Retired U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Steven W. Rhodes got just a bit too clever in his latest ploy to stampede the Michigan Legislature. He is trying to ram a $ 720 million bail out for the Detroit Public Schools through the Legislature, but wound up creating a labor relations firestorm. He even managed to grievously damage the prospects of the bail out in the Legislature. As always, it is the DPS students who are suffering the fallout.
Judge Rhodes, the DPS ‘transition manager’, sent out an email on Saturday telling all and sundry that DPS would have no money to pay teachers after June 30th. He urged Michigan lawmakers to “act thoughtfully, but with the urgency that this situation demands”. The Detroit News later reported:
Rhodes, who warned over the weekend the district would run out of money June 30 and stop making payroll for employees who get paid over the summer, urged employees, parents and others Monday to press lawmakers to pass the rescue plan.
This is a reprise of the successful panic tactics he and his buddy U.S. District Judge Gerald E. Rosen developed to force acceptance of the phony Detroit bankruptcy Plan of Adjustment. This effort, celebrated by Michigan’s nitwit media, left a smoking, $ 491 million crater in Detroit’s post bankruptcy finances. Mayor Duggan has been reduced to chiseling money from demolition contracts. Don’t forget that the $ 720 million bail out plan also turns total, absolute DPS control over to Mayor Duggan and his crack team of demolition contract negotiators. Out of the frying pan and into the fire we go.
This is how Michigan’s devious elites now get what they want, when they want, from an embarrassingly slow and cantankerous constitutional government process which they despise.
Whoopee Ti Yi Yo, Git Along Little Dogies
Some boys goes up the trail for pleasure,
But that’s where you get it most awfully wrong;
For you haven’t any idea the trouble they give us
While we go driving them all along.