Labor activist: Emails show Detroit’s emergency managers always intended to declare bankruptcy

A Detroit labor activist has uncovered emails that indicate that the very people put in charge of saving the city financially were actually hoping the city would go bankrupt all along. According to the Detroit Free Press, with whom Davis shared the emails, revelations in the documents call into question whether the city’s emergency management were ever negotiating in good faith, thereby lending strength to lawsuits currently trying to halt the bankruptcy.

“Ray Charles could see what’s going on here,” said activist Robert Davis at a press conference on Monday. “It’s not hard to connect these dots.”

He continued, “These emails are totally contrary to all the public statements which they have made on this particular issue.”

Davis has been a gadfly to Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr since the Washington bankruptcy lawyer was called in to take over the city’s finances. He has filed a series of lawsuits – one of which a judge found to be frivolous, levying a $40,000 fine that Davis has yet to pay – against Orr’s office and the state, alleging that the reorganization plan unfairly targets retirees and pensioners, whose benefits are protected under the state constitution.

The public line from the Emergency Manager’s Office and the Michigan state government under Republican Gov. Rick Snyder — a tea party favorite and crony of corporatist billionaire Dick Devos — has always been that bankruptcy would be a last resort for the city of Detroit, which has been struggling under the weight of its own debts. Included in the city’s operating costs are the pensions of some 21,000 retired workers, which are guaranteed, as are all worker pensions in the state, under the Michigan state constitution.

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Activist Davis said that the email record reveals that Snyder, Orr and Jones Day never had any intention of allowing the negotiations to succeed or believed that the bankruptcy was in any way avoidable. Orr and Jones Day, he said, stand to make millions in legal fees by facilitating the bankruptcy.

More at: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/23/labor-activist-emails-show-detroits-emergency-managers-always-intended-to-declare-bankruptcy/