The Last Days Of Detroit?

If we need yet another in an endless list of examples of the downside of Democrat rule, we look again to the city of Detroit, a shining example of decades of dystopian blue-rule. Now considered the most miserable city in the US, it is also suffering from another blue-rule malady, property tax delinquency.

Nearly half of the owners of Detroit's 305,000 properties failed to pay their tax bills last year, exacerbating a punishing cycle of declining revenues and diminished services for a city in a financial crisis, according to a Detroit News analysis of government records.

Delinquency is so pervasive that 77 blocks had only one owner who paid taxes last year, The News found.

I'm not really surprised, knowing that a once vital city is a shadow of its former self, with block after block of abandoned homes and businesses. But I expect the Detroit Democrat Machine will point to Detroit's problems as somehow being the fault of the very people they're squeezing dry.

It’s easy to imagine progressives seizing on this information as some sort of proof that Detroit’s disastrous financial problem is due to those selfish property owners not paying their due to keep the city running. But really it appears to be a self-perpetuating cycle of dissatisfaction with the services – or rather the lack of services – property owners are getting from the city...

I know I would be loath to pay an always increasing tax bill while getting an ever decreasing amount of services from the city. Street lights are shut off and police no longer patrol or respond to crime reports in some neighborhoods. How would this entice me to pay even more of my remaining money when I know I'll get less in return? It's like something right out of Atlas Shrugged.

The state government has declared that Detroit is in a financial emergency, verging on bankruptcy. And should it go under, an emergency manager will be appointed by the state to clean up the mess, something the ever blue Democrats are scared will undo decades of blue-model governing that helped turn Detroit into a progressive utopian cesspool.

It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of folks.

But we must not forget that Detroit stands as an object lesson, showing us what will happen if we follow the blue model. While Greece, Spain, Portugal, and some of the other EU nations verging on financial collapse are also object lessons, they are too far away and too 'foreign'. Detroit is in our back yard, as are some of the other failing blue-model cities. They stand as examples of what the progressives have in store for us.

Atlas Shrugged, indeed.