Friday, October 6, 2017

DETROIT IN MELTDOWN - WILL THIS CITY BE THE SETTING FOR THE MARCH TO REVOLUTION?

As Detroit mayoral election approaches, water shutoffs continue amidst pervasive poverty

By Debra Watson 

6 October 2017
 
Once again this year the US Census Bureau reported that Detroit, Michigan is the poorest “large” city in the US, with an overall poverty rate of 35.7 percent, belying the narrative that is central to the re-election campaign of incumbent Mayor Mike Duggan that Detroit has experienced a “comeback.” According to the September Census report, more than half the children in Detroit live in families below the poverty level.
Duggan is up for re-election in early November. He has spent most of his four-year term arranging hundreds of millions in tax breaks for real estate speculators and billionaires like Dan Gilbert and the Ilitch family, heirs to the Little Caesar’s Pizza empire, and to various business and real estate ventures in the city’s downtown.
A mass campaign of water shutoffs began in earnest in 2014, following Duggan’s election in 2013. It coincided with the massive attack on pensions and wages and benefits of Detroit city workers mandated by the Detroit bankruptcy, which was supported by Duggan, the Obama administration and the entire Democratic Party establishment.
The Detroit bankruptcy gutted the pensions and health benefits of Detroit city workers and set a precedent for attacks on pubic worker pensions nationwide. As part of the settlement the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) was placed under control of a regional water authority, a step toward the privatization of the system.
It is now four years into the residential water shutoff offensive by the DWSD. By January of this year 83,000 residential water accounts had already gone through the shutoff process. By the beginning of the summer of 2017, ten thousand Detroit households faced water shutoffs.
Instead of declining, as the city claimed would happen as they signed up more people for payment plans, the number of shutoffs kept piling up under the Duggan administration.
Duggan’s opponent, Coleman Young II, a Michigan state senator and the son of the long-time former mayor of Detroit Coleman Young senior, has demagogically attacked Duggan for ignoring Detroit’s neighborhoods outside of downtown. However, Young is part of the same Democratic Party establishment that has overseen the deindustrialization and impoverishment of Detroit dating back to Coleman Young senior’s election in 1974. His attacks on Duggan are a transparent attempt to revive the discredited program of racial politics promoted for decades by the Democrats to divide the working class.
It is a measure of the relentless march to the right of the Democratic Party that there have been no calls by either Duggan or Young for any programs to confront the poverty so many Detroit households face on a daily basis in a city that at one point enjoyed the highest standard of living in the United States.
Double digit rent increases are driving the remaining poor out of the city altogether. Detroit, which once boasted the highest home ownership rate in the country, has now, for the first time in the post-World War II period, become a majority renter city. According to an October 5 report in the Detroit Free Press, one in five Detroit families in rental units face eviction every year.
Behind the water shutoffs is a social assault, overseen by Duggan and DWSD head Gary Brown, a former cop and lieutenant of hated former Detroit Emergency Manager Kevin Orr. To satisfy the rapacious greed of Wall Street lenders, the threat of living without running water is used as a punishment to extract tribute from Detroit’s impoverished residents.
Fifty percent of every dollar DWSD collects goes to creditors and bondholders as a part of political arrangements made at the time of the Detroit bankruptcy. When the last dime is extracted, poorer residents of the city are to be pushed out.
Partly to deflect criticism and partly to assist in extracting back debt from customers, schemes were expanded in early 2016 that put more low-income households on payment contracts. These payment plans are often nothing but a sham, limiting eligibility to a pre-specified number of months and creating bigger bills by tacking on arrearage charges.
One in four of Detroit’s residential customers—defined as households with incomes under 150 percent of poverty—ended up on various temporary and often onerous—payment plans. The number of people enrolled in some water assistance program had gone from 9,000 in 2015 to 44,000 in early 2016.
The WRAP program was one such program, ostensibly set up to help water customers, but resulting in future bills low-income households struggled to afford.
The World Socialist Web Site spoke with several Detroit residents trying to avoid shutoff who had come to the city’s east side water payment office.
Jay Harris, a painter, was rushing out to get back to work. He told our reporters:
“I don’t think anything of this mayoral election. The only thing I notice is the downtown getting bigger and greater and since it is around election time of course they are fixing up some parks to get the vote. Why did they not do that right away?
“I notice that instead of them tearing down burnt up houses, they are tearing down the one or two brick houses on a block and leaving the burnt ones alone. That is the craziest thing I ever saw. Why not keep the houses that someone could live in?”
“I have been renting my home for seven years. The last time I called on my water bill they told me $120 was due on the 20th. I paid that bill. Now they are telling me I have to find that money tomorrow somehow or I will be cut off. I already lost $100 by taking off work and coming down here to pay a bill I already paid.
“I have been on the WRAP program for 12 months and now they say it is over. I come down here and they ‘counsel’ me and tell me I missed a payment and now I have to come up with $420.”
Kathy and Steve Petty charged that the water department still does not have correct accounting. “I hope everyone hears what I have to say,” Kathy told our reporters. “They are terrible in there. Terrible! I get a balance due bill every month and I regularly pay my bill. Now they are letting me know that even though I just paid all this money, they have no record of the payment.”
“I also had a problem last month because they double-billed me. I came down here then and they told me just pay half the bill because someone made a mistake down here. So I did that. Then all of a sudden the bill was over $200 and they are threatening to shut me off.”
World Socialist Web Site reporters also spoke to a local owner of some rental properties who had come down to pay some of her tenants’ water bills.
She said, “Why are people being victimized? I don’t like Duggan or Young.
“It is sad! I am pressed, oppressed and depressed. Rights are not rights anymore. Water usage should not cost that much. We are paying more now under Duggan than under [former Mayor] Kwame Kilpatrick!
“People are being pushed out to the suburbs. The people are divided. I can’t find someone who cares about the people. This country is not an opportunity employer.”

