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Friday, July 19, 2013

Detroit Goes Belly Up

(Two posts today. Please scroll down)

With a hat tip to Western Hero and related to THIS NEWS about the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history:


As I said over at Western Hero:

Can Detroit even GIVE AWAY housing now? Not from what I've been reading.

We must not forget that Detroit has long been governed by members of the Democratic Party. What has happened to Detroit could well happen to other cities governed by the Democratic Party.

Talk about the devolution of America! Sheesh.

Be sure to read Finntann's commentary over at Western Hero. Worth your time.

38 comments:

  1. This didn't happen over night, as we all know. Politician after politician putting off the inevitable, knowing that payday comes someday.

    Just spend, spend, spend, with no accountability at all. What did they think would happen? The Feds would bail them out? May still happen, who knows.

    How many other cities are running the same way? These were not Conservatives running things.

    Debbie
    Right Truth
    http://www.righttruth.typepad.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. The preceding verse was dedicated to the following historical miscreants and the millions more who followed these knaves, fools, demons, and rogues on the downward path dragging the USA to her destruction.


    __________ DEDICATED TO__________

    Abraham Lincoln
    The Progressives
    Samuel Gompers
    Mother Jones
    W.E.B. Dubois
    Emma Goldman
    Rosa Luxemburg
    Roger Baldwin
    Upton Sinclair
    The Frankfurt School
    The New York Intellectuals
    SAUL ALINSKY
    The New School for Social Research
    Eleanor Roosevelt and her cousin Franklin
    The NAACP
    The Yippees
    William Kunstler
    Jerry Rubim, Abby Hoffman
    SNCC
    H. Rap Brown
    Students for a Democratic Society
    The Black Panthers
    M.L. King, Jr.
    The New York Times
    The Washington Post
    The Nation
    The Ivy League
    CBS, NBC, ABC
    Hollywood
    Morris Seligman Dees and the SPLC
    The New Yorker Magazine
    The Rev. Jessie Jackson
    Elijah Muhammed
    Malcom X
    The Rev. Al Sharpton
    Malik Zulu Shabazz
    The Rev. Jeremiah Wright
    ETC.

    the ist is by n means comprehensive. Feel free to add names that have been omitted. There are plenty of tgem.

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  3. Thia ia what happens when Paul has nothing left gor Peter to rob.

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  4. It wasn't just any kind of Democrats running Detroit - it was black Democrats.

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  5. Will they sell their $1 Billion dollar art collection? The only city with its "Government" owned art collection.
    Why do I think that somehow I will be kicking in to the pot to save their sorry whatever.

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  6. I don't doubt that your readers, AOW, will remember Democrats governed even if that has little to do with the issue.

    They won't remember the white flight and the spiral of declining property values, lost jobs and declining services. Too complicated to look at the whole story.

    Well Bunkerville, maybe they'll sell Breughel's Wedding Dance to Steven Wynn, after all in the right wing world it would be socialist to have it on public view.

    But it's all the Dems fault. Not much depth of thought here, AOW.

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  7. FT, why not add names like your as representatives of the bigots who led the white flight which started the decline?

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  8. According to Forbes:

    ...Municipal bond holders may be the worst off in this situation. Because of the severity of Detroit’s debt situation and complete lack of assets the city has in addition to declining tax revenue, bond holders may be lucky if they get 10 cents to the dollar (10% of their investment) returned in a settlement.

    More distressing are public employees. This includes city officials, police, fire, education, transportation, sanitation, etc. There is the potential for wage garnishments or even completely redone salary arrangements. Pension holders (retirees), like municipal bond holders are looking at taking severe cuts to the medical insurance and retirement payments they receive unless something extraordinary happens in the courts where citizens are given precedence. Most likely, pension holders and current city employees will have to do some serious negotiation with the city to eke out a small percentage of what is owed to them....


    Grim -- particularly for bond holders and retirees who are elderly and/or disabled.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Duck,
    White flight occurs for various reasons -- some of which are legitimate concerns for safety.

