Even Detroit children marched against Jones Day in Cleveland March 25, 2013.

Jones Day is city’s “restructuring counsel” under EM Kevyn Orr 

Clients include:

• Banks who hold most of city’s debt
• Major media, including McClatchy, which owns News and Freep
• Far right-wingers opposed to Voting Rights Act, contraception and abortion, corporate regulation
• The tobacco industry  

By Diane Bukowski 

CLEVELAND – A busload of Detroiters protested the emergency manager takeover of their city outside the Cleveland, Ohio offices of Jones Day March 25, the first day of for Jones Day attorney Kevyn Orr’s tenancy as Detroit EM.  The Jones Day law firm is the “restructuring consultant” for Detroit. 

Ranging from young children to seniors with walkers, marchers picketed for two hours in snow and cold, chanting, “Jones Day has got to go,” “Kevyn Orr, get out the door,” and “Detroit will live and not die.” 

Marchers challenge third largest law firm in the world.

Jones Day staff  brought coffee and tea to the picket line, which the protesters would not touch, but executives refused to answer questions from the media. 

Jones Day execs watch protest; Jones Day is not known for “diversity,” although Detroit EM Kevyn Orr headed their diversity recruitment division.

Jones Day is the third largest law firm in the world, with 2,407 attorneys and gross revenues of $1.6 billion in 2012. It was founded in Cleveland and is currently managed by Stephen Brogan out of its Washington office. It has 37 offices across the globe, in the U.S., Australia, Brazil, England, France, Spain, Italy, Russia, both Chinas, Japan, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (where it has three).

Former Detroit school board member Marie Thornton was among the protesters. 

“Here we are in Cleveland, walking in front of Jones Day with seniors and babies,” Thornton said. “They had the nerve to bring hot coffee to us, while taking complete control of our city. This is a complete travesty.’ 

Senior marches with walker, determined to save Detroit from clutches of Jones Day.

Rev. Charles Williams, leader of the Michigan chapter of the National Action Network (NAN), said “We believe Jones Day and Kevyn Orr’s real goal is to protect the banks, in addition to disenfranchising our people. We are standing up and calling on other folks across the country to join us as we protest at Jones Day locations. This is just the beginning. This is a protracted struggle that will continue until we get our vote back. We fought too hard and marched too long. Too many of us were hit by water hoses, bit by dogs, and lynched; too much of our blood has been shed.” 

Pastors Charles Williams II of NAN and Cleveland pastor Aaron Ellis, who promised to bring hundreds more to next protest.

Jones Day represents most of the global banks which hold the City of  Detroit’s total debt of over $12.9 billion, including UBS AG, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch,  and Muriel Siebert and Co., an affiliate of the SBS Financial Group. (See   )

“I am very very upset that the EM going to strip the history of Detroit away from our children’s children,” Phyllis McMillon, President of AFSCME Local 542 which represents Recreation Department workers, said during the protest. “The citizens of Detroit will not have access to the taxes they pay in their own city. They are planning to take away Belle Isle like they took away Jean Klock Park in Benton Harbor.  Roger Penske, who wants Belle Isle, and others said they are going to donate vehicles to the city, but contractors will be driving them, while city workers are laid off.”

Marchers chanted, “Detroit will live and not die.”

Wonder why Detroit media including the Detroit News and Free Press strongly favor the installation of Orr and Jones Day and the elimination of Detroiters’ right to self-determination? 

Jones Day represents some of the biggest media and media-related companies in the country, including the McClatchy Company (formerly Knight-Ridder), which owns the News and Freep. Others include DirecTV, GE, Goldman Sachs, Halliburton, Lehman Brothers Holdings, Liberty Media Group, Time Warner, the Tribune Co. and the Washington Post Co. 

Jones Day security officer at left threatened to have this reporter arrested when she tried to go inside to talk to Jones Day spokesperson.

The law firm is tied to ultraconservative organizations including the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute (co-founded by Charles Koch of the infamous Koch Brothers), the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, and the Center for  Competitive Enterprise. It produced U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, appointed by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan in 1986.

Many Jones Day clients oppose provisions of the National Voting Rights Act, patients’ rights to contraceptive care and abortion at federally- funded religious hospitals, regulation of  corporate executives under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and anti-trust laws.

It is notorious for representing the tobacco industry for decades in state and national litigation that continues to the present.

It was cold! Marie Thornton, in middle, bundled up in blanket.

Most recently, Jones Day partner Michael Carvin spoke at a Heritage Foundation briefing on the “(Un)Constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act,” in Washington, D.C, as the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Shelby County v. Holder. 

Section 5, which Shelby County, Alabama is trying to overturn, requires that certain States and localities, located primarily in the South and Southwest, obtain federal preclearance for all voting changes before they may be implemented. To obtain preclearance, a jurisdiction must demonstrate that the change neither has a discriminatory purpose nor a discriminatory effect. 

Snyder comes to Clieveland from Berlin, Hitler’s home.

White voters are “wide open to electing black Democrats … as much as white Democrats,” Carvin told the audience, according to a Feb. 24 article in the Roll Call newspaper.

Jones Day, represented the National Federation of Independent Business which along with dozens of other groups unsuccessfully challenged “ObamaCare” before the  U.S. Supreme Court.

In league with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, it zeroed in on the contraception mandate in the health care reform law.

Cleveland even has a monument to Detroit’s City Council, a giant rubber stamp (lol).

“Forty Catholic agencies and institutions across the country launched a veritable legal holy war against the Obama administration, filing coordinated lawsuits against the Department of Health and Human Services over the proposed contraception mandate in the new health care reform law,” Mother Jones magazine reported in Feb. 2012,  

“The effort is being spearheaded by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which has been clashing with the Obama administration for months over the mandate and other White House decisions that the bishops view as anti-Catholic. The church certainly brings a lot of money and high-powered legal fire to the fight—the lawsuits were filed by the Jones Day law firm, where Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once worked.” 

Edward Moore, at front, said, “The federal and county governments are in deficits and they don’t have EM’s. I’ll be damned if Detroit will have one.”

In 2008, Jones Day represented the Free Enterprise Fund in a challenge to provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act before the U.S. Supreme Court. 

Sarbanes-Oxley is a federal law that sets stricter standards for U.S. corporations and accounting firms. It requires top management to individually certify the accuracy of financial information and increases the severity of penalties for fraudulent activities. The bill was enacted in response to major corporate and accounting scandals including Enron, Tyco International, and WorldCom among others.

In June 2010, the USSC held in a 5-4 vote that restrictions on removal of members of the  Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which supervises Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, were unconstitutional. The act had limited the power of the U.S. President to remove the principal officer of the PCAOB.

Marchers snubbed Jones Day coffee tray.

Most notoriously, Jones Day represented R.J. Reynolds and Phillip Morris, two of four defendants, against lawsuits from 46 state attorney generals, which resulted in the 1998 “Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement.” That agreement provided $206 billion over 25 years in compensation to the states for Medicaid-related health care costs resulting from tobacco smoking.

Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue, as it was then known, authored a 460-page document setting forth common arguments against the tobacco companies, and then refuting them.

To this day, Jones Day continues to defend tobacco companies against ongoing litigation, arguing meanwhile for changes in the MSA that would benefit the companies.

Jones Day Cleveland HQ glowers over the city.

Published on Mar 26, 2013

Overturning Emergency Manager In Detroit! – - A No Struggle, No Development Production! By KennySnod – - Overturning Emergency Manager In Detroit!

We oppose Emergency Managers because they rob us of our right to elect our own local representatives and deny democratic self-rule at the local level. We demand our elected leadership remember that they were elected by the same people who will voted out Public Act 4 on Nov. 6th, 2012. We demand that you abide by their decision. Now we’re working to “Overturn Emergency Manager In Detroit!” We ask you to

Sign our “White House Petition: At: http://wh.gov/wGJK

• End the Consent Agreement/ No Emergency Manager.
• Begin the Justice Department Intervention, and
•  Stop Voter Suppression and Constitutional Violations.
• We also ask you to join us in our 1) Our Mass demonstrations, rallies, press conferences to protest and denounce the actions of Governor Snyder and his collaborators;
•  To expose the criminal nature of the banks and the corporations who are at the root of the financial crisis in Detroit and throughout the State of Michigan;
• We must link this struggle in Detroit with the plight of other cities throughout Michigan like Benton Harbor, Flint, Highland Park, Inkster, Ecorse, Muskegon. As well as dozens of other cities in the USA like California, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Rhode Island and many others facing similar crisis.

3/25/2013 – - A No Struggle, No Development Production! By Kenny Snodgrass, Activist, Photographer, Videographer, Author of 1} From Victimization To Empowerment… www.trafford.com/07-0913  eBook available at www.ebookstore.sony.com
2} The World As I’ve Seen It! My Greatest Experience! {Photo Book}
YouTube: I have over 390 Video’s, over 133,300 hits averaging 4,700 a month on my YouTube channel @ www.YouTube.com/KennySnod

Council vote expected April 2 or 9; body’s last chance to stand up for Detroit, espouse Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream

Major federal lawsuit against new EM Act 436 filed March 28 as protesters march, occupy Coleman A. Young Municipal Centr.

By Diane Bukowski 

March 31, 2013

Dr. Martin Luther King leads freedom march in Detroit, 1963. It was the first time he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.

DETROIT – Detroit’s City Council has one last chance to stand up for the people against the bankers’ seizure of the country’s largest and poorest Black majority city March 25. 

They blew earlier chances nearly a year ago April 4, 2012, the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, with the 5-4 passage of a disastrous consent agreement. Most recently the Council failed to pursue its legal right to challenge Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder’s appointment of Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr in court. 

Council Pres. Pro-Tem Gary Brown

Now, Council President Pro-Tem Gary Brown is pushing for the Council to approve a contract with Orr’s previous employer, the Jones Day law firm, according to inside sources. He wants the Council to vote Tuesday, April 2 at its regular session, but the vote may be delayed until April 9. 

Snyder and Detroit Mayor Dave Bing tapped Jones Day, the world’s third largest law firm, to become the city’s “re-structuring counsel” under newly-minted Public Act 436.  Orr worked for the firm from 1984 until his alleged resignation to take over as EM. 

“I look forward to meeting [Orr] sometime today and talking about  . . . how do we reduce crime in the city of Detroit,” Brown told WWJ radio March 25, the day Orr took office in the Coleman A. Young Center next to Detroit Mayor Dave Bing. Bing refused to fight the EM appointment. Orr’s spokeman  is William Nowling, a former campaign aide to Snyder. 

Brown did not address what may be the biggest crime in Detroit’s history.  That crime will reap huge profits for Jones Day and its client banks, which hold most of the City of Detroit’s $16.9 billion debt, a key factor cited in the takeover. 

These include UBS AG, which just paid a $1.5 billion fine to the U.S. Department of Justice for interest-rate rigging, Citigroup, which just settled another lawsuit brought by cities and pension funds for $730 million, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch, and Muriel Siebert and Co., an affiliate of the SBS Financial Group. Their role is confirmed by debt documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request  by the Moratorium NOW! Coalition, and postings on the Jones Day website. 

Debt documents are available at https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0BwEVDvudxHBTX1lMcXFLdzNOSEU/edit?usp=sharing&pli=1

Most of the banks are also defendants in lawsuits world-wide brought by cities, states and investors, which claim they manipulated the “London Interbank-Offered Rate” (LIBOR), to increase their profits while defrauding public and private investors. It is estimated that $800 to $1000 TRILLION worth of securities and loans were affected. 

“A lawyer shall not represent a client if the representation of that client will be directly adverse to another client . . .” say the Michigan Rules of Professional Conduct, section 1.7(a), Conflict of Interest. 

Attorney Jerome Goldberg

Attorney Jerome Goldberg of The Moratorium NOW Coalition Against Foreclosures, Evictions, and Utility Shut-offs earlier said that the role of Jones Day clients in Detroit’s economic collapse is indeed “directly adverse” to that of Detroit’s people.

“[Michigan State Treasurer Andy] Dillon is fully aware of the real basis for the city’s deficit,” Goldberg said.  “He and the city’s first financial review team concluded that without interest payments to the banks, the city would have more than enough revenue to fund its expenses. Their report showed the city owes a total debt of over $16.9 billion, with $4.9 billion in interest. The banks’ fraudulent lending procedures, including a $1.5 billion pension obligation certificates (POC) loan [by UBS AG and SBS] in 2004, forced the city to pay an additional $1 billion to hedge funds for betting the wrong on which way interest rates would go.” 

Goldberg said that money should be spent instead on the people of Detroit, including jobs, affordable housing, street lighting and other services. He called for the city to declare a moratorium on its debt payments, an action which working and poor people across the globe have demanded, protesting by the millions, as banks exact draconian austerity measures. 

Opponents including the Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network filed a federal lawsuit against PA 436 March 27, which if successful would negate Orr’s appointment and that of other EM’s, almost exclusively in Michigan’s majority Black cities. The lawsuit says PA 436 is returning African-Americans in the state to virtual conditions of slavery. It cites discrimination based on race and wealth, and violations of the National Voting Rights Act and the 13^th and 14^th Amendments guaranteeing due process. (See separate article on lawsuit. Click on EM lawsuit 3 27 13 for full text.) 

Over 200 protesters then marched on the federal court building in downtown Detroit, and occupied the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center for two hours demanding to meeting with Orr. 

Protesters jam CAYMC lobby March 28, 2013.

“We are fighting for our children, we shall not be moved, just like a tree that’s standing b the water, we shall not be moved,” the occupiers sang. Sharpton promised that thousands more will descend on the city after NAN’s national conference next week. 

“There will be a threat to everyone in this nation if the emergency manager in Detroit stands,”  Sharpton said.  “If they get away with it in Detroit, they can do it all over the country.  .  .  . This is not a march, it is a walk to file a lawsuit. When we march, there will be thousands. We will engage in non-violent civil disobedience, and fight until this is overturned.  .  .” 

Protesters call Synder a dictator in Benton Harbor, during annual parade.

Meanwhile, Gov. Snyder and Wall Street ratings agencies celebrated the takeover. 

“Moody’s Rating Service today announced that it has revised the State of Michigan’s Rating Outlook for all bonds to Positive from Stable,” a March 28 release from State Treasurer Andy Dillon’s office said. “Moody’s also affirmed Michigan’s General Obligation Credit Rating of “Aa2.” 

Snyder and Dillon met with all three ratings agencies in New York the previous week, according to the release. 

Detroit EM Kevyn Orr is waiting to dine on Detroit’s assets.

“This is great news for Michigan, on the heels of our recent visit and on-going discussions with credit rating agencies,” Snyder said. “We have been optimistic that Wall Street would recognize all of the hard work we have put in, to get Michigan’s fiscal house in order.  This is yet another sign that Michigan is the comeback state.” 

The release added, “Earlier this month, Moody’s indicated that expanded oversight of Detroit’s finances by Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr under Public Act 436 of 2012 would ‘help expedite the city’s progress towards financial and operational stability.’ . . . The EM’s ability to amend the current year budget…could be a first step toward imposing fiscal stability and improving the city’s illiquid cash position.”

Standard and Poor’s, which is facing a $5 billion fraud lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice, chimed in earlier. 

“The appointment of an (emergency manager) allows the city to move forward in a more efficient manner, continuing to make the types of adjustments necessary to regain structural balance,” S&P credit analyst Jane Hudson Ridley said in a statement.

Standard & Poor’s, banks responsible for “predatory lending” to Detroit.. Here Joe O’Keefe of Fitch Ratings and Stephen Murphy of Standard and Poor;s (center) press UBS $1.5 billion debt on City Council Jan. 31, 2004.

Meanwhile, however, S&P is keeping Detroit’s general obligation debt at junk level, citing budget deficits, cash-flow problems, and long-term liabilities including pension and retiree health benefits. Amazingly, they also mentioned potential payments on interest rate swaps. Ironically, keeping Detroit’s ratings downgraded provides more interest for the banks on new loans.

Millions protest bank-imposed austerity measures in Spain.

Representatives of S&P and Fitch Ratings pressed for the UBS AG $1.5 billion POC loan at the City Council table in 2004, despite objections from residents, pension board and union leaders that the loan represented tremendous risk if the market “went south,” as it indeed did in 2008.

In addition to their role in representing criminal banks, Jones Day represents clients far right wing clients opposed to Voting Rights Act, contraception, and corporate regulation, and the major media, including McClatchy, which owns the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press. They are one of the major law firms which represented the tobacco industry against the states in a 1998 master settlement agreement, and continues to pursue action on their behalf to diminish payments under that agreement. (For details on these issues, click on http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/27/detroiters-march-in-cleveland-tell-jones-day-and-banks-get-out/.)

For history of the disastrous $1.5 billion pension bond deal, written largely by this author in the pages of the Michigan Citizen, click on Pension bond stories MC.

Al Phillips, President of AFSCME Local 457, Detroit Health Department. Born Feb. 15, 1937, Died April 16, 1994.

