“If it weren't for the Chicagos and Detroits and Toledos, terrible things would spread out across the whole country and make trouble for everybody else. Such places are collectors of badness in the way hospitals are collectors of the sick and damaged.” ― Stephen Dobyns, Eating Naked: Stories
Consider this: right now there are 78,000
abandoned homes in the city of Detroit, roughly 1/3 of its 140 square miles
is
derelict, downtown is pocked with at
least 60 abandoned buildings, some of which stand in the shadows of hotels and
stadiums, nearly half of all Detroiters can’t
read, much of the city’s population still consists of children
living in poverty, the murder rate in Detroit is 11 times higher than that of
New York City, police solve less
than 10 percent of the crimes that are committed and crime has gotten
so bad that even the police are telling people to "enter
Detroit at your own risk".
Detroit is so mired in debt and beholden
to the mistakes of the past that it amounts to little more than a “daisy chain” of
disaster. The city, or rather it
leaders, had been spending $100 million more than it took in with each budget.
The city, for 51 years (1962 to
present) had a one-party government (Democrat) that grew fat, corrupt and
incompetent. But year after year, even decade after decade, the voters kept
re-electing the same crooked politicians.
Not even crash test dummies are that stupid.
A long-time mayor went to jail
after The Detroit Free Press spent years
piecing together his trail of corruption.
Kwame Kilpatrick was convicted of
24 federal crimes including racketeering, extortion and bribery. He used the mayor’s office to enrich himself
for years through shakedowns, kickbacks and bid-rigging schemes.
Another newspaper, The Detroit News, revealed how officials
robbed city departments of funds so thoroughly that inspected fire hydrants
routinely failed to produce water and police couldn’t answer 911 calls. In
one terrible example, firefighters responding to an apartment fire had to
watch pleading residents die, because the ladders on their trucks didn’t work.
Yet the officials were re-elected and federal money poured in, only to
disappear.
Below, is the list of mayors who
created and/or managed the decay of Detroit.
Roman Gribbs 1970-1974
Dennis Archer 1994-2001
Kwame Kilpatrick 2002-2008
Dave Bing 2009-present
Former NBA star
turned mayor, Dave Bing seemed to be aboveboard when elected in 2009, however the
blight and corruption that is Detroit overtook his office.
When the city fell
under state oversight following Governor Snyder’s appointment of bankruptcy
attorney Kevyn Orr as its emergency manager, he became the final say on all
city financial matters. That action was
clearly the impetus for
Bing to announce in May of this year that he would not seek reelection. He
was angered that his executive team would not remain intact to move his
initiatives forward.
Detroit is only just
the beginning. When the
next major financial crisis strikes, we are going to see a wave of
municipal bankruptcies unlike anything we have ever seen before.
Under the current
administration, we
have seen our federal government pile up $17 trillion dollars in debt and over
$200 trillion in unfunded liabilities.
What’s past is prologue. Was Ayn Rand prophetic? Take a look at her fictional Starnesville
from Atlas Shrugged. It is Obamanomics taken to its fatal conclusion. And as Daniel Hannan, Conservative MEP for
South East England warns,
we should tremble.