    As you mentioned, the matter is complex -- including the outsourcing and devolution of the American auto industry. But the corruption of the government of Detroit is also a factor that should not be discounted.

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  10. From CBS:

    ...For decades, Detroit paid its bills by borrowing money while struggling to provide the most basic of services for its residents. The city, which was about to default on a good chunk of its $14 billion-plus debt, now will get a second chance in a federal bankruptcy court-led restructuring.

    Detroit’s budget deficit this year alone is estimated at $380 million...

    [...]

    ...Detroit’s fall began late that decade as developers starting building suburbs. Then came the 1967 riots that accelerated the number of white residents who moved to the cities north of Eight Mile Road, considered the region’s racial dividing line.

    At the same time, auto companies began opening plants in other cities, and the rise of autos imported from Japan started to cut the size of the U.S. auto industry. Detroit’s property values fell, tax revenue dropped, police couldn’t control a growing murder rate, and many middle-class blacks fled the city for safer suburbs with better schools....

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  11. Bunkerville,
    I read this afternoon -- when my Internet service finally returned -- that Detroit will not sell the "cherished" Howdy Doody marionette, which has been languishing for years in a warehouse. The marionette would auction for around $1 million, a drop in the bucket of Detroit's financial mess.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Debbie,
    How many other cities are running the same way?

    More numerous that I want to think about!

    ReplyDelete
  13. The causes of the white flight are indeed varied, AOW but you are going to have to move in pretty mysterious ways to claim the Dems are behind it all.

    ReplyDelete
  14. FT,
    I see that you have ruffled Canardo's feathers.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Duck,
    The Dems were in leadership positions in Detroit. With those positions comes the responsibility to lead and to govern responsibly. They did not.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Ingham County judge rules Detroit bankruptcy be withdrawn

    There is quite a bit of information in the above article including the following interesting statement:

    ... “It’s also not honoring the (United States) president, who took (Detroit’s auto companies) out of bankruptcy.”...

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  17. It was only a matter of time. I'm surprised they didn't do this sooner.

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  18. Are you certain we have a template for governing in situations when industrial cities lose theirmindustry, AOW?

    Some like Pittsburgh or Cleveland have been able to develop as medical centers and mitigate the decline but from Camden to Detroit there there are many cities where the problem is dire ... Buffalo, Erie, Yongstown.

    I don't believe we have seen a solution from the right. Just bromides.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Duck,
    As you know, there are multiple ghost towns in the "Wild West." Certainly, those situations were different and occurred for some reasons different from the plight of Detroit. The difference is that the people in those towns in the "Wild West" moved elsewhere.

    Anyway, Wikipedia (not an irrefutable source, but a place to do a bit of reading) has an entry about the decline of Detroit. One brief excerpt:

    ...It is thought by some, such as economist Walter E. Williams, that the decline was sparked by race-based city policies which caused more affluent whites to leave the city (sometimes known as "White flight"), reducing the tax base, and leading to fewer employment opportunities and customers in the city....

    Please do read the entire entry at the above link.

    I would also not discount the effects of environmentalism on the American auto industry. For example, I well remember a lot of the fallout when catalytic converters were added to vehicles; we suddenly had vehicles that got very low gas mileage and little horsepower at a higher sticker price. The Japanese figured out how to work out those problems, but the American auto industry was late to the party -- to the point that most Americans gave up on buying American made vehicles.

    I do not discount the effects of deindustrialization, which resulted from multiple causes. However, deindustrialization also occurred after WW2 without the horrendous results we are seeing now. What was different?

    Overall, cities known as "the Foundry of the Nation" have been shrinking for decades.

    Is there really a solution?

    What is the remedy that you would propose?

    ReplyDelete
  20. Debonair Dude,
    Thank you for pointing that out! Obama supporters during the 2012 election cycle were saying that all the time -- as I well recall hearing until I wanted to spit.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Debbie,
    This didn't happen over night, as we all know. Politician after politician putting off the inevitable, knowing that payday comes someday.

    Yes.

    And lots of individual households in America have been doing the same.

    The profligacy will come to no good end -- sooner or later.

