Expert: Different approach could have helped Detroit avoid bankruptcy filing

**professorscott** · September-23-13, 03:43 PM

Originally Posted by Detroitnerd

Lansing abrogated its own agreement to share revenue with Detroit.

OK, great; let's go back to 2011 and give the D the, what was it, couple hundred large that people say the state owes it? Cool, now here we are in 2013 and everything is the same, only it's happening a few months later. So I'm writing this post in mid December or early January instead of now.

Meanwhile, for a decade and more, month after month, Detroit was maintaining an inflated staff of unnecessary bureaucrats while its population and revenue shrank, and paying the Mastercard with the Visa. But sure, blame everybody else.

**Detroitnerd** · September-23-13, 04:03 PM

Originally Posted by professorscott

OK, great; let's go back to 2011 and give the D the, what was it, couple hundred large that people say the state owes it? Cool, now here we are in 2013 and everything is the same, only it's happening a few months later. So I'm writing this post in mid December or early January instead of now.

Meanwhile, for a decade and more, month after month, Detroit was maintaining an inflated staff of unnecessary bureaucrats while its population and revenue shrank, and paying the Mastercard with the Visa. But sure, blame everybody else.

I think I acknowledged that Detroit's government wasn't trouble-free and that the situation was bad. And that wasn't my point. My point is that this is what Lansing wanted to happen, and it's completely obvious that it was engineered to go this way on purpose.

It's like having a ship docked in a marina. You agreed to paint it and the marina owner agreed to lend you a pump so it wouldn't sink. You painted it and ... he took away your pump, just as he was readying a change in the club charter about ships that sink below a certain line becoming property of the marina ...

Go ahead and change the subject or argue half-measures. Pile on [[crypto-racist) invective about the people running the city. It doesn't change how this was all planned out way in advance, how it was all done in the sneakiest and most underhanded of ways, down to the date Orr was appointed so Detroit had no choice in the matter.