If labor movement had listened then, the people would be thriving today

Pres, Al Phillips headed local union for Health Dept., now privatized

(VOD: the resolution below was brought by AFSCME Local 457 delegates to the AFSCME International Convention in 1992. It warned then that the union movement needed to take up the battle against the banks. A resolution against privatization which included the same call for a debt moratorium was passed by the AFSCME Presidents representing Detroit locals on April 15, 1994. The anniversary of Local 457 Pres. Al Phillips’ death the following day, April 16, 1994, is now approaching. It is long past time for a mass movement of working and poor people to overturn the power of the banks.)

AFSCME Local 457 President Al Phillips is shown at right with his local’s delegation to the national march in Washington against the first U.S. war against Iraq.

In 2010, French workers carried out a general strike and protests in the millions across the country to stop changes to their pension systems, which allowed workers to retire at 60. The government wanted to change the age to 62. The workers were victorious. Photo shows protest in Lyon.

 (VOD: The Detroit City Council, under orders from its bosses anointed by the consent agreement, approved a contract with Milliman, Inc. to review the city’s pension fund systems, with the eventual objective of a takeover. Recent federal indictments of pension fund attorneys are linked to this objective. Detroit EM Kevyn Orr will have the power to appoint new officials to achieve the pension takeover.)

More on this is coming, but meanwhile,  following is a statement from the Detroit pension systems’ actuary. For comments from pension officials which state the funds are on solid grounds, including 102 percent funding of Detroit Police and Fire, and 83 percent funding of the General system, click on http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130321/METRO/303210470. A GRS report on the pensions’ status as of June 30, 2012 is due for release soon.)

GRS Views on Recent City of Detroit Studies  

February 27, 2013 www.gabrielroeder.com  

In Detroit in 2010, city workers including police and fire held large protest against Bing’s attempt to take over their pensions systems.

Gabriel, Roeder, Smith & Company (GRS) is the retained actuary for both the General Retirement System of the City of Detroit and the Police and Fire Retirement System of the City of Detroit. GRS is a Michigan based company with a national practice, and is a leader in Public Sector Retirement Consulting. Milliman, Inc., a Seattle based consulting firm, was called in recently to perform certain actuarial analyses of the City of Detroit’s Retirement Systems for the review team under the financial stability agreement.

GRS performs an actuarial valuation of both Systems each year. The actuarial valuations develop the liabilities and funded ratios of the plans as of the valuation date. They also develop the City’s contribution rates for the fiscal year that starts one year after the valuation date, based on established funding policies. In addition, our reports typically present information that allows the reader to understand the extent to which contribution rates may be expected to increase (or decrease) in the future and may provide recommendations on the operation of the System.

City workers protest pension cuts July 26, 2012.

An article in the February 26, 2013 Detroit Free Press “Police, fire pension costs could crush Detroit’s finances, study shows” asserts that Milliman has “audited” our 2010 valuation reports and found that “the GRS numbers … don’t hold water.” We do not have access to the alleged audit by Milliman and thus can neither confirm nor deny that the Milliman report contains that statement. However, we can confirm the following:

• The GRS numbers do hold water.

• GRS has not provided any information to Milliman in conjunction with an audit of the 2010 valuations.

• A traditional audit of an actuary’s work almost always involves an exchange of information between the retained actuary and the auditing actuary.

• Conditions are changing rapidly at the City. Any review or audit of work done in the past must take into account differences between current conditions and conditions in effect when the original work was performed. 

AFSCME protest at CAYMC.

The article goes on to state that contributions to the two Retirement Systems could rise to very high levels over the next several years, when expressed as a percentage of payroll. That is no surprise, given the shrinking covered payroll and the relatively large number of retirees. Contrary to the implications in the article, there is no inconsistency between the 2010 funded ratios calculated by GRS and potentially high future contribution requirements estimated by Milliman.

Gabriel Roeder Smith & Company stands by its work for the City of Detroit Retirement Systems. Our reports are accurate, complete, and provide policy makers with the tools they need to make informed decisions.

We are continuing to work with both Retirement Systems to provide meaningful long term solutions that all stakeholders can embrace.

Children ride their bikes past a City of Stockton recreational building.

Court says city of Stockton, California may proceed with bankruptcy

• Creditors including Wells Fargo, BOA, Union Bank NA, IBM, Key Government Finance, Ambac, others object;  judge rebukes them
• Retirees still  in danger if federal law trumps state law guaranteeing pensions
• Detroit advocates of bankruptcy–beware

(VOD editor: As of April 14, 2013, VOD has corrected the original version of this post as follows:  A representative of The Bank of Stockton  contacted VOD earlir about the caption to the photo previously used at the top of the story, which showed a downtown building in Stockton displaying an ad for the Bank of Stockton. She indicated that the sub-title used for the photo when clicking on it appeared to indicate the Bank of Stockton itself was bankrupt, and she mis-stated the actual headline of the story, which remains as above. VOD responded that it would change the sub-title of the photo to clarify that it was not the Bank of Stockton that declared bankruptcy. Later, VOD received the following rather strongly, perhaps maliciously, worded email from the Bank’s attorney:

Rather than take the responsible action that I demanded, below, you reconfigured your story slightly to attempt to diminish the libelous nature and in so doing added a line, below a photograph of the advertisement for the Bank appearing on a downtown Stockton building, which now reads: “The Bank of Stockton is one of the city’s creditors.” And then you further called out the Bank by name in a list of creditors appearing below the referenced photograph. Your apparent source for the assertion that the Bank is a creditor of the City of Stockton is a document that is linked to your article. Your article references a linked document that you assert is “a creditors’ list from federal court records.” At the time I wrote my April 3 email, I gave you the benefit of the doubt that you had done adequate research to confirm the document was what you said it was and that the Bank was actually a creditor. We have since confirmed that neither is the case. The document is not an official creditors’ list as you claim, but likely is only a list of interested parties obtaining notice of the bankruptcy proceedings. In addition, the Bank is categorically not a creditor of the City. As a result, your article is false on two counts and both false claims adversely affect the Bank, particularly your falsely lumping the Bank in with the list of “capital market creditors [who] had failed to negotiate in good faith in a pre-bankruptcy mediation, as required by law, and [who were] also criticized [for] their refusal to pay part of the bill for mediation.” As a result of my April 3 demand and the exchange with Ms. Brusa, you apparently sought to temper the libelous nature of your original article by making the above-referenced modifications. The problem for your publication, however, is that in doing so you actually doubled down on the falsity of the assertions made against the Bank—assertions that—had you performed customary and appropriate research—should never have been made. You and your publication were therefore either reckless in republishing the story or are now republishing the story maliciously because the Bank pointed out the problems with your original story. Either scenario creates substantial liability for you and your publication. The Bank renews its demands for a complete retraction of the story, a cessation of use of the Bank’s advertisement in connection with the City of Stockton bankruptcy and an apology for the false assertions leveled against the Bank. You have two business days to do so. In all other respects, the Bank renews the demands and admonitions in my April 3 email. Please confirm by return email to me as soon as the required actions have been taken. Again, the Bank reserves all legal and equitable remedies to address this situation should you elect not to comply 

Mon, Apr 1 2013

By Jonathan Weber

SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) – A federal judge on Monday approved the city of Stockton’s petition for bankruptcy in a case that sets the stage for a lengthy battle between bondholders and the California pension system.

U.S. NINTH DISTRICT BANKRUPTCY JUDGE CHRISTOPHER KLEIN

In a case being studied by other cash-strapped American cities including Detroit, U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Christopher Klein’s decision was a setback for bondholders and insurers who had resisted the California city’s bankruptcy filing. Stockton is the largest U.S. city ever to file for bankruptcy.

The judge also signaled that the California Public Employees Retirement System’s [Calpers] position in the case was not above review. Stockton, a city of 300,000, has so far not reduced pension payments to retired city workers, although it has eliminated retiree healthcare benefits.

“This does not mean there is not potentially a serious issue involving Calpers,” Judge Klein said. “But at this point I do not know what that is.” He added that there were “very complex and difficult questions of law that I can see out there on the horizon,” relating to Calpers.

Stockton, CA city worker leaves city hall in Feb. 2013.

The decision on Stockton marks the start of a lengthy restructuring of the obligations that currently overwhelm its finances, which were crippled by the housing crisis and recession.

Investors in the $3.7 trillion municipal bond market are concerned that if Stockton is able to avoid paying bondholders in full without cutting pension payments, other cities will pursue a similar strategy as they struggle to cope with budget shortfalls.

Kenneth Naehu, head of fixed income at Bel Air Investment Advisors in Los Angeles, agreed that the case could cloud the issue of where bondholders stand in relation to retirees and pension funds in a municipal bankruptcy.

STATEMENT OF STOCKTON, CA DEBT FROM 2011 CAFR

CALPERS ISSUE LOOMS; JUDGE REBUKES CREDITORS

In a lengthy preamble to his ruling, Klein delivered a stinging rebuke to the so-called capital market creditors – mainly the insurers for bondholders who own hundreds of millions of dollars of Stockton debt – who had opposed the bankruptcy filing.

He rejected the arguments of bondholders and insurers that Stockton was not truly insolvent when it sought Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection last summer and that it had improperly failed to seek relief from its pension obligations.

Klein said capital market creditors had failed to negotiate in good faith in a pre-bankruptcy mediation, as required by law, and also criticized their refusal to pay part of the bill for mediation.

Calpers is far from off the hook, but the city’s obligations to the retirement system are properly addressed as part of the effort to finalize a “plan of adjustment” for emerging from bankruptcy, the judge said.

Child defends Detroit retirees during Sept. 30, 2012 Wastewater Treatment Plant strike.

Michael Sweet, a municipal bankruptcy lawyer with Fox Rothschild who is not involved in the case, said the judge’s remarks suggested that “somewhere along the line the city will have to go to Calpers, because otherwise they will have problems with discrimination in the plan.”

A plan of adjustment, like any bankruptcy reorganization plan, cannot favor one group of creditors over another.

“You’re going to see an issue teed up that could go to the U.S. Supreme Court,” Sweet said.

Calpers asserts that California law protects pensioners from any haircut even in bankruptcy, but that position has never been tested in court.

‘SCORCHED EARTH’ TACTICS

Bob Deis, the Stockton city manager who is largely responsible for managing the bankruptcy process, called the judge’s verdict a “vindication” of the city’s position.

Artist Mark Bradford with his mural, “Scorched Earth.”

He criticized the “scorched-earth” legal strategy of the bond creditors as a waste of time and money, and said the city had already spent $6 million to $7 million on the mediation and legal costs.

Assured Guaranty Ltd, one of the bond insurers, said in a statement that it “disagrees” with the judge’s ruling but that it looked forward to working with the city on a “consensual approach” to resolving its debts. A company spokesman also said that it had tried to negotiate with the city prior to bankruptcy, but without success.

Others opposing the city’s bankruptcy included National Public Finance Guarantee Corp, Wells Fargo Bank, the Franklin California High Yield Municipal Fund and Franklin High Yield Tax-Free Income Fund.

Municipal bankruptcy court

Throughout his two hours of comments, the judge made it clear that he thought the city had done everything it could to avoid bankruptcy. He noted that sharp cost-cutting had begun years ago, and that 77 percent of the city’s budget was devoted to already-diminished police and fire services.

Klein agreed that further cuts in public safety and other services were not options.

It was not clear on Monday if any of the capital market creditors would appeal the ruling. A spokesman for Assured Guaranty said the company wanted to see the written ruling before it determined next steps. National Public Finance Guarantee had no comment on a possible appeal.

(Reporting by Jonathan Weber; Additional reporting by Michael Connor in Miami; Editing by Chris Reese, Tiziana Barghini and Will Dunham)

Stockton, California eligible for municipal bankruptcy protection: judge

Related story on Assured Guaranty: http://www.capoliticalreview.com/top-stories/bond-insurer-may-contest-stockton-bankruptcy/

Protesters including DPS board member Tawanna Simpson (r) carried out eviction of EFM Roy Roberts Nov. 12, 2012. Now he in turn has evicted the school board (again) under PA 436.

By Elena Herrada (Notes)

Monday, April 1, 2013 at 10:31pm

Detroit school board member Elena Herrada speaks at forum against EAA Aug. 2, 2012

The elected Detroit School Board members face a new Emergency Manager law, PA 436, which replaces the one the voters repealed. Despite the fact that the language of the ballot initiative stated that repeal of PA 4 would also repeal its predecessor law, and that once the signatures were certified, the emergency manager law would be immediately suspended, none of this came to pass.

Despite the fact that Detroiters pay for a bond iniatiative to build much needed new schools, when the State took over, it sold off or leased our new buildings to charters and to the separate and unequal new experiment, The Educational Achievement Authority.

The Emergency Manager can hold all power over elected officials. This is the greatest perversion of democratic representation; one who is not elected answers to no one, and those of us elected answer to a corporate proxy. Crucial decisions about education are made by share holders and bond holders who know or care nothing of education for poor Black and Brown children. This is economic organ harvesting with full complicity of the state, the philanthropic community and the banks.

Protest against DPS state-appointed CEO Kenneth Burnley June 16, 2005. Student Sasha Alford at front.

We are also being told that the options for voting out the emergency managers is actually a White Only option. None of the municipalities or school districts currently under EM will be eligible for the same option to vote out an EM. This “Grandfather” clause is similar to the Jim Crow laws that exempted Black people from equal protection under the law. This is being challenged; a law suit was filed in Federal Court last week on March 28th in Detroit.

The brutal racism leveled against Detroit- especially Detroit’s most vulnerable children- is something we have not witnessed in our lifetime- those of us under 70 or 80 years old. We have not witnessed state imposed racial and economic segregation; indeed, we were witnesses to court ordered school desegregation, which caused rapid white flight in the 70s, making way for Coleman A. Young to be the longest serving mayor in Detroit history. But it is no longer necessary to vote to run Detroit; indeed, voters run nothing. Detroiters who fought long and hard for representation- and for Latinos, a dream deferred- are watching our voting rights erode before our eyes while newcomers are being given tax abatements and incentives to move into the city.

Emiliano Zapata

The fact that the next election would have been the first in Detroit to offer the possibility of Latino representation via district voting vs. at large is only a small part of the current political moment. A city of 85% African Americans and all Black cities in Michigan have been stripped of voting rights by the state and we are still too numb to coherently make a plan to resist. Anyone elected to office now would have no power to make decisions. It calls into question why anyone would run. (School Board members do not get paid).

The elected school board members proudly return to exile. We invite the Detroit city council members to join us in exile and say NO to captivity; say NO to complicity; say NO to collaboration with those who steal our resources, our future and our city. SAY NO and JOIN THE DPS BOARD in EXILE!

In the words of Emilano Zapata, ” It is better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees.”

Claytown community activist Sheila Crowell (l) explains her concerns about contaminated grounds at new Munger PreK-8 school to community and officials, including (background) State Rep. Virgil Smith.

 Bond project manager claims sites are safe based on inspection by “3rd party” environmental hygienist

DPS admits no removal of contaminated soil was done before constructing Prop S schools

Community fears sites remain dangerous to children and families

By Diane Bukowski with Sheila Crowell 

April 1, 2013

DETROIT — The Chicago school district announced the closure of 54 schools last month, due to a $1 billion debt. The declaration brought back horrific memories of the Detroit Board of Education’s 2005 vote to close 50 schools, the beginning of a Hurricane Katrina that has left the district with only 104 bona fide (non-charter) public schools out of 268 it had in 1999. By 2014, additional closures will reduce that figure to 72. 

Chadsey High School before its demolition.

Sheila Crowell, a community activist, has doggedly followed the demise of Chadsey High School, a storied multi-ethnic landmark, and other schools serving Detroit’s “Claytown” neighborhood on the city’s near west side over the last decade. Southwestern High School,  and Hanneman, O.W. Holmes, Logan and Munger Elementary Schools,  among others, have also been closed. 

Recently, Crowell and her neighbors have focused on environmental and health issues resulting from Chadsey’s demolition, and its replacement by the $22.3 million Munger PreK-8 elementary on what was confirmed to be contaminated soil prior to the construction.

Chadsey during demolition, which left site contaminated with dangerous chemicals including asbestos and lead.

 The construction managers were Turner Construction, a national white-owned company headquartered in New York City, and White Construction, a Black-owned Detroit-based business. Walbridge Aldinger, owned by John Rakolta, a close ally of Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, Brailsford Dunleavy, and Fanning Howey form the overall Bond Program Management Team.

“Carol Weaver [DPS supervisor of community outreach] and the DPS feel the school grounds are safe,” Crowell said. “No one is bucking the DPS, because no one cares about the youth and our 48210 Claytown neighborhood residents, meaning our lives are in danger every day. When the rain comes this spring the so called safe DPS school and park grounds will melt away again, running down onto the school grounds, city of Detroit sidewalks, streets, and alleys, placing the homeowners’ lives and homes in major danger. Does someone have to wait until the ground sinks leaving open holes for a youth or adult to fall into to? All of this and more just so people like Walbridge could make money off the Proposal S Plan.” 

