Kevin Williamson on how financial deals are made in my hometown, and how they fall apart.
So we have: a city council too short-sighted and beef-witted to understand what it was doing, a mayor who was an outright criminal, union bosses who never asked where the money was going to come from and union members who simply cashed the checks and never held their leaders to account, banks and financial firms that were happy to bet that they’d be comfortably seated when the music stopped, and lawyers and a court system happy to ignore the fact that the bankruptcy deals being worked out in Detroit are exactly as corrupt and destructive as the policies that put the city into bankruptcy in the first place. And a pox on the people of Detroit, too: They keep voting for this, over and over.
The ones left holding the sack can maybe be paid off in pastureland, if they can raise the money to demolish the last of the rotting houses. Watch out for those discarded syringes, Daisy.
Once, many years ago, I laid a cocked and locked .45 under a newspaper on the front seat and went for a tour of my old neighborhoods. Rented rowhouses I barely remember were simply gone, assuming I even had the right streets. The last house I ever lived in within the city limits was gutted and listing to starboard. My oldest brother had owned that, and after months of fruitlessly trying to sell it had driven away without even locking the door. The very first house I ever lived in, up till my sixth year, was a contrast to that: The roof was intact, the structure was straight, and all the windows were neatly covered with plywood. Even back then I knew it was probably a Potemkin charade: There was likely not an ounce of copper left in it. That was more than thirty years ago, so it’s all probably empty lots now.
That’s a depressing thought to start my morning. Moving on.
Yeah, but at least you got out.
A big part of the problem is that there was a black mafia that took over Detroit and political correctness prevented any state and federal authorities from exposing the crimes. After all if a majority black population votes in a majority (or exclusively) black city officers and they steal money and sell city contracts and commit many other crimes you would have to be racist to point this out. It is going on right now as we discuss the crimes of previous mayors of Detroit but you don’t see anyone trying to expose it do you. The governor of Michigan threatened to take over Detroits bankrupt system and the blacks on the Detroit city council replyed they would put thousands of rioting blacks in the street if the governor dared interfere in their crime spree. The governor backed down. So it’s a standoff. No worries the federal government will bail out Detroit.
No guarantees, regardless of where you are. In 1947, my parents bought a small, unfinished house in Baldwin Park, CA. It was on a large lot, but only one bedroom. Baldwin Park was a small town then, and our neighborhood was a mix of Mexican and European types, with some of the Mexican people having roots in California from before USA statehood. It was quiet and crime free.
They spent several years finishing it, inside and out, and my father even built a carport/patio. My sister and I left handprints in the cement. I visited the neighborhood in 1965, and was glad to see the little house well tended and the peach tree my dad had planted in the front loaded down with fruit. Then, about 15 years later, I had occasion to drive through the area again. All I could see where large track home developments, condos and appartment buildings along the main street of the town. The neighborhood had vanished, along with the corner grocery store, the tavern and all the rest of the old town. I didn’t recognize anything at all.
I have no clue what any of it looks like today, of course, or how many of those houses and apartment buildings are empty and boarded up. But I would not be at all surprised to see that it was decaying and that gangs roamed the streets there too. The same corruption and destruction of life, liberty and property are evident – and inevitable – in every place where some people have the power to control and steal from everyone else, regardless of their race, creed or ethnic origin.