Detroit was
once one of the world's great cities. It was the 4th largest metropolis in
America, jobs were plentiful because of the auto industry, and Motown even kept
it on the cutting edge musically. Unfortunately, from 1962 until the present
day, the mayor of Detroit has been a Democrat. The result?
Detroit's
population has dropped from 1.8 million to just over 700,000, the unemployment
rate is over 50% if you count the people who've given up on finding jobs,
property values have dropped so much you can buy homes in the crime-ridden city
for $500, and Detroit has gone bankrupt.
How did
Democrats kill one of the most prosperous cities in America? With the same sort
of unfettered liberalism that Democrats like Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and
Nancy Pelosi want to foist on the rest of the nation.
1) Unions crippled the auto industry: The Big 3
automakers could afford unions when they practically had a monopoly on auto
production in the United States. However, once they started facing real
competition from overseas, the unions made them less and less competitive. The
unions forced the companies to pay out more than market value for their
workers, put stifling work rules in place that made flexibility and innovation
difficult, and created generous pension plans that are proving to be
unsustainable. This wouldn't have been possible without a symbiotic
relationship between the unions and the Democrats in government who tied the
hands of the Big 3 automakers and simply wouldn't allow them to get rid of the
unions that were slowly strangling them to death. Eventually because of the
unions, the Big 3 automakers had to deal with significantly larger costs per
car than their overseas competitors and they took it out of the only place they
could: the cars. As the quality of their products dropped, their competitors
took an ever larger share of their market, and there were fewer jobs to go
around. If you want to know why the "Motor City" is up on cinder
blocks in Michigan's front yard, this is where it started.
2) White citizens were demonized until they left: Detroit was a
heavily segregated city and in 1967, there were black riots. After that, white
flight to the suburbs began. This was dramatically exacerbated when Coleman
Young became Detroit's first black mayor in 1972. Young was cut from the same
cloth as men like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, but unlike the two of them, he
actually had power. Young systematically drove white government employees out
of their jobs so they could be replaced by blacks, was hostile to the white
suburbs, and was generally perceived as anti-white. Naturally, a lot of white
people just left, which reduced the population and significantly cut into the
tax base. Today, Detroit is a 7.9% white city, and if he were alive and
kicking, that would probably suit Coleman Young just fine.
3) Out-of-control crime helped drive much of the black middle class out of
the city: Ever heard of "Devil's Night?" It's the night before Halloween
and in Detroit, fires are set all over the city. Combine the sort of criminal
mentality that produces an unofficial "holiday" like that with a sky
high unemployment rate and Draconian laws designed to make it difficult for law
abiding citizens to arm themselves, and it's not a surprise that crime is a
problem in Detroit. However, the issue goes much deeper than that. In case you
haven't noticed, in a conflict between a cop and a criminal, the hearts of
liberals almost always seem to bleed for the thug. Combine that with the
liberal tendency, when money gets tight, to cut essential programs instead of
their perks and the goodies they hand out to their supporters, and you end up
with a police department that is both dramatically underfunded and completely
incompetent.
How
bad has it gotten? "The size of the police force in Detroit has been cut by about 40
percent over the past decade," "it takes (the police) an average of 58 minutes to respond"
to a call and the "police solve
less than 10 percent of the crimes that are committed in Detroit."
4) Reckless government spending bankrupted the city: Detroit's tax base
has been plunging like an anvil dropped into the Marianas Trench and so, in
true liberal fashion, liberals have raised taxes to make up for it instead of
cutting spending. "The city's per-capita tax burden is the highest in Michigan. Detroit has the country's highest property taxes on homes, the top
commercial property tax and the second-highest industrial property tax."
Unfortunately for Detroit, you can't get blood from a stone. As jobs and wealth
fled the city, there was simply less cash available for big government
programs, pensions, and the incredibly generous, but almost completely unfunded
union health care program. It's fantastic that the city paid "80 percent to 100 percent of retirees'
medical costs," but 99.6% of those costs were unfunded. As
Obamacare supporters should have learned by now, it's a lot easier for
politicians to make big promises about what they’re going to give you than it
is to back them up in the real world.
5) The government is completely incompetent: Ever notice that
the bigger government seems to get, the less it does anything well? Citizens of
Detroit could tell you all about that. The school system is horrible, which
explains why a staggering 47%
of the population is illiterate. In addition, 40% of the street lights don't work, only about 1/3 of the
ambulances are running, and 2/3 of the parks have been closed since 2008. Just
to give you an idea of its priorities, an independent report in 2012 suggested
the city fire 80% of the Water and Sewage Department including a
horseshoer" that it has on staff even though it has NO HORSES.. How did the union respond to that report? "They don’t have enough people as it is
right now. They are just dreaming to think they can operate that plant with
less." Detroit may not have enough police, ambulances, or competent
teachers, but if you ever need a horseshoe in the Motor City, they've got you
covered.
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2013/07/30/5-ways-liberalism-destroyed-detroit-n1651524/page/full
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