Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Detroit as a Kleptocracy

Imagine waking up and finding your city is no longer under a government structure we have known as Representative Democracy. What we are waking up to finding is Kleptocracy and elite capture through a Consent Agreement. These words are more common in third world countries as they strive to find democracy enabling the lower class equal opportunity to participate in government. Although now we have these here, in Detroit, and found in other Michigan communities, including our schools whom the State has placed a review team to determine their financial stability.

The first step is to qualify the community as financial unstable and that can be accomplished by bringing officials that are told to work within a system that supports elite capture. The review team commonly has members whom are affiliated with the organizations writing and litigating the law, seeing those persons as authority on the matter. Commonly missing from a review team are humanitarian industrial engineers that identify problems in organization and process as would be found through Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The underlying interest by the State Treasury is to maintain a debt burden through use of the Emergency Manager Law and Emergency Financial Manger Law (Public Act 72 of 1990, repealed May 2011 to allow Public Act 4 to be brought into law). The manner of working these laws is direct opposition to bankruptcy law which negotiates debt down during restructuring. Instead additional debt is added to "avoid the financial emergency", assets are sold off to corporate/foundation/state-controlled intersts, and the money disappears as one would expect in a kleptocracy. 

The State Treasury even went so far as to claim the Detroit Review Board was not a public body per the Open Meetings Act, however that claim was denied by Judge William Collette on February 2, 2012. The Detroit News reported the story incorrectly until a February 6 correction was released.

Once under control the new fascist regime established through the Consent Agreement departments can cook the books and remain unapproachable in process by the public whom are ruled. The city's assets in will be sold to corporate interests to cover a shortfall in finances that has been caused by leadership that has been cornered into reckless abandonment as they are placed in office. Quite often restructuring is not consistent with industrial engineering practices. This would include absence of organization charts and claims of urgency that evade defining processes existing to find flaws and waste. These restructuring practices are required through bankruptcy processes. This kleptocracy ensures the War on the Poor continues at an ever quickening pace.