Bailout: Automatic Democrat Reaction To Financial Problems

[_bcspace]

A new national poll from Quinnipiac University shows that a majority Democrats believe the federal government should bail out Detroit, but an even larger majority of Americans oppose such a move. Fifty-one percent of Democrats support Washington providing federal assistance to Detroit, which last month became the largest American city ever to seek bankruptcy protection.

Not surprisingly, there is a strong partisan divide on the question of a federal bailout for the Motor City. Seventy-three percent of Republicans oppose a bailout, while only 18 percent support the idea. Independents are nearly of the same mind as Republicans on the issue: 68 percent oppose federal assistance for Detroit and 28 percent support it.

The poll also shows a significant racial divide on the issue. Whites overwhelmingly oppose a federal bailout (63 percent against vs. 26 percent in favor) while a solid majority of African-Americans support a bailout (57 percent favor vs. 36 percent against) as do a plurality of Hispanics (48 percent favor vs. 36 percent against).

A federal bailout for Detroit is very much a live issue politically. Michigan's congressional Democrats are vowing to find federal assistance for the city, while Republicans such as Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul have declared that Washington will bailout Detroit "over my dead body."

On March 14, Republican Gov. Rick Snyder appointed Kevyn Orr as emergency manager of the city. After a four-month review of its disastrous financial situation, which included painstaking negotiations with bondholders, creditors and union employees, Orr and Snyder concluded Chapter 9 bankruptcy was the only option to try to rescue the failing municipality.

Bankruptcy papers were filed by Snyder and Orr on July 18, just minutes before lawyers from the unions filed for an injunction to try to stop the bankruptcy from proceeding. At issue is whether a federal bankruptcy court has the jurisdiction to order a restructuring that will almost certainly include a significant reduction in future pension benefits for city workers, something that is currently prohibited by the state constitution.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/08/02/dems_favor_federal_bailout_of_detroit_public_does_not_119482.html

[_ajax18]

I don't suppose anyone will be bailing out the American taxpayer anytime soon.

[_cinepro]

I don't suppose anyone will be bailing out the American taxpayer anytime soon.

I'm obviously not a fan of "bailouts", but I do wonder why the Fed's $85 billion/month creation of money is given to specific financial sectors for their benefit, and not distributed evenly throughout the population or in some other way given more directly to taxpayers.

I mean, say what you want about Bush's tax cuts, but at least that was a direct benefit to all taxpayers.

[_Brackite]

From NewsBusters.org:

MSNBC's Schultz: Democracy is Dead in Detroit, Republican 'Parasites' to Blame

...

Ed Schultz has spent weeks blaming Detroit’s recent bankruptcy filing on Republican policies, even though the city has been firmly in Democratic hands for decades. The bombastic MSNBC host has called the city a “conservative utopia,” arguing that Republican anti-union policies have “gutted Detroit.”

Schultz’s latest tirade came on Saturday’s The Ed Show, when the left-wing host bizarrely claimed that Republicans have “taken democracy away from Detroit.” Schultz further suggested that Republicans “circumvent[ed] local elections in this country” and “discard[ed] what people want and say about their communities.”

...

Now, it’s not entirely clear what Schultz meant by taking “democracy away.” He could have been referencing Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R-Mich.) efforts to help Detroit resolve its debts and rein in government spending. But Schultz couldn’t provide one fact to back up his wild accusations, instead doubling down on the harsh rhetoric:

The people who once built the cars won’t get the pensions they were promised, but the big automakers are doing just fine, after we help them out with federal money? But for the worker? Well, to hell with the workers. Workers don’t mean anything. This is the conservative utopia.

Apparently, Schultz forgot that a Democratic Congress and a Democratic White House bailed out the “big automakers” in 2009, and that the same Democratic White House confirmed just last week that it would not bail out the city of Detroit. Hardly a “conservative utopia.”

Schultz also ignored the fact that Detroit has elected only one Republican city councilor and exactly zero Republican mayors in the last forty-plus years. But the host may be so desperate to absolve Democrats of all blame in Detroit’s bankruptcy that he simply can’t consider the facts.

