting overly expensive solutions they are sucking funds away from departments that could help provide a much better quality of life for it's citizens.

But that's what private companies do when they become contractors. They take scarce funds that are used for important civic purposes [[police, fire, transit, garbage collection, emergency services) and line their pockets with the profits while forcing austerity measures on the work force and physical plant. If you don't see that, I wonder how much you've studied the facts of privatization.

The Cities huge loss of people comes because citizens don't believe their tax dollars are being spent the way it should. The city is hemoraghing people and their tax dollars because of it. The citizens are demanding safe streets and lights that stay on. Protecting workers at a redundant, overpriced, power distribution system is not getting them the safe streets.

The city's population loss is attributable to many things: Freeway building, opening up suburbs for broad-brush zoning and new construction, postwar Defense Department plans for spreading industry out, the lack of large industrial parcels in the city, the switch from streetcars to buses, the lack of greenfield space in the city, the mass exodus from American cities after World War II, the GI Bill, the Housing Acts of the 1950s and 1960s, blockbusting, redlining, racism, lack of nationwide urban policy, a generational mistrust of cities, changing tastes, federal subsidies for suburbs and much more. This has been worsened here by restrictive wording in our state constitution regarding annexation, mass transit and constitutional change, aggravated racism, fractured local government and more. To claim that people moved out of the city because of misused tax dollars would mean that people moved out of the city starting in the 1980s. People have been moving out of Detroit since Ford made his 1 millionth car in 1915. My grandpa moved out of Detroit in the 1920s, when, arguably, it was one of the best-managed, richest, most forward-thinking cities in the world.

Also the city is not the Federal or state government. The cities sole purpose should be providing the best services it's residents tax dollars can afford, not unsustainable job creation.

Well, there has to be a balance. But to ignore all the factors that have created the problem and helped make Detroit what it is today just seems like a pat way of decrying "socialism" or scoring points for "free enterprise." In effect, we've spent the last 60-odd years subsidizing suburban growth and having almost no plan for our central city. It's small wonder that proponents of privatization want to ignore all this vital history and use the city's financial situation to ram more privatization [[which maybe won't even work) down Detroiters' throats.

I am, however, heartened to hear you approve of governments using money for job creation. If we can just get our regional act together and stop looking for quick neoliberal fixes, maybe we can get their attention and get some funding for light rail, commuter rail and other goodies.

[Wingnatic]

''Trace it back to the introduction of fluoride in the public drinking water system. It was first started in 1875, and today not one single person from that time period is still alive! ''
lol ! Boy if Pat were still alive , I'd vote for him because he was honest . I don't think people were quite ready for his '' bullfeathers '' platform
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDmvhQ-aZEE

[Detroitnerd]

''Trace it back to the introduction of fluoride in the public drinking water system. It was first started in 1875, and today not one single person from that time period is still alive! ''
lol ! Boy if Pat were still alive , I'd vote for him because he was honest . I don't think people were quite ready for his '' bullfeathers '' platform
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDmvhQ-aZEE

It all boils down to ... "purity of essence."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjL9g3s6Fro

[ndavies]

I agree it's due to mismanagement by the city managers and their elected bosses.

I can fire a company that for non performance of the services I'm paying for. I can't fire the Detroit lighting department. The Detroit lighting Department [[or any other government department) knows it's protected and won't get off it's ass because it doesn't have to. There are no consequences for it's utter failure. The fear of being fired is a great motivator.

It's the continued inability of the city managers to do the things to improve the efficiency of the city that are keeping it where it is.

The city has been running this way since the 1960's. That job protection thing they have going on isn't and has never worked. The city doesn't have the cash to continue to run this way. It needs a complete house cleaning top to bottom. Protecting a service that continues to cost far more than the city can outsource it for is not moving forward.

Also the individual reasons people left are multitudes. Bringing people back in is going to take 2 things. Improved services and lower taxes. It's the only way you'll get people back. Protecting Bloated city departments from being cut is not going to do it.

Unfortunately, with the cities decrepit accounting systems we don't even know the other places this kind of non-performance is happing.

[Detroitnerd]

I agree it's due to mismanagement by the city managers and their elected bosses.

I can fire a company that for non performance of the services I'm paying for. I can't fire the Detroit lighting department. The Detroit lighting Department [[or any other government department) knows it's protected and won't get off it's ass because it doesn't have to. There are no consequences for it's utter failure. The fear of being fired is a great motivator.

It's the continued inability of the city managers to do the things to improve the efficiency of the city that are keeping it where it is.

The city has been running this way since the 1960's. That job protection thing they have going on isn't and has never worked. The city doesn't have the cash to continue to run this way. It needs a complete house cleaning top to bottom. Protecting a service that continues to cost far more than the city can outsource it for is not moving forward.

Also the individual reasons people left are multitudes. Bringing people back in is going to take 2 things. Improved services and lower taxes. It's the only way you'll get people back. Protecting Bloated city departments from being cut is not going to do it.

