Two ways to destroy a city:
1.) Nuke it
2.) Elect Democrats
Posted on 12/19/2009 7:44:49 AM PST by re_tail20
Dave Bing has just signed on to four years of maybe the most futile and thankless job in America: mayor of Detroit. What in the world was he thinking?
"I wouldn't have taken this job if this wasn't doable," he tells me. "I finished basketball in 1978, then went into my own business in 1980 and did it for 29 years. . . . Now I get to the end of that career and probably should have retired. But there was a calling greater than anything that I ever envisioned, and that was to help bring this city back."
In November, 57% of the Detroit voters bought into his tough-love reform agenda. Mr. Bing replaced the disgraced Kwame Kilpatrick, who went to jail earlier this year for spending city funds on his girlfriends—just the publicity boost the city already flat on its back didn't need.
The mayor's office is in the heart of downtown Detroit, which has shrunk to about an eight-block radius of high rise office towers, upscale restaurants and stores. Yet everything in Mr. Bing's office, including the furniture, is, in the words of his press secretary, "spartan." There's no money to be wasted on redecorating, the mayor tells me. He's not taking a salary. At 66, with his horn-rimmed glasses, graying hair and tailored business suits, Dave Bing looks ready for business.
His highest priority is balancing a budget that is swimming in red ink. "We have a $325 million deficit, and 2010 doesn't look any better. Right now revenue growth is still negative. We're taking in less money each year. We can't rebuild this city by constantly cutting, but in the short term, we don't have an option," he says.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
no
Go, Mayor Bing. Stick it to the unions.
Two ways to destroy a city:
1.) Nuke it
2.) Elect Democrats
Let it die!
I’m so sick of this obsessive “need” to rescue that dump, as if doing so is vital to Michigan’s future!
Michigan does not follow Detroit, and hasn’t done so for years.
There is this large area on the Western side of the state that runs from K-Zoo/Grand Rapids to Traverse City/Mackinaw Island that will be the salvation of this state if only the dolts in Lansing will finally turn around and stop coddling that Obama-esque hellhole, hoping for a return to its glory days.
I don’t think Detroit will come back in our life time given it’s current makeup, both demographically, politically and economically. Too bad, the state of Michigan itself is a beautiful state (particularly the northern half) surrounded on three sides by the Great Lakes. What an awful disaster. If I recall at one time (maybe the 50’s), Detroit was the third largest city in the U.S. (after NYC and Chicago), now look it at. Ugggh.
Fork, meet Detroit....and California.....
Democrats and unions.
It’s dead, Jim.
Good article. Thanks.
No. Put massive fences with barbed wire around the city and walk away.
That reminds me, the sentencing date for John Conyer’s wife Monica has been pushed back until March.
And he knows nothing, r-i-i-i-i-g-h-t.
From what? It's population?
“He’s praying for lots of federal aid to help the city pull out of its ditch, he wants to borrow against future tax revenues...”
Same old $hit, different day.
An interesting article about an interesting individual.
I wish him all the luck but he needs to rethink taxes if he wants to turn it around.
Spend one years cash flow on a hundred of these and from then on after, Detroit will not be bleeding any more money. Yearly saving by not having anyting to spend on? 3-600millions. 3-6 billion every decade.
He thinks he can do welfare/socialism better.
What a guy. He would make a perfect RINO.
Every organism needs a butthole. Maybe Detroit is just fulfilling its social role in the biology of civilization.
He only had vision in one eye yet he was able to be a star for the Pistons for years.
He always seemed like a gentleman to me.
Yep, i like Western Michigan. Especially the lake effect snow that it gets - makes for fantastic cross country skiing. Loads of blueberries through the summer. Tulip festival in the spring.
If it weren’t for the goofy state government and taxes I’d move there.
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