Detroit represents nothing less than progressivism in its
final stage of decadence: Worried that unionized public-sector workers
are looting your city? Detroit is already bankrupt, unable to provide
basic services expected of it — half the streetlights don’t work,
transit has been reduced, neighborhoods go unpatrolled. Worried that
public-sector unions are ruining your schools? Detroit’s were ruined a
generation or more ago, the results of which are everywhere to be seen
in the city. Worried that Obamacare is going to ruin our health-care
markets? General-practice physicians are hard to find in Detroit, and
those willing to accept Medicaid — which covers a great swath of
Detroit’s population — are rarer still. Worried about the permissive
culture? Four out of five of Detroit’s children are born out of wedlock.
Worried that government is making it difficult for businesses to
thrive? Many people in Detroit have to travel miles to find a grocery
store. This is the endgame of welfare economics: What good is Medicaid
if there are no doctors? What good are food stamps where there is no
food? What good are “free” schools if you’re so afraid to send your
children there that you feel it prudent to arm them first?
Detroit is what Democrats do. The last Republican
elected mayor of Detroit took office during the Eisenhower
administration. The decay of Detroit is not the inevitable outcome of
the decline of the automotive industry: The automotive industry is
thriving in the United States — but not in Detroit. It isn’t white
flight: The black middle class has left Detroit as fast as it can. The
model of Detroit politics is startlingly familiar in its fundamentals,
distinguished only by its degree of advancement: Advance the interests
of public-sector unions and politically connected business cronies,
expand the relative size of the public sector remorselessly — and when
opposed, cry “Racism!” When people vote with their feet, cry “Racism!”
When the budget just won’t balance, cry “Racism!” Never mind that the
current mayor of Detroit is the first non–African American to hold that
job since the 1970s, or that, as one Detroit News columnist put
it, “black nationalism . . . is now the dominant ideology of the [city]
council” — somewhere, there must be a somebody else to blame,
preferably: aged, portly, white, male, and Republican. No less a fool
than Ed Schultz blamed the straits of this exemplar of Democratic
single-party rule on “a lot of Republican policies.” Melissa
Harris-Perry, “America’s leading public intellectual,” blames Detroit’s
problems on its conservatism and small government, oblivious to the fact
that Detroit maintains twice as many city employees per resident as do
larger cities such as Fort Worth and Indianapolis, and three times as
many as liberal San Jose.
Posted in: Armageddon,Democrats,Destruction,Liberal,Obama,Poverty,USA
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