Posse Incitatus

Bankrupt Detroit

The long-ailing Motor City has not filed for bankruptcy yet, but I believe it will within a few weeks.

The city's emergency financial manager, Kevyn Orr, met Friday with creditors, insurance companies, investors, unions and pension officials to plead his desperate case. He proposed that investors and lenders — many of whom purchased what they thought were secure municipal bonds —  take a "haircut" of about 10 cents on the dollar. In other words, if Detroit owes your firm $200 million for bonds you bought several years ago, all it can pay is $20 million, and then walk away.

Orr made it clear to the nearly 50 unions representing city employees that further wage and benefit concessions are in the cards, as are efforts to put contracts out for bid and privatize some city services.

Frankly, I believe Orr's chances of working out arrangements with all of these stakeholders are minimal. But perhaps he's just going through the motions before a bankruptcy filing, just to prove he at least TRIED. Good-faith efforts to come to terms with your creditors seem to be a necessary prerequisite to favorable treatment in bankruptcy court.

Detroit's fiscal dilemma, which dates back to the 1970s but has steadily worsened in the past 10 years, is that servicing its long-term debt and pension/health care liabilty for retired city employees takes up an inordinant amount of its tax revenues. This leaves too little money to provide police and fire protection and other essential services such as garbage pickup, reliable electrical service and streetlights that work. As it stands, the city's long-term debt is a staggering $17 billion.

According to the Detroit Free Press, 46 cents of each dollar of tax revenue goes to public safety, and another 38 cents toward debt and long-term obligations. 

It is true that inept and corrupt politicians have screwed Detroit royally in recent decades. Most of them were black Democrats. But the finger-pointing between largely white suburbanites and mostly black city residents oversimplifies things and delays real recovery.

Middle-aged and older whites in the suburbs often point to the 1967 riots, which spurred white flight and began a long, steady decline in the Motor City, as the watershed event that led to the current disaster. In their minds, Detroit was hunky dory before that, and bad ever since.

But what they neglect to acknowledge is that, prior to the 1970s, black Detroiters suffered from well-documented police brutality at the hands of a largely white police force. Furthermore, blacks were relegated to substandard housing in Detroit until the white flight began in the 1950s and 1960s. That was when bankers and real estate agents used blatant red lining and scare tactics to get whites to sell their homes at below market prices, then turned around and sold those same homes to blacks at unfairly high prices. To these conniving sharks, white flight was simply a golden opportunity to make a killing.

The white and black southerners who ventured north to Detroit in the first half of the 20th century for high paying factory jobs typically did not have more than a high school education. Regrettably, many of their children and grandchildren also did not further their education past high school, believing that high paying union jobs would never go away. Illiteracy is a serious problem in the city, probably increased by the high school dropout rate.

While the educational level of Detroiters hasn't progressed much, industry has undergone a dramatic transformation in the past quarter century. Robotics, outsourcing and foreign competition that have forced American auto companies to downsize have caused many of these jobs to evaporate forever. And Detroit is left with a vicious downward spiral: Few jobs, low tax base, bad schools, violent crime, drugs, gangs, illegitimate births and more population drain as those who can afford to leave the city do so.

Detroit proper had nearly 2 million people in 1950, 1 million in 2000, and about 700,000 today. (The entire metro area has nearly 4 million people.)

But as people continue to flee and tax revenues decline, there is less and less money for police and fire services just as demand for these services escalates due to grinding poverty and violent crime becoming more and more common inside the city limits.

Past mistreatment of blacks by whites has led to a bitter, insular culture among many Detroit residents. They are mistrustful of suburban whites and fail to acknowledge that it is wealthy white investors and philanthropists -- Mike Ilitch, Dan Gilbert, Peter Karmanos, Alfred Taubman and the Ford family, for example — whose steadfast investment and financial support have prevented Detroit from being in even worse shape. Downtown Detroit is doing fairly well; it's just that the majority of neighborhoods are blighted, crime-ridden, dangerous and crumbling.

Detroit, believe it or not, was known in the early 1900s as the Paris of the Midwest due to its tree-lined boulevards and beautiful architecture, including majestic churchs, art deco skyscrapers, and stately homes. (Yes, there are still some beautiful homes inside the city limit, especially in the Palmer Woods subdivision, where Mitt Romney gew up.) But the city's distress and blight are so overwhelming, it is dificult to be optimistic.

I've stated before that Detroit reminds me of an attractive, intelligent and talented person with a bad substance abuse problem. His or her life has been marred by destructive habits, unsavory acquaintances, ugly incidents and poor choices, all of which feed off of each other in a perfect storm of misery. Veering off on a path of destructiveness can make anyone or anything appear ugly and irretrievably broken.

