Detroit city, USA, bankruptcy

This video from the USA is called The Committee Against Utility Shutoffs holds demonstration in Detroit.

By Jerry White in the USA:

Emergency manager throws Detroit into bankruptcy

19 July 2013

The emergency manager overseeing the financial restructuring of Detroit filed a petition in federal court Thursday afternoon throwing the devastated industrial city of 700,000 residents into Chapter 9 bankruptcy. Republican Governor Rick Snyder, who appointed Wall Street bankruptcy attorney Kevyn Orr as the city’s emergency manager last March, immediately approved the filing.

The largest municipal bankruptcy in US history paves the way for an unprecedented attack on the pensions and health care benefits of city workers, the further slashing of essential services, and the sell-off of public assets to pay the banks and bondholders who hold the city’s debt.

Announcing the filing, Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr stood side-by-side with the city’s Democratic mayor, David Bing, a multi-millionaire who has slashed the city workforce by 20 percent since taking office in 2009. Both cynically claimed that the bankruptcy would have little effect on daily life and would lead to improved services for city residents. …

Orr has already approved a corporate-backed plan to shut off services to neighborhoods deemed too poor or under-populated for profitable private investment, while handing over public lighting, transportation, garbage collection and other services to for-profit companies. His “turnaround” team has appraised everything from the city’s water treatment plant and masterpieces at the Detroit Institute of Arts to Belle Isle Park and the animals at the Detroit Zoo for possible sale to private investors.

Above all, the bankruptcy filing clears the way to gut the pensions and health care benefits of the city’s 31,000 current and retired employees. By throwing the city into the bankruptcy courts, Orr intends to circumvent Michigan’s constitution, which declares public pensions to be a “contractual obligation” that “shall not be diminished or impaired.”

Related articles

• BREAKING: Detroit Files Biggest U.S. Municipal Bankruptcy (indyhiphop.com)
• Judge appoints mediator for Detroit bankruptcy (macombdaily.com)
• Records Detail Fees For Detroit Turnaround Effort (detroit.cbslocal.com)
• Detroit bankruptcy provokes calls for nationwide assault on pensions (rinf.com)
• Labor activist: Emails show Detroit’s emergency managers always intended to declare bankruptcy (rawstory.com)
• Orr under fire for comments in interview (wxyz.com)