- Detroit is at the top of Forbes' 2013 list of most dangerous cities. Again. For the fifth year in a row. The police have an average 58 minute response time. Forbes jokes that "they can have a pizza delivered in less time than it takes to get a police car."
- Once the police come, they may have to take reports in the dark, since 40% of the street lights do not work.
- Detroit's unemployment rate peaked at 27.8% in July 2009, and as of August, 2013, it is at 17.7%.
- No one in their right minds would live in Detroit, and this has lead to population flight: The population has dropped by more than 60% from 1.8 million in 1950 to just over 700,000 in 2010. Between 2000 and 2010, the population fell by 25%.
All of this has left the city dilapidated. Detroit has all the ruin of Dresden, but none of the firebombing. In fact, the phrase "ruin porn" has been applied to photos of the state of decay, and "ruin tourism" (what used to be called "slumming") is now a business.
No politician in Detroit is fit to manage their own bank accounts, let alone that of a whole city. Which means... outside help.
Rick Snyder, Michigan's governor, proposed on January 22, 2014, that the state provide $350 million to cover city pensions. "This is not a bailout of paying the debts directly of the city of Detroit. This is not a bailout of banks and other creditors," Snyder said. No, it is a bailout of retiree pension funds, using other people's money, of course.
To follow this bad idea with a worse idea, Snyder then proposed bringing in 50,000 skilled immigrants over the next five years to revitalize the "motor city".
In other words, Detroit is now the equivalent of a third-world country, and the politicians are now trying to populate it with third-world workers.
Snyder is yet another Republican, abandoning working class people. With Republicans like these, who needs Democrats?
