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Rand Paul's Detroit Shock Doctrine
Rand Paul's Detroit Shock Doctrine
Rick Perlstein on July 21, 2013 - 9:59 PM ET
Detroit has now declared bankruptcy. A judge has ruled the act illegal—a decision that may or may not stand. Naturally, New York’s fiscal crisis forty-eight years ago comes to mind, though in many respects the differences are more important than the similarities: New York was one of the world’s financial and cultural capitals, its private economy largely thriving; as such, the news of government’s bare coffers was shocking, a revelation, something the world at first had a very hard time getting their mind around. While what’s happening to Detroit, no one’s idea of an economic capital, isn’t surprising at all...
To wit: here comes Senator Rand Paul, saying nothing would be more splendid than to let a major city go bankrupt—because with bankruptcy, you get “new management, better management, and by getting rid of contracts, contracts that give you where [sic] public employees are getting paid twice what private employees are and things come back more to normal.” No matter that so far the White House says only that it’s “monitoring” the situation, though former Obama auto czar Steve Ratner says he hopes Obama will pump federal money into the city. That is what Paul distorted into his claim that “apparently” the president is “making indications that Detroit can be expected to be bailed out.” And that, he says, will happen only “over his dead body.” Because municipal bankruptcy would give Paul the chance to do what right-wingers like him always do, starting with New York in 1975: make excuses for slashing the public sector.
Shock doctrine stuff, in other words. The unwinding of what’s left of the welfare state, by whatever means at your disposal. Same story, then and now. In 1975, its most prominent voice was William Simon, President Ford’s Treasury secretary, who leveraged his work as the butcher of New York to become a major conservative movement leader...
Read more: Rand Paul's Detroit Shock Doctrine | The Nation http://www.thenation.com/blog/175373/rand-pauls-detroit-shock-doctrine#ixzz2ZmzUcr62
Follow us: @thenation on Twitter | TheNationMagazine on Facebook
Rick Perlstein on July 21, 2013 - 9:59 PM ET
Detroit has now declared bankruptcy. A judge has ruled the act illegal—a decision that may or may not stand. Naturally, New York’s fiscal crisis forty-eight years ago comes to mind, though in many respects the differences are more important than the similarities: New York was one of the world’s financial and cultural capitals, its private economy largely thriving; as such, the news of government’s bare coffers was shocking, a revelation, something the world at first had a very hard time getting their mind around. While what’s happening to Detroit, no one’s idea of an economic capital, isn’t surprising at all...
To wit: here comes Senator Rand Paul, saying nothing would be more splendid than to let a major city go bankrupt—because with bankruptcy, you get “new management, better management, and by getting rid of contracts, contracts that give you where [sic] public employees are getting paid twice what private employees are and things come back more to normal.” No matter that so far the White House says only that it’s “monitoring” the situation, though former Obama auto czar Steve Ratner says he hopes Obama will pump federal money into the city. That is what Paul distorted into his claim that “apparently” the president is “making indications that Detroit can be expected to be bailed out.” And that, he says, will happen only “over his dead body.” Because municipal bankruptcy would give Paul the chance to do what right-wingers like him always do, starting with New York in 1975: make excuses for slashing the public sector.
Shock doctrine stuff, in other words. The unwinding of what’s left of the welfare state, by whatever means at your disposal. Same story, then and now. In 1975, its most prominent voice was William Simon, President Ford’s Treasury secretary, who leveraged his work as the butcher of New York to become a major conservative movement leader...
Read more: Rand Paul's Detroit Shock Doctrine | The Nation http://www.thenation.com/blog/175373/rand-pauls-detroit-shock-doctrine#ixzz2ZmzUcr62
Follow us: @thenation on Twitter | TheNationMagazine on Facebook
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