“I’m a son of Detroit,” Mitt Romney confessed during Monday’s presidential debate. “I was born in Detroit. My dad was head of a car company. I like American cars. And I would do nothing to hurt the U.S. auto industry.” But like so many Detroiters, Mitt Romney left before the capital of the U.S. auto industry could hurt him. Detroit is scary.
Detroit has just been named the most dangerous city in America. This is the fourth consecutive year that Forbes has bestowed the dishonor upon the Motor City. A few years back, the Bay Area Center for Voting Research named Detroit the most liberal city in America. If you believe the two listings are mere coincidence, I have a domed stadium in Pontiac to sell you.
Detroit proves that liberalism is hazardous to your health.
America’s most dangerous city hasn’t been governed by a Republican for a half century. Yet, on November 6, the city’s residents will again take out their anger on a Republican-this time one of the city’s sons-at the polls. The worse the performance of Detroit’s hard-left officeholders paradoxically means the greater the punishment for the party that opposes them. When the largest employer in a city is the city itself, urging the cut backs necessary to attract employers is seen as an attack on employment.
Detroit’s violent crime rate, more than five times the national average, is shocking only when glimpsed outside the context of the city’s other depressing social trends. The illegitimacy rate is 85 percent. Two thirds of the city’s children live in poverty. Less than a third of ninth graders graduate from high school within four years. Just 53 percent of the adults are functionally literate. The people are as bleak as the decrepit concrete landscape.
So is the government. The city has closed half of its schools during the past decade, hasn’t fixed the 40 percent of its street lights that remain broken, and has decided to divert a huge chunk of its 911 calls to a telephonic queue. “It’s giving criminals the wrong idea,” Tony Wright, a retired Detroit homicide detective featured on A&E’s The First 48, explained. “If you want to do something, do it in Detroit. The police won’t show up.”
Like Mitt Romney, most people born in Detroit no longer live in Detroit. In 1950, 1.85 million people lived there. Detroit, which lost 200,000 people during the last decade, now hosts about 710,000. Motown Records has rebuffed Michigan for Manhattan. Eminem has extracted himself from 8 Mile and moved to Rochester Hills. Even the Motor City Madman isn’t crazy enough to live in Detroit.
It’s not that there aren’t inducements to moving there. The median home on the market sells for $86,000-$13,000 less than the city with the second lowest housing prices. Buyers looking for a fixer-upper can find listings for gutted 3-bedroom homes for as low as $500. But when your neighbors are a pack of feral cats, a crack dealer, and a jungle of weedy overgrowth, even $500 is too expensive.
No group surveys the American city that most closely resembles 1980s Beirut or postwar Dresden. If one did, Detroit would be its place. Detroit is number one in chlamydia. But its baseball team is in the World Series. So it’s a wash, right?
Sixty years ago, Detroit was the wealthiest city in the United States. Today, it is by far America’s poorest big city. There is a cautionary tale here for the U.S.: things fall apart-fast. America may not go from riches to rags. But the mighty do fall. Because America is the most powerful nation today doesn’t necessarily follow that it will be the most powerful nation tomorrow. In Detroit, corruption, lavish government sinecures, muddleheaded social policies, horrible schools, greedy unions, overbearing taxes, gutter morality, and too many eggs in one industrial basket combined to make the first the worst. To the extent that America follows the policies embraced by Detroit, America will not, as Mitt Romney worried in Monday night’s debate, follow the road to Greece but instead will follow the one that leads back to Mitt Romney’s birthplace.
It is strangely fitting that the presidential candidates fixated on Detroit during a foreign policy debate. Policies have certainly made Detroit very foreign to anyone familiar with “the Paris of the Midwest.” The city that gave the world Henry Ford and Berry Gordy now gives us the likes of jailed mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and disgraced police chief Ralph Godbee, Jr. “Governor,” President Obama remarked Monday night, “the people in Detroit don’t forget.” If this is true, memory may be a more painful blow than the crime, illegitimacy, and poverty they currently experience. Not long ago, Detroit was one of the most thriving cities on Earth. The Paris of the Midwest has become the Basketcase of the Midwest.
Let Detroit go bankrupt? It already has. The $16 trillion question for the presidential candidates is whether they will let America go Detroit.
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Cel care munceşte e blestemat de două ori: o dată de Dumnezeu, şi a doua oară de Semenul său care nu munceşte.
