RSSDear, Dirty Detroit
Gene Lalor | November 21, 2009
In one of his greatest novels, Ulysses, the Irish writer James Joyce famously referred to his nation’s capital as “dear, dirty Dublin,” thereby expressing his love-hate ambivalence toward the city and land of his birth.
After many years in recovery from the repressive British yoke, Ireland, with Dublin as its centerpiece, would rise from Joyce’s dirt to become the vaunted Celtic Tiger of Europe with the Irish enjoying one of the most robust economies on the face of the planet.
James Joyce would be proud today.
Some of that luster has been lost in the current recession, due as much to the general downturn as to Ireland’s abandonment of proven successful, free enterprise, low taxation, fiscal policies.
Ireland could be an object lesson for the American city of Detroit were it not that Detroit were so far gone. It would be a real stretch for any Detroiter to find much Joycean love for that city.
Once the 4th largest city in America, Detroit is almost moribund. The most liberal big city in the nation has slipped to 11th largest as things became worse and worse and about a million of its citizens gave up and fled.
It has been suggested the best thing to do with this crime-ravaged and economically-destitute town is to bulldoze it and begin all over again.
Would that bulldozing were feasible.
As Rich Lowry wrote on Realclearpolitics.com, Detroit “stands as a stark statement of the failure of urban liberalism.”
Detroit’s decline and fall may have begun with the race riots stoked by MLK in 1968 but the election in 1974 of its first black mayor, Coleman Young, clearly greased the skids. The collapse and bailout of the auto industry merely iced the cake with rancid topping.
Young would reign for 20 years. During his tenure he accomplished little except instigating white flight to the ‘burbs, at the same time he ripped whites, accusing them of ” ‘pillaging the city,’ “ Meanwhile, “his scandal-plagued administration managed the city into the ground.”
In the process, Young catered to the teacher unions, rejected opportunities to improve the school system, sucked up to his constituency by blaming cops for rampant crime, (”the police are the major threat . . . to the minority community,”) and cut government services while raising taxes: http://bit.ly/5pulDw
All were sure-fire policies to achieve the goal of an all-black, liberal city.
By the 2000 census, Detroit was 82% Black, 12% White. In 2009, it is in shambles at the same time some of its near and distant suburbs such as Sterling Heights (91% White) are thriving in affluence.
Detroit had so much going for it up until the Coleman Young years, a major port city sprawled over 140 square miles, aptly titled the Motor City with good jobs, a good future.
Now it’s a city that can’t afford to bury its dead or pick up its garbage. Its school system is in receivership, its murder rate off the charts, it is $300 million in debt, with rotting and abandoned buildings throughout.
Those pathetic details of a city in “a death spiral” are reported by the (London) Times. Toward the end of its account the Times saw fit to mention that Detroit mortuaries believe that many of its unburied dead were dead due to an inability to “afford medical insurance and medicines:” http://bit.ly/5qc8Bn.
No mention is made of decades of liberal rule that brought Detroit to its sorry state.
Whatever money Detroit did have seems to have been poured into the Downtown Detroit Partnership which revitalized and refurbished a small part of the city as the rest disintegrated. 
Either way, asserting the obvious or leaving the obvious to interpretation will result in the same conclusion for politically correct types: This is clearly a rabidly, racist diatribe.
Should that be the consensus opinion, then so be it but if so how would the race-mongers explain the often rapid decline of American metropolises following liberals assuming power?
A study by non-partisan Bay Area Center for Voting Research, BACVR, must be racist as well.
The BACVR identifies the most liberal and most conservative cities in the country and makes a frank admission: “The great political divide in America today is not red vs. blue, north vs. south, coastal vs. interior or even rich vs. poor. It is now clearly [with a few exceptions such as Berkeley and Cambridge] black vs. white.”
In the top 25 black lib cities, Detroit leads the pack followed by the liberal bastions of Gary, Washington, D.C., Oakland, Englewood, Newark, Flint, Cleveland, Hartford, Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore, N.Y.C., and Buffalo. Most are concentrated in the Northeast, Midwest, and California.
For the full list see http://bit.ly/2JJwOH.
With few exceptions, most are not only Democratic-controlled but represented in Washington by Democrats, crime-ridden, riddled with corruption and crippled with fiscal chaos, though not all as seriously as Detroit.
The tanking auto industry may have been a factor in the tanking of Detroit but was far from the only factor.
After Coleman Young did his bit, most significant in the demise of Detroit was the 2002 election of the Mayor Kwame Malik Kilpatrick, “America’s hip hop mayor” 
He hip-hopped Detroit into bankruptcy while earning his rep as one of the most corrupt politicians of the 21st century, which is ironic considering he was elected on a reform platform.
Kilpatrick’s hip hopping was far removed from reform and was accompanied by various unseemly, and criminal, events:
—The murder of an exotic dancer outside the executive mansion after a Kilpatrick party;
— The multiple firings and lawsuits by cops after they blew the whistle on the mayor;
— The multi-million dollar court judgements against him in favor of the whistle blowers;
— The mayor’s assault of 2 cops;
— The mayor’s arrest, violation of his bond, and ultimate imprisonment.
He was even booed at a Red Wings game, cause in itself to suspect Kilpatrick and his Democrat Party were unworthy of holding public office: http://bit.ly/7hYAY0
Not so, said Detroit voters in a special mayoral election. They elected Democrat, hometown hero and black basketball star Dave Bing 
as interim mayor earlier this year.
Dear, dirty Detroit. Some cities never learn.
Contributor's website: http://www.genelalor.com/
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