Munger High School, front, during meeting March 1, 2013. Walkways into school were also covered with ice and unsafe.

The demolition and construction were paid for out of a $500.5 million bond issue allegedly approved by Detroit voters as Proposal S in 2010.  (The Wayne County Board of Commissioners ruled that 60 percent of the votes in the election, including all absentee ballots, were not recountable due to irregularities, in response to a challenge by Mayoral candidate Tom Barrow.)

DPS officials at a March 1 meeting called by Crowell and held in the Munger school library admitted no removal of contaminated soil was done prior to the school’s construction, but claimed precautions taken have made the grounds safe.  

MDEQ representatives stand in background during meeting at Munger.

They reiterated what Rachel Lynn of  Brailsford and Dunlavey told Crowell in an email March 29, 2012:

“The soils on school site only (not Dingeman Park) were tested before the start of construction by a 3^rd party environmental hygienist, and the test results showed that the contaminants in the soils were those found in diesel fuel and metals;

Rachel Lynn of Brailsford and Dunleavy, part of DPS Bond Program Management Team.

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) evaluates the risk associated with contaminants by examining the different ways people may be exposed to them, including eating, touching, inhaling dust, breathing vapors, etc.

For the contaminants found in the soils at Munger, and at the levels they were detected, the only way of exposure that posed risk was if the soils were touched or eaten; for all other ways (inhaling, drinking water, breathing vapors, etc.), the contaminants were not present at levels above the acceptable standards set by MDEQ for residential areas;

The imported soil and sand will be tested by the 3^rd party hygienist to confirm that it is free of contaminants and do not pose risk to the students or community;

All soils currently seen piled on site will remain on site and will not be removed and dumped;

This method of managing the soils is a method approved by MDEQ and has been used at schools in Detroit and the suburbs; and

The site will be safe for the students and community as a result of these measures.”

Sheila Crowell makes a point during March 1 meeting.at Munger.

Crowell responded, “If the MDEQ has not or cannot receive copies of all testing done by this third party environmental hygienist who so called tested the Munger School grounds at any level, how would MDEQ be able to say and give the okay the contaminated soil was safe for anyone walking to school, attending school, playing and rolling on school grounds, residents, homeowners, anyone who would put themselves in, on or near the DPS school property, including Dingeman Playfield, both owned by the DPS? The Munger School grounds, Dingeman Playfield, Larkins Alley, homeowners/property on Larkins, Cecil and Martin, etc. must be tested and paid for by DPS. Just because we are a poor neighborhood, we have rights to live & breathe as any other human person living in the USA.”

Shreds of what appears to be orange geofabric on Munger site in July, 2012. Photo by Sheila Crowell.

Crowell proceeded to monitor the site herself repeatedly during and after construction. During one visit to the site in July, 2012, she observed that some of the “geofabric”  barriers were already shredded, among numerous other problems.

In Aug. 2012, VOD went to the site with Crowell and took photos, observing large mounds of soil, standing pools of water, debris including a dog carcass, more orange geofabric that was out of place, and other items which appeared to be evidence of contamination.. VOD published an article by Crowell including those photos along with hers, and VOD commentary, at

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/09/02/new-munger-school-contaminated-soil-standing-water-west-nile-virus/

Sheila Crowell and State Sen. Virgil Smith point out iced over walkway on Munger grounds that they fear will melt in the spring and contaminate new soil laid over old.

Crowell said that since then, she has repeatedly asked the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality to test both the Munger site and Dingeman Playfield, to no avail. During the March 1, 2013 meeting, former Chadsey and current Southwestern High School coach Ron Hardy asked, “Are the geo-fabric barriers waterproof?” 

The MDEQ reps contended that “water infiltration is not necessarily a concern. The possibility of water becoming contaminated is minimal. There is no acute risk.” 

“Why did the Bond Oversight Committee stand by the decision to lay geo-fabric barriers in landscaped areas, not covered by pavement on top of the contaminated soil, then import 12 inches of new sand and top soil to lay on top of the barrier?” Crowell asked. “That’s 12 inches of so called protection which is washing away. A foot of protection. Shame!”

The meeting and walk-though of the Munger grounds, called by Crowell for the community and government officials March 1, 2013, was well-attended. 

Michigan State Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Detroit), State Sen. Virgil Smith (D-Detroit), and Jesse Gonzalez, representing Wayne County Commissioner Ilona Varga were present, along with two MDEQ representatives, Joseph DeGrazia, C.P.G. and Gerald Tiernan, C.P.G. 

Community representatives included Claytown residents Al Nasir and Aswan Almaktary of ACCESS, John Lopes, President of Southwest PRIDE, and Coach Hardy. 

Representing DPS in addition to Weaver were Roderick Brown, Executive Director of Operations for the bond program, Kevin Smith, Chief of Staff to DPS EM Roy Roberts,  Felicia Venable-Akinbode, executive director of DPS Auxiliary Services, and Munger School Principal Deborah Hurst.

State Rep. Rashida Tlaib explains her bill that would require remediation of grounds before new school construction,.

The most striking admission from DPS at the meeting was that nothing was done at Munger or other newly-constructed Prop S schools to actually remove contaminated soil. Many of the schools have been built on sites where old schools laden with asbestos and other contaminates were demolished.

“I have introduced House Bill 4827, which would require an environmental assessment before schools are constructed,” Rep. Tlaib said. (Click on Tlaib 2013-HIB-4278 to read entire bill.)

The bill says public notice of the results of the inspection shall be posted on the school board’s website and published in a newspaper of general circulation.

Standing water turned into ice still on Munger grounds March, 2013.

It further states, “The board or board of directors shall not commence construction of a school building at the site unless a licensed professional engineer has attested under seal that planned reponse activities will at least satisfy the clean-up criteria for limited residential use under Sec. 20120A(1)C and (17) of the Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Act, 1994 PA 451, MCL 324.20120A, or planned corrective action will at least satisfy the cleanup criteria for restricted residential use under part 213 of the Natural Resources and Envionmental Protection Act, 1994 PA 451,  MCL 324.21301A TO 324.21334.”

Ice was on Munger basketball court as well. Sheila Crowell and VOD saw children playing there last fall.

Rep. Tlaib said, “I would rather that the school sites just get completely remediated before the buildings are constructed.” She expressed concerns that DPS would be subject to lawsuits from the community as illnesses related to the contamination develop.

Crowell said she is also concerned about Dingeman Playfield adjacent to the new Munger PreK-8 building. DPS purchased those grounds from the City of Detroit, possibly through Prop S, and is now responsible for them.

“I am very concerned about health issues there for the kids and the parents,” Crowell said. “I want those grounds tested as well.”

Ice pool where trees were planted on Munger grounds by Greening of Detroit.

Conditions on the Munger and Dingeman sites became apparent as the group did a walk-through of the area. But even prior to the walk-through, VOD noted that the sidewalks in front of Munger were covered with  ice and barely accessible for the young children entering and leaving the building,  let alone adults.

During the walk-through, large iced over areas on the grounds were evident, in the same areas VOD observed pools of standing water during its walk-through in Sept. 2012. Also iced over were walkways and a basketball court used by students and the community. Crowell and others expressed concern that when the ice melts, the resulting water will sink into the new soil placed above the contaminated soil and carry contaminants back to the top.

Sheila Crowell and community group planting tree on Dingeman Playfield several years ago. Their community plan for the playground was destroyed by bureacrats; they lost over $508,000 in funding.

Crowell pointed out saplings that the Greening of Detroit had planted on the grounds and expressed doubts  regarding whether they would be contaminated as well, and fail to grow properly. A retired  City of Detroit Recreation Department forester told VOD earlier that the Greening of Detroit does not follow up properly on trees it plants because its young volunteers do not have the needed training.

As we walked through Munger School, images of what had been a vibrant, multi-ethnic, renowned Chadsey High School came to mind, a school destroyed by government officials and contractors greedy for dollars. Chadsey students walked out several times to protest their school’s closing, to no avail. See the video below taken in 2007 by a Chadsey student.

Chadsey High School 2007, uploaded by “death by reflection.” Some clips & pics from Chadsey high school my tenth grade year before I got expelled. Just watch, you might even be in it!! This is a video of a last view of how this school will be remembered! It will be demolished, starting March 8th, 2011. Long live ” The Explorers!”  Comments:

Rachel Hutterson damn!!!MEMORIES MEMORIES; MzSweets1010 man this is just sad…so many memories here and now they’re all gone.. and i thought i could return in a few years and look back on the good times..smh CLASS OF 09!!!

Related articles:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/09/02/new-munger-school-contaminated-soil-standing-water-west-nile-virus/

NEW MUNGER ELEMENTARY SCHOOL WILL NOT SERVE COMMUNITY NEEDS SC

 OCCUPY THE US DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION 2.0

The Battle for Public Schools

From United Opt Out National

April 4, 2013

Helen Moore, leader of Keep the Vote No Takeover, at press conference against Detroit EM takeover, March 22, 2013

Folks can tune in to Detroit’s participation on Saturday April 6 (Helen Moore, leader of Keep the Vote No Takeover, will be speaking at 2 pm). March to the White House at 3 pm.

All four days for the entire event April 4-7  http://www.livestream.com/califather

All other info re: the event can be found here:
http://unitedoptout.com/occupy-doe-2-0-the-battle-for-public-schools-last-minute-details

Administrators of the public education advocacy group UNITED OPT OUT NATIONAL are hosting the second annual event on the grounds of the US Department of Education in Washington, DC on April 4-7, 2013. We ask all of those in support of teachers, students and public schools to attend. The third day will include an organized march to the White House.

Child at DOE protests standardized testing.

The event is a four-day gathering of progressive education activists endeavoring to resist the destructive influences of corporate and for-profit education reforms, which began in previous administrations and persist with the current one. We cannot and will not stand silent as the threats to dismantle our system of public education continue. These threats include the erosion of the teaching profession, excessive use of standardized testing, mandated scripted curriculum, the absolute disregard of child poverty, and reforms which disproportionately impact minority communities.

CTU Pres. Karen Lewis and Chicago teachers have led a massive strike, and are in the forefront of current school closings protests there.

We ask that you join us, stand tall, and meet your responsibility as citizens to be heard above the din corporate influence. You will have the opportunity to hear speakers and converse with public school advocates from across the country, including Diane Ravitch, Nancy Carlsson-Paige, Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis, Stephen Krashen, Brian Jones, Deborah Meier, Helen Moore, and many other students, teachers, and community members (visit the link below for full schedule details1).

1 Occupy2.0 Full Schedule: http://unitedoptout.com/the-official-schedule-for-occupy-doe-2-0-the-battle-for-public-schools/

Do not miss this free and unique opportunity to connect with like-minded public school advocates. Come gather information and strategies that can be used to fight corporate education reform in your own community. Join us and make your voice heard.

If you require more information about the event, or to schedule interviews with the Administrators of United Opt Out National, please contact Peggy Robertson at (720)810-5593 or via email writepeg@juno.com.

Email: unitedoptoutnational@gmail.com Website: http://unitedoptout.com

Helen Moore (center) with Detroit Journey for Justice delegation on Capitol Hll Jan. 29, 2013.

VOD: The U.S. Department of Civil Rights just announced that it is opening an investigation into disproportionate closings of schools in communities of color in Michigan, as a result of the events below. Click on DOE letter to Helen Moore to read letter sent to Elder Helen Moore.

Video below is from National Journey for Justice event Sept. 12, 2013; a busload attended to protest destruction of Detroit Public Schools.

  

 

 

School Closures Violate Civil Rights, Protestors Tell Arne Duncan

Posted: 01/29/2013 7:01 pm EST | Updated: 02/01/2013 2:12 pm EST

 

 

 

 

WASHINGTON — The standards-based education reform movement calls school change “the civil rights issue of our time.” But about 220 mostly African American community organizers, parents and students from 21 cities from New York to Oakland, Calif., converged on Washington Tuesday to tell U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan he’s getting it backwards on school closures.

Members of the group, a patchwork of community organizations called the Journey for Justice Movement, have filed several Title VI civil rights complaints with the Education Department Office of Civil Rights, claiming that school districts that shut schools are hurting minority students. While most school closures are decided locally, the Education Department’s School Improvement Grant gives underperforming school districts money for shakeups or turnarounds, including closures.

Chicago students march through the Loop protesting the city’s plan to close more than 50 elementary schools on March 25, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. Last week the city announced the plan claiming it was necessary to rein in a looming $1 billion budget deficit. The closings would shift about 30,000 students to new schools and leave more than 1,000 teachers with uncertain futures. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The meeting became heated at times. “The voices of the people directly impacted can no longer be ignored,” said Jitu Brown, an organizer from the South Side of Chicago. “This type of mediocrity is only accepted because of the race of the students who are being served.” He called school closures “a violation of our human rights,” since many communities are left without neighborhood schools after districts shut them down.

“We are not Astroturf groups,” Brown continued. “We are not people who are paid by private interests to appear.”

Helen Moore, an organizer from Detroit, said the current reform movement is tantamount to racism. “We are now reverting back to slavery,” she said. “All the things that are happening are by design, by design, by design. They don’t want our children to have an education, but we’ll fight to the death.”

Members of the Obama administration, including Duncan and Obama education advisor Roberto Rodriguez, were in attendance. The Obama administration has been repeatedly admonished for ignoring racial issues. Duncan opened the meeting by saying his job was to listen. “As populations go down, a lot of changes have to be made,” Duncan said. He called for a recognition of common goals and intentions. But due to his schedule, he left the meeting after 45 minutes, leading to a quick “Where is Duncan? Where is Duncan?” chant.

Over the last few years, cities have used closing schools as a strategy to raise student performance or to save money. Philadelphia, New York and Chicago are among cities considering even larger waves of closures. Philadelphia, for example, is slated to close 37 schools by June. But organizer Brown argued that shutting schools hurts communities and poses major safety threats to kids who have to travel further to go to school.

The Office of Civil Rights, responsible for enforcing federal civil rights laws, is investigating school closings in cities that include Detroit and Philadelphia. From Oct. 21, 2010, to Jan. 1, 2013, the Office of Civil Rights has investigated 27 school closings, finding insufficient evidence of civil rights violations in every case. Currently, the office has 33 open cases involving 29 school districts in 22 states, officials said. Tuesday’s meeting had no bearing on the investigation procedure.

The protest goal is a moratorium on school closures, phaseouts and turnarounds. Brown has met with Duncan and other Education officials before, and said he wants to take his case to Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack obama. Duncan’s spokesman, Daren Briscoe, said the Education Department doesn’t have the power to impose a moratorium. The department controls less than 10 percent of the nation’s public school dollars, and most school closures are locally decided, he said.

Schools are closed for reasons ranging from cost to underuse. Brown argued that if Duncan suspended the School Improvement Grant program, he could stop some closures and turnarounds, while “changing the tone” surrounding closings. (School closures, though, are seldom done through School Improvement grants.)

A Pew Foundation report on school closures found that “academic studies suggest that student achievement often falls during the final months of a closing school’s existence.” And a recent audit of Washington’s closures found that a recent wave cost $8 million more than originally projected.

But still, school districts are pressing forward with closure plans. Chicago is expected to decide on the number of schools it will close soon. Aquila Griffin, 17, spoke at the Tuesday event, saying she recently left a Chicago high school that was being “phased out.” As the school lost students in its last days, it shed teachers, computers and classes that made it stand out, Griffin said.

“Now students are walking into the back of the school building like sharecroppers from the 1930s,” Griffin said. She invoked the Martin Luther King Jr. maxim on judging people not on the color of their skin, but on the merits of their character. “My judgment of the [Department of Education] is, how do you plan to correct the wrong you let happen in the first place?” She received a standing ovation. 

New Food & Water Watch Analysis Highlights Public Costs Associated With Water System Privatization Deals

April 4, 2013

Contact: Tia Lebherz, Food & Water Watch, (313) 486-1356 tlebherz@fwwatch.org

Detroit, Mich. – As Emergency Financial Manager Kevyn Orr works to balance Detroit’s budget in the wake of a state-declared financial emergency, reports indicate he may attempt to raise cash by privatizing Detroit’s drinking water and wastewater systems.

Tia Lebherz

But Borrowing Trouble: Water Privatization Is a False Solution for Municipal Budget Shortfalls, released today by the consumer advocacy organization Food & Water Watch, shows that taxpayers ultimately suffer when water systems are privatized, and that leasing or selling these essential systems simply masks, not alleviates, local budget shortfalls.

“Privatizing Detroit’s water and sewer system will do nothing to alleviate the city’s financial problems,” said Tia Lebherz, a Detroit-based organizer for Food & Water Watch. “Doing so would amount to a one-shot ploy to obscure larger money woes, and would ultimately come back to haunt residents in the form of higher bills.”

