Detroit is bankrupt
According to the bankruptcy filing, Detroit now has more than $18 billion in unfunded liabilities. The city’s population has dwindled from 1.85 million in 1950 to under 700,000 today, and its tax revenues have shrunk accordingly even as the average tax burden has risen to the highest level of any town in the state. A deficit estimated at $237 million in June was too much for the once-mighty industrial town to handle.
Orr’s goals, laid out in a report issued in June, were simply to keep the lights on and the fire department operating. Currently, according to the report, 40 percent of the Detroit’s streetlights don’t work, and there are 78,000 abandoned and blighted houses in the city, posing a massive fire risk. A recent New York Times feature corroborated Orr’s account of life in Detroit, reporting that most city residents no longer rely on even basic services like police or the fire department.
Yeah. It's halftime in America, and time to bring out the bulldozers to clean the field.
In honor of our Cleveland friends at this blog, I remind you of this celebratory Cleveland travel video:
ReplyDelete"We're not Detroit!!"
That's right, and don't you forget it! We're not Detroit!!
ReplyDelete...yet...
That local comedian got in trouble with the local tourism promotion people. So they put together some kind of lame response to it. It was the perfect example of proving the original point.