If Detroit serves as being anything, especially these days, it would be that it has become the prefect example of what America is very likely to look like by the time that Barry "Almighty" completes the "fundamental transformation" that he said our country was so badly in need of. Detroit’s long, painful, descent into darkness has been nearly legendary. Once the fourth largest city in the nation, and home to its largest industry, Detroit’s population has been cut in half, from 1.5 million in 1970, to less than 700,000 in 2012. The median household income is $27,862 compared to the state median of $48,669. The poverty level is 36.2 percent compared to a statewide level of 15.7. The murder rate is 11 times that of New York City, and the unemployment rate is above 18 percent, more than double the ‘reported’ national average. Detroit Public Schools (DPS) have been under emergency management for 5 years. In late February, the state review board revealed that the city faced a short-term cash $327 million budget deficit and an estimated $14 billion in long-term debt, primarily driven by, what else but, unfunded pension and retirement health care obligations.
As a result, the city cannot now provide even the most basic of services. The Detroit Fire Department has become so short of critical resources, rotating "brownouts" of city fire companies are now required. Forty percent of the city’s street lights are broken. For the past two years, City Mayor David Bing’s administration has slowly adopted a city "triage" system, best described by the Detroit Free Press. "Infrastructure improvements, demolition activity, outdoor maintenance and development incentives will henceforth be concentrated in a relatively small number of neighborhoods that boast the high numbers of owner-occupied homes and little evidence of residential and commercial blight," it reports. To accord with this plan, the city’s 139 square miles have been broken down into four categories by Detroit’s Planning and Development Department: "steady," as in little blight and a high number of owner-occupied homes; "transitional," as in a neighborhood on its way up or down; "varied" as in some streets are stable and others are not; and "distressed" as in large amounts of blight, and few amenities, such as grocery stores.
Detroit residents have responded in kind. A staggering 47 percent of the owners of Detroit’s 305,000 properties didn't bother with paying their property taxes in 2012. Homeowner Fred Phillips illuminated the frustration many of those residents feel. "Why pay taxes?" he asks. "Why should I send them taxes when they aren’t supplying services? It is sickening….Every time I see the tax bill come, I think about the times we called and nobody came." Well it’s hard to argue with that! Yet it’s even worse than that. Detroit has some of the highest big city property taxes in the nation, and property assessments remain overly inflated, amounting to as much as ten times the market price of the property, and that's according to recent research compiled by two Michigan professors. This has led to another rather unique phenomenon. Property owners are allowing themselves to be foreclosed upon, and then re-buying the same property at a reduced price, legally eliminating their outstanding debt in the process. Six hundred properties were repurchased in this manner in 2012, triple the number that occurred in 2010.
In short, Detroit is a city that now finds itself on the brink of total collapse. And the primary cause of that collapse being, 50 years of Democrat rule. The last Republican Mayor the city had was Louis C. Miriani, who lost his reelection bid in 1961. Enter, Democrat, Jerome Cavanagh, who brought with him the "Model City" program, fashioned after Soviet Union centralized efforts to transform entire urban areas at once, to a nine-square-mile section of the city. Using a commuter tax and a new income tax as his vehicle, Cavanagh promised residents "the rich" would pay for it all. Yet because people were being told by government how to run their businesses and their lives, in exchange for government goodies, the program ended up failing spectacularly. Then in 1967, after police broke up a celebration at an after hours club, an enraged neighborhood began to riot, igniting the worst race riot of the entire decade. Black-owned business were looted and burned to the ground. Forty people were killed and 5,000 were left homeless, and the "white flight" out of the city center, totaling 140,000 people over an eighteen month period, ensued. The city was never the same after that.
Ever since an unbroken chain of Democrat mayors have followed, all of whom have played a hand in the implementing of all manner of progressive, and very destructive, policies, highlighted, of course, by the giveaways to public service employees. Their outlandish salaries and benefit packages, coupled with highly inefficient work rules, succeeded in the killing off of the golden goose: the auto industry. It and its attendant industrial community headed South, where taxes were lower and right-to-work rules allowed them to keep their businesses afloat. The same swath of progressive policies successfully destroyed the public school system as well. Perhaps nothing illustrates the corrupting influence of those policies better than the Detroit Federation of Teachers’ success in scuttling a $200 million offer by businessman and philanthropist Robert Thompson to build 15 charter schools in the city in 2003. Ten years later, the Detroit Public School (DPS) system remains a cesspool of failure, corruption and bankruptcy. Today nearly half of Detroit's adult population is functionally illiterate, quite the badge of honor for the city's public schools, don't you think?