    ReplyDelete
  22. LOL. I see Ducky's unmitigated racism now blames Detroit's problems on the absence of white people.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Beamish,
    Hehehe.

    Duck must be a "secret" racist, huh?

    ReplyDelete
  24. Beamish,
    Hey! I see that you have a new avatar. Good one!

    ReplyDelete
  25. Well, here's another one; Gary Indiana. This is what happens when unions become so powerful that any sembalence of a work ethic disappears while wages inflate beyond any real value added. I know this because I lived there and worked there. Democrats have been running this city since, at least, 1943. Do I really need to mention which party runs the unions? Please check-out this link.


    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2173761/Tragic-portrait-city-decline-The-desolate-ruins-Gary-Indiana-reveal-decaying-heart-Americas-proud-industrial-centre.html

    ReplyDelete
  26. AOW,

    My new avatar is because my heart doesn't bleed for Trayvon Martin's mommy enough for Z's exacting standards of imbecility.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Beamish,
    I don't see Z's standards as ones of imbecility. She is a more sensitive person than many of us. Just the way it is.

    I have never been mugged, but I have more than one family member who has been assaulted and bloodied. Frankly, I don't give a damn about the attackers when a family member is in mortal danger.

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  28. My biggest concern with this is that the U.S. taxpayer not be forced to bail out these Democrats and thus allow them to continue their reckless ways.

    ReplyDelete
  29. Ducky said: "The causes of the white flight are indeed varied"

    I watched it happen. Coleman Young encouraged whites to leave. And when they tried to come back, racists on the City Council actively discouraged it.

    Also, your blaming of 'white flight' is actually focused on one race, and might be racist on your part. For a long while now, Blacks have been fleeing Detroit a lot more than whites have.

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  30. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  31. AOW said: "As you mentioned, the matter is complex -- including the outsourcing and devolution of the American auto industry."

    The outsourcing was forced by the unions.... again, a Democratic problem, due to the close alliance.

    The unions DEMANDED that lousy workers be paid $70 an hour to do horrible work and build the worst-quality automobiles sold in North America. This was a super strong incentive for the car companies to go elsewhere. And if/when they didn't, companies that paid a fair wage for such work (from $20 to $40 an hour) ate their lunch with much lower labor costs and a much higher product.

    Want to get rid of outsourcing? Cut the overhigh business taxes in the US to a fraction of what they are. Get rid of much of the regulations that serve no good purpose but to kick businesses out of the country. Make the entire country "right to work" so companies don't have to leave the country to pay a fair wage.

    Watch the unemployment rate go to less than 5% within a year of these positive reforms being enacted.

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  32. Dmarks,
    The outsourcing was forced by the unions.... again, a Democratic problem, due to the close alliance.

    Absolutely.

    My father, automotive master mechanic, saw it coming back in the 1970s -- probably even earlier.

    Dad was forced to join the union where he worked and often bemoaned that union demands for higher wages were driving down the quality and quantity of work because the company could not pay those high wages.

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  33. Dmarks,
    Coleman Young encouraged whites to leave. And when they tried to come back, racists on the City Council actively discouraged it.

    I was unaware of that! Thanks for the information.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Dmarks,
    Wikipedia on Coleman Young:

    Upon learning of Young's death, former President Jimmy Carter called Young "one of the greatest mayors our country has known."

    Figures!

    ReplyDelete
  35. AOW: Jimmy Carter also considered the Ayatollah Khomeini to be a great human rights leader.


    Here is a telling quote from Khomeini:

    "A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However he should not penetrate, sodomising the child is OK. If the man penetrates and damages the child then he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl, however does not count as one of his four permanent wives.
    The man will not be eligible to marry the girls sister."

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  36. Also about the situation in Detroit. Just a few years back, GM moved from an outlying part of Detroit (still in Detroit, though) to the very center of downtown. The move was opposed to some African-American City Council members who were racist and were opposed to white GM employees being in that area.

    Coleman Young had a great contempt for white people, and also considered people who were Stalinists to be good friends due to their ideology.

    ReplyDelete

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