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Detroit Mayor’s Surrender Shows the Failure of Liberalism

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Lifelong Detroiter here, (City, not Suburbs) a few things that are crucial to understanding what is actually happening here. First these "neighborhoods" are vast empty expanses where MAYBE 3 or 4 dilapidated houses still stand. Why would you continue to fund FULL city services to areas that bear more semblance to farmland/prairie? If you have a gangrenous leg do you keep it in hopes it "Gets better" or "returns to normal" NO... You amputate the leg, to save the body. My neighborhood (Warrendale) is typical of Detroit (not one of the ones you see on T.V.) working class houses, neatly manicured lawns, actual grocery stores, racial integration, and Good Schools. Police response time SUCKS, other city services follow the same metric. By cutting off farmland from Detroit (and therefore allowing emergency services to become Wayne Counties problem) response times in my neighborhood WILL improve, Hell my property taxes might even be adjusted to a more realistic level! Cutting off deserted, "diseased" portions of Detroit, Neighborhoods like mine might be spared, and more importantly Detroit can move on. Naysayers should bite their tongues, this situation could happen anywhere there are manufacturing jobs. This is NOT a surrender, a failure, or poorly thought out knee-jerk reaction. This is Detroit Taking two steps forward, without the usual 3 steps back.
@MP of WI... Communism, and Socialism are different, drastically. Communism was a failure in the Soviet Union because of poor egocentric leadership, is the People Rep. of China a failure? No. Sweeden? No. Canada? No. I'm sorry your head is buried in the sand, but do your homework before you start glib talking on a subject you obviously do not understand.

Bradley J. Greene of MI 4:57PM December 07, 2010

What types of Liberal Democratic policies were to blame? Welfare? Smart Growth? High Density Development? Endless government programs? The usual Democratic Social engineering attempts at creating a utopia? I am concerned because they have a habit of trying to repeat the same mistake in other cities.

Michael LaPlante of MN 1:29AM May 15, 2010

Nice to see all cons including the scumbag author of this article, are all clueless and dumb.
All fox viewers I bet !
idiots

GOPdestroyingthisnation of FL 8:13PM May 14, 2010

Reading the news from mainstream and unconventional sources alike makes me laugh to the point of derision. Congressmen threatened by their constituents for voting for the healthcare bill that they (deceivingly) tout as being advocated by those same constituents, Detroit essentially dead, public transit in my hometown on the brink of demise, the demise of the monetary system here and worldwide, census non-compliance, etc. It used to boil my potato to see "elected" officials literally rape me and the productive people I know of nearly half of their income to fund their social engineering schemes, but I was comforted by many that the social-democratic utopia won't last and will implode just like the USSR did 2 decades earlier. I can't wait to see it all come crashing down. My only fear is that those who witness it will think it was because socialism wasn't given a fair shake rather than SOCIALISM DOESN'T WORK!!!!

MP of WI 4:11PM March 30, 2010

Now I've read even more comments and I laugh my butt off as liberals get in a tizzy about being mocked for their role in creating this mess.
Make no mistake about it: Detroit is a city destroyed by the worst liberalism has to offer. When someone hits that sore spot, of course the liberals are going to cry for mommy.
Let's get the facts right here. PLENTY of cities had "white flight" after race riots in the late 60's and major crime waves of the 70's and the few that stayed on were welcomed into the drug epidemic of the 80's. This has happened to many cities. However Detroit stands alone as the one that was unable to recover because it kept to its guns and kept private business out of the city by attempting to regulate every single thing allowed in the city limits.
City taxes alone ensured that the wealthy kept their butts and money out in the suburbs (along with their businesses).
Michigan on the state level made Detroit's problems even worse. Detroit is an example of a welfare state gone wild. It is nothing but a 3rd world city in the middle of America.
Welfare handouts don't bring jobs, it brings more people wanting welfare. And Detroit showed us how well that works.
Want to buy an old home to fix up? Forget about it. The cost is too high to even flip a $1 home...even during the housing boom of the 90's.
Sorry, liberals, you made this bed. Now you lie in it.