THE BIGGEST SWAMP IN D.C. IS SWAMP KEEPER TRUMP'S WHITE HOUSE, er, ah OUR WHITE HOUSE!!!

"The Trump cabinet’s eye-popping travel expenses have highlighted the gulf between his demagogic campaign promises to “drain the swamp” and end government waste, and the reality of the open oligarchic rule in the capital."

Tom Price resignation highlights corruption in Trump’s cabinet

By Shelley Connor
2 October 2017
Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Tom Price resigned on Friday, amid mounting criticism of his use of chartered jets and the apparent use of these government-funded trips as personal outings with his wife.
Between May and September, Price’s travels aboard private jets had cost the Treasury about $400,000, according to Politico. Moreover, many of Price’s trips had been of a personal nature: in June, for example, the HHS chartered a jet to Nashville, where Price owns a condominium. He spent the day touring a medicine dispensary, giving an extemporaneous speech at a health care summit, and having lunch with his son. On another occasion, he and his wife flew to St. Simons Island, Georgia to visit a resort where they own property, making an appearance at a medical conference.
Price stated on Thursday that he would reimburse the government for his travel fees. Significantly, he only offered to pay for his seat, which, according to an HHS spokesperson, cost $51,887.31. That Price could write a personal check for a sum that exceeds an average worker’s annual wage is no surprise, since he is a multi-millionaire. But the amount falls well under Politico’s $400,000 figure. It does not include the seats for Price’s staff, who traveled with him on his many jaunts to physicians’ conferences and pharmaceutical company gatherings.
Price issued a four-paragraph resignation letter on Friday in which he expressed “regret” for having “created a distraction” from the administration’s mission—which, it should be pointed out, is to strip healthcare from millions of Americans in the service of insurance and pharmaceutical executives. He made no apology for his actions.
Several other members of Trump’s cabinet have incurred scrutiny over their travel expenses. Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin, Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke, Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt, and Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin are all being investigated for their use of privately chartered jets or government planes, or for combining official travel and plush holiday trips.
Treasury Secretary Mnuchin requested the use of a military jet—at a cost of $25,000 an hour—to transport him and his new wife, Louise Linton, to their European honeymoon. After questioning by Treasury officials, he rescinded the request. A few weeks later, he and Linton traveled by military jet to Kentucky, taking advantage of the trip to view the solar eclipse in the path of totality. Linton posted a photo of the couple deplaning, tagging the expensive, designer brands she was wearing to Instagram.
In July, Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin issued a memo demanding that Veterans Affairs staffers curb their travel expenses. Less than two weeks later he took his wife to Europe at the public’s expense. The pair attended a championship tennis match at Wimbledon, took a cruise down the Thames, shopped, and toured historical sites. They were accompanied by Shulkin’s acting undersecretary, Poonam Alaigh, and her husband, as well as Shulkin’s chief of staff and an aide. A security retinue of six also accompanied the delegation.
Ostensibly, the trip was official government business. However, at least half of their time was spent on recreation, and Shulkin’s wife, who is not a government employee, had her flight paid for and was given a per diem reimbursement for expenses by the Department of Treasury.
As Secretary of the Interior, Ryan Zinke is responsible for public lands coveted by oil and gas industries and their shareholders. Zinke took multiple flights aboard a privately chartered jet owned by Nielson and Associates, an oil and gas exploration company based in Wyoming. One such trip cost $12,375. For most of these flights, there were commercial options available for a few hundred dollars. Jay Nielson, executive vice president of Nielson and Associates, feigned ignorance about Zinke’s travels on his company’s jets, saying, “Part of why people charter planes is they like to remain somewhat private.”
