printJudge Rosemary Aquilina is hoping to suspend reality in Detroit with her gavel.
Aquilina is “an Ingham County Circuit judge,” who “ordered Friday that Detroit’s federal bankruptcy filing be withdrawn,” reports the Detroit News. “Aquilina said the Michigan Constitution prohibits actions that will lessen the pension benefits of public employees, including those in the City of Detroit.” (Imagine: The state’s constitution works against Michigan taxpayers.)
The Library of Economics and Liberty remarks that “Early English bankruptcy laws were designed to assist creditors in collecting the debtor’s assets, not to protect the debtor or discharge (forgive) his debts.”
This was the wise, ancient common law. The latter is not the concern of Wikipedia, when it talks about the “debtor declaring bankruptcy to obtain relief from debt,” which “is accomplished either through a discharge of the debt or through a restructuring of the debt.”
That the US even allows Chapter 9—“municipal bankruptcy; a federal mechanism for the resolution of municipal debts”—says a lot.
Governments should not be availed of the legal instruments meant to protect private-property owners. How about debtor’s jail for politicians who defraud taxpayers?
Perhaps Aquilina worries that the fat cats (Detroit’s political class) will obtain relief at the expense of the little guy (public-sector workers) to whom the politicians and the unions promised the world?
The sooner the oink sector is disabused of its delusions, the better.
Last week’s column introduced readers to the Colosseum of courtroom cretins. In a word, a dumbed down courtroom commentariat that is incapable of separating politicized constructs (racism) from facts admissible in a court of law.
Judge Rosemary Aquilina is another of this idiocracy’s many exhibits.