Societal collapse

[Higgenbotham]

Britain's second largest city declared bankruptcy today.

Britain’s second-largest city effectively declares itself bankrupt amid $950 million equal pay claims

By Rob Picheta and Catherine Nicholls, CNN

Published 1:36 PM EDT, Tue September 5, 2023


Britain’s second-biggest city effectively declared itself bankrupt on Tuesday, shutting down all nonessential spending after being issued with equal pay claims totaling up to £760 million ($956 million).

Birmingham City Council, which provides services for more than one million people, filed a Section 114 notice on Tuesday, halting all spending except on essential services.

The deficit arose due to difficulties paying between £650 million (around $816 million) and £760 million (around $954 million) in equal pay claims, the notice report says.

The city now expects to have a deficit of £87 million ($109 million) for the 2023-24 financial year.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/05/economy/ ... index.html

[Higgenbotham]

Eventually it will get real. In that 2012/2013 time period, a few cites went bankrupt while Bernanke went pump, pump, pump, pump harder, pump harder, pump harder, and finally everything was back to normal, right?

10 years since bankruptcy, Detroit’s finances are better but city workers and retirees feel burned

A state-appointed manager on July 18, 2013, made Detroit the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy. A decade later, the Motor City has risen from the ashes of insolvency

BY COREY WILLIAMS
Published 11:14 PM CDT, July 16, 2023

DETROIT (AP) — Mike Berent has spent more than 27 years rushing into burning houses in Detroit, pulling people to safety and ensuring his fellow firefighters get out alive.

But as the 52-year-old Detroit Fire Department lieutenant approaches mandatory retirement at age 60, he says one thing is clear: He will need to keep working to make ends meet.

“I’m trying to put as much money away as a I can,” said Berent, who also works in sales. “A second job affords you to have a little bit of extra.”

Thousands of city employees and retirees lost big on July 18, 2013, when a state-appointed manager made Detroit the largest U.S. city to file for bankruptcy.

A decade later, the Motor City has risen from the ashes of insolvency, with balanced budgets, revenue increases and millions of dollars socked away. But Berent and others who spent years on Detroit’s payroll say they can’t help but feel left behind.

“You become a firefighter because that’s your passion and you’ll make a decent living. You would retire with a good pension,” said Berent, who told The Associated Press that his monthly pension payments will be more than $1,000 lower than expected due to the bankruptcy.

https://apnews.com/article/detroit-bank ... 0b08f08f30

[John]

** 05-Sep-2023 World View: Trump and MAGA

> A third element is that as I believe
> MAGA will get trashed as the 14th
> Amendment is applied. ...

> So I’ll just continue to anticipate
> Trump will disappear long before
> cities do. Meanwhile, MAGA will be
> outvoted.

This is completely ridiculous and
delusional, but it shows how desperate
the Democrats are.

"MAGA" stands for "Make America Great
Again." When you say that you want to
trash MAGA, then what you're really
saying is that you want to trash
America.

This actually isn't surprising. You and
the Democrats are still furious and
looking for revenge for the Republicans
winning the Civil War, freeing the
slaves, outlawing the Ku Klux Klan, and
outlawing the Jim Crow laws, which the
Democrats loved.

It's hilarious listening to clips of
Democrats like George Stephanopolous
whining about how shocked and astonished
they are that Trump's approval keeps
rising, despite all the indictments and
the 91 ridiculous charges in multiple
states. They're certain that Trump
should have been completely destroyed by
now, and next they've turned to the
ridiculous 14th amendment argument.

Aeden provided a link to a video with
multiple clips of blacks cheering Trump.

https://m.facebook.com/100090248535050/ ... 5173/?_rdr

One said, "If Trump is getting arrested
in Atlanta Zone 6, then I'm his
brother." Blacks are well aware that
the 91 charges against Trump are no
different than that kinds of phony
charges that are always leveled against
blacks.

So be careful what you with for.
Trashing Trump is far different than
trashing MAGA. Even without Trump, most
Americans would like to see America
great again, after 2-1/2 years of Biden
and Democrats trashing America, not to
mention seeing Biden selling out for $50
million from China.

