BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

The City of Detroit filed for bankruptcy yesterday afternoon. It owes as much as $20 billion and there is no conceivable way that debt will ever be paid. The city offered its debtors 10 cents on the dollar but the debtors refused.

A good deal of the blame – rightly or wrongly – will be placed at the feet of municipal workers – sanitation, water, sewer, cops, firefighters and so on.

The pressure of ever-rising wages for no additional work, leading to ever-rising pension costs, plus ever increasing benefits and ever more closely defined work rules will likely be found to be at the bottom of all this.

But its not the unions’ fault. It is the fault of the elected officials – Democratic elected officials in Detroit – who didn’t have the, um, guts to ever say “No” to their largest voting bloc. Continue reading →