Bill Jenkins of MI 11:55PM February 28, 2010

Liberals will be unhappy with this article, but it barely scratches the surface into what liberal programs have run this city into the ground with zero results.
Private business is needed and Detroit ignored that route and put it's chips all-in on government approved and heavy regulated growth. It failed miserably.
Why someone above is whining about a "do-nothing congress" when Detroit is a local issue is beyond me. Other cities that have been in Detroit's position have enjoyed amazing rebounds since the late 60's. Detroit is the exception.
Detroit's government (all Democrats) have decided that they wanted to control every aspect of Detroit's economic future. They hired cronies and paid them luxurious salaries. Meanwhile, skyscrapers are vacant, people continue to flee, and the education system is so bad that 50% of Detroit is considered illiterate.

Bill Jenkins of MI 11:46PM February 28, 2010

Surrender? The author offers a grossly over simplification of Detroit’s problems. The fact is Detroit has been abandoned and consolidating services is the only way to ensure fiscal solvency. Consolidation and eliminating services is going on all across the country from Republican districts like the one on Colorado where citizens refused a tax increase and allowed city services to go away. Detroit is no different, hard choices have to be made. As a long time Detroiter I am insulted by the comparison to Liberalism and the failure of the city. Ideology had nothing to do with it; the enemy of the city has been the structural and racial problems that have plagued the city since the '67 riots and long before it. Degentrification of the city coupled with a shrunken black (or white) middle-class has ruined the city (this has all been documented by the local press). The economy of Michigan as a whole has shrunken and college students who are educated in Michigan’s fine universities can’t find work in the state. The auto industry is another factor in the city’s demise, the Michigan economy was centralized on one industry and the business tax code still reflects its dominance.
The 20+ year reign of Mayor Coleman Young further isolated the city from the suburbs and turned it into an "us" vs. "them" situation. Young was determined to protect the city’s valuable assets from what he saw as a white takeover and exploitation of city resources. He was obviously misguided by some racial prejudice and a history of hostility toward the city by the suburbs. The history of red-lining districts so African-Americans could not buy homes, business lending discrimination, the brutality of the police, the unjust use of the "justice" systems against minorities, the highway projects of the 50’s and 60's that decimated historic black neighborhoods, the drug epidemic that was allowed to fester in the city--have all lead to the city's current condition.
Comparing a complicated and separate issue like healthcare to Detroit is an intellectually dishonest exercise meant to serve as a straw man for the Democrat's reforms to a broken system.

TyLaw of MI 9:40PM February 28, 2010

AMEN,sometimes I worry there's not enough people based in reality out there.Thank you!!

Hunter of WI 11:02PM February 26, 2010

Blaming the problems of Detroit on "liberalism" is both simple minded and wrong. The events which led to the current state of Detroit are many, and no one thing can be single out as "the cause." However, far from blaming liberalism, if anything one should blame "corporatism" - the auto industries which engineered their own downfall through poor planning, which lobbied instead of building reliable, fuel efficient cars, and which created their own top heavy, unimaginative, and failed corporate culture. Add to that the scheming and, let's be blunt, thieving of a large segment of the financial industry - which led to the tanking of the housing market, and you have a corporate FAIL of massive (literally world-wide) proportions. All of it aided and abetted by a do-nothing Congress (both Republican and Democrat).

uqbar of MI 2:24PM February 26, 2010

in this article that every American needs to read and take to heart are "...after decades of Democrat rule..."
What on earth happens to people that causes them to ignore such a decline in their city, to the point that it is devestated? I just cannot believe sheer ignorance can run so rampant, sheer apathy for quality of life could be so rampant. But even more outrageous, how elected officials could be so negligent.
Bottom line, it is the voters who choose-----------But politicians that deliberately deceive to get elected because they know they can get away with it are lower than low. Detroit citizens, ya'll were served terribly, and I hope enough of you that are still left are paying attention now. I hope and pray that Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, New York City and all the other big urban areas are paying attention too. America was made strong with small gov't, big individualism - We've got to get back those core values. In our country, the ONLY things limiting any of us are our own personal choices and the unpredictability of life.

Donna of TX 1:08PM February 26, 2010