By Barry Curtis
In the mid-seventies president Gerald Ford was a victim of media assassination by misquotes when he reportedly said this about New York: “Drop Dead.” Gerald Ford never said New York, “Drop dead.” Mr. Ford, on Oct. 29, 1975, gave a speech denying federal assistance to spare New York from bankruptcy. The front page of The Daily News the next day read: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.”
The president never uttered those words in 1975, but he should have. Mr. Obama never uttered the words Detroit drop dead, but he should.
Last week the special city manager of Detroit filed bankruptcy with the federal court to reorganize or alleviate Detroit’s $18 billion in long term debt.
This city that is bloated with cronyism and bad management is the typical big liberal city of the North. For the last sixty years the liberal democrats have destroyed the once model economic city of the nation and at one time the world.
“You can see here, as it is impossible to do in a more varied and complex city, the whole structure of an industrial society.” So wrote essayist Edmund Wilson, reporting on a visit to the Motor City in the 1930s.
Detroit during its peek had some 125 automobile company’s working in its city limits, employing tens of thousands of people. Without question during the 30’s and 40’s Detroit was the global modern model for the economic savvy and the downtrodden alike.
Detroit is perfectly situated in the heart of the great lakes region. Its proximity to iron, coal, and copper gave the motor city an almost majestic quality in the late 1950’s.
Detroit was certainly the jewel of the great lakes. However, leave it to the liberal lions to bring down an economic miracle.
By the mid-twentieth century, one in every six working Americans was employed directly or indirectly by the automobile industry and Detroit was its epicenter. The “Big Three” auto firms—General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler—were all based in metropolitan Detroit.
Detroit’s liberal leaders have betrayed the good citizens of this capable city. Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was found guilty of multiple counts of racketeering and extortion. Kilpatrick was convicted of 24 charges, including racketeering, extortion, attempted extortion, bribery, mail fraud, wire fraud and filing false tax returns. Both Kilpatrick and contractor Bobby Ferguson were found guilty on most counts. Kilpatrick’s 71-year-old father, Bernard Kilpatrick, was only found guilty of one tax count. That according to the Huffington post.
With Detroit’s bankruptcy in mind I caution you patriots to not let the liberals pollute our words and values. First there is no such thing as “public” money. The government doesn’t produce anything, but grief, it has no capital. It simply takes other people’s money. Secondly, we are the “other people”. It is our hard earned money and risk taking that the government taxes. Third point is in Detroit, the liberals ran out of other people’s money.
The final point is that the other people left Detroit in mass and all that remained was entrenched, entitled, decaying liberalism
The city’s betrayal and liberal corruption continues after 30 years of working for the city’s two pension funds, attorney Ronald Zajac was indicted on charges: he was part of a bribery and kickback scheme involving more than $200 million in Detroit pension fund investments.
The city’s liberal corruption doesn’t stop there. According to the US attorney’s office, Paul Stewart, a former trustee of Detroit’s Police and Fire Retirement System, also was charged with participating in the scheme.
This is how big liberal cronyism looks. This is the result of a large unregulated liberal machine in Detroit. The sad part is that the citizens of Detroit deserve better. The scary part is that there are a number of other large upper mid-western cities’ that are in the same situation and whose fate is as equally bleak. Just look at Chicago.
The city has a tradition of bloated public services, inflated city salaries, and an unrestricted sense of entitlement to public services. We deserve the leaders we elect. In other words, Detroit, live with it.
Detroit, as it relates to a possible taxpayer funded bail out of your mess? Well here is to your seemingly unrestrained spending spree for the last 60 years, DROP DEAD!
You can listen to The Curtis report on KLIF 570 AM and KSKY 660 AM.