[Guest 3]

Furthermore the values you espouse CAME from Christianity. Slavery was the foundation of human society until Christians crusaded against it, for example.

Well, sorta. A version of the Golden Rule was proclaimed by Confucius, 600 years before Christ got around to it. Slavery wasn't practiced by the Chinese perhaps as late as the Qin Dynasty in 221 BC. There is no word that could be translated as slave in Sanskrit. The first record of slavery is the Code of Hammurabi. Thus, human society predates slavery.

China and India have practiced slavery in all but name to this very day. You've obviously never been to China or India. I have. (And no, the Chinese buffet and the Indian restaurant don't count.) Only someone like you would hold up these countries as paragons of virtue.

[Bob Butler]

John

I prefer the interpretation of MAGA as ‘make attorneys get attorneys.’ More descriptive. Trump is less into America than he is into himself. I’m less into trashing America than trashing Trump.

Again, during the Civil War period, Lincoln’s Republicans were the progressive party. End slavery. Shift the political power from landowners to robber barons. As with much of New England, I would have been on the Union side. About MLK’s time, civil rights was adopted as progressive by the Democrats. They were already progressive on other issues, and added race relations at that time.

You really ought to become familiar with political history.

Guest 3

Of course China and India are anything but paragons of virtue. China is quietly pretending its economic system isn’t collapsing. I’m convinced there are problems with conservative thought, with little to choose between Putin, Xi and Trump. Putin is into conquest. Xi built large cities he didn’t need, throwing away much of what he gained in globalism. Trump is into criminal acts. All three made poor choices of very different natures. What is common is the making of arbitrary autocratic decisions while surrounding themselves with yes men.

I would note that peasants under the feudal system were only half a step above being slaves. Most state economies were more feudal than slavery based, arguably not much better. As I’ve said, the Agricultural Age was a mess, emphasizing hereditary rule supplemented by conquest while exploiting the general population. Most just found the feudal system sufficient, only supplementing it with slavery. The American south was a bit unusual in leaning on slavery.

[John]

I prefer the interpretation of MAGA as ‘make attorneys get attorneys.’ More descriptive. Trump is less into America than he is into himself. I’m less into trashing America than trashing Trump.

"Abraham Lincoln once posed the question: 'If you call a dog's tail a leg, how many legs does it have? ' and then answered his own query: 'Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one."

[Guest]

I prefer the interpretation of MAGA as ‘make attorneys get attorneys.’ More descriptive. Trump is less into America than he is into himself. I’m less into trashing America than trashing Trump.

"Abraham Lincoln once posed the question: 'If you call a dog's tail a leg, how many legs does it have? ' and then answered his own query: 'Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one."

Direct hit.

[Bob Butler]

Direct hit.

We'll see if the attorneys get attorneys.

[spottybrowncow]

You can potentially convict anyone of anything if you're targeting someone of one political persuasion in a district where 90+ percent of the population is of the other persuasion. Astute citizens be warned, that's not justice, that's playing with fire. Harry Reid's elimination of the filibuster in 2013 for lower court nominees paved the way for Republicans to do the same for the confirmation first of Neil Gorsuch, then later for Kavanaugh and Amy Barrett, thus creating the greatest headache (a Supreme Court majority with integrity and true legal scholarship) that the democrats currently have.

Do they really think prosecuting Trump and others in districts where they can be convicted of jaywalking and get life imprisonment will work out any differently for them in the long run? Mark Levin put out a call for Republican prosecutors to start charging democrat officials with crimes in conservative venues where they will not get off with a slap on the wrist like Kevin Clinesmith did. Thus far, no one has answered the call, because Republicans on a whole are more honest than democrats, and value the rule of law far more. But if pushed hard enough, they will be forced to resort to this, and we may see ex-president Biden languishing in a jail cell in Alabama, finally convicted of his treasonous selling out of the US to his master Xi Jinping (among other crimes).

It's unclear if a secret service agent will still have to carry his diaper bag.

[Lara RH]

Direct hit.

We'll see if the attorneys get attorneys.

People with low IQs never consider the consequences of their actions. The loss of the Rule of Law means nothing to someone like Bob Butler because he lives in the selfish now.