De fapt, de cel de-al doilea nu e blestemat: e fraierit.
Lăsaţi Stânga să conducă lumea!
Nu trebuie să-i fie oferit nici un subterfugiu, nici un alibi, nici o scăpare!
Stânga trebuie să guverneze până când îi va fi clar oricărui imbecil că ea e cauza dezastrului!
Stânga trebuie nu învinsă de Dreapta, ci distrusă de oameni!
Stânga trebuie ucisă ÎN oameni!
Iar pentru asta Stânga trebuie lăsată să dea tot ce poate.
În mai bine de 100 de ani, singura mare realizare a comuniştilor a fost – pe lângă peste 100 de milioane de victime – transformarea lor în indignaţi.
Lăsaţi Stânga să conducă lumea!
Nu trebuie să-i fie oferit nici un subterfugiu, nici un alibi, nici o scăpare!Stânga trebuie să guverneze până când îi va fi clar oricărui imbecil că ea e cauza dezastrului!Stânga trebuie nu învinsă de Dreapta, ci distrusă de oameni!Stânga trebuie ucisă ÎN oameni!Iar pentru asta Stânga trebuie lăsată să dea tot ce poate.
Lăsaţi Stânga să conducă lumea! Nu trebuie să-i fie oferit nici un subterfugiu, nici un alibi, nici o scăpare!Stânga trebuie să guverneze până când îi va fi clar oricărui imbecil că ea e cauza dezastrului!Stânga trebuie nu învinsă de Dreapta, ci distrusă de oameni!Stânga trebuie ucisă ÎN oameni!Iar pentru asta Stânga trebuie lăsată să dea tot ce poate.
Lumea de la porţile Orientului încolo poate repeta la nesfârşit eşecul, dar măcar lumea civilizată trebuie să se lecuiască odată şi odată.
excelent articol. si foarte adevarat. detroit este simbolul americii dupa inca 4 ani de obama. populatia majoritara de culoare, care s-a mutat in oras de prin toata tara, prin anii 80, cand industria de automobile a inceput sa prospere si-au luat case prin centrul orasului si au inceput sa distruga tot ce se putea. incet, incet, oamenii cumsecade si firmele serioase au plecat spre suburbii, iar orasul a fost lasat prada delincventei si saraciei. cladiri enorme si impunatoare sunt goale, fara geamuri si folosesc drept adapost celor fara casa. toate magazinele au gratii solide la usi si geamuri, la toate colturile de strada sunt cersetori cu pancarde. blue collar town, cu sindicate puternice, detroit voteaza stanga in mod consecvent. colegii mei americani din zona detroitului, intelectuali cu multa scoala, nici nu vor sa auda de republicani. fostul primar, Kilpatrick, de culoare si el, a bagat mana adanc in sacul cu bani publici si este la parnaie. dar daca cineva crede ca detroit o duce rau, sa dea o tura prin pittsburg: orasul pare ca lovit de armageddon, nu am vazut in centru decat siruri nesfarsite de cladiri goale, de inchiriat si cu placi de lemn in loc de geamuri. america democratilor, a celor ce au cerut ca guvernul sa le salveze companiile de la faliment. america cersetorilor de bani publici.
Canadiana Mai bine să câştige Obama.
Se va dovedi că nu numai comunismul e falimentar, dar şi că o mască destul de onorabilă a acestuia – reprezentată în SUA de democraţi – poate pune o naţiune pe butuci.
Secolul trecut a fost secolul falimentului comunist.
Cine n-a înţeles nimic din asta va trăi secolul falimentului socialist.
oglinjoara Canadiana abia asteapta chienzii si cubanezii sa zica: uite ce a facut democratia si capitalismul din america. pentru romania, inca 4 ani de obama-reala ar fi un dezastru.
Canadiana oglinjoara Asta e. Satisfacţia chinezilor, cubanezilor va fi o bucurie de sclavi.
Fiecare om/popor/naţiune e responsabil/ă pentru alegerile (sau non-alegerile) sale.
Canadiana oglinjoara Aş spune că e ESENŢIAL să câştige Obama.
Altfel, iar s-ar pune pe seama capitalismului previzibilul dezastru.
Canadiana oglinjoara America trebuie să-şi bea paharul leftismului (universitar, hollywoodian, mediatic) până la fund.