WSJ: Why Detroit Failed?

archer wrote:

Blazer Bob wrote: [ It just so happens that the fat cats in Detroit come with a d.

Of course they do.....all the fat cats with an r fled the city to Grosse Pointe and left the city to die.

Or got tired of having no voice in city goverment? Pay your taxes, accept the corruption, and make do with diminished services. Why stay?

Watch for another batch of Californian Republicans to head to Colorado since the Dems now have a super majority in the legislature.

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/ ... g-trouble/


"Detroit, Is That You? Chicago In Big Trouble
shutterstock_129028808
It looks like Detroit may yet have competition for the distinction of America’s most poorly run city. The unprecedented triple-drop in Chicago’s bond rating and the city’s shiny new long-term debt figure—$29 billion—should have pols quaking in their boots. The Chicago Sun-Times has published some distressing numbers from Chicago’s recent audits:
The number of “physical arrests” by Chicago Police officers declined again — from 152,740 in 2011 to 145,390 in 2012. That continues a six-year trend that coincides with the hiring slowdown that caused a dramatic decline in the number of police officers. Police made 227,576 arrests in 2006. The number of arrests has been dropping like a rock ever since….
Emergency responses continued their steady rise — to 472,752. That’s up from 300,971 in 2006.…
The 55 percent subsidy to retiree health care that Emanuel wants to phase out and retirees are suing to maintain cost the city $97.5 million in 2012.
The condition of Chicago’s four city employee pension funds is growing ever more precarious. The firefighters pension fund has assets to cover just 25 percent of liabilities, followed by: Police (31 percent); Municipal Employees (38 percent) and Laborers (56 percent).
In addition to the pension, law enforcement, and emergency response concerns that remind us of a certain bankrupt city across the lake, the report notes that three of Chicago’s four largest private employers (JP Morgan, Accenture LLP, and Northern Trust) are in finance. It seems like blue cities have a codependent relationship with the one percenters progressives claim to hate."...

Rick wrote: Maybe Detroit went bankrupt because of wise decision like this:
New $444 million hockey arena is still a go in Detroit
http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/26/news/ec ... index.html

Who thinks this will be the best way to spend money Detroit doesn't have? I'm sure there's a Republican somewhere pulling the strings and forcing this move...

I was really hoping some liberal would explain the logic in this move

Rick wrote:

Rick wrote: Maybe Detroit went bankrupt because of wise decision like this:
New $444 million hockey arena is still a go in Detroit
http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/26/news/ec ... index.html

Who thinks this will be the best way to spend money Detroit doesn't have? I'm sure there's a Republican somewhere pulling the strings and forcing this move...

I was really hoping some liberal would explain the logic in this move

If you build it they will come... I'm not saying they'll stay but there has to be some failed logic at work that suggests a new sports venue will draw people in from outside the city center and that will fix all of Detroit's woes. Like minded folks like these probably agree:

[youtube:2d4d68mk][/youtube:2d4d68mk]

Math is hard, just keep spending, hand out more entitlements, and everything will get "more gooder."

I know a couple who are big Red Wings fans. They live in the 'burbs, go in for the games, and then quickly leave. It isn't like the Rockies and LoDo where people head out to the bars before or after a game. With that setup, a new arena doesn't bring a lot of income into the city.

Detroit’s death by democracy

By George F. Will, Published: July 31 E-mail the writer
DETROIT

In 1860, an uneasy Charles Darwin confided in a letter to a friend: “I had no intention to write atheistically” but “I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.” What appalled him had fascinated entomologist William Kirby (1759-1850): The ichneumon fly inserts an egg in a caterpillar, and the larva hatched from the egg, he said, “gnaws the inside of the caterpillar, and though at last it has devoured almost every part of it except the skin and intestines, carefully all this time avoids injuring the vital organs, as if aware that its own existence depends on that of the insect on which it preys!”...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... story.html