Selling Their Seed
The Harrisburg , Pennsylvania bankruptcy is another example of government trying to give everything away to the financial sector.
In addition to the problems caused by the GOPression, 20% of the people in the city were flooded out recently, and the tax base has collapsed. Their major bone of contention is a city guarantee on bonds issued years ago to build a new incinerator for the area. The city doesn’t have the money to continue the bond payments and maintain services.
The state has been proposing a take-over of finances that features the now standard wage concessions by workers, and the sale or lease of the city’s assets, parking garages and meters.
As those assets are an income source, why anyone would think that selling or leasing them would be anything more than a stop-gap measure that just puts off the default is beyond me. A majority of the city council voted to file for bankruptcy, and now the mayor and the state are fighting the decision.
The city council thinks that bond holders should share in the pain, but the mayor and state want to protect them from any ‘inconvenience’.
