-- Download The Red Wings Fiddle While Detroit Burns as PDF --

We can’t really blame just the Red Wings. We have to blame the Tigers and the Lions too, but really the 1% who own them.

Detroit is bankrupt. Services will be privatized to privateer leeches. Human beings will lose pension supports, jobs, wages and benefits. The 2008 crash could have been a catalyst for a manufacturing transition to a post-carbon energy infrastructure, but that was squandered.

But amidst all this, we have: stadia! Glorious stadia!

And who put up hundreds of millions for these glorious stadia? Governments, including one called Detroit, that is now bankrupt. And the citizens will be paying for these circuses instead of libraries, schools, water infrastructure and a host of other necessities in 21st century cities.

All I know is that if I’m in a fiscal crisis at home and I am having trouble paying for food, clothing and shelter, the last thing I should be doing is going out and buying a mid-life crisis Corvette convertible.

But that’s just me. What do I know about stadia.

What I do know is that the 1% who control governments around the world, big and small, will continue socializing the losses and privatizing the parasitic gains. And if this suddenly frustrates you, it’s called neoliberal capitalism. Find your nearest Occupy cell and begin building a post-capitalist/post-parasitical future…hopefully one that does not include Robocop.

NOOR: And, Frank, we just got some breaking news that the Michigan Strategic Fund has decided to issue $450 million in bonds for a new stadium for the Detroit Red Wings, 44 percent of which will be financed publicly. Do you think this decision is emblematic of the development model that led Detroit on this path for years, if you can give us a brief comment?

HAMMER: Well, you know, I mean, I think that Detroit built a new baseball stadium, it built a new football stadium, and lo and behold, here we are a few years later and Detroit is still going into bankruptcy. So apparently building stadiums doesn’t quite do the trick. And I think that a manufacturing model, a resurrection of manufacturing with green technology would be a much more permanent and sustainable solution.

Detroit Red Wings Get New $400 Million Taxpayer-Financed Stadium While the City Goes Bankrupt.

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Stephen Elliott-Buckley

Post-partisan eco-socialist. at Politics, Re-Spun

Stephen Elliott-Buckley is a husband, father, professor, speaker, consultant, former suburban Vancouver high school English and Social Studies teacher who changed careers because the BC Liberal Party has been working hard to ruin public education. He has various English and Political Science degrees and has been writing political, social and economic editorials since November 2002. Stephen is in Twitter, Miro and iTunes, and the email thing, and at his website, dgiVista.org.

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