Although more than 80 percent of water systems worldwide are publically owned and controlled, the collapse of global financial markets in the 2000s has led many governments around the world to consider privatizing these assets through arrangements such as concession contracts, where a municipality retains ownership of a system, but the corporation that has assumed control is responsible for setting rates and financing system upkeep.

People’s Water Board Coalition protest outside Detroit Water Board building Aug. 21, 2012.

In these deals, the private company will give a local government what is effectively an upfront loan for control of its water system, while ratepayers, not the municipality, are expected to repay the loan through rate increases and other fees.

Because ratepayers must repay the loan from the company leasing their water system, water bills will increase. The more money a local government receives from the deal, the more households and local businesses will pay through their water bills.

The late Mary Shumake protests with the Michigan Welfare Rights Coalition in Detroit.

“Water privatization would disproportionately affect poor and working class families across Southeast Michigan who are already unable to keep up with water rate increases,” said Ann Rall of the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization. “Our water system should provide the highest quality service at the most affordable price to ensure that all can have access to safe drinking water and sanitation. The regressive rate hikes that would occur with privatization would place an unfair burden on those less able to pay. Privatization would also increase the already-staggering level of unemployment in this region.”

Concession contracts are far more expensive than the common form of government borrowing on the municipal bond market. The upfront loan can have an interest rate of 14 percent or higher, while local government debt typically has an interest rate of about 4 percent. For similar reasons, concession contracts have also been shown to drive up the cost of system improvements, adding $0.8 million to $2.5 million onto the total cost of every $1 million investment.

Detroit Wastewater Treatment Plant workers on strike Sept. 30, 2012

“In Detroit, both the Emergency Financial Manager and the Board of Water Commissioners have expressed that they are interested in pursuing the privatization of DWSD, either through the sale or lease of the system,” said Ken Gray, member of AFSCME Local 207. “However, we know, and this report confirms, that such an irresponsible and short sighted decision will not create a balanced budget but rather will dig Detroit into a deeper hole of long term financial instability.”

Food & Water Watch recommends that Kevyn Orr reject the idea of privatizing Detroit’s local water and sewer systems, as doing so will not provide a real, sustainable and responsible solution for the city’s financial shortfall. Policymakers should grant the public access to all information regarding potential privatization contracts, encourage public input and require a referendum on any proposed lease, concession or sale of a public drinking or wastewater system.

Borrowing Trouble: Water Privatization Is a False Solution for Municipal Budget Shortfalls is available here:

http://foodandwaterwatch.org/reports/borrowing-trouble-water-privatization-is-a-false-solution-for-municipal-budget-shortfalls/

Food & Water Watch works to ensure the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainable. So we can all enjoy and trust in what we eat and drink, we help people take charge of where their food comes from, keep clean, affordable, public tap water flowing freely to our homes, protect the environmental quality of oceans, force government to do its job protecting citizens, and educate about the importance of keeping shared resources under public control.

Tia Lebherz
Organizer
Food & Water Watch
2727 2nd Ave, Suite 136
Detroit, MI 48201

Office: 313.486.1356
Cell: 310.963.0789
Fax: 313.486.1357
tlebherz@fwwatch.org

http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/

Related articles:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/20/detroit-water-dept-on-the-table-says-efm-commissioners-approve-report-rooted-in-lies/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/12/grand-theft-of-detroits-water-dept-imminent-water-board-mtg-wed-march-13-2pm/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/09/27/detroit-dwsd-debt-shows-wall-street-never-loses-on-bad-swaps/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/11/19/detroiters-outraged-over-top-council-members-complicity-in-ema-water-dept-takeover-hearings-tues-nov-20/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/11/19/pro-tem-brown-in-bed-with-bowc-water-contractors/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/10/21/epa-wants-45-day-halt-to-ema-detroit-water-contract-council-presses-ahead/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/10/02/an-eye-witness-report-from-detroits-afscme-local-207-water-strike/’

By Richard (RJ) Eskow 04/07/2013

Falling income. Unaffordable colleges. A dying middle class. Young people without hope. The greatest economic inequality in modern history.

And yet, in the midst of the Long Depression, we’re told that the president intends to cuts Social Security.

Pres. Barack Obama proposes cuts in Social Security, Medicare

According to reports, the new presidential budget proposal will also include job-killing spending cuts and a Medicare cost hike that will increasingly affect the middle class with every passing year.

The president says this isn’t his “ideal plan,” but he doesn’t say what his ideal plan would look like — and he certainly isn’t fighting for a better one. He also claims his budget offers “tough reforms,” which rings of self-satisfaction rather than sorrow.

He’s decided on his next move. What’s yours?

This budget represents a moral challenge for everyone, especially those of us who voted for him. I’ve already gone here to let my elected officials know that I unconditionally oppose these budget cuts.

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Call it ‘the unkindest cut of all.’ What makes the chained CPI particularly unkind is the fact that millions of Americans have already had their Social Security benefits cut. Benefits are determined based on a person’s lifetime earnings, so any significant loss in income now results in a benefit cut later. (More details here.)

Long-term unemployment is a benefit cut. A stagnating wage is a benefit cut. Wealth inequity is a benefit cut.

How many more cuts can the American people stand?

A Deep Cut

How big is the president’s chained CPI cut? For someone who retires at 65, it would be:

a 3.7 percent cut at age 75;
a 6.5 percent cut at age 85;
and a 9.2 percent cut at 95.

What about the dollar cost of the president’s cut? For the average earner, cumulative benefits would be cut by:

$4,631 — more than three months of benefits — by age 75;
$13,910 — nearly a year of benefits — by age 85;
and $28,004 — more than a year and a half of benefits — by age 95.

Unless the president’s budget excludes the chained CPI from IRS calculation, it would also lead to tax increases for all income except that in the highest tax bracket. So his Social Security cut would also be a middle-class tax hike.

All the President’s Cuts

Despite its severity, reports tell us that the chained CPI isn’t this budget’s only harsh austerity measure. The president will also propose increasing Medicare premiums for higher earners. The figure that’s been reported is $47,000 per year. That targets comfortable seniors, not just the wealthy.

In less than 25 years, that more than one retired person in four would be paying an increased Medicare premium. (See the Kaiser Family Foundation’s analysis for more.) This cost hike wouldn’t do anything to reduce runaway health care costs. It’s just cost-shifting.

The president’s budget also includes some plain, old-fashioned austerity. According to reports, the new Obama budget calls for $400 billion in cuts to health programs, along with cuts to federal employees’ retirement programs, the Post Office, and farm programs.

That follows the European model of cutting budgets during a Long Depression. Hey, what could go wrong?

Off-Balance

The White House is defending these cuts by saying they’re only acceptable as part of a ‘balanced package.’

Seniors will suffer cuts three times greater than the wealthy under Obama plan.

But their current budget is already unbalanced. Dean Baker’s calculations show that the president’s asking the typical financially-strapped senior to sacrifice more than three times as great a share off income as the average wealthy American. Disabled veterans could be hit even harder, since they tend to spend more years collecting the benefit.

What’s more, Social Security shouldn’t be included in deficit discussions at all. It doesn’t contribute to the deficit. Suggesting that they be part of these negotiations is reinforcing a false sense of ‘balance.’

The president’s budget is also out of balance because it includes much more in cuts than it does in revenue hikes, and the increases being proposed — ‘closing loopholes’ — skirts around this country’s real tax inequity. While it’s important to close loopholes, their preferred approach also has the potential for being directed against the middle class as well as the wealthy.

Austerity, Democratic-Style

No matter what the spin doctors say, the President isn’t ‘negotiating.’ Negotiation is a process in which one party proposes X and the other counters with less than X. But the chained CPI isn’t in the Republican budget. It is only in the president’s.

And remember: The president’s budget is just the starting point for negotiations.

Sure, the Republicans like this cut too, and they’ve raised it on other occasions. But it’s in Obama’s budget, not theirs. Their fingerprints aren’t on it. Obama owns this.

That means his party owns it — unless other Democrats oppose it, fiercely and publicly.

The Defense Should Rest

Some of the president’s supporters are still pretending the chained CPI is a “compromise.” They should stop. He’s spoken in favor of it a number of times. It’s his preferred policy.

Others take the opposite tack. They say people “shouldn’t be surprised” at the president’s cuts given all the signals he’s given recently. But wrong is wrong, and surprise has nothing to do with it.

And please stop saying that he hasn’t broken any promises. In 2007 he said that “cutting benefits is not the right answer.” In 2008 he berated John McCain for “suggesting that the best answer to the growing pressures on Social Security might be to cut cost-of-living adjustments or raise the retirement age.” Said candidate Obama: “I will not do either.”

As of this writing, the White House website still says that the president “believes that no current beneficiaries should see their basic benefits reduced” (which this budget would do).

Other presidential defenders offer something Digby describes as a “Sophie’s Choice” for liberals. They’re “telling the progressives that a hostage is going to get shot no matter what: Head Start and food inspections today or the elderly, the sick and the veterans tomorrow and they have to choose which one.”

“Why,” asks Digby, “should progressives bear that responsibility?” For that matter, why should anyone else?

Things fall apart. The center cannot hold.

The self-described “centrists” supporting this move are especially off-base, since the political center hates the chained CPI. A new AARP poll showed that 69 percent of voters “opposed” or “strongly opposed” the chained CPI, while only 16 percent supported it. A December poll found that 54 percent of voters opposed the chained CPI, with 16 percent favoring it.

The president’s chained CPI proposal isn’t “centrist.” It’s far to the right of public opinion.

Left, Right and Center host Matt Miller even mocked “liberal” outrage that the chained CPI is only a small reduction on a macroeconomic level. We called those who use this argument the “mohels of moderation“: It’s just a tiny cut! Why all the yelling?

Value Village

As Mike Lux says, “your budget represents your values.” What is valued in this budget: Compromise at any price? Good press coverage? The approval of Washington’s insular “Village,” whatever the cost to others?

This budget certainly reinforces false and destructive right-wing messaging: That Social Security should be cut as part of a deficit reduction plan. (It shouldn’t.) That government spending hurts the economy, even in hard times. (We know that it helps.) That we can’t solve our health care cost problem, so we should shift the burden back onto individuals. (We can solve it, the way other countries have.)

Whatever happens during budget negotiations, the president’s proposal is already a huge victory — for conservative ideology

The Dance

Obama’s defenders say the Republicans have insisted that he propose these cuts before they’ll consider them. We’re told that this bowing gesture will lead to a beautiful pas de deux — or to a scornful rebuff which will benefit Democrats at the polls.

That makes no sense. When has one party demanded that the other present its ideas — especially its most unpopular ones — as if they were its own? What’s next: Will they ask the president to propose their Medicare voucher plan? Call for a flat tax? Join the Tea Party?

We liked the old system: One party proposed one set of ideas, the other party proposed another, and the voters decided which ones they preferred.

Democrats’ Dilemma

The president leads his party. Unless Democrats mount a concerted opposition to this budget, they’ll have gone on record as the party that wants to cut Social Security.

Hill Democrats face a real quandary. If they resist this misguided document they’ll find themselves under intense pressure from the White House and their own leadership. But this budget is wrong for the country, and Democrats who support it will help inflict a deep wound on their party’s electoral chances.

And they’ll feel the wound themselves. That AARP poll showed that 87 percent of voters over the age of 50 consider it “very important” that politicians not cut Social Security benefits. Any Dem who votes for it will suffer at the polls.

Democrats already suffered a precipitous 25-point drop in confidence on this issue during Obama’s first two years in office — then lost the House as Republicans ran to their left with a “Seniors’ Bill of Rights.”

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is tracking the elected officials who are standing up to oppose this cut. These leaders deserve our support. And liberals are threatening to mount primary challenges against Senators and Representatives who vote for a chained-CPI budget.

They can count me in.

Your Move

The president has made his decision. Now the rest of us must make ours. We have a moral obligation to future generations, and to ourselves, to actively oppose the cuts in this budget. This is the wake-up call: These programs can’t defend themselves, and we can’t depend on others to defend them for us.

The ball’s in our court now.

The first step is to make your voice heard. You can tell your elected representatives that you oppose these cuts by going here.

See also:

“Death of 1,000 Cuts: Our Lousy Economy Is Already Slashing Social Security Benefits”
“Matt Miller’s Off-Center Defense of Obama’s Social Security Cut”
“A President Who’ll Cut Social Security – And Liberals Who Love Him Too Much”
“The Great Wage Robbery”
“The Long Depression”
“Shocker: Obama’sLess Trusted Than Bush On Social Security“ 

Follow Richard (RJ) Eskow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rjeskow 

Uploaded by DetroitEvolution

(VOD editor Diane Bukowski: Thanks to those brave souls who held this slowdown on Tigers’ opening day April 5. I have personal sympathies based on the fact that I work part-time in a downtown location squarely in the midst of tail-gating and drunken suburban mobs, on Bagley near Grand Circus Park. From 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. that night, Tigers fans spent the day in parking lots and streets and sidewalks around our building getting completely blasted, openly drinking alcohol (illegal), urinating in the streets and on our building, then coming INTO our building. Someone kicked down the locked door to a non-functioning toilet on my floor, and defecated in it anyway, leaving a terrible odor. If this had been a BLACK mob, police would have hauled away hundreds, cracked heads, and probably shot a few.  But there were no police to be seen. This added insult to injury on top of the EM appointment, and made it difficult for me to leave the office to service my homeless clients.)

General strike in Greece against austerity including “debt-restructuring” IMF policies. Banner reads: Stop Austerity, Growth Now. Greeks protested is every major city.

By G. Dunkel on March 1, 2013

(VOD: The Detroit City Council is to vote Tues. April 9 at 10 a.m. on a costly “debt-restructuring” contract with Jones Day, the world’s third largest law firm, whose clients include most of the major banks which hold the city’s debt. In Greece, Italy, Spain, France and other countries, people have held general strikes and mass shutdowns to protest similar policies.)

Just days before an inspection team was due to check that Greece’s new austerity measures were in place, tens of thousands of workers took to the streets on Feb. 20 and shut the country down. The strikers made it clear that “reforms” that leave patients without health care and drugs, students without education, taxpayers without money, families with no one employed, workers without labor rights and 68 percent of the youth without jobs are really attacks on the Greek people and their standard of living. (Greek Reporter, Feb. 20)

Police hold Greek farmers back during protest in Patras, Greece Feb. 20, 2013

The inspection team is from the Troika — the European Union, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank — which offered its first bailout to Greece in 2010 after three years of recession. The Troika offers only more austerity.

As an example, the minimum wage was cut by 22 percent in 2012 from $989 a month to $772 and just $673 for youth, with another 10 to 15 percent decrease due in 2013.

Protest in Athens at Parliament Building Feb. 20, 2013

What’s worse is that, according to the General Confederation of Greek Workers (GSEE) relying on official statistics, only 600,000 workers out of 1.5 million employed in the private sector get a regular paycheck. Most employers in Greece pay anywhere from 3 to 15 months late; workers keep on working in the hopes of getting back pay or at least severance.

Many of the workers getting minimum wages are in the private sector.

Protest marches took place in 70 cities, with large demonstrations on the island of Crete, and one action attracting 18,000 participants in Thessaloníki, Greece’s second largest city. Farmers, whose access to credit is under attack by the Troika, actively blocked, in particular, the highway between Athens and Thessaloníki.

Youg woman in Feb. 20, 2013 protest in Greece.

In Athens, two demonstrations followed the same route, ending at Syntagma Square in front of the Greek Parliament, both with similar demands. The Greek Communist Party (KKE) supported the All-Workers Militant Front (PAME) union confederation’s march and the other march by the GSEE, together with the Civil Servants’ Confederation. The main press services of France and Germany both reported significantly from 50,000 to 60,000 participants.

According to AFP, the main banner carried by PAME read, “No to modern sweatshops, hands off collective labor agreements.”

KKE General Secretary Aleka Papariga led a large KKE delegation at PAME’s demonstration. She told the crowd: “The working people who are suffering must take a decision. To discover their strength and advance combatively, towards the rupture and overthrow, to the very end. Otherwise, they will find themselves trapped against the wall.”

At the other march, the GSEE, the union movement close to social democratic parties, explained: “We are fighting for collective bargaining agreements, for measures to be finally taken against unemployment and to ensure our democratic and working rights.” Some of PAME’s demands made the same points.

One of hundreds of protests in Greece over the last several years.

Syriza, a major presence in the GSEE/ADEDY march, is an electoral coalition of social democratic and left parties which heads the opposition. Syriza said it wanted to use the strike as a springboard to force out the coalition government led by the conservative prime minister, Antonis Samaras. “The general strike aims to bring down the government and annul (the austerity) agreement and measures,” Syriza said in leaflets handed out this week.