Considering some of the men who have run this city, Detroit’s descent into socialistic ruin should come as a surprise no one. From 1974 to 1993 it was Coleman Young, who was later revealed to be a member of the Communist Party, that was mayor of the city. He failed to stem Detroit’s descent into chaos, and in 1992 his police chief was convicted of stealing $2.6 million from city taxpayers, even as Young defended him. Michigan’s hard-left U.S. Senator Carl Levin was Young’s chief supporter, serving as Detroit City Council president. The most recent crook to be mayor of the city was Kwame Kilpatrick, who served as Mayor from 2002 to 2008. In 2008, he pleaded guilty to two felonies and no contest to a third one, receiving a sentence of 120 days. In 2010, he received a five year sentence for probation violations stemming from his obstruction of justice conviction. Currently Kilpatrick, along with his father, Bernard Kilpatrick, and his longtime contractor friend Bobby Ferguson, who got millions of dollars in city work, are awaiting a jury verdict on racketeering, bribery and tax charges that could send them all to jail for 20 years.
All of these polices and politicians have had their effect. In 2012, Forbes Magazine rated Detroit the most dangerous city in America. A Detroit News poll revealed that "Detroit’s crime crisis" has gotten so bad, a staggering 40 percent of its residents intend to leave the city within five years. Another two-thirds say the city is on the wrong track. The poll also found that all of Detroit’s public officials were held in low esteem, except for Police Chief Ralph Godbee–who 'retired' due to a sex scandal after the poll was taken. Now ordinarily you might think that those living in the epicenter of Democrat-inflicted misery for fifty years might consider changing course. But nope, such is not the case. If you were to assume such a thing you would be completely wrong. And what was yet another demonstration of blatant stupidity is the fact that in 2012 Barry "Almighty" received 98 percent of the vote. And on the same night Detroit voters elected a convicted felon, Brian Banks, to serve in the state legislature. Other election results show overwhelming margins of victories for Detroit Democrats as well.
To make the claim that Detroit's current situation has nothing whatsoever to do with the implementation, by Democrats, of decades worth of socialist policies is to either be living in denial, suffering from delusions, or simply being ignorant. So you can bet it’s certain that Detroit’s Democrat dominated city government will resist any and all efforts made by Gov. Synder, and the Republicans who run the state legislature, to keep the city from going under. Also, I'm sure it goes without saying that much of that resistance will be framed in racial terms, a theme that has already been stoked by U.S. Rep John Conyers, Democrat and certified moron, who has represented Detroit for 47 years. "How come all of the jurisdictions put under emergency management are majority African American? Has anybody noticed that?" he wondered. Well, John, I'll tell ya, one thing that a lot of people have "noticed", and it's that if blacks were to ever become just a little interested in becoming productive citizens and not just a bunch of parasites, their city might be in much better shape. Also, John, you might also be interested to know that the top ten most dangerous cities in the nation are each led by a Democrat mayor. Just sayin, John.
Detroit residents have had fifty years to demonstrate the initiative necessary to fix their city's problems. They chose not to. Instead, their insistence on electing corrupt Democrat after corrupt Democrat, has succeeded only in bringing their city to the point where bankruptcy is the only option left. And here's just a brief summary of what that fifty years of Democrat rule has accomplished for the city, and what the residents of Detroit seem to have been quite content to receive in exchange for their votes: 1) The city’s unemployment rate has nearly tripled since 2000 and is more than double what's being reported as the national average. 2) Its homicide rate is at historic high levels and the city has been named among America’s most dangerous for more than 20 years. 3) Detroiters wait an average of 58 minutes for police to respond, compared to the national average of 11 minutes. 4) 40 percent of the city’s lights didn’t work in the first quarter of 2013. 5) Roughly 78,000 structures are abandoned in the city. 6) Detroit owes more than $18 billion to creditors. 7) The city’s population has declined 63 percent from its peak, including a 28 percent drop since 2000.
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