In Four More Years We'll Be Detroit

From one moment to the next the city of Detroit doesn’t know where its next bailout is coming from. Chronically unable to pay its bills, the city looks to the state for cash gifts to stave off default. Operating under the terms of a consent agreement hammered out with the state, Detroit faces fiscal uncertainty largely because it has failed to get adequate concessions from public employee unions that are unsustainable. And those concessions that they have wrested from unions, politicians in Detroit have been unwilling to enforce.

One prominent Detroit attorney, however, is facing the future of the Motor City with a bit more certainty.

"Detroit should go bankrupt," says Douglas Bernstein, according to the Detroit News. Bernstein is a partner in the law firm of Plunkett Cooney who specializes in bankruptcies. "It would be a recognition that they've hit bottom, and it's a chance to go on the upswing. I don't think they're going to be stigmatized as much as people think…. Otherwise, you're going to go down the path and be in one crisis after another. Yes, it's expensive and it should be a last resort. But at some point, you've had enough."

The bankruptcy would be the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the US.

While we are not at the point yet for the federal government to declare bankruptcy, you may rest assured that that day is coming, because the same forces that are driving Detroit to bankruptcy are driving the US as well.

There are fewer people building things and more people demanding things they didn’t build.

Whatever else one may say about it, if Obama meant to throw Detroit a fiscal lifeline with the auto bailout, it hasn’t worked. It demonstrates the futility and danger of the federal government commanding and controlling the recovery of any industry- or even the county.

After $85 billion in federal bailout funds for the automakers headquartered in Detroit, there are no fiscal answers to what ails the city and the surrounding areas.

To demonstrate most clearly why the auto bailout should be considered such a tremendous failure, you only have to consult the numbers.

$80 billion is more money than 14 states annually produce in GDP. Detroit has a population of 700,000. On per capital basis, that means the bailout cost about $112,000 per Detroit resident. Delaware has the greatest per capita annual GDP of any state at $70,000 per resident- only Washington, DC- which is NOT a state, Mr. Obama- at $175,000 in per capita GDP beats the Detroit auto bailout.

Yet, still by most measurements, Detroit is imploding. By June of 2013 it is expected that the city will be short $47 million according to the Detroit Free Press.

And surrounding communities are also suffering. BusinessWeek reports that “five cities and three school districts [in the Detroit area] have emergency managers, including Flint and Pontiac,” in order to manage the fiscal crisis. The law allowing “emergency managers” with broad authority over fiscal matters, including modifying employee contracts, however, was recently repealed after unions campaigned to protect existing contracts.

So now Detroit will be short of cash by mid-December and the only way to fix the crisis is by voiding public union contracts, not just modifying them as an emergency manager was able to do.

“The state's democratic process succeeded in overturning an emergency manager law whose powers threatened the financial gains of public-sector unions and the political prerogatives of elected officials,” writes Daniel Howes, a columnist for the Detroit News. “But democracy is failing in Detroit, as its metastasizing crisis and the feckless response to it amply demonstrates.”

If at a time when automakers are trumpeting record-setting sales, record profits, record bonuses for their employees, how is it possible that the community at-large is not reaping any of the benefit?

Because while the auto bailout was a bad idea in any event, one should at least expect that the community as a whole should benefit from the application of community funds to a private venture rather than just benefit a small fraction of say…I don’t know… one percent? There is no other morally defensible reason to bailout out the auto industry unless it was going to benefit the community as a whole.

“We refused to let Detroit go bankrupt. We bet on American workers and American ingenuity,” said the president while making his pitch for reelection, “and three years later, that bet is paying off in a big way."

Mitt is a fine man. A man of character. But he is a squish, not tough enough mentally to be in a knock down street fight. Further, the pubbies have no faith in the electorate. If they fought and showed character and dare I say courage, the electorate would rally to them. I didn't think Romney was tough enough and told my wife that many times during the primaries. What was a bit surprising, though not so out of character for the pubbies, was the way his PACs fought in the primaries. Of course that was against republicans. Against democrats...milk-toast. Could it be the campaign leadership was infiltrated by DEMOCRATS.? YES!!!

Maine will be Somalia. Minnesota will be Somalia.

Detroit will be Kenya.

Detroit, like all Democrat run cities are nothing more then incubators for the parasites and predators created by the policies therein.

Feral hogs have gotten to be a problem in Texas and the South. The response of the old boys has been to go out and shoot some feral hogs (with land owners' grateful permission, of course). Shoot them on foot, from horseback, from the back of a bouncing Jeep or pickemup truck, hell, shoot them from helicopters and small planes. It's rapidly becoming a keen and popular sport.

So when are Michiganders going to get the idea?

Maybe we can trade Detroiters for South Africans.

How about, 2,000,000 blacks from California and the Southwest, for 2,000,000 ex-Rhodesians and Afrikaners (Boers and ex-British) who are just going to get killed if they try to stay anyway?

Detroit will be Kenya.

You sure? The Detroit Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area (SMSA) has a ton of Palis and Lebanese.

People in MI must be fully satisfied with Detroit even if most never visit it. They vote statewide like they live in Detroit even though many of their counties seem to be conservative.

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