Greek President Karolos Papoulias, whose role is symbolic, commented, “We are faced with a societal explosion if any more pressure is put on society,” ruminating, perhaps, over the constant barrage of pay cuts, tax hikes and slashed pensions that he nonetheless supports. (Greek Reporter, Feb. 20)

Much of Detroit’s streets look like this one in Highland Park, which shows Cassandra Cabil at her home after Highland Park cut a deal with DTE to remove half the city’s street lights. Under a new Public Lighting Authority, 40 percent of Detroit’s street lights, many already gone, will also be permanently removed. The blame lies with Wall Street. Photo: Carlos Osorio

 (VOD has taken the liberty of re-publishing this entire article, which clearly lays out the role Jones Day clients, including UBS AG, SBS Financial Services, BOA’s Merrill Lynch, and JP Morgan Chase, in what continues to amount to the gang rape of Detroit. Detroit’s City Council will vote Tues. April 9 on a costly “debt-restructuring” contract with Jones Day. Council members should read this and beware. The article confirms much of what VOD has already written over the last two years.)

By Darrell Preston & Chris Christoff – Mar 13, 2013 8:24 PM ET

The only winners in the financial crisis that brought Detroit  to the brink of state takeover are Wall Street bankers who reaped more than $474 million from a city too poor to keep street lights working.

The city started borrowing to plug budget holes in 2005 under former Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who was convicted this week on corruption charges. That year, it issued $1.4 billion in securities to fund pension payments. Last year, it added $129.5 million in debt, 9.3 percent of its general-fund budget, in part to repay loans taken to service other bonds.

Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announces appointment of Kevyn Orr as Detroit EM March 14, 2013.

Detroit, which is trying to avoid becoming the largest U.S. municipal bankruptcy, struggles to serve residents after revenue declined when the auto industry collapsed and the city began to empty. Michigan ’s Republican governor, Rick Snyder, [has named] an emergency manager, who will have to address debt and derivatives taken on in the last eight years.

“We have no lights, no buses, poor streets and now we’re paying millions of dollars a year on our debt,” said David Sole, a retired municipal worker and advocate for Moratorium Now Coalition, a Detroit group that fights foreclosures and evictions. “The banks said they need to be paid first. But there is no money.”

Dave Sole of Moratoriun Now! speaks at rally against EM March 6, 2013.

The city, which peaked at 1.85 million residents in 1950, has lost more than a quarter of its population since 2000. The 700,000 inhabitants who remain endure unreliable buses, inadequate police and fire protection and broken street lights that have darkened entire blocks.

Covering Shortfalls

Banks including UBS AG (UBS), Bank of America Corp.’s Merrill Lynch and JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM) have enabled about $3.7 billion of bond issues to cover deficits, pension shortfalls and debt payments since 2005, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Liabilities rose to almost $15 billion, including money owed retirees, according to a state treasurer’s review.

The debt sales cost Detroit $474 million, including underwriting expenses, bond-insurance premiums and fees for wrong-way bets on swaps, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That almost equals the city’s 2013 budget for police and fire protection.

Protesters rally outside CAYMC in Detroit as EM takes office March 25, 2013.

The largest part is $350 million owed for derivatives meant to lower borrowing costs on variable-rate debt.

Municipal borrowers from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have paid billions to banks to end interest-rate swaps that didn’t protect them. In the bets, a municipal issuer and another party exchange payments tied to interest-rate indexes.

‘Pay Later’

“The banks promise to get you the money and say you can pay later,” said Greg Bowens, spokesman for Stand Up For Democracy, a Lansing group that campaigned last year to repeal the law allowing appointment of a financial manager. “They get their fees off the top, and you trust that they’re doing what’s in your taxpayers’ best interest.”

Moratoriun Now and Occupy Detroit protect the home of a Detroiter facing foreclosure.

As banks were collecting fees from bonds, some targeted city homeowners with subprime loans that led to foreclosures, depressing real-estate values and tax revenue, Sole said. About one-quarter of Detroit’s housing units are vacant, according to Detroit Future City, a 50-year blueprint for recovery. In some areas, entire blocks are deserted. Properties have been stripped of plumbing, wiring and whatever can be sold.

The home town of General Motors Co. (GM) has been running general-fund deficits of $155.4 million to $331.9 million since 2005, when Kilpatrick was mayor, and has been firing workers to save money.

Killing Fields

Last year, it cut police staffing by 11.6 percent to 2,836, according to budget documents. Killings spiked. Detroit had 411 homicides last year, up 9 percent from 2011.

Stephen Murphy of Standard and Poor’s (r) and Joe O’Keefe of Fitch Ratings sell Detroit City Council on %1.5 billion UBS AG loan in 2004.

On March 11, Kilpatrick, a Democrat, was convicted on corruption and fraud charges. He and co-conspirators executed a “wide-ranging racketeering conspiracy involving extortion, bribery and fraud,” U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade said in a statement.

Kilpatrick’s attorney, James Thomas of Detroit, declined to comment.

While his client ran Detroit, the city embarked on two of its most expensive bond issues, first paying $46.4 million in fees to UBS and others to borrow $1.4 billion for pension obligations.

A year later, the city paid $61.8 million, including insurance costs, for UBS to sell $948.5 million in bonds, replacing two-thirds of the debt sold the previous year.

Some pension debt traded at about 65 cents on the dollar in the most recent trade Feb. 12, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Wrong-Way Bets

Detroit also entered into swaps contracts with UBS and SBS Financial Products Co., which serves as a counterparty on swaps transactions.

The arrangements are a bet on the direction of interest rates and can raise costs if they move unexpectedly.

Detroit CFO Jack Martin Aug. , 2012.

Rates fell, leaving a liability of $439 million on June 30, 2012, according to a city report. That has fallen to about $350 million as rates went back up, said Jack Martin, Detroit’s chief financial officer.

The borrowing “likely contributed to our current problems,” said Martin, who took his job in May, 2012. “It was the way people did business back then. We are where we are now and working hard to right the ship.”

The city makes periodic swap payments from money generated by casinos.

Public Interest

Wall Street firms could end the deals and call for full payment because Moody’s Investors Service last March cut unlimited general-obligation bond ratings to B2, five levels below investment grade, according to the city’s 2012 financial statement. In November, Moody’s cut the rating again, sending it down two levels to Caa1.

The cuts mean there is “significant risk in connection with the city’s ability to meet the cash demands” under the swap, according to Detroit’s financial report.

The city has been talking with holders of its swaps, the report said. Martin said no negotiations are occurring.

“I don’t think we’re going to have any problems with the counterparties wanting to get those dollars any time in the near future,” said Martin. “We believe, and they believe, it would not be in the city’s best interest, and wouldn’t be in their best interest either.”

Banks have been reluctant to negotiate lower termination payments for many municipal governments. Last year, Detroit’s water and sewer utility borrowed to pay more than $300 million to unwind swaps.

‘Liquidity Problems’

Karina Byrne, a spokeswoman for Zurich-based UBS, declined to comment on the deals. Elizabeth Seymour, a spokeswoman for New York-based JPMorgan, also declined to comment on them, as did Thomas Butler, an SBS spokesman who works for New York-based Butler Associates LLC.

After the pension bonds, the city continued to issue general-obligation bonds and short-term debt totaling about $1.3 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

The city ran into “liquidity problems,” according to the 2012 financial statement. Because of low ratings and deficits, it was unable to borrow and turned to the Michigan Finance Authority, which arranged a $129.5 million bond issue underwritten by a Bank of America unit.

Costing $1.6 million in fees, part of the proceeds went to repay the unit for an earlier $80 million loan — and part of that loan had been used to service other debt, according to the financial statement.

William Halldin, a spokesman for Charlotte, North Carolina- based Bank of America, declined to comment on the deal.

Debt Hangover

An emergency financial manager will have to handle the legacy of Detroit’s borrowing. Snyder said March 1 that the official would try to restructure long-term debt and renegotiate payments.

Striking new terms would be difficult, said Rick Frimmer, a corporate and municipal restructuring specialist with Schiff Hardin LLP in Chicago who represents some of the debt holders. Temporary changes may be possible, he said, such as waiving payments or default terms.

The city has advisers working on a plan to deal with the debt, in part by reducing retiree health-care liabilities, said Martin. He declined to comment on fees negotiated before he joined the administration.

“I’m sure the fees and interest rate are what most other local units or school districts would have to pay,” Martin said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Darrell Preston in Dallas at dpreston@bloomberg.net; Chris Christoff in Lansing at cchristoff@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Merelman at smerelman@bloomberg.net

Protest at Coleman A. Young Municipal Center.

 Contract includes unlimited charges for work, including asset sales

Brushes off “conflict of interest” re: Jones Day’s representation of most city creditors

Bars affirmative action in hiring, including U.S. EO 11246 compliance

Refuses to comply with  “ban the box” city ordinance re: ex-offenders 

By Diane Bukowski

DETROIT – The Detroit City Council is expected to vote on an open-ended, open cost “debt restructuring” contract with Jones Day  at its regular session Tues. April 9, 2013 at 10 a.m. Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr worked for the firm beginning in 1984, allegedly terminating his tenure when Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder anointed him EM. 

Tom Barrow, President of Citizens for Detroit’s Future

“My friends, why is this not an obvious conflict, obvious to even non-Detroiters who think an EM is a great idea for Detroit but not themselves?” Tom Barrow, President of Citizens for Detroit’s Future, asked. “Orr is so cold that he will now USE the Detroit city council to do what he could do by himself. . No, instead he wants the Detroit City Council to do it and thus make it appear and enable him to say “the city of Detroit hired” Jones Day. We have Miller Canfield, Buckfire and now Jones Day. I guarantee once they get their hooks into us, these folks will not let go until at least 100 million is charged. This is so wrong!!! So wrong!

Under the newly-minted EM act, PA 436, Detroit’s EM must approve everything city officials do. However, many Detroiters feel their Council could at least take a stand on behalf of the people, and vote a resounding NO! 

Snyder appoints EM Kevyn Orr as Mayor Dave Bing stands by, in Oreo arrangement.

The contract’s initial term of services is from March 15 to Sept. 15, 2013. But an attached letter to Mayor Dave Bing says it can last as long as Orr is EM. Under PA 436, he is supposed to stay 180 days, but only if Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder doesn’t want him to stay longer. Jones Day says it will charge $3.35 million for “Core Re-structuring.” 

To read the complete contract, click on Jones Day contract.

CONTRACT COULD COST DETROIT HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS

However, the letter to Bing says the firm will charge additional costs for a massive amount of non-Core Restructuring work, which will be performed by its Managing Partner Stephen Brogan and partners David Heiman, Bruce Bennett, Corrine Ball, and Heather Lennox. (See profiles of these lawyers and their activities at the end of this article.) 

Rates quoted in the letter are: 

 JONES DAY PARTNERS COMING TO DETROIT

These Jones Day partners are specified in the contract. However, an unknown number of other staffers will also be hired. The contract specifically forbids the use of “affirmative action” in hiring.

That work includes “work related to Pension Certificates  Participation and related swap and interest agreements,” other than legal analysis. It will charge to handle litigation relating to labor or pension disputes or proposed changes to the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, now before U.S. District Court Judge Sean Cox.

DWSD workers on strike last September; Orr has said DWSD is “on the table” for monetization.

Jones Day will charge Detroit for work on “(a) any asset dispositions, privatization, or similar transactions, or any other capital-raising transactions; and (b) any transactions necessary to implement a negotiated financial restructuring, such as new debt instruments, new labor contract, or other agreements beyond restructuring term sheets.” 

It will charge for work relating to EM Acts PA 72 and 436 or challenges to Orr’s power, and for “contingency planning for a potential chapter 9 bankruptcy filing by the City, or the conduct or administration of such a case.” 

LIBOR scandal is massive.

Jones Day represents UBS AG and a partner of SBS Financial, the firms which sold Detroit a predatory “pension obligation certificate” (POC) loan of $1.5 billion in 2005. The city has had to pay an additional $1 billion to hedge funds for betting the wrong way on which way the market would go, prior to the great economic collapse of 2008. 

UBS AG just paid a $1.5 billion fine to the U.S. Department of Justice for interest-rate rigging in the LIBOR scandal and faces other related litigation globally. 

The firms are also involved in $474 million in fees Wall Street raked in as a result of interest swap deals. (See article below from Bloomberg Businessweek.) 

Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings announces lawsuit against UBS, Citigroup, JP Morgan and numerous other banks for interest rate rigging. Why hasn’t Detroit joined in?

During Gov. Snyder’s press conference announcing Orr’s appointment March 16, VOD specifically questioned Orr about the UBS AG loan to the City of Detroit and the USDOJ fine, asking him what he would do about the banks. He responded only in generalities. 

Later, VOD emailed him asking him if he would investigate whether LIBOR banks including UBS AG have caused the city economic damage, and pursue legal action against them, as did the City of Baltimore and many other municipalities and pension funds around the U.S. Orr never responded to the email, and never admitted that Jones Day had UBS AG and SBS as clients. 

Jones Day admits in its letter to Bing, “Some of Jones Day’s clients may have, or develop, interests adverse to the City.  .  . We will promptly inform the City of any client relationships that may raise conflict concerns as such matters are identified over the course of our engagement. We will work with the City to address any conflicts as circumstances require.” 

Jones Day says further that it “will not represent any person or entity in any matter adverse to the City without its express written consent.” 

It appears to be a case of too little (or nothing), too late. As the Bloomberg Businessweek article points out, Wall Street firms including Jones Day clients are responsible to a great degree for Detroit’s economic decline, the matter which Jones Day is allegedly to address. 

Kevyn Orr was Jones Day’s minority recruitment director, but he appears not to have done a very thorough job, as evidenced by photos of partners on the Jones Day website. Jones Day further states in its contract that it “shall not be required to comply with any affirmative action provision or related employee data-gathering or auditing requirements . . . . ” It also refuses to comply with U.S. Executive Order 11246, which requires affirmative action in hiring. Jones Day claims it is not subject to this order because it is not a federal contractor paid out of federal funds.

Supporters of the Voting Rights Act at U.S. Supreme Court during hearings on Shelby County v. Holder.

The contract also refuses specifically to comply with Detroit’s new “ban the box” ordinance, which would eliminate questions about previous criminal offenses until later in the interview process.

Jones Day partner Michael Carvin opposed Voting Rights Act Sec.5 as well as HHS contraception mandate in Obamacare.

Showing its racist tendencies, Jones Day has been an active supporter of Shelby County Alabama in recent hearings before the U.S. Supreme Court, in which it is trying to overturn Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act which requires many Southern states to obtain federal preclearance for all voting procedure changes before they are implemented.

Most recently, Jones Day partner Michael Carvin spoke at a Heritage Foundation briefing on the “(Un)Constitutionality of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act,” in Washington, D.C, as the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Shelby County v. Holder.

White voters are “wide open to electing black Democrats … as much as white Democrats,” Carvin told the audience, according to a Feb. 24 article in the Roll Call newspaper.

Many protesters of the EM appointment, in signs and at Council, have advocated “debt re-structuring,” appearing to confuse it with a moratorium on payments of the city’s debt or actual cancellation, actions which have been demanded in Third World countries for years and which are now being demanded in France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Ireland and other European countries. 

“Debt re-structuring,” as it has been carried out in those countries, while getting the banks to back off some of their immediate demands for payment after massive general strikes and protests, is however, inextricably tied to austerity measures. 

In 2004, the Detroit Public Schools District “re-structured” a $220 million loan taken out by then state-appointed CEO Kenneth Burnley. It spread the debt out over 15 years, resulting in soaring interest rates. The agreement to “re-structure” the debt specified that payments would come directly from the state’s per-pupil aid to DPS. As a result, to ensure re-payment of that and other loans, a state trustee gets DPS per-pupil aid and parcels out 80 to 90 percent of it to the district’s creditors. (Click on  Banks take 90 cents of every state aid dollar for article by this author published in the Michigan Citizen in 2004.)

The devastation of DPS, and the destruction of the futures of Detroit’s children, is directly due to “debt restructuring.” DO NOT BE FOOLED.

PROFILES OF JONES DAY PARTNERS COMING TO DETROIT

STEPHEN BROGAN, JONES DAY MANAGING PARTNER 

Stephen Brogan in the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia, where Jones Day has three offices.

The current managing partner of Jones Day is Steve Brogan, a 1977 Notre Dame Law grad, and a current member of Notre Dame’s Board of Trustees. Brogan was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General during the Reagan Administration (1981-1983), Jones Day represented Brogan’s alma mater the University of Notre Dame, and other Catholic organizations, pro bono in their lawsuit challenging Obamacare’s contraception inclusion mandate. It has also represented the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland in its child abuse lawsuits. 

DAVID HEIMAN

Corporate cannibal Wilbur Ross

David Heiman has been part of teams representing WL Ross & Co., owned by billionaire Wilbur Ross, a conservative Mitt Romney supporter and global corporate buy-out specialist who was involved with the owners of Sago Mine in W. Virginia, where 12 miners died after numerous safety violation citations. Heiman has also been part of teams representing Lehman Brothers, whose collapse triggered the 2008 world-wide economic meltdown; the Chrysler LLC buyout by Fiat; Gould Electronics, accused of contamination at a site in Omaha, Nebraska by the US EPA, and USG Corporation, which went bankrupt settling asbestos personal injury liabilities. 

