The Discount Tent of course refers to the recent brouhaha where Brooks Patterson, Oakland County Executive, 30 some years ago stated regarding Detroit "“I made a prediction a long time ago, and it’s come to pass. I said, ‘What we’re gonna do is turn Detroit into an Indian reservation, where we herd all the Indians into the city, build a fence around it, and then throw in the blankets and the corn.’”".
While colorful and inflammatory, the statement is, in its essence "truthy" as the left would put it. After all we're not sending in blankets and corn, instead the State of Michigan will be sending in millions of dollars to deadbeats, corrupt government officials and the electorate that succored them for so long as they led the city to ruin and bankruptcy.
The Detroit News: Let's call a bailout a bailout
Let's also note the sad reality, Govenror Snyder, a nominal Republican, is pushing $350 Million dollars on a solid Democrat city to relieve them of the consequences of their malfeasance. That malfeasance of course first being promising pensions that couldn't be paid while squandering the pension money that was there on corruption and incompetence. The second such act of malfeasance being that of the vulnerability of the Detroit Institute of Arts because the City Council for years refused to get it out from under City control and thus let its assets be open to satisfy the city's liabilities rather than safe as an independently and competently run institution.
In short it's a Republican Governerd racing to save a too-big-too-fail Democrat machine.
Why is he doing it when the moral hazard of bailing out those who will invariably continue the same antics and policies that led it to ruin remain in place? Perhaps because in his mind it's the right thing to do or for his own legacy as suggested in the Detroit News:
The governor is spending the largest portion of his time on Detroit and its problems. No other recent governor has devoted so much attention to the city, not even Democratic ones for whom Detroiters voted for by rote.
And again, Snyder is doing it without hope for a ballot box return. Neither the unions whose retirees will benefit, nor Detroiters whose city will be saved, are likely to reward him with votes.
And yet he’s investing his political capital in mustering a Republican-controlled Legislature to do something it has rarely done — recognize the special place Detroit occupies in the state, and thus its special claim on the treasury.
As I’ve suggested before, if he can get that done — and I think he will — Detroit should erect a statue of The Nerd in the center of Campus Martius.
I'd humbly suggest there's no way Detroiters will be putting up a statue of a Republican governor anytime soon, no matter how many millions he hands over to them. Indeed, I expect the first thing we'll hear are complaints that he hasn't given even more of the State's money to the City and its Democrat machine.
If Snyder as part of this deal doesn't explicitly condition this bailout on the severing of the link between the DIA and the city and turning it over to tri-county control, and also require that all future Detroit retirement plans to be 401K types outside the control and sticky-fingers of the Democrat machine, we'll be looking at this same problem yet again, with the same bailout to be the answer.
If that happens, the Governerd will be forever remembered as the Goverfool.