Scott Pruitt, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, is widely known for his extravagant use of federal funds. Congressional inquiries have focused on his 18-person, 24-hour security detail, the $25,000 “secure” phone booth he had built for himself, and his frequent flights from Washington, DC to his home state of Oklahoma. Pruitt has also cost the federal purse an estimated $58,000 for private jets he has used to travel the country in support of the sweeping cuts he plans to make to the EPA.
Tom Price is thus far the only cabinet member to have drawn Trump’s ire over travel expenses. For Trump, the primary concern was the “optics” of Price’s use of public resources. Furthermore, Price had already found himself in Trump’s crosshairs when the administration met resistance for its efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act.
Trump had jibed at Price in July, during a speech at a Boy Scout Jamboree. In reference to the healthcare plan Price had presented to congress, Trump threatened; “He better get the votes. Otherwise I will say, ‘Tom, you’re fired.’”
The Trump cabinet’s eye-popping travel expenses have highlighted the gulf between his demagogic campaign promises to “drain the swamp” and end government waste, and the reality of the open oligarchic rule in the capital.
Aristocratic arrogance and contempt also finds expression in the various responses of administration officials to criticism. Zinke has referred to the investigation into his travels as “a little BS.” Louise Linton, upon receiving a critical comment on her preposterous Instagram photo, unleashed a snide tirade against the commenter, demeaning the woman’s income and lifestyle. Linton’s response inspired comparisons to Marie Antoinette, whom she once portrayed on television.
Speaking to the Washington Post, Poonam Alaigh dismissed concerns that the VA delegation’s trip to Europe represented wasteful spending. “Were there some breaks we got? Sure. But they were reasonable,” she said.
The Trump administration has ruthlessly worked to dismantle programs to provide working Americans clean air, unpolluted drinking water, healthcare and education. It has portrayed American workers as lazy and irresponsible, and therefore undeserving of assistance. At the same time, Trump appointees have plundered the Treasury to maintain their positions among the financial aristocracy, traveling with unwarranted security details aboard luxury flights to protect themselves from the public they so clearly abhor.
Of course all the tone-deaf assertions and actions of the Trump cabinet pale by comparison to the privileged existence of Trump himself, who has spent more than a quarter of his presidency at his own hotels, golf clubs and other resorts, including the “winter White House” at his Mar-e-Lago estate, at a total cost to the Treasury that dwarfs all the boondoggles enjoyed by all other administration officials combined. It is likely that Trump’s sensitivity to the exposure of Price’s high-cost travel was sparked, not only by the administration’s failure to repeal Obamacare, for which he held Price partly responsible, but by concern that Price’s lifestyle would draw unflattering attention to the far more lavish perks enjoyed by the “commander-in-chief.”


Will Trump’s Amnesty double these figures?

TRUMPERNOMICS: 

THE SUPER RICH APPLAUD TWITTER’S TAX PLAN!


"The tax overhaul would mean an unprecedented windfall for the super-rich, on top

of the fact that virtually all income gains during the period of the supposed

recovery from the financial crash of 2008 have gone to the top 1 percent income

bracket."

THE GOLDMAN SACHS WHITE HOUSE DEMANDS THEIR LOOT!


TRUMP DEMANDS PUERTO RICO PAY THE BANKSTERS FIRST!

HOW MUCH DID SWAMP KEEPER TRUMPS HUNDREDS OF BANKRUPTCIES COST HIS BANKSTERS???

 BOOK:
…………………..TRAGIC!

THE DEATH GAP: INEQUALITY IS KILLING 

AMERICA!



CALL IT OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS OR TRUMPERNOMICS FOR THE SUPER RICH!


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