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Mail
Magazine 24
Detroit's
financial debacle holds lessons
by Star Parker
We
are now hearing the usual voices of protest in Detroit in the wake of
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder appointing an outside expert to take over
financial
management of the near-bankrupt city.
Detroit
is the largest city in American history to be seized in this
fashion and turned over to an outside manager.
The
city's reported deficit is $327 million and long-term liabilities are
in the range of $14 billion.
But
no matter to the unions, politicians and bureaucrats who have been at
the helm for years as the city has spiraled into the depths of the
black hole
in which it now finds itself. These interest groups, which have been
the
driving force behind this fiscal travesty, have one interest: to keep
their
respective beds feathered. Citizens and public welfare be damned.
So
they cry foul when adult supervision is sent in to take on the
formidable rescue task.
The
man Snyder has put in charge, Kevin Orr, is a high-powered Washington,
D.C., black attorney who, according to USA Today, "has extensive
experience in municipal finances, public infrastructure projects,
public
pension matters and litigation."
Al
Sharpton's man in Detroit, the Rev. Charles Williams II, has called Orr
an "Uncle Tom."
The
travesty now taking place in Detroit should be carefully watched by all
Americans. This is not an exception to the rule, but rather just the
latest
case study of a pathology dragging down the whole nation. And it's a
pathology
for which low-income minority Americans are paying the dearest price.
Walter
Williams, a George Mason University economics professor, has noted
that the common denominator of the nation's 10 poorest cities with
populations
over 250,000 is that for decades they all have been controlled by
liberal,
Democratic mayors, the majority of which have been black. Detroit is
No. 1 on
the list, with the largest share of residents living in poverty.
Detroit's
former mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick, son of former congresswoman and
Congressional Black Caucus member Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, is now in
jail
awaiting sentencing after being convicted on 24 counts of running a
criminal
enterprise out of the mayor's office.
The
point is that we need to discern a rule of thumb here: The more that
human lives are governed by compulsion and entitlement rather than
freedom,
choice and personal responsibility, the outcomes are uniformly
undesirable.
Compulsion
and entitlement -- meaning liberal government and union power --
means less service, less efficiency, more fraud, corruption and waste,
and
insensitivity to changes in the marketplace.
If
we are going to save our cities, we need to get back to what built them
in the first place. Freedom, enterprise and entrepreneurship.
It
took a hurricane and a flood to wake up and turn around the basket case
that was New Orleans. Ray Nagin, New Orleans' mayor during Katrina, who
blamed
everyone but himself for the debacle that occurred, in January was
indicted on
21 counts of corruption.
New
Orleans is now undergoing a renaissance. The public school system was
turned over to a charter operator and the number of failing schools has
dropped
and test scores are improving.
Low
taxes and a new spirit of entrepreneurship, spurred by such imaginative
initiatives as The Idea Village entrepreneurship hub, have kept
unemployment in
New Orleans at less than two-thirds the national average.
Let's
get going with ideas like urban enterprise zones -- championed by the
late Congressman Jack Kemp and now by economist Arthur Laffer -- and
give
preferential tax treatment to employers and employees in blighted urban
areas.
Abolish
the minimum wage in these areas and give kids a chance at
entry-level jobs and learning critical job skills.
The
possibilities are only limited by our courage and imagination. But only
one theme will save our large, urban cities and their poor minority
citizens.
Get
them out from under political and union control and restore freedom,
competition and entrepreneurship.
Read
this and other articles at Mail Magazine 24
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