(Detroit Police Chief William Hart and Mayor Coleman A. Young in better days. Photo Detroit Free Press.)
When you grow up in a town north of Canada, all directions are down from the Pole.
That is the way it seems, anyway, since the accident of the Detroit River and the protrusion of Ontario below the tumescent bulge of Michigan’s thumb placed the little Canadian town of Amherstberg due south from where Big Beaver Road intersects Woodward in Grabbingham.
It is across the river from the approach to Naval Air Station Grosse Isle, where Raven flew his Douglas A-1 Skyraider back the day, and the distinctive diamond of runways still beckons from the port windows of the airliners that take me home to DC from the Motor City.
It is all downhill from here, too, these days. Those morons on the Hill are continuing to screw with us. There were conference calls at the office yesterday to deal with the apparent inevitability of a government shut down. That train-wreck has been in progress for so long that now that the moment has arrived, again, it seems a but unreal.
I mean, with majorities in both houses and a Democrat in the White House last year, they idiots could not deliver a budget. Now with the other sort of loons in control of the House, we are somehow in a major policy fight about the funding of Planned Parenthood.
I know there are strong feelings on both sides of the issue, and respect the emotion. But, hey, take it outside, would you guys? We are facing the biggest national security threat of our lifetimes in the form of a budget deficit that will destroy our currency and you idiots appear ready to sacrifice the country over something that is none of the Government’s goddamn business in the first place?
It is beyond sanity. The litany of criminal greed that got us to this sad place has been abundantly documented. The Bankers who stole our cash are unpunished. The corrupt legislators who took their money and cooked the tax code are still in office. The Administration seems to live in a cloud-cookooland that imagines that a budget relying on a 40% deficit sold to credulous Chinese is somehow acceptable.
What is not sustainable is…well, not sustainable. That means this collective lunacy is going to end at some point. That can be done, in my feeble understanding, either in a grown-up and orderly manner, or in a panicked catastrophe when the illusion of normalcy dies and the rush to the exits begins.
Paul Krugman, the Nobel Laureate and known smart guy, shot holes in the House budget plan formulated by Rep. Paul Ryan. He castigated those who had applauded Ryan’s effort to reign in the deficit, acting on recommendations formulated by the bi-partisan Bowles-Simpson panel, but which could not pass an internal vote due to the unpalatable nature of the options that could salvage eventual solvency.
(Paul Krugman. Photo Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times.)
I borrowed Mr. Krugman’s title for the hysterical rant this morning, since he rightly points out that some of the provisions of Mr. Ryan’s budget are simultaneously ridiculous and heartless. Of course he is right, just as the Erskin-Bowles panel was. This is not going to be fun. In fact, it is going to be ludicrous and cruel to a lot of people, you and me included.
The view from the city north of Canada is illuminating, and revisiting the disintegration of a city that once seemed too big to fail is useful to look ahead and see what might be hurtling down the wrong side of I-75 toward us.
Back when I lived there, the illusion of Detroit as a viable enterprise continued for a while, though the paradigm shifted from making things to stealing them. There is, today, a continuing industry in mining the old skyscrapers and single-family homes for scrap metal.
Mayor Coleman A. Young had a vested interest in continuing to drive the once-great city into the dirt. The more unipolar the city became in demographics, the stronger his power base became. There was plenty of stuff to vacuum up in the great deconstruction, at least for his twenty years in office, plenty of swag to spread around to his pals.
The Mayor was an outspoken advocate for federal funding for Detroit construction projects, and the legacy of the free money, unconnected to any organic generation, saw the erection of the RenCen, the People Mover and the Joe Louis Arena. Construction funds offered plenty of opportunities for graft, and the corruption was endemic to the enterprise.
Police Chief William Hart was one of the beneficiaries. He was convicted of stealing two-and-a-half million dollars from the undercover activities funds. Deputy Chief Kenneth Weiner was busted for embezzling $1.6 million from the police pension fund.
While the Blue-Suiters had the highest profile in criminal activity, there were dozens of other investigations, indictments and convictions in the Young Administration. The corruption in the school board and sanitation department are legendary.
You can’t call it anything other than officially sanctioned looting.
Upon learning of Young’s death from emphysema in 1997, former President Jimmy Carter called Young “one of the greatest mayors our country has known.”
By that criteria, I suppose you could argue that Jimmy was one of our greatest presidents. But I digress. The consensus these days is that the death of Detroit was somehow inevitable, even a necessary event. Maybe that is true, but if a city as amazing and vibrant as Detroit, a place too big to die, does anyway, maybe that is likewise true for other really big things.
Like the good old USA.
Nah. Couldn’t happen. We are too big to fail, right? Someone will bail us out. Maybe Goldman-Sachs….
Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com