Detroit, the showcase of liberal governance where fire stations use soda cans as warning devices

The argument against liberals ever being in charge of our lives can be reduced to a single word: Detroit.

Detroit has fallen from its position as one of the greatest cities in America at the beginning of the 1950s to a perfect reminder of what liberal Democrats will do when given enough power and enough time to show who they really are.

“The Motor City” had an unbroken succession of liberal Democrat mayors for more than 40 years and each of these men has contributed to the steady decline of their city. Acting in concert with greedy unions these mayors first turned Detroit into their private kingdom, and then looted its treasury for every cent they could.

In the 1970s and through until 1993 when he finally left office, Detroit’s first Black Mayor, Coleman Young polluted the city’s government. It was fair to say that from the Police Department to the School Board to the Sanitation Department, every one of Detroit’s agencies was corrupt. Yet Coleman Young was just the beginning.

In 2001 when Kwame Kilpatrick became mayor the decline of Detroit progressed at warp speed. He was just as corrupt in his personal as his political life, being a thief and very possibly a murderer. By the time he left office for his new home in a federal prison, Detroit had fallen into such disrepair that reclamation was impossible. His successor, Detroit Piston’s great Dave Bing was ill equipped for the job...

re: On the first scheduled payday for teachers after Bing took office he required all School System employees to come to his office and personally sign for their check. The result was horrifying. At the end of the day there were 37 actual paychecks and 220 direct deposit slips totally over $208,000 that went unclaimed.

So what does this mean? Is the writer saying that the 220 remaining employees were bogus? They didn’t show up because they didn’t exist?

The city’s public schools, which have shrunk to about 90,000 students from more than 160,000 nine years ago, are also undergoing big changes. Robert C. Bobb, the emergency financial manager, has closed schools, laid off employees and begun investigating numerous thefts, the system’s real estate deals and questions about whether scores of people receiving paychecks are really on the payroll.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/26/us/26detroit.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

The Sixties was also the moment when Detroit began to experience its reversal of fortune. The city was hit particularly hard by the social turbulence of this revolutionary era, most notably a rising militancy among local community organizers angered by what they perceived to be the slow pace of civil-rights reforms[8]—although Detroit had a large and prosperous black middle class, higher-than-normal wages for unskilled black workers because of the auto industry, and two black U.S. congressmen. Moreover, Detroit had acquired millions in federal funds through President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs and invested them almost exclusively in the inner city, where poverty and social problems were concentrated. The Washington Post claimed that Detroit’s inner-city schools were undergoing “the country’s leading and most forceful reforms in education.”[9] Housing conditions were not viewed as worse than those of other Northern cities. In 1965, the American Institute of Architects gave Detroit an award for urban redevelopment.[10]
Nonetheless, Rev. Albert Cleague and other Detroit-area activists openly called for black separatism and self-determination on the premise that whites would never voluntarily choose to share political power with blacks.[11] At a July 1967 Black Power rally in Detroit, the radical H. Rap Brown gave voice to the city’s growing unrest when he warned “Motown” that if it did not make sufficient reforms, “we are going to burn you down.”[12]
This inflammatory racial discontent grew at a time when the Democratic Party, claiming to be sensitive to the problems of minorities, was completing a takeover of city government. In 1961, the reins of political power in the city fell permanently into Democrats’ hands. In the 53 years that have passed since then, Detroit has not had a single Republican mayor. Indeed, it has elected only one Republican to its City Council since 1970.[13] As it was becoming a failed city, it was also becoming a political monoculture.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_Cities_Program

Interestingly, the Detroit fire department is probably the best in the world at structure fires. Lot of practice and different tactics.

They could use abandoned buildings or neighborhoods and charge other departments to send firefighters in for serious training.

I think with their skills they would do well.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.