Posted on 06/20/2013 8:50:28 AM PDT by massmike
If you want to know where the progressive road to progress ends, come to Detroit.
In 1950, Detroit was the wealthiest city in America by per capita income. It had a Republican mayor, and the GOP ran the city until 1962.
For the past half century Detroit has been governed by Democrats and has become, in the words of the Bay Area Center for Voting Research, “the most liberal city in America.”
Motown bought the fully-loaded version of the progressive sedan: taxes that redistribute income from businesses to bureaucrats, a living wage that is higher than the federal minimum, and municipal employee unions that make sure that the public using public services comes second to their members.
Today, Detroit is on the verge of a Chapter 9 filing, the bankruptcy forum for municipalities that live beyond their means. With $20 billion in long-term liabilities it can’t pay, the Motor City would be the biggest bankruptcy case in history.
In a country where a 3.9 percent difference in the popular vote in a presidential election is considered a landslide, the overwhelming majority of the mayors and city council members of bankrupt cities are Democrats, as in Detroit.
As the Four Tops would say, it’s the same old song.
(Excerpt) Read more at bostonherald.com ...
Things are fixin to get real interesting in Detroit.
Detroit emergency manager orders probe of city’s pension fund
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130620/METRO01/306200080
Better yet, the ChiComs? We could do a 50 year lease on it for them to take it over as a S.A.R. like Hong Kong or Macau.
I wish ...
I keep telling Republicans: Don’t try to save these places. Hold them up as an example of where DNC policies lead. Hang them around the necks of Democrats and demand that they explain how their policies “worked” to produce such a wreck.
This is sort of like opening a door for a feminist, getting yelled at, letting her have the door and then seeing her drop her stuff as she tries to deal with the door in the wind. There is no need to be gallant; there is only a need to come up with a pithy observation about how well her feminism just worked for her... and then walking away.
If you want to know where the progressive road to progress ends, come to Detroit.
No. Sorry. The self-styled "progressive" road ends with mass murder. Monumental failures such as Detroit are inevitable results of Marxist policies, but since 1917, mass murder has been the measure of Marxist dictators.
More on this point...
I thought I read somewhere that some of the accounting scams that have been running to make budgets look better involved having union pensions invest in each other (like moving credit card debt from one card to another).
I’m not sure if I understand that correctly. But from what I understand, the pension obligations will be severely written down for public unions and members will take huge hair cuts as benefits will be cut drastically.
For some pension plans that listed assets from investors that were also pensions, nobody will “owe” anybody anything and the formerly stated resources will have to be re-evaluated before bankruptcy will even begin to consider what to cut the obligations too.
Maybe a more informed FReeper can either set me straight or better explain just how bad the bankruptcy is going to hurt the government union workers in Detroit.
In this case the republicans own the issue because we own the state. New pro business policies at the state level are bringing business into the city and the willingness to tackle the problems is also sparking interest from the corporate world.
Thinking we’ll ever successfully hang these problems around the neck of democrats is like believing we’ll secure the border right after we pass an amnesty bill. Its simply not going to happen.
Owning the state is exactly why I say “Hang it around the necks of the Democrats.”
Detroit is in a death spiral. Don’t give them any more of anyone else’s money to try to prop up their corrupt system.
I NB this morning that the EM for Detroit is now cracking open the pension system management and books. That should be highly entertaining...
It’s stunning how people could still vote democrat after years of miserable failure in Detroit. Even the white libs living in the burbs seem to over what party it was that took that city down the road to hell.
What kind of paper is the Boston Herald? I wouldn’t think anything from the Democrat Scheithole could be conservative enough to allow such an article.
Here it’s largely Unions if it’s not minorities. To be specific - government unions or UAW.
I agree. I’ve heard the only difference between a socialist and a Marxists is that the Marxists has found his AK-47 and is willing to use it. We’re headed for the labor camps if the “progressives continue to get their way.
I agree. And there is nothing worse than taking to a die hard union member. They turned off their ability to think and directly take their talking points from the union leaders. As long as they get their cushy benefits, the whole state could go to hell as far as they were concerned ( and of course, they'd blame the republicans for it too ).
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