It wasn’t 50 years of Democratic Party rule that ruined Detroit.
It was the Governor and the state legislature not “sharing the wealth” of state sales tax.
Michigan communities have missed out on some $6.2 billion in statutory revenue sharing payments over the past decade as lawmakers and governors diverted funds to fill holes in the state budget, according to a new report from the Michigan Municipal League highlighting losses by community.
Detroit, the state’s largest city, lost out on $732 million in revenue sharing between 2003 and 2013, according to the report. Twenty two other cities — from Grand Rapids to Wyandotte — saw the state divert at least $10 million in sales tax revenue that local leaders believe they should have been entitled to.
That’s money that would have helped local governments provide essential services — including police and fire, water systems, road maintenance, parks, libraries — and may have allowed some of them to avoid financial emergencies requiring state intervention.
Yeah, sure it would have. Because it’s not like these municipalities never saw a dollar they couldn’t figure out how to waste.
Yeah, not sharing the taxes. What a bunch of Maroons.
No amount of money will fix Detroit, for the same reason that no amount of money will turn Nairobi or Harare or Port-Au-Prince into Toronto. And yes, I went there. San Francisco also has had a left-wing crank political culture for generations, but somehow San Francisco doesn’t look like Hiroshima with graffiti, and Detroit does.
When taxpaying citizens are run out of a city by organized violence, and the government refuses to do anything to protect the taxpayers, and rewards the aggressors, the result looks a lot like Detroit. Or Philadelphia. Or New Orleans. Or Harlem. Or Watts. Or Compton. Or Port-Au-Prince. Or Harare. What do these locations have in common?
It was predictable and it was predicted. To the Left, Detroit is a shining success, because the welfare recipients in Detroit all vote the straight Democrat ticket. It’s their vision for the future of America and they’re willing to impose it on all of us at the point of a bayonet if we don’t go quietly. Got ammo?