Detroit bankruptcy no natural disaster

Published 8:57 pm Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Those who demand a federal bailout for Detroit have gone beyond twisting logic; they’re now rewriting history in the campaign to make America responsible for Detroit’s bad decisions.

One of the most brazen examples comes in the web pages of Salon.com, a reputable, left-leaning online magazine.

The attention-grabbing headline is “Why the right hates Detroit,” but the real problem is in the basic premise of the piece by Andrew O’Hehir. The piece equates the disaster that has befallen Detroit with the disaster that befell New Orleans.

“Two great American cities have now faced near-death experiences in the 21st century,” O’Hehir writes. “While Detroit’s gradual slide into bankruptcy and the almost biblical inundation of New Orleans in 2005 look quite different on the surface, I’m more struck by the similarities. Both these tragic events were a long time coming.”

He’s reaching when he describes the “similarities.”

“Both tragedies were shaped by larger economic forces and historical trends that lay (or at least appeared to lie) beyond the control of individual politicians or policy makers,” O’Hehir claims. “Then there’s the obvious but uncomfortable fact that both are cities with large black majorities, in a country where African-Americans are only about 13 percent of the population.”

And that, he concludes, is why the right hates Detroit — and by extension, New Orleans. He goes on to contend that “some right-wingers in America are so delusional, so short-sighted and, frankly, so unpatriotic and culturally backward that they were delighted to see those cities fail and did everything possible to help them along.”

Now, that’s name-calling, not argumentation. What, exactly, did those “right-wingers” do to Detroit? Blacks have been in control of Detroit, its finances and its purse-strings for more than half a century. When Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder appointed an emergency manager for the city, following the federal indictment of its mayor on corruption charges, Detroit’s leaders objected because the manager is white.

(Here’s one similarity O’Hehir fails to mention; former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has now been indicted on corruption charges, as well.)

In fact, no one is happy to see Detroit fail, any more than they were happy to see New Orleans’ disaster play out. Indeed, America responded to the New Orleans tragedy in a way only Americans can: More than $142 billion from federal funds and charitable donations flooded into the city in the weeks, months and years after the disaster. The vast majority of that money was approved under the Bush administration. Another $37.9 billion from the Recovery Act went to the city.

No, those “right-wingers” don’t hate Detroit. And opposing a bailout of the city isn’t a form of racism.

Rather, it’s the acknowledgement that bailing out Detroit will send the message that every other city whose politicians made promises they couldn’t keep will eventually be bailed out, as well.

The bankruptcy proceedings and oversight by the state of Michigan are the correct steps for Detroit to be taking now.

It’s true the people of Detroit are victims here. Let’s not make federal taxpayers into victims, too.