Marathon Pundit: The free-fall of Democratic-controlled Detroit

Monday, March 12, 2012

The free-fall of Democratic-controlled Detroit

Walter Russell Mead does a good job explaining the tragedy of Detroit in his blog for The American Interest, but he neglects to mention the role of public-sector unions in its decline. Also, Mayor Dave Bing isn't as awful as Mead makes him out to be. He is too little too late for the one-time Motor City. Rather than playing for the Pistons in the early 1970s, Bing should have been mayor then.

For decades, Detroit has been the poster child for urban decline in America. Now things have reached an even newer low: The city is projected to run out of money by next month and seems to have no credible plans to make up this shortfall.

Interestingly, despite statements by Michigan Governor Rick Snyder that the state would appoint an emergency manager to run the city in lieu of the elected government, the Wall Street Journal reports that Snyder and Detroit Mayor David Bing have agreed to forgo this process as well, leaving the city in the hands of many of the people who brought it to this point in the first place. The turnaround should begin any minute.

Unemployment in the city of Detroit is estimated at about 20 percent; two thirds of the city’s children live in poverty. The two largest employers in the city: the dysfunctional public school system and the crippled city government. Decades of incompetence and corruption by elected officials in tandem with the decline of the once flourishing American automobile industry and (entirely understandable) flight by the better educated and the better off have thoroughly blighted what was once one of America's most flourishing cities.

Leftie intellectuals spend a lot of time analyzing the "false consciousness" that keeps American workers voting for Republicans who (in the view of the intellectuals) support anti-worker policies. We don’t hear nearly as much from these incisive social thinkers about the false urban consciousness that keeps voters supporting policies and politicians that have ruined the cities, but there you are. Many of the policies that are dearest to the hearts of powerful Democratic politicians are responsible for wrecking the lives of many of their most loyal supporters, but the loyal supporters turn out year after year.