BRUCE BENNETT 

Enron’s CEO Kenneth Lay during trial.

“Prior to joining Jones Day in May 2012, Bennett was the lead debtor’s counsel in the country’s largest municipal bankruptcy (County of Orange, California), following a $1.7 billion loss in county investment pools. As counsel to the debtor, Bruce was the architect of the plan of adjustment that . . . .resulted in the recovery of more than $870 million for the county. . .,” says the Jones Day website. “Bruce also successfully resolved many other large bankruptcy cases for lenders, note holders, and equity interest owners, including Adelphia Communications, Enron, Fountainebleau Las Vegas, Green Valley Ranch, Hawaii Medical Centers, Lehman Brothers Treasury Co., Olympia & York, and Tribune Company. 

Corinne Ball  

Protest in London against cuts in pensions and public services.

Jones Day announced in April, 2011 that Ball would lead Jones Day’s restructuring effort in Europe, where it has dozens of offices.  She was the lead lawyer in the Chrysler bankruptcy and in the Dana Corporation global settlement in the UK which targeted the company’s pension systems, transferring them to Centerbridge and other investors. She obtained settlements to eliminate “an enormous accumulated liability for health and life insurance benefits for retirees from its unionized and nonunion workforces, and to modify its collective bargaining agreements with active employees, allowing Dana to compete in the troubled auto industry upon emergence from bankruptcy. This “Global Settlement” resulted in the elimination of almost $1.5 billion in accumulated post-retirement benefit obligations, and the creation and funding of Voluntary Employee Benefit Association (VEBA) trusts,” says the Jones Day website. 

She also helped WL Ross & Co. with numerous acquisitions of European-based companies. 

Heather Lennox 

According to Jones Day, “Heather Lennox has . . . substantial experience counseling clients in fraudulent conveyance, illegal dividend, fiduciary duty, piercing the corporate veil, and mass tort issues in bankruptcy. She has represented a number of entities in the structuring and consummation of spin-offs, secured financings, distressed sales and acquisitions, ring-fencing transactions, and other out-of-court restructuring transactions.

Heather has represented, among others: Copperweld Corporation, CSC Industries, Dana Corporation, Fruehauf Trailer Corporation, Great American Communications Company (a prepackaged case), Hostess Brands, Inc., LTV Steel Company, Metaldyne Corporation, and Oglebay Norton Company as debtors’ counsel, and significant creditors in the Delta Airlines, Forum Health, HomePlace Stores, Northwest Airlines, Pittsburgh Penguins, R.H. Macy, Southern Air Transport, United Airlines, US Airways, and Wornick Company bankruptcies.

For a formatted printout of this article, click on COSTLY JONES DAY CONTRACT.

Related articles:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/04/08/only-wall-street-wins-in-detroit-crisis-reaping-474-million-fee/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/04/08/reek-general-strike-battled-imf-austerity-measures-em-to-bring-same-to-detroit/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/04/07/privatizing-detroit-water-sewerage-dept-will-cost-customers-dearly/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/04/01/detroit-pension-systems-under-attack-actuary-disputes-milliman-report/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/04/01/afscme-local-457-called-for-moratorium-on-debt-to-banks-in-1992/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/31/detroit-council-to-vote-on-jones-day-contract-firm-represents-criminal-banks-holding-citys-debt/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/27/throw-out-detroits-em-power-to-the-people-not-the-banks/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/27/detroiters-march-in-cleveland-tell-jones-day-and-banks-get-out/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/26/vampire-capitalism-comes-to-detroit-mi-and-dekalb-county-ga/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/24/from-detroit-to-cyprus-banksters-in-search-of-prey/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/20/banks-behind-detroit-emergency-manager-takeover/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/20/detroit-water-dept-on-the-table-says-efm-commissioners-approve-report-rooted-in-lies/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/23/detroit-leaders-announce-drastic-direct-action-to-fight-em-banks/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/19/wall-street-v-woodward-ave-will-detroit-em-address-predatory-interest-rate-swaps/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/17/detroit-efms-law-firm-advises-worlds-biggest-crooks-including-libor-banks/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/12/grand-theft-of-detroits-water-dept-imminent-water-board-mtg-wed-march-13-2pm/

Leamon WIlson, Pres. AFSCME Local 312, at right, with other bus mechanics at City Council hearing a few years ago. For a long time, Leamon was also President of the Presidents’ Council of the 17 AFSCME Citry of Detroit Locals. Leamon was 55 when he died yesterday.

From Diane Bukowski, editor of VOD, and for 20 years a union leader with AFSCME Local 457:  It is with a heavy heart that I publish this notice. I was just informed yesterday that Leamon Wilson, President of AFSCME Local 312, representing bus mechanics, and for many years President of the AFSCME City of Detroit Presidents Council, passed yesterday at the age of 55.

Leamon (;l) protests with others at the Mayor’s State of the City address in 2004.

Leamon was a beloved and militant leader, who at one point was fired by the Kilpatrick administration for his leadership of his local. We picketed with other AFSCME workers at DDOT headquarters to get him back.

Leamon was fearless, and loved his members and the City of Detroit. He fought for us tooth and nail, and was not afraid to be associated with “lefties” like myself and others. His heart was with the union, the workers, the people, and no doubt the toll the struggle took on him through all these years may have contributed to his death.

Leamon at WWTP protest.

Leamon was at every protest, he fought hard at the negotiating table for his members. He supported me absolutely when I was on trial for doing my job as a journalist for the Michigan Citizen, charged and convicted falsely of two felonies for taking photos of the aftermath of a fatal state trooper chase on Detroit’s east side in 2008. Not only did he come to my trial as a witness, he let my defense committee use his local union HQ for a rally.

LEAMON WILL BE SORELY MISSED. LONG LIVE LEAMON WILSON AND HIS SPIRIT! DOWN WITH THE FASCIST FORCES DESTROYING OUR CITY!

GOING HOME SERVICES:

Visitation

Sunday, April 14, 2013;     3 – 8 p.m.

O.H. PYE Funeral Home  

17600 Plymouth Rd. near Southfield and Jeffries Freeways    Detroit, MI

FUNERAL MONDAY, APRIL 15, 2013

Family hour   9:30 A.M.

Funeral            10 A.M.

KADESH MISSIONARY BAPTIST CHURCH

20361 Plymouth Rd. Detroit, MI  48228

REPAST AFTER SERVICE:         AFSCME Council 25 Hall                     600 W. Lafayette @ Third             Downtown Detroit, MI 48226

VOD: The following essay by Leamon’s son Leamon E. Wilson won him the AFSCME Family Scholarship; it is published on the AFSCME Co. 25 website. Leamon E. Wilson will start college this year

WHAT AFSCME HAS MEANT TO OUR FAMILY

By Leamon E. Wilson

On July 19, 1995 I was born into the AFSCME Family. My father had recently been elected as President of AFSCME Local 312, the Local representing mechanics employed by the Detroit Department of Transportation. Dad had worked his way up through the ranks, serving as a steward, chief steward and grievance committeeman before accepting the nomination to run for President of the Local. Three years earlier he had met my mother, a union representative, when she successfully argued that the employment of one of the local’s members should be restored, primarily because of the employer’s misconduct. According to family legend, when the grievant received his job back and full compensation for the time he was out of work, Dad fell in love and the grievant – “Uncle Hank” – was best man at the wedding and later named as my godfather!

AFSCME workers in Labor Day Parade wearing green NO EM shirts Sept. 5, 2011.

This brief, albeit comical, history is important because all of my life I have been surrounded by the love and support of people who believe that caring for and service to others is a privilege given to each of us. I participated in my first Labor Day parade when I was just over one year old. My father pushed my stroller – shaped like a car – during the parade. Although I had taken a few steps two days after my first birthday, I really began walking after the parade, mimicking the marchers I had watched that morning. My mother swears that I marched around the living room for hours. I don’t remember this, but I do know that it was not my last march.

AFSCME and the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists protest at CAYMC May 27, 2010

As the son of a union activist I have had the opportunity to participate in protests over collective bargaining agreements, violation of contract terms and job losses. As young as I can remember I have accompanied my father to grievance meetings, community meetings and union meetings. As a very young child I was usually handed to one of the female members who would care for me and protect me as my father argued (i.e. yelled) to get his point across. As I grew older, the task for ensuring my safety was turned over to “one of the guys,” which generally meant that I could have my fill of anything in the vending machines while my father argued (i.e. yelled) to get his point across.

During all of these years I have also had the privilege of meeting political, civic and religious leaders throughout the community, a unique opportunity not generally available to the average student. I’ve seen first hand the compassion and commitment demonstrated by members as they fought for the right to make a decent wage or to prevent non-union vendors from taking away their jobs altoegther. I’ve seen the stress and devastation families experience when layoffs or job eliminations force them to lose what most of us would think are basic life necessities – a home, food, transportation and the ability to support their children.

Detroit AFSCME workers in green shirts flooded April 13, 2011 Lansing rally against PA 4.

Throughout it all my parents have consistently reinforced the value of these experiences – the importance of standing in the gap for the disenfranchised; for being the voice for those who cannot speak for themselves; and for ensuring that the rights of all peoples are never diminished or eliminated. The obligation to serve and give back is as engrained in me as my name. The AFSCME Family Scholarship will help me reach my goals and continue a long standing tradition of being a gatekeeper for those in need. While I may or may not end up in a unionized profession, these experiences have taught me how to be a better person, to be compassionate, and, as my father would say, to always be caught doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do.

Thank you for the opportunity to walk proudly in the path he forged.         

VIDEO BELOW SHOWS PRES. LEAMON WILSON SPEAKING AT CITY COUNCIL HEARING, FIGHTING FOR HIS MEMBERS, BUS RIDERS               

Recent VOD stories featuring AFSCME Local 312 President Leamon Wilson:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/08/27/d-dot-deputy-dumped-will-feds-charge-nojay-bing-brown/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/02/22/regional-authority-will-likely-own-46-new-d-dot-buses-10-member-board-has-only-one-detroit-rep/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2012/02/09/bing-to-slash-bus-routes-d-dot-jobs-feb-24-contractor-gets-big/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2011/11/05/bing-keeps-buses-broken-drivers-and-riders-in-danger-blames-youth/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2011/11/05/bing-keeps-buses-broken-drivers-and-riders-in-danger-blames-youth/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2011/10/27/occupy-detroit-calls-for-march-for-ddot-workers-and-riders/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2011/09/20/bus-workers-riders-blast-bing/

Residents of South Korea call on U.S. Secy. of State John Kerry, who is currently in their country, to start peace talks with North Korea, instead of promoting war.

By Jay Janson

March 30th, 2013 — Dissident Voices

While staring at the New York Times front page photo of the bat-winged nuclear-capable B-2 Stealth Bombers up in the blue sky on their first non-stop long-range mission from the US on their way to a practice sortie to end in a mock bombing drop of inert munitions on a range off South Korea’s coast, I ponder.

U.S. warplane

The thought that ‘enough is enough’ will apparently never arise in the mind-set of those commanding the first planet-encompassing space-age military, blown up now to an uncontrollable magnitude and fueled by an uninterrupted flow of trillions of dollars by ledger line pre-occupied elite of the speculative investment banking community; a community possibly still being led by multi-war promoting confidants of ninety-eight year old David Rockefeller.¹

Koreans have been victims of U.S. war crimes for more than a century.

Former president of Korea, Lee Myung-bak dutifully bought loads of new US weapons of mass destruction. Does he ever remember watching his two tiny siblings begin to slowly die before his eyes during a US bombing raid on his family’s farm? As the nuclear capable black bat wings make their run over her beloved Korea, does the new President, Park Geun-hye, keep in mind her father’s point blank assassination by the head of the, allegedly American overseen, Korean CIA?

Following is a short history of homicidal crimes against humanity bitterly suffered in the Land of the Morning Calm from savage attack, conquest, and manipulation by the most recent of the many mindlessly brutal white colonial empires to one degree or another descendent from the barbaric Goths and savage raid-or-trade Vikings.

Painting of Koreas fighting U.S. invasion in 1871.

1871, June 10 — Adm. Rodgers, commanding five warships and a landing party of over 1,230 men armed with Remington carbines and Springfield muskets attack Choji Fortress of Kanghwa-do, and proceed to occupy the whole island (116.8 sq mi), killing 350 Korean defenders of the island while losing only three of their own, withdrawing to China when the Korean army sends in reinforcement armed with modern weapons. This war known in Korea as Sinmi-yangyo and as the 1871 US Korea Campaign in America.²

1905 — US President Theodore Roosevelt cuts all relations with Koreans, turns the American legation in Seoul over to the Japanese military, deletes the word “Korea” from the State Department’s Record of Foreign Relations and places it under the heading of “Japan,” approving of what will be a brutal, too often murderous, forty year occupation, during much of which, Koreans are forbidden even to speak their language; an unconstitutional act of the US president, said to have been in exchange for acceptance of the continuing US occupation of the Philippines by Japan, recognized as a half-brother empire of the European colonial powers.³

On March 1, 1919, Koreans gather at Tapgol Gong-won (current day Pagoda Park in Seoul) to protest Japanese rule and fight for independence.

1918 — President Woodrow Wilson officially recognizes Korea as territory of the Japanese Empire, refuses to receive delegations from Korea and Vietnam demanding restoration of sovereignty, delegations mistakenly hopeful for Wilson having proclaimed before both houses of Congress, as an addendum to his ‘Fourteen Points“ of a day earlier, “National aspirations must be respected; people may now be dominated and governed only by their own consent. Self determination is not a mere phrase; it is an imperative principle of action…. that peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game, now forever discredited, of the balance of power; but that all well-defined national aspirations shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be accorded them;” a promise become known in the third world as an infamous, cruel and preposterous lie (the Japanese occupiers were deadly in punishing all those involved in the country-wide March 1st Korean Independence Movement).

US troops arrive in Korea to partition the country 1945.

1945, September 8 — US State Department officials, arrive in Korea with the US Army, disband the government of the Korean People’s Republic created September 6, in Seoul, by delegates from local peoples’ offices from all provinces throughout the peninsula formed when Japan announced intention to surrender (August 10), proceed without any Korean authorization whatsoever, to immediately cut Korea into two parts to be occupied by US and Soviet troops and establishing a military government, flying in from Washington DC (in General MacArthur’s private plane), Singman Rhee, to head it; eventually installing him as president of a separate South Korea Government that will include collaborators, and will outlaw all strikes, declare the KPR and all its activities illegal and begin a deadly terror of persecution of members of the disallowed Korean Peoples Republic, communists, socialists, unionists and anyone against the the partition and demanding an independent Korea.⁴

Mass grave of Koreans slaughtered under U.S. backed regime.

1946-1949 — The US in effect declares war on the popular movement of Korea south of the 38th Parallel and sets in motion a repressive campaign dismantling the Peoples’ Committees and their supporters throughout the south, becoming massively homicidal as Rhee’s special forces and secret police take the lives of some 200,000 men, women and children as documented recently by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the National Assembly of the Republic of (South) Korea; on the Island of Cheju alone, within a year, as many as 60,000 of its 300,000 residents are murdered, while another 40,000 fled by sea to nearby Japan some two years before the Koreans from the north invade the South. [Wikipedia]

U.S. bombs Korean city 1950.

1950, June 28 — The US attacks by, air, sea and land, aiming at the southward invading army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North), which nevertheless unifies the peninsula in five short weeks (except for the US defended port city of Pusan); with little resistance from South Korea’s ROK military as most of its soldiers either defect or go home; over the next three years US will commit dozens of high death toll documented atrocities (some recently apologized for) as American planes level to the ground almost every city and town of any appreciable size in the entire peninsula, north and south, in the end threatening to drop the atomic bomb, and be charged with germ warfare by some not easily dismissed sources.

UN members vote to impose sanctions on North Korea.

1953-2013 — The US using its control over international financial institutions and its power over the financial policies of most of the nations on Earth, keeps in place economy crippling sanctions and trade blockades (only loosening them slightly from time to time in attempts to halt the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea production of nuclear weapons as it faces a US, constantly condemning it in intense belligerency, massively armed with ever new nuclear weapons. (US sanctions obviously violate Principle VI c. Crimes Against Humanity: “inhuman acts done against any civilian population.”)

U.S. and South Korean navy vessels in war exercises off the coast of Korea, March 18, 2013.