Unfortunately, with the cities decrepit accounting systems we don't even know the other places this kind of non-performance is happing.

I don't think our disagreement is that big. It think much of it hinges on our different views of privatization. It is promoted as a cure-all, but the truth is definitely a lot more complicated than you might at first think. Sure, you can fire a company if they don't furnish the services they promised to, but what makes you think they will do any better as long as Detroit's corrupt ruling class remains in power? I fear the worst in that regard.

Actually, the cure for Detroit's problems isn't taking civic functions and handing them over to companies that only care about their bottom line. The solution is more democracy, not less. The solution involves more regionalism, not establishing a bunch of private fiefdoms. At some point, we in this region have to get past the barriers that we've been using to rationalize the past and promote good, regional planning and shed the kleptocrats who win when we all fight against each other, black and white, city and suburb, rich and poor.

If we can do that, I believe we'll have them on the run, and be on a path to better public services for all. Maybe we'll even be able to get some federal money, change the state constitution, and begin forging a genuine political identity for metro Detroit.

I know, hope springs eternal. But you gotta start somewhere.

[R8RBOB]

I know people wish for the best, but it is time to realize that Detroit's rebirth will require something no one is provided: the dollars.

Detroit can merge all its services and land with the suburbs and it will not be enough. Detroit's history was that of a industrial base but our industries are now overseas and places like Detroit are feeling the effects. The suburbs can't save Detroit because they depended on the same industries that fled the United States for China. What does the future holds? Uncertainty unless a energy source or minerals are found in Detroit because that is the only way we are going to get BIG, BIG money in Detroit.

[Detroitnerd]

I know people wish for the best, but it is time to realize that Detroit's rebirth will require something no one is provided: the dollars.

Detroit can merge all its services and land with the suburbs and it will not be enough. Detroit's history was that of a industrial base but our industries are now overseas and places like Detroit are feeling the effects. The suburbs can't save Detroit because they depended on the same industries that fled the United States for China. What does the future holds? Uncertainty unless a energy source or minerals are found in Detroit because that is the only way we are going to get BIG, BIG money in Detroit.

I think the BIG MONEY phase of Detroit actually did more to hurt its long-term viability than to ensure it. What we need in Detroit is a steady supply of money, regional vision and honest government. It amazes me that foreign companies have no problem operating manufacturing in the Detroit area, just our short-sighted American companies have no interest in doing so. Perhaps it's because the Europeans are already unionized and taxed, and feel no stigma with working in our area, given its union and taxes. Why can Germany [[ThuyssenKrupp AG) and Russia [[Severstal) run manufacturing operations in our area, but not American firms? Maybe it's because they're not waiting for the last union organizer to die or the last tax to be outlawed.

[R8RBOB]

I think the BIG MONEY phase of Detroit actually did more to hurt its long-term viability than to ensure it. What we need in Detroit is a steady supply of money, regional vision and honest government. It amazes me that foreign companies have no problem operating manufacturing in the Detroit area, just our short-sighted American companies have no interest in doing so. Perhaps it's because the Europeans are already unionized and taxed, and feel no stigma with working in our area, given its union and taxes. Why can Germany [[ThuyssenKrupp AG) and Russia [[Severstal) run manufacturing operations in our area, but not American firms? Maybe it's because they're not waiting for the last union organizer to die or the last tax to be outlawed.

Ok, the BIG part was used to generalize but you are correct. Detroit needs a money supply that would used for building and not stuffing in said pockets. As for regional cooperation, I'm for it but the suburbs are hurting as much as Detroit. They have overstretched themselves and now everyone is crying broke.

[terryh]

I feel educated and enlightened by youre posts DetroitNerd! Makes sense to me.......

[English]

^ I agree. Detroitnerd's posts are just great. Whether I agree or disagree, I always learn something.

Kudos to all for a great thread. This is DetroitYES at its best. I'm glad the Dateline special got people talking about nuts and bolts...

[Kevgoblue]

More accolades to Detroitnerd. Very thoughtful and well articulated responses.

No question the whole region will suffer as a result of the decline of American manufacturing. But in regards to the condition of the actual city of Detroit one must not overlook the effects of sprawl. The demographic shifts in the region has to be the most extreme example of disinvestment that our country has ever seen. Disinvestment physically, intellectually and economically.

[R8RBOB]

More accolades to Detroitnerd. Very thoughtful and well articulated responses.

No question the whole region will suffer as a result of the decline of American manufacturing. But in regards to the condition of the actual city of Detroit one must not overlook the effects of sprawl. The demographic shifts in the region has to be the most extreme example of disinvestment that our country has ever seen. Disinvestment physically, intellectually and economically.

Good point about the sprawl. L. Brooks Patterson was one of those big heads who loved sprawl. Other cities and counties across can use Detroit as an example as what not to do. Isolate your hub city. One of the major issues that Detroit faced was not only did they have to compete against other cities for businesses, events, conventions but they had to compete against their own suburbs which choked the entire region.

[Detroitnerd]

Aw shucks. Thanks, guys.