Destroying Detroit (liberalism killed detroit)

[Wretched Excess]

Destroying Detroit

It could be an item on a David Letterman Top Ten List of “How to Know Your Mayor is Headed for a Major Scandal” �" he’s known as the “Hip-Hop Mayor.”

That’s what they call Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, now famous for text messages detailing the affair he had with his chief of staff. Kilpatrick had denied the relationship under oath in a lawsuit brought by two police officers Kilpatrick allegedly fired to cover up his personal misconduct. He has been indicted on eight felony counts including perjury and obstruction of justice.

This would just be another dreary entry in the long annals of misbehaving politicians if it weren’t for the backdrop of a decaying city. Elected at age 31 in 2002, Kilpatrick was supposed to bring youthful vitality to his job, and he talked about reform. Now, he’s just another tragedy to befall Detroit, a city whose decline is �" as psychologists put it �" overdetermined, but stands as a stark statement of the failure of urban liberalism.

Detroit suffers from every possible malady except a plague of locusts, and that’s only because they find urban living uncongenial. The city has a revitalized downtown, but all around it, the city rots. Forbes magazine declared Detroit “America’s Most Miserable City,” on the basis of its unemployment and crime rates, among other things. The unemployment rate of 8.2 percent is the highest of any major urban area in the nation, and its homicide rate is higher than New York’s in the bad old days of the early 1990s.

The city has lost 1 million residents since 1950. It was hit by the decline of the auto industry and white flight, fueled partly by racism. These trends would have rocked the city no matter what. Detroit compounded them with disastrous governance, personified by Mayor Coleman Young, who held office for 20 years beginning in 1974.

His record raises the question why, if it wanted to engage in a nefarious plot to hurt blacks, the federal government would invent the AIDS virus when it could simply emplace mayors like Coleman Young instead. “Imagine a Rev. Jeremiah Wright with real power,” says urban expert Fred Siegel. Coleman taunted suburbanites, accusing them of “pillaging the city,” while his scandal-plagued administration managed the city into the ground.

He neglected policing, maintaining that “crime is a problem, but not the problem. The police are the major threat ... to the minority community.” The 1968 riots never really ended in Detroit, dragging on in a long crime wave. With government services terrible to nonexistent and both crime and tax rates high, there was no reason for anyone to stay. “Several Detroit mayors have been the best economic development officers Oakland County ever had,” comments Michael LaFaive of the Michigan-based Mackinac Center for Public Policy, referring to the county to Detroit’s north.

Public-sector unions protect the dismal status quo. Detroit high schools graduate just a third of their students, according to an estimate by Michigan State University. But when a philanthropist offered to spend $200 million to create 15 new charter high schools, teachers staged a walk-out. Mayor Kilpatrick spurned the offer. These failing schools throw kids with no skills into a struggling economy in an environment characterized by social breakdown.

No matter what Mayor Kilpatrick did with his chief of staff or how many lies he has told, this is the true scandal of Detroit �" and too many American cities. In the wake of the controversy over Rev. Wright, Barack Obama called for a national conversation on race. But we talk about race incessantly already, and Mayor Kilpatrick will carry on his own dialogue by playing on black fears with charges of “selective prosecution.”

What would better serve the interests of African Americans and the country is a national conversation about good urban governance �" how to crack down on crime, reform the schools and free the economy from sclerotic government. Detroit awaits it, as its disgraced mayor twists in the wind.

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but they will always have the lions.

[Lord Undies]

The Motor City has stalled. 

[DixieBelle]

Wow. Stunning indictment and true!!! And sadly, you could substitute "Memphis" for "Detriot" and have the same article. Right down the Mayorial shenanigans. Of course he's not booted out. Yet.

[Chris_]

An excellent synopsis, missing the mark only slightly by failing to directly confront the "800 pound gorilla" in the living room, which is that it is not totally liberalism, but "african-American" liberalism that has killed Detroit.

Detroit is a worst-case scenario, but a similar fate has befallen all US cities with a majority black population, and an "african-American" political administration.  "White flight" exists for a reason, and one can cry "racism" all they want, but the fact remains that not only whites, but working and middle class minorities of all stripes will flee from these urban areas when anarchy is allowed to thrive, and valuable resources are channeled into welfare and "black culture" projects at the expense of vital services.  The anarchy is further compounded by "politically correct" police practices that tolerate, rather than deter criminal activity.

Detroit made its own bed......let them lay in it........

doc

[Rebel]

The city has lost 1 million residents since 1950. It was hit by the decline of the auto industry and white flight, fueled partly by racism. These trends would have rocked the city no matter what.

WTF? It's racist to wanna live safely? Why is it that in all these instances of "white flight", all one has to do is look behind and respectable black people are right on our heels? It's not racist. It's trying to get away from a certain black culture which liberals have pandered to for votes by telling them it's not their fault, but someone else's. Thereby absolving them from any crime they commit.

Liberalism is an epic failure.

[Chris_]

The city has lost 1 million residents since 1950. It was hit by the decline of the auto industry and white flight, fueled partly by racism. These trends would have rocked the city no matter what.

WTF? It's racist to wanna live safely? Why is it that in all these instances of "white flight", all one has to do is look behind and respectable black people are right on our heels? It's not racist. It's trying to get away from a certain black culture which liberals have pandered to for votes by telling them it's not their fault, but someone else's. Thereby absolving them from any crime they commit.

Liberalism is an epic failure.

And its never going to change unless someone in American leadership has the cajones to open a loud and honest discussion about what is wrong with the "black community".......since it is considered racist to even think about the fact that blacks have an enormous attitude problem.....I don't see anything changing in the forseeable future....

doc

[DixieBelle]

The city has lost 1 million residents since 1950. It was hit by the decline of the auto industry and white flight, fueled partly by racism. These trends would have rocked the city no matter what.

WTF? It's racist to wanna live safely? Why is it that in all these instances of "white flight", all one has to do is look behind and respectable black people are right on our heels? It's not racist. It's trying to get away from a certain black culture which liberals have pandered to for votes by telling them it's not their fault, but someone else's. Thereby absolving them from any crime they commit.

Liberalism is an epic failure.

I high-fived you!

Werd!!!

In Memphis, every single business I knew as a child is now located across the state line in Mississippi. When I go home to visit, it's like being in the Twilight Zone. You drive around and see familiar names except they are now in a new location. You drive through Memphis and you need a flak jacket and semi-automatic.

And so true about the blacks following the whites fleeing. The ones that give a damn and don't want to be associated with the criminals always follow the whites. As it should be. I don't see color when that happens. I see good people and bad people.