Instead, big Eddie chose angry, partisan rhetoric, suggesting that conservative critiques of the city’s culture are racist:

Conservatives are using the most insulting language possible that they can come up with to blame unions, blame black people, blame their culture, for Detroit’s troubles.

Schultz’s tirade focused on conservative Washington Post columnist George Will, who cited Detroit’s feral dog epidemic, high illiteracy, and high rate of single-parent households as evidence of a “cultural collapse” on ABC’s This Week. Of course, Will never blamed African-Americans for Detroit’s bankruptcy. But Schultz seems desperate to distract from the clear and obvious mismanagement of Detroit by Democratic leaders:

Union-busting is the real parasite. Conservative policies which help businesses out for years – and are now saying, we don’t want to fund public education. We’re not going to go down that road to health care. We don’t care what those workers did for all those years. These are the real parasites who gutted Detroit.

Many intelligent voices, on both sides of the political aisle, have weighed in on Detroit’s financial collapse. The Washington Post’s Zachary Goldfarb blames an auto industry that employs “fewer people” and pays them less. Forbes’ David Marotta cites Detroit’s sky-high property and corporate income taxes. When a city is falling apart, those policies discourage folks from moving in – particularly wealthy individuals, who are more mobile and can find jurisdictions with more favorable tax policies.

The Detroit Free Press, hardly a conservative newspaper, offers perhaps the most substantive take. The paper’s editorial board accuses city officials of “betray[ing] its retirees,” “shortchanging” pension funds for infrastructure spending, defaulting on pension obligations, and offering “pension sweeteners” that have raised costs and shrunk the city’s work force.

Although none of these papers directly blame Democrats, they certainly don’t blame Republicans, as Schultz has done. Few would argue that Detroit’s problems are exclusively Republican or exclusively Democratic.

Then again, Ed Schultz carries a rare breed of partisanship, and vicious anti-GOP rhetoric, to the Lean Forward network each and every weekend.

And what about the two large cities in the liberal State of California that declared bankruptcy? Are Republicans also to blame for the bankruptcy of Stockton and San Bernardino in California??

MSNBC's Ed Schultz is indeed a Political Hack.

[_JAK]

I don't suppose anyone will be bailing out the American taxpayer anytime soon.

Well, of course, if we were to bring more jobs back to Detroit, tax would be collected from those who have regained employment in the US. The deficit is shrinking, contrary to some who claim otherwise, according to the Congressional Office of Management and Budget – a non-partisan analysis of economic realities.

JAK

[_moksha]

What's Toyota's position on this matter?

[_Brackite]

Moksha, I don't know what's Toyota's position on this is.

[_Kevin Graham]

Fox Conflates The City Of Detroit With Automakers To Attack President Obama

Jarrett: The President Vowed Not To Let Detroit Go Bankrupt, "But You Know, He Did, Didn't He?"

Reacting to Detroit's recently announced bankruptcy, Fox News' Gregg Jarrett and Chris Stirewalt repeatedly conflated Detroit automakers with the City of Detroit in order to attack President Obama for breaking a campaign promise to not "let Detroit go bankrupt." However, the President's statement was clearly in reference to the Detroit automakers that received government assistance, not the city itself.

According to The New York Times, "Detroit, the cradle of America's automobile industry and once the nation's fourth-most-populous city, filed for bankruptcy on Thursday, the largest American city ever to take such a course." After it was reported that the White House did not plan to offer financial assistance to the City of Detroit, Jarrett and Stirewalt questioned whether President Obama had gone back on a statement he made in October 2012 when he said, "We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt." Jarrett asserted, "The president did vow, 'I will not let Detroit go bankrupt.' But you know, he did, didn't he?"

But, as CBS News reported at the time, Obama's statement was in reference to an op-ed written by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney in which Romney said, "Let Detroit go bankrupt." According to CBS, the president was responding to that op-ed by pointing to the success of his administration's bailout of the auto-industry."

As Slate's Matthew Yglesias wrote, President Obama and others often used the term "Detroit" to refer to the auto industry. According to Yglesias, "If you or someone you love is going around and finding old quotes in which the words 'Detroit' and 'bankruptcy' appear but it's absolutely clear from context that 'Detroit' is being used as metonymy for auto companies rather than as a way of referring to the municipality then please stop."