1945-2013 — The US Government, under control of its speculative investment banking elite, uses the gigantic world-wide reach of its likewise controlled US media cartel to manufacture an upside-down reality regarding US business and government intentions in Korea (and elsewhere), by blocking, slanting, omission, disinformation, misinformation and a virulent demonization of a nation once bombed flat, twice over, by US war planes; a six-decade propaganda campaign surely prosecutable as a media crime against peace under Principle VI c. of the universally signed on to Nuremberg Principles in the UN Charter.⁵

2010 May — An example of ‘sentence 8’ is the Russian Navy derided, and Chinese government ignored story of a old North Korean torpedo having cut in half a modern South Korean warship in an area where days before, US-ROK live fire exercise war games were menacingly taking place off the coast of North Korea; detailed investigation by Japanese found that a US minesweeper, known to have left the day before, might have been practicing with the newest US spider mine weapon, entirely capable, as most modern mines are indeed capable of, blowing a small warship into two pieces; though a discredited and fabulous US accusation, this media doctored widely broadcasted UN backed accusation has however, become accepted as fact by most of the entire Western media audience and will continue on into the future as the truth until the day it can no longer be of interest).⁶

2013 March — A second example of US media crimes against peace, is the present startling situation, as offered in US TV and print media, namely, that of the somewhat tiny nation, North Korea (size of US State of Pennsylvania), threatening the greatest military power the world has ever seen, possessing tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, with a nuclear attack, not for the sake of the bravely warning of its defense and retaliation power to ward of a feared attack from US planes and ships which periodically fire heavy weapons of mass destruction within earshot of its capital Pyongyang as part of frequent military exercises off its coast; the whole world is constantly ‘informed’ of what a madcap menace its leader is, by a Pentagon fed US media, which at the same time is justifying US bombings, invasions, occupations of some three dozen other small nations. (Citations and author bio follow.) 

1. Demonic David Rockefeller Fiends Dulles Kissinger Brzezinski – Investor Wars Korea thru Syria. History of David Rockefeller led global arrangements of financial-political control thru public information management culminating in “The International Community’ (formerly, “The Free World’, earlier The Colonial Powers), arraying covert agencies and military of US-NATO-UN, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, in war on Syria and Iran. China and Russia’s pathetic resistance after having acquiesced to the destruction of Libya. [↩]
2. During the last years of the Joseon Dynasty, Korea’s isolationist policy earned it the name the “Hermit Kingdom”, primarily for protection against Western imperialism before it was forced to open trade beginning an era leading into Japanese colonial rule. A Brief History of the US-Korea Relations Prior to 1945, Korea Web Weekly [↩]
3. Diplomacy That Will Live in Infamy, New York Times, James Bradley, 12/5/2009. See also the
   Taft-Katsura Agreement. [↩]
4. The Unknown Truth About Korea: U.S. Sanctioned Death Squads and War Crimes, 1945-1953, S Brian Willson. [↩]
5. Manufacturing Consent, Ed Herman and Noam Chomsky.
   Obama Calls on U.N. to Punish North Korea Over Rocket, but WHO PUNISHES THE U.S.? Commercial media feeding frenzy on the space missile launch by North Korea at the same time whipping up fear of Iran. Obama has harsh words for North Korea, as earlier for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Venezuela and Iran, which received a kind invite to talk mixed in with such severe public criticism as to make the invitation unacceptable. So far, Obama, both as president and as commander-in-chief belies change to serious diplomacy. [↩]
6. N. Korean Torpedo Accusation Fizzles: Strong Probability of US Mine Strike Investigated
   The self-righteous scowling countenance of Mrs. Clinton reminded us of a serious Colin Powell pointing to photos of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction trucks, of Adelai Stevenson’s photo evidence that planes that bombed Cuba were not U.S. planes, of Robert McNamara on the Gulf of Tonkin attack on innocent U.S. warships, of the John Foster Dulles proving that communists, not capitalists, were out to conquer the world.
   See also Kim Petersen, “Independent Media as Mouthpiece for Centers of Power,” Dissident Voice, 28 May 2010.
   NY Times, AP Consistently Leaving Out Debunking Info on “N. Korean Torpedo’ Claim. [↩]

Jay Janson, who was born in Detroit, is  a founding professor of the most prestigious music conservatory in Korea (South). He hashave Korean family, friends, students and colleagues. He spent eight years as Assistant Conductor of the Vietnam Symphony Orchestra in Hanoi and also toured, including with Dan Tai-son, who practiced in a Hanoi bomb shelter. The orchestra was founded by Ho Chi Minh,and it plays most of its concerts in the Opera House, a diminutive copy of the Paris Opera. In 1945, our ally Ho, from a balcony overlooking the large square and flanked by an American Major and a British Colonel, declared Vietnam independent. Everyone in the orchestra lost family, “killed by the Americans” they would mention simply, with Buddhist un-accusing acceptance. Jay can be reached at: tdmedia2000@yahoo.com. Read other articles by Jay.

Also go to http://kingcondemneduswars.blogspot.com/ which includes petition language for churches, etc. to take up in the opposition to rampant and savage U.S. spending on wars across the world.

This article was posted on Saturday, March 30th, 2013 at 8:00am and is filed under Crimes against Humanity, History, Imperialism, Korea.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/03/prosecutable-us-crimes-against-humanity-in-korea/#more-48234

No Emergency Financial Manager For Detroit! City Council April 9, 2013         A No Struggle, No Development Production! By KennySnod

Posted April 10, 2013

Overturning Emergency Manager! We oppose Emergency Managers because they rob us of our right to elect our own local representatives and deny democratic self-rule at the local level. We are demanding our elected leadership remember that they were elected by the same people who voted in the referendum against PA4 Nov. 6th, 2012. We demand that you abide by their decision.

Protesters in downtown Detroit demand cancellation of Detroit’s debt to banks.

Now we’re working to “Overturn Emergency Manager In Detroit!” We ask you to sign our “White House Petition: 1) End the Consent Agreement/ No Emergency Manager. 2) Begin the Justice Department Intervention, and 3) Stop Voter Suppression and Constitutional Violations. At: http://wh.gov/wGJK. We also ask you to join us in our 1) Our Mass demonstration, rallies, press conferences to protest and denounce the actions of Governor Snyder and his collaborators; 2) To expose the criminal nature of the banks and the corporation who are at the root of the financial crisis in Detroit and throughout the State of Michigan; 3) We must link this struggle in Detroit with the plight of other cities throughout Michigan like Benton Harbor, Flint, Highland Park, Inkster, Ecorse, Muskegon. As well as dozens of other cities in the USA like California, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Rhode Island and many others facing similar crises.

A No Struggle, No Development Production! By Kenny Snodgrass, Activist, Photographer, Videographer, Author of 1} From Victimization To Empowerment… www.trafford.com/07-0913  eBook available at www.ebookstore.sony.com
2} The World As I’ve Seen It! My Greatest Experience! {Photo Book}
YouTube: I have over 390 Video’s, over 136,000 hits averaging 5,000 a month on my YouTube channel @ www.YouTube.com/KennySnod

PRES.PUGH INTRODUCES DISCUSSION WITH SHINOLA AWARD                 (VOD apologizes for use of racist graphic to make our point)

 CITY COUNCIL MOVES AHEAD WITH JONES DAY VULTURE CONTRACT 

By Diane Bukowski

April 13, 2013

DETROIT – Detroit City Council President Charles Pugh and his majority cadre apparently didn’t “know sh-t from Shinola” regarding the Jones Day law firm contract during meetings held April 9 and 10, which ended with their moving the costly contract for a vote at Council to be held April 16 in Council Chambers at 10 a.m.

(Definition–sh-t from Shinola: common saying in U.S. beginning 1950′s re: lack of knowledge, ignorance.)

Dameeko Williams of Project Save Detroit 2013.

“This is nothing but vulture capitalism,” Dameeko Williams of Project Save Detroit 2013, representing the city’s youth, told Council before their deliberations. “Jones Day only represents the banks and the bondholders, like Comerica, Wells Fargo and Chase which hold most of Detroit’s debt..” 

Pugh opened the session April 9 by introducing his friend from Shinola, LLC, Randy Montgomery, who said he and his partners will make watches, bicycles and other “cool Detroit” paraphernalia at the College for Creative Studies.  Pugh sponsored a special award ceremony for this white-owned business, whose officers he met at a meeting of the white-dominated Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, a corporate front for privatization. 

Charles Pugh with officers of Shinola, LLC at Council April 9, 2013.

Shinola? Apparently Pugh et. al. are not old enough to remember Shinola shoe polish. Incredibly, the owners of Shinola, LLC bought the rights to the name from that company, ignoring associations of black shoe polish with racist black face caricatures of old. (See racist Shinola ad above; VOD hereby apologizes for reprinting it to make our point.) 

But perhaps the symbolism was appropriate. 

Speakers say Kevyn Orr represents “vulture capitalism.”

Detroit’s Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr (African-American) is fronting for his alleged former employer Jones Day, a white-dominated law firm associated with right-wing racist causes and foundations.  Case in point, Shelby County v. Holder. a challenge to the Voting Rights Act just heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. (See earlier VOD stories on Jones Day; links at bottom of article.) 

Detroiters blasted Council throughout public comment (as seen in Kenny Snodgrass’ video above), before its discussion of Jones Day. VOD even brought copies of its latest article on Jones Day to educate the Council, but to no avail. Just as the majority evidently did not read the Consent Agreement, which gave away virtually all their powers, before approving it April 4, 2012, they prefer to read the sound-byte version of affairs from the big-business media to make their decisions 

Rev. Charles Williams II, representing Michigan chapter of National Action Network.

“We are here from the National Action Network because we believe that Jones Day is a destroyer of democracy, we are standing against it and asking you to vote NO,” Rev. Charles Williams II told the Council. “Jones Day in one month got almost 12 million of TARP (federal Troubled Asset Relief Funds) to restructure Chrysler under bankruptcy. They bailed out the big companies, but 40 creditors pulled away from Chrysler, as unions and others were left out of the bail-out.” 

Valerie Glenn of Free Detroit-No Consent said the Jones Day contract and others let to firms like Miller Canfield, Ernst & Young, Conway McKenzie and Milliman constitute corporatocacy and genocide. 

“You will go down in history as the administration that completely destroyed Detroit,” Glenn said. “We call for your resignation.” 

Theo Broughton of Hood Research speaks at City Council April 9, 2013.

Theo Broughton of Hood Research agreed. 

“If Jones Day partners are getting $1100 an hour, we urge you to vote NO,” she said. “All of these firms are sucking up the city’s money.” 

Cecily McClellan, a laid-off city worker and Vice-President of the Association of Professional and Technical Employees said, “Billionaires are trying to turn Detroit into a playground for the wealthy. They are the real criminals.” 

One woman asked Council members a simple question. 

Speaker asks: What does democracy mean to you, Gary Brown, James Tate and Saunteel Jenkins?

“Our democracy has been taken away, our constitutional rights have been violated,” she said. “I ask you Gary Brown, James Tate, Saunteel Jenkins—what does democracy mean to you?” Is anybody able to step up to the table and answer my question?” 

Saunteel Jenkins replied haughtily, “Those who are here to express disagreement with this body are showing our expression of democracy.” 

Ironically, a Council police officer present interfered with the First Amendment and this newspaper’s right to democracy during the session, preventing VOD videographer Kenneth Snodgrass from standing with other news photographers on the side of the Council table to take his videos and photos properly. When VOD editor Diane Bukowski’s camera malfunctioned, she was forced to borrow his camera to take photos, despite her protest to the officer that Snodgrass had VOD credentials and should be treated equally.

Pastor Willie Rideout speaks against Jones Day contract.

Pastor Willie J. Rideout of All God’s People summed up, “We are the people. We voted you in. You came to our churches to get you elected, and now we are telling you to vote no on Jones Day, say no to the creditors, stop this predatory movement. Push the Emergency Managers out and put the money back into our cities. Let the millionaires and billionaires pay their taxes.” 

Councilwoman JoAnn Watson agreed, “Detroit’s debt to the banks should be re-negotiated. Banks and bondholders should not be paid first.” 

The Jones Day contract was actually being referred to the Internal Operations Standing Committee for its meeting the following day. Councilwoman Brenda Jones, who chairs that committee, agreed to have a Committee of the Whole session then for the entire Council to ask questions about a contract they had just received in committee. 

Councilwoman JoAnn Watson at table April 9, 2013, gives telling look at Council members Saunteel Jenkins and Kenneth Cockrel, Jr.

Council Pres. Pro-Tem Gary Brown contradicted Adam Hollier of Mayor Dave Bing’s office about the bid process for the contract. Hollier claimed it went through regular bid channels, but Brown said he discovered it had not gone through the Purchasing Division, but through a special process. 

Councilwoman Jones, chair of the Internal Ops Committee, asked her fellow committee members James Tate and Andre Spivey on April 9 not to move the contract to the full Council yet, calling for due diligence. 

The Committee heard a presentation in support of Jones Day from Edward Keelean, Acting Corporation Counsel in the wake of the Mayor Dave Bing’s demotion of his predecessor Krystal Crittendon after she stood up against the consent agreement and the hiring of Miller Canfield, a co-author of Public Act 4. 

David Whitaker, head of the Council’s Research and Analysis Division, said they had done a partial report on the contract but had not been privy to numerous documents Keelean discussed during the meeting, despite asking for them repeatedly. 

Jones asked that RAD be given sufficient time to make a full report, but  she was outvoted by Tate and Spivey, leading to more blistering condemnation of those Council members during public comment. 

Long-time activist Ken Parks was to the point in his remarks. 

“We are big-time debt slaves to the masters of finance capital,” he said. “If we are going to restructure, we need to restructure our priorities, so that people are first and profits are second. The banks said from the start they knew their loans were not repayable; it’s up to them to take responsibility. It is time again for a Year of Jubilee, where our debts are forgiven.”

____________________

Related articles:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/04/08/costly-jones-day-em-contract-faces-council-vote-tues-apr-9-come-at-9-am/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/31/detroit-council-to-vote-on-jones-day-contract-firm-represents-criminal-banks-holding-citys-debt/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/27/detroiters-march-in-cleveland-tell-jones-day-and-banks-get-out/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/23/detroit-leaders-announce-drastic-direct-action-to-fight-em-banks/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/20/banks-behind-detroit-emergency-manager-takeover/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/03/17/detroit-efms-law-firm-advises-worlds-biggest-crooks-including-libor-banks/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2013/01/18/the-gang-rape-of-detroit/

The late President Ronald Reagan and current U.S. President Barack Obama. Photo montage: courtesy of The Black Agenda Report

Bruce Dixon

         By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

         Apeil 10, 2013

They say that elections do matter, and that there are real differences between Republican and Democratic presidents. But backing up the view to 30 years, that difference looks a lot more like continuity, both at home and in America’s global empire.

Is This Barack Obama’s 2^nd Term or Bill Clinton’s 3^rd Term, or Ronald Reagan’s 9^th?

U.S. soldiers with captive citizens of Grenada, a predominantly Black, socialist-led country..

The answer is yes to all three. Ronald Reagan hasn’t darkened the White House door in decades. But his policy objectives have been what every president, Democrat and Republican have pursued relentlessly ever since. Barack Obama is only the latest and most successful of Reagan’s disciples.

Like the present era, the Reagan presidency marked a series of decisive rightward turns for US empire at home and abroad.

U.S. soldiers threw bodies of Panamanians, from the predominantly Black neighborhood which housed Gen. Noriega’s headquarters, into mass graves.

Reagan’s invasion of Grenada, along with his bloody contra wars in Central America and southern Africa signaled the renewal of on and off the books of US military interventions when and wherever the logic of empire suggested, and regardless of namby-pamby concerns of human rights, domestic or international law. But if being a Republican means you can be a naked imperialist at home as well as abroad, being a Democrat like Barack Obama means making sufficiently ambiguous noises war and empire to enable corporate media and your own campaign to manufacture a false narrative of actual and substantive difference between Democrats and Republicans.

U.S.invaded Somalia in 1993, but the Somalians fought back. Here they drag the body of a dead U.S. soldier through the streets of Mogadishu.

The first president Bush invaded Panama, and landed US troops in Somalia, a supposed “humanitarian” intervention. Bill Clinton massively increased the shipment of US military hardware and training to more than 50 of Africa’s 54 nations, fueling the conflict in Congo which has taken 7 million lives to date. That’s continuity of purpose and of policy.

In Barack Obama’s case all he had to say was that he wasn’t necessarily against wars, just against what he called “stupid wars.” Corporate media and “liberal” shills morphed that lone statement into a false narrative that Barack Obama opposed the war in Iraq, making him an instantly viable presidential candidate at a time when the American people overwhelmingly opposed that war. Once in office, Barack Obama strove mightily to abrogate the Status of Forces Agreement with Iraq which would have allowed US forces to remain there indefinitely. 

