We Hope For Better Things; It Shall Rise From the Ashes If you’re a self-hating masochist like me, you’ve probably noticed this headline on the Drudge Report: If you click the headline, it leads to a story about a new Quinnipiac University poll that shows a majority of Democrats support a federal bailout of Detroit while Republicans and independents really, […]

Just a totally harmless cloud of heavy metal-laden black dust, no problem at all The large piles of petcoke that have been stored on the banks of the Detroit River delivered a little surprise to the residents of Windsor across the border last weekend in the form of a thick black cloud of dust kicked up by a storm. Here’s […]

Frugality is apparently NOT a job requirement Kevyn Orr scored a pretty sweet deal when he signed on as the Emergency Manager for Detroit. In addition to a car, a driver and a body guard, he’s also got a nice suite in the posh Book Cadillac hotel. This is on top of his $275,000 annual salary. Orr’s contract (pdf) also […]

Color me skeptical The Detroit Free Press reports that Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette will file papework in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Detroit to defend state constitutional protections of the pensions of city retirees. Invoking his role as “the people’s attorney,” Schuette said he will file in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Detroit on Monday to intervene in the city’s […]

Michigan represent!

Michigan’s next Secretary of State, Professor Jocelyn Benson was on Up with Steve Kornacki this morning, talking about what’s happening in Michigan right now, how Detroit got to where it is today, and our path forward. It was a refreshingly smart and thoughtful conversation.

Watch it after the jump.

A little justice please? Early this month, I wrote two pieces about Brooke Harris, a teacher fired first from a Flint charter school for helping students to organize a fundraiser for the family of Trayvon Martin and more recently fired by the Education Achievement Authority (HERE and HERE.) At Brooke’s per-termination hearing, she learned that she was being accused of […]

The DIA is a superhero among museums. But that doesn’t mean it should have to save Detroit. I don’t understand this obsession some people have with the Detroit Institute of Arts selling off the treasures in its collection. Do they think it’s the DIA’s responsibility to save Detroit? Because it’s not. Of course, the people who think the DIA should […]

Republicans hate picking winners and losers except when they don’t Amid all the drama surrounding Detroit’s bankruptcy this past week, there was a supremely ironic announcement made that came the same day a federal bankruptcy court judge cleared the way for Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr to proceed with the Chapter 9 filing. Plans for new sports complex, centered around a […]

Too poor to bail Graphic by Anne Savage Not that we were expecting the federal government to do for a failing urban giant like Detroit what they did for big corporations like GM and Chrysler or monstrous banks like Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase. But this right here? This is dickish: Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is pushing an amendment that […]

That must have been one very convincing sales job… Photo by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog Back in January when the Snyder administration was negotiating with Kevyn Orr to become Detroit’s Emergency Manager, well ahead of the city even being declared in a financial emergency, Orr had this to say about Michigan’s newly-enacted Emergency Manager law, Public Act 436 […]

This is unreal

“This is unprecedented in my experience,” he said. “It seems reckless to even consider liquidating these public assets.”