MORE to come?

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati ... ...Detroit DEFAULTING.....do we see a sea swell of cities to follow?

homeagain wrote: www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/...552819/......Detroit DEFAULTING.....do we see a sea swell of cities to follow?

More than possible, it's very probable. (@ the "Feds") Can't print money forever ya know .

Joe Biden: If you elect Mitt Romney he will let Detroit go bankrupt!

homeagain wrote: www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/...552819/......Detroit DEFAULTING.....do we see a sea swell of cities to follow?

Take your pick.

http://www.bing.com/search?q=cities+nea ... &FORM=AWRE

The real tragedy of Detroit is that it is proceeded by generations of minority youths condemned to never reach their potential.

[youtube:dro2llbq][/youtube:dro2llbq]

I guess Barry "evolved" on this topic too...

Detroit Bankruptcy It should never have come to pass
Posted by Michael D. LaFaive on July 18, 2013 at 5:40pm

The city of Detroit announced it has filed for bankruptcy. Gov. Snyder must still approve of the move. If he does, it is a sad day in the long decline of a once powerful city.

It did not need to come to this.

Warning signs were everywhere and only increased in intensity in recent years. As early as 2000 this author published an entire issue of the Mackinac Center’s flagship publication Michigan Privatization Report dedicated to Detroit’s fiscal problems and related solutions.

I warned city leaders that "If Detroit's future expenditures were relatively stable, this financial snapshot still would be cause for concern. But the city is looking at two new outlays of monstrous proportions: funding the pension obligations of current and future city employees, which could cost up to $3 billion, and fulfilling requirements under several federal environmental acts, which will cost billions more."

In other words, the Center gave Detroit officials a 13-year heads up on the cost of their future pension obligations and the difficulty the city may have in funding them. Today those obligations probably contributed to the decision to seek federal bankruptcy status.

The handful of ideas presented for reform in 2000 would have saved Detroit $207 million annually, generated a windfall of at least $2.4 billion from the sale of assets and netted an additional $15 million annually from the sale of just two properties. The Michigan Privatization Report issue recommended selling both Belle Isle ($370 million) and Cobo Arena ($50 million). Both of those are conservative figures.

In 2005, I wrote an op-ed in The Detroit News titled, "Detroit Can't Postpone Reforms: Here are five ways the city can restore prosperity and avoid state receivership."

Instead of aggressively facing their problems and fixing the city's mismanagement issues, city officials continued to ignore and delay reforms until a consent agreement, an emergency manager and a bankruptcy filing were needed.

Permission to reprint this blog post in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author (or authors) and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are properly cited. Permission to reprint any comments below is granted only for those comments written by Mackinac Center policy staff.

mackinac.org


http://www.mackinac.org/18905

Kicking the can down the road. Let the next mayor deal with it. I will hand out big pensions and spend lavishly for votes

FredHayek wrote: Kicking the can down the road. Let the next mayor deal with it. I will hand out big pensions and spend lavishly for votes

Stunning how evil and cruel hearted those republicans are.

http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsgs ... htype=Next


"The Unheavenly City A review of Detroit: An American Autopsy, by Charlie LeDuff



By Michael Barone

Posted June 20, 2013

When people ask me why I moved from liberal to conservative, I have a one-word answer: Detroit. I grew up there, on a middle-class grid street in northwest Detroit and a curving street in affluent suburban Birmingham, and I got a job as an intern in the office of the mayor in the summer of 1967 when Detroit rioted. I was at the side of Mayor Jerome Cavanagh and occasionally Governor George Romney during the six days and nights in which 43 people, mostly innocent bystanders, died. I listened to the radio in the police commissioner's office as commanders announced, shortly after sundown, that they were abandoning one square mile after another. The riot ended only after federal troops were called in and restored order.

Cavanagh was bright, young, liberal, and charming. He had been elected in 1961 at age 33 with virtually unanimous support from blacks and with substantial support from white homeowners—then the majority of Detroit voters—and he was reelected by a wide margin in 1965. He and Martin Luther King, Jr., led a civil rights march of 100,000 down Woodward Avenue in June 1963. He was one of the first mayors to set up an antipoverty program and believed that city governments could do more than provide routine services; they could lift people, especially black people, out of poverty and into productive lives. Liberal policies promised to produce something like heaven. Instead they produced something more closely resembling hell. You can get an idea of what happened to Detroit by looking at some numbers. The Census counted 1,849,568 people in Detroit in 1950, including me. It counted 713,777 in 2010.

To get a feel for what this particular hell is like, you should read Charlie LeDuff's Detroit: An American Autopsy."...