Ed Schultz and Michael Eric Dyson rip Rand Paul’s idea for a Detroit ‘selfie’-bailout

By Arturo Garcia/Raw Story

MSNBC host Ed Schultz and frequent guest-host Michael Eric Dyson panned Sen. Rand Paul’s (R-KY) recent outreach trip to Detroit, Michigan, and his pitch for a plan Paul says will help the city “bail itself out.”

“Now that’s a dandy,” Schultz told Dyson. “No one knows what the heck he’s talking about.”

“He’s doing selfies,” Dyson said of Paul. “A self-bailout picture. This is the ‘selfie’ generation, self-serve. It’s good for the gas on your automobile, but it’s nothing to do with bailing yourself out. If people could bail themselves out, they wouldn’t be in the economic condition they’re in. But they didn’t get themselves in that condition, and it’s been going on for the last 40 to 50 years.”

As the Los Angeles Times reported on Friday, Paul was the featured speaker at the opening of a new Republican outreach office in the beleaguered city, part of the GOP’s efforts to reconnect with communities of color.

Paul also proposed that the city create“economic free zones,” meaning areas with unemployment rates of 12 percent or higher would qualify for personal, corporate and payroll tax cuts he argued would save the city $1.3 billion over a 10-year period.

“His heart, I’m sure, is in the right place,” Dyson said. “But his mind and his mouth and his economics are horrible. Cutting that red tape, slashing that tape thinking that it will provide opportunity for those everyday normal people there is pretty ludicrous.”

In reality, Dyson argued, it was the disproportionate accumulation of capital at the top that led the city on the path to bankruptcy, to the point that the city’s pension funds are now at risk.

“If Rand Paul wants to be a friend to those people in Detroit, figure out a way to stimulate the economy,” he told Schultz. “Figure out a way to return democratic rule back to the people who were duly sworn in to do so and give the mayor of Detroit a powerful hand here and not make him a manager of the city.”

Watch Schultz’s interview with Dyson, aired Friday on MSNBC, below.