Evaluating Motown

by Sam Huntington

Mayor Dave Bing appeared on camera earlier this week to proclaim that while it’s true Detroit has problems his isn’t the only city in America on the verge of bankruptcy. While I’m not quite sure how that helps, or in any way mitigates what happened in Detroit, its probably true. I’m very sure that Chicago is near to disaster, and Baltimore, and any number of other cities controlled by unions and run (into the ground) by democratic administrations.


I suppose it is possible to forecast which cities Mr. Bing was speaking about in his remarks. They, like Detroit, should be a showcase for the liberal agenda. A city rife for disaster should be controlled by labor unions, should have a debt nearly equal to that of the entire federal government with no way to repay any of its loans, and conditions within the city itself should be so bad that no sane person wants to remain within its borders.

A city like Detroit will have public schools that are no more than incubators for drugs and violence to such an extent that these children will be well prepared for failure as adults. Roughly seven percent of Detroit’s adults are literate; they are people who aren’t qualified for a job even if employers were screaming for help. This doesn’t mean that people are stupid —quite the contrary. More than half of Detroit’s adult population glimpsed the future and left. The population dropped from 1.8 million to roughly 700,000 in the past twenty years.

A city like Detroit will lack political competition. It is exactly what the democrats and unions wanted: a fiefdom. Detroit has had a democratic mayor since 1962, and like the ever-evasive unicorn, a republican member of the city council is almost unheard of. One party government very rapidly evolves into extraordinarily bad government. It may offer sweet deals to public unions and their members, but sooner or later, someone is going to have to pay for those plums —a neat trick when revenues drop by half.

Like Gary, Indiana (most people seem to have forgotten), the bills have come due for liberal irresponsibility. Time to pay the piper for bad management, criminal corruption, unaffordable borrowing, refinance schemes, raising taxes, and deferring contributions to public pensions. Did I mention raising taxes, which is something socialists love to do?

And of course, we are now hearing the eggheads in Washington discuss a federal bailout for Detroit. Yes sir, nothing like pouring good money in on top of bad investments, eh? But here’s something else to consider. If Mr. Bing is correct about there being “a lot more cities out there” like Detroit, just waiting to slide into the progressive abyss, then what does that tell us about the tax and spend policies of the federal government under Barack Obama? Like most Americans, who were stupid enough to vote for Barack Obama twice, I see no indication that “most Americans” have even yet figured it out: infrastructure is expensive enough without expanding government into people lives, paying them extraordinary entitlements and six-figure pensions.  How many cities can the federal taxpayer afford to "bail out?"

The truth is that Detroit was a disaster waiting to happen for the past fifty years. And those geniuses of the progressive persuasion stood around and watched it happen. Yes sir, let’s reelect people just like Coleman Young, Kwame Fitzpatrick, and John Conyers’ young chick, Monica.  It is said that people deserve the government they elect.  I think this is true, don't you?