An Iraqi army soldier, accompanied by U.S. army soldiers from Fox Troop, Sabre Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, walks down a field as plumes of smoke rise from a burned irrigation canal in a deserted area on the outskirts of Balad Ruz, in Iraq’s Diyala province, some 75 kilometers ( miles) northeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, Aug. 10, 2008. Soldiers from Fox Troop burned thick growth inside irrigation canals as they were searching for weapons caches in the area. (AP Photo/Marko Drobnjakovic)

But when the Iraqi puppet government, faced with a near revolt on the part of what remained of Iraqi civil society, dared not do his bidding, insisting that uniformed US troops (but not the American and multinational mercenaries we pay to remain there) stick to the withdrawal timetable agreed upon under Bush, liberal shills and corporate media hailed the withdrawal from Iraq as Obama’s “victory.”

Barack Obama doubled down on the invasion and occupation of large areas of Afghanistan, and increased the size of the army and marines, which in fact he pledged to do during his presidential campaign.

US Major General David Hogg inspects Ugandan troops. Photo Ryan Sutherland

Presidential candidate Obama promised to end secret imprisonment and torture. The best one can say about President Obama on this score is that he seems to prefer murderous and indiscriminate drone attacks, in many cases, over the Bush policy of international kidnapping secret imprisonment and torture. The Obama administration’s reliance on drones combined with US penetration of the African continent, means that a Democratic, ostensibly “antiwar” president has been able to openly deploy US troops to every part of that continent in support of its drive to control the oil, water, and other resources there.

The MPLA of Angola vanquished the U.S.-supported anti-revolutionary UNITA front after years of a bloody civil war.

The objectives President Obama’s Africa policies fulfill today were put down on paper by the Bush administration, pursued by Bill Clinton before that, and still earlier pursued by Ronald Reagan, when it funded murderous contra armies of UNITA in Angola and RENAMO in Mozambque. It was UNITA and RENAMO’s campaigns, assisted by the apartheid regimes of Israel and South Africa that pioneered the genocidal use of child soldiers. Today, cruise missile liberals hail the Obama administration’s use of pit bull puppet regimes like Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda, all of which shot their way into power with child soldiers, to invade Somalia and Congo, sometimes ostensibly to go after other bad actors on the grounds that they are using child soldiers.

Under Barack Obama, U.S. has “boots on ground” all over Africa, under AFRICOM.

If either George Bush, or if Ronald Reagan had openly deployed US troops to Africa on anything like the scale President Obama has, black America would be up in arms. They wanted to. They couldn’t. It seems that now, by giving us a black president, the empire can get just about whatever it wants.

It works the same way at home. Ronald Reagan and the first George Bush would have liked to tamper with social security, but dared not. All Reagan could do was tell welfare queen jokes, and despite Reagan’s open disdain of organized labor, NAFTA was a distant wet dream of corporations and billionaires. The first president Bush proposed NAFTA but could never get it through Congress.

Bill Clinton had John Engler co-chair his “welfare reform” task force”

Former Michigan Gov. John Engler

It took a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, who marshaled a minority of Democrats in Congress to vote with Republicans both to pass NAFTA and to eliminate welfare. It was Bill Clinton who publicly embraced Republican myths about balancing the US budget, while allowing liberals to imagine he would deliver a “peace dividend.” The second president Bush openly trumpeted right wing lies about the solvency of social security and the (lies which Barack Obama happily repeats to this day) and tried more than once to privatize it. Again, that’s continuity across administrations and parties.

True to form, Obama picked the ball up where his predecessors left it and has run relentlessly righward ever since. Barack Obama uses the language of the elites when he calls social security, Medicaid and Medicare and other federal benefits “entitlements” and asserts that their growth must be trimmed. He championed the formation of a deficit reduction commission chaired by Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, both advocates of privatizing social security and drastic cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and federal benefits and tried to fast-track their recommendation through Congress. Fortunately that recommendation never came.

Numbers of Black and Latin youth in prison have skyrocketed under Obama.

Just last week, Obama offered as his opening position in negotiations with Republicans, the chaining of social security and all other federal benefits to the consumer price index — a monstrous betrayal that will reduce social security benefits by as much as $100 monthly by a decade from now. It wasn’t anything he had been cornered into by Republicans. It was the point from which Barack Obama decided to start. That’s continuity. Only a Republican president, like Richard Nixon, could go to China in the 1970s. Only a black Democrat can break his promises to labor on championing a card check law, refute his commitments to a just and fair media with network neutrality, and do nothing to roll back the prison state which has engulfed black and brown youth. Only a black Democrat could deport more Latinos than all the last three Republicans together, in his first term alone.

VIDEO ABOVE: Gil Scott Heron: “Winter in America”

In the game of advancing the interests of the American people, it seems, Democrats and Republicans are not mutual opponents. They are a tag team, each one pushing the ball further and further down the field in the wrong direction. It’s still winter in America, and the dead hand of Ronald Reagan still guides this nation, decades after his exit from the White House. Welcome to the 9^th term of Ronald Reagan, in the person of Democrat Barack Hussein Obama.

One could also argue, since we are in the grips of the greatest depression, although we don’t call them that any more, since the 1930s, and Obama’s economic policies bear more in common to Herbert Hoover than to Franklin Roosevelt, that we’re living through Herbert Hoover’s third term as well. But we’ll save that for another day.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, and lives and works near Marietta GA. He is a state committee member of the GA Green Party and can be reached at bruce.dixon@blackagendareport.com. 

http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/barack-obamas-2nd-term-it-bill-clintons-3rd-or-it-ronald-reagans-9th

(L to r) Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman, and Elena Herrada, both arrested at City Council April 16, 2013, with supporters, after their release from the Ninth Precinct. Councilwoman JoAnn Watson and several attorneys intervened to have them released on personal bond. Their misdemeanor charges will be heard Wed. May 1, 2013 at 36th District Court, 8:30 a.m. They pledged to continue the battle against the bankers’ takeover of Detroit.

Vote split 5-2

Protesters delayed vote with civil rights songs; two arrested

Mass actions May 5 and June 22 to challenge EM rule in Detroit and state 

By Diane Bukowski 

April 17, 2013 

DETROIT – The Detroit City Council voted 5-2 for a “debt re-structuring” contract with the Jones Day law firm April 16, despite loud protests including civil disobedience, and legal opinions from two of three city attorneys that it represents a clear conflict of interest. Many protesters said Jones Day will enable a complete takeover of Detroit by the big banks, which the firm represents.                                                                                                                                            

Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman is arrested at Council meeting April 16, 2013. Over a dozen uniformed Detroit police officers waited while Council was recessed due to earlier protest consisting of singing “We shall not be moved.”

A phalanx of fully-equipped Detroit police arrested two protesters, the Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman of St. Peters Episcopal Church, and Detroit School Board member Elena Herrada, as they chanted with the rest of the audience, “SHAME, SHAME!” Earlier, the public brought a one and a half hour halt to the vote by kneeling and singing the civil rights anthem, “We shall not be moved.” 

The two were charged with misdemeanors and released at 4 p.m. from the Northeast District police station. They are to appear in 36^th District Court Wed. May 1 at 8:30 a.m. 

Councilwoman JoAnn Watson.

“It is common sense that the city should not be hiring the same law firm to address its debts that represents its lenders,” objected Councilwoman JoAnn Watson, who along with Councilwoman Brenda Jones voted against the contract. 

“We owe hundreds of millions of dollars to banks and bondholders that Jones Day represents,” Watson said. “When the current federal lawsuit gets rid of PA 436 [Michigan’s new emergency manager act], this contract would not be undone. That is the same reason the Council should not have voted for the PA 4 consent agreement. Kevyn Orr has the power to make the contract himself—let him do it. The Council will knowingly be waiving the whole issue of conflict of interest by voting for this.” 

Members of public file out of Council after vote and arrests, chanting, “SHAME, SHAME!”

The PA 436 lawsuit has now been assigned to U.S. District Court Judge George Caram Steeh, an appointee of President Bill Clinton with a relatively progressive record. He has extended the time for the defendants including Gov. Rick Snyder to respond to the complaint to May 15, 2013. 

Antonio Cosby concurred with Watson during public comment. 

“With its list of financial clients, Jones day cannot represent the interests of the people. The EM law requires them to protect the interest of banks. There is the complicity of the Council itself—your approval is not needed. Force the EM to make the contract with his own partners. To the people: resist the EM!” 

Demeeko Williams

Dameeko Ashawn Williams, a Wayne County Community College business administration major, and member of Project #Save Detroit 2013,  said, “I am disappointed in the Mayor and the six city council members who sold out, caved in to the EM, on the Consent and Milestone Agreements, and now this contract. What will it take for several hundred thousand people to stand up and fight back against malfeasance and corrupt government?  You have the power to say no to Jones Day. We are not broke. I’ve studied all the documents—you have been bamboozled. You all can say no today, close the door and declare war on Republican oppression in the city of Detroit.” 

Attorney David Whitaker, head of Council’s Research and Analysis Division, said, “There is a major problem with Kevyn Orr being the Emergency Manager, with all power the city has and more, and his former firm being the restructuring counsel .” 

Jones Day partners comng to run Detroit. Managing partner is Stephen Brogan at left.

Orr will directly supervise six Jones Day partners, including his former boss, Jones Day managing partner Stephen Brogan. 

Whitaker also noted, “The core restructuring work in the contract largely deals with balance sheet issues, getting the city’s enormous debt under control. But there are a number of other issues that would be expected for any firm that are outside the core scope of work. It might be expected that the contract would go way beyond $3.3 million for six months.” 

Orr said the Detroit Water and Sewerage Dept., Belle Isle and other assets are “on the table” in re-structuring. Here Wastewater Treatment Plant workers strike Sept. 30, 2013.

In a letter to Mayor Dave Bing attached to the contract, Brogan said he wanted to “clear up any doubt” that more work would be required. He said that would include asset dispositions, privatization, new debt instruments, and new labor contracts, among other issues. He also cited the city’s Pension Obligation Certificate debt to Jones Day clients UBS AG and SBS Financial, which now amounts to over $2.5 billion including penalties. 

Young Detroit Buliders at CDBG hearing in 2010. Their CDBG funds were later eliminated; more groups stand to lose under EM.

The Detroit News’ Daniel Howe quoted Bill Nowling, Orr’s spokesman, “One of the things that Kevyn wants to do is pick off that low-hanging fruit. He said on Day 1, if you want a roadmap to what I’m going to do, look at the consent agreement.” 

Howe went on to say that Orr will imminently announce the takeover of the City’s Planning and Development Department by the Detroit Economic Growth Corporation, a “quasi-public” entity dominated by corporate board members, a move cited in the Consent Agreement. The takeover would likely mean the elimination of PD&D city workers, and  would affect the city’s administration of $150 million in federal funds allotted annually, including $33.3 million in Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) and $93.1 million for Neighborhood Stabilization programs. 

Last year, Bing eliminated the Detroit Health Department, founded in 1825, from the city budget. Shown here is the Herman Kiefer Complex, now known as “The Institute for Population Health.”

Howe added that other departments using federal dollars will also be targeted. The city has already divested itself of the Health and Wellness, Human Services, and Workforce Development Departments, including their workers and contractors. The majority of funding for those departments came from the federal government. 

Acting Detroit Corporation Counsel Edward Keelean said at the hearing that he has absolute confidence that Jones Day is ethical and will disclose all conflicts of interest. He said the state of Michigan gave the nod to Orr as EM, and that there was a meeting in January at Metro Airport between Orr, other Jones Day partners, and government officials. He said that the Miller Buckfire law firm, now on contract with the city as its “investment banker,” vetted Jones Day and other firms. 

Former Corp. Counsel Krystal Crittendon agreed with Law Dept. atty. Louis Smith that Jones Day contract is a “conflict of interest” during interview after City Council session Aprili 16, 2013.

Miller Buckfire has been bought out by Stiffel Financial, which has had numerous lawsuits for fraud brought against it by municipalities and the Securities Exchange Commission. 

Law Department attorney Louis Smith, who worked closely with previous Corporation Counsel and now Mayoral candidate Krystal Crittendon, disagreed with Keelean. 

“I believe there is a conflict of interest, although I do believe do believe the process is clean and Orr is ethical,” Smith said. “But there remains the appearance of impropriety, which with the history of corruption in this city, means the second highest ranking law firm should have been selected. 

Councilwoman Brenda Jones said the firm had falsely claimed to represent three governmental entities in bankruptcy proceedings, Orange County and the City of Stockton in California, and Jefferson County, Alabama. She said that in fact it represented only one government, and its attorneys represented creditors in the other two cases. 

Keelean claimed that the attorneys in those cases were not working for Jones Day at the time. 

Council Pres. Pro-tem Gary Brown and Pres. Charles Pugh confer after recess of Council April 16, 2013.

The five Council members voting for the contract were Council Pres. Charles Pugh, Pres. Pres. Pro-tem Gary Brown, Councilwoman Saunteel Jenkins, and Councilmen James Tate and Andre Spivey. Councilmen Kwame Kenyatta and Kenneth Cockrel, Jr. were not present. 

The five members clearly had their minds made up, moving almost immediately for a vote with little discussion other than comments from Watson and Jones.  Earlier, Orr met with each Council member individually. Only Councilwoman JoAnn Watson took a representative with her, Attorney Jerry Goldberg of the Moratorium NOW! Coalition.

During public comment at the meeting, Goldberg called for a moratorium on payment of the city’s $16.9 billion debt to the banks. 

“Under Sec. 11 of the Emergency Manager Act, the EM can modify or abrogate virtually every contract including union agreements, but the Act mandates payment in full of all debts,” Goldberg said. “Section 16 mandates that the EM conduct an investigation of any criminal activity that contributed to the financial crisis. That should include the activity of the major banks, which carried out over 150,000 illegal foreclosures in Detroit, documented at a U.S. Senate hearing. Why should these banks now have first claim on our tax dollars? By voting No, the Council would be sending a message to the banks, who are the real criminals. We must wage a struggle to take back our city from the banks who have destroyed it.” 

Abayomi Azikiwe

Abayomi Azikiwe of  Moratorium Now! noted, “This firm was heavily involved in the Chrysler bankruptcy, which resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and businesses in Detroit and nationally.  Orr and his law firm are agents of the banks. The people owe the banks absolutely nothing after their predatory lending and fraudulent bond issues. Our Coalition now has over 3,000 pages of debt documents which expose these criminal activities.”

Both  announced that a “People’s Assembly to Save Detroit” will be held Sat. May 4 at 1 p.m. at Central United Methodist Church, Woodward and E. Adams in downtown Detroit. 

Elena Herrada, who was later arrested, told the Council, “We welcome you into exile with the Detroit Public School Board, operating under a despotic EM despite every obstruction.  “We welcome you into exile and caution you against captivity. We are going to fight the EM’s,  the Educational Apartheid Authority (EAA), led by Mike Duggan, , the governor, and certainly Jones Day. Stand up for the children and elders of Detroit!” 

Dr. Martin Luther King in Birmingham jail.

Rev. Bill Wylie-Kellerman, also later arrested, recalled that the day was the 50^th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” 

“The Council passed the consent agreement last year on the anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination,” Rev. Wylie-Kellerman added. “Dr. King’s letter speaks to me personally. It is addressed to clergy and people of faith, asking where are your bodies and voices in the struggle to condemn attacks in Birmingham. Dr. King said it was time, and that’s what time it is in Detroit today.”  Click on LETTER FROM A BIRMINGHAM JAIL for text of Dr. King’s letter.)

City retiree Ms. Jackson at meeting with grandson.

Ms. Jackson, a City of Detroit retiree who brought her grandson to the meeting, said,
“Those that are going to vote for Jones Day are the same people that decided to go with the Consent Agreement. Why did you allow Snyder to bamboozle you all in the first place? You did not have to agree with anything, you didn’t read the fine print. What’s the advantage of Orr being here?  You have listened to what Snyder said. I told you we need houses in Detroit, and there is over $3 billion in the general city pension system. You are going into my money now—I have a problem with that.” 

Ms. Jackson kept speaking despite a police officer coming to her side threateningly, after Pugh told her her time was up. 

“The people petitioned for a public vote on PA4, and Michigan voted no EM, Detroit voted no EM,” said Rick Mattson. “I doubt that Orr can balance a checkbook. Jones Day will make a bundle, and the banks will make a mint. What happened to one body, one vote? Disillusionment is  growing. An unjust law is no law.” 

Rev. Charles Williams II interviewed after City Council meeting April 16, 2013.

Rev. Charles Williams II of the Historic King Solomon Baptist Church and head the of the Michigan National Action Network chapter, said,  “Jesus threw the moneychangers out of the temple. JD is nothing but a rep for Merrill Lynch and Bank of America, so why would we hire them to renegotiate the city’s  debts. Jones Day is the EM, Jones Day and Kevyn Orr JD, KO in one happy family with the CC and Bing. We will be everywhere Jones Day is across the world to shine the light.” 

NAN is building for a mass march down Woodward Ave. on June 22, honoring the 50^th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s march in Detroit in 1963, where he first gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. The NAN march is to focus on the disenfranchisement of the majority of Blacks in Michigan, as well as the fight against the banks.