Kevyn Orr and the bitter medicine of bankruptcy can eventually cure Detroit's financial ills. Retirees relying on pensions will suffer, as will city residents who pay tax rates that are ridiculously high given the poor level of services they receive. Crime and bad schools will remain stubbornly as cancers upon the city.

But in order for the city to truly recover in viability, safety, optimism, the health of its neighborhoods and the vitality of its schools, the people will need to take a look in the mirror and resolve to do better.  The time for finger pointing, complaining and paranoia has come and gone.

It's literally do or die, and don't think it's not possible that this once-great city could die completely, with the level of abandonment so profound that recovery is next to impossible.

Fast and Furious — Middle Eastern Version

Okay, so the intent is not the same, but the consequences could be similar. A few years ago, the Obama administration allowed straw purchasers of weapons in the United States to arm Mexican drug dealers and gang bangers with weapons, ostensibly to ascertain who the purchasers were. This would, it was hoped, lead law enforcement authorities up the chain to bigger fish such as drug kingpins.

But the disastrous program backfired, resulting in the deaths of untold numbers of innocent Mexicans including women and children, and the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. 

Fast forward furiously to June 2013, and the Obama administration has announced it is going to arm rebels in Syria seeking to overthrow the murderous dictator Bashar al-Assad. Several months ago, President Obama stated that if Assad used chemical weapons against the rebels involved in the bloody civil war, which has already claimed 80,000 lives in 2 1/2 years, that would "cross a red line."

It took a while, but Obama finally determined that crossing that red line meant Assad would have to face consequences: a better-armed resistance. The administration contends it has a much better knowledge of who the "good" rebels are as opposed to the Islamists such as al Qaeda, Islamic Brotherhood and other violent terror groups.

But the fog of war isn't just an expression, and it's not just something that's present among the combatants on the battlefield. It also pertains to military planners, strategists and politicians. Let's face it, information "on the ground" in bloody Syria is not necessarily accurate, nor can informants be trusted to tell the truth.

I have stated in a couple of past blogs that I don't think it is wise for the United States to get involved in what I consider a no-win situation. Hezbollah, a Shia puppet of Iran, supports Assad, while Sunni Islamists such as al Qaeda seek to overthrow his regime. This is like a battle of Hitler vs. Stalin (or, for Michigan State Spartan fans, Michigan vs. Notre Dame). You just don't want to get involved, or to root for one side to win.

I fear that Islamofascists will obtain U.S.-supplied weapons and ammunition, and many innocent people will die. And if Assad's regime is overthrown, will we be any better off with Koran-worshipping nut jobs replacing him? I think not.

Your tax dollars at work, indeed.

Obligatory book plug

We're advertising a new product on the left sidebar:  Battle Officer Wolf.  It's an e-book and I can personally vouch for it's complete and utter excellence.

It's only available electronically, but since you are looking at a web site, you care clearly capable of reading it.  Normally, one electronic copy would be enough, but just to be safe you should buy two or three.

What is it about, you ask?  It is a brilliant retelling of the Beowulf saga updated and set in space.  By changing the setting, the author is able to make the story fresh and compelling.  If you know the story, you'll get a kick out of the adaptation; if you're unfamiliar, you will be hooked from the first paragraph.

Full disclosure:  I know the author and have a vested interest in the book's success.  But it is very good.

Push Back with RELISH!

 Maybe it’s just because it’s springtime and the weather has been gorgeous of late. But my spirits have been pretty darned good, and I think part of that is I am happy about developments in Washington, DC.

No, of course I am not happy about dysfunctional government, bloated deficits and arrogant, imperious leaders whose contempt for the American public knows no bounds. I am happy that the Obama administration’s haughty overreach is coming back to bite them in the arse. 

The Benghazi disaster does not appear to be something that will have legs, although it could blow up again.

Furthermore, I am delighted that the Republican Party now has some lawmkers who have “a pair,” as the vernacular goes, and aren’t afraid to push back against left-wing B.S. Sen. Rand Paul and Sen. Ted Cruz are a couple of good examples of men with spines. They have repeatedly faced down left-wing Democrats and not minced words when it comes to denouncing the incompetence and wrongheadedness of so many of the administration’s actions.

Sen. Paul staged a nearly 13-hour filibuster against the Obama administration's drone policy back in March, then a couple weeks later filibustered against gun control legislation. Sen. Cruz has been a forceful voice against ill-advised gun control, the "Gang of Eight" immigration bill, and the nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense.

More recently, a group of private citizens testified in congressional hearings about the IRS targeting and harassing conservative groups seeking tax-exempt  status. It was with great pleasure that I witnessed a this slapdown by Prof. John Eastman of the National Organization for Marriage gainst a brain-dead liberal, Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon. Blumenauer opposes tax-exempt status for an organization that advocates defense of traditional marriage. Defense of traditional marriage to those of Blumenauer's ilk out on the far left flank is kind of like believing that Obama's cabinet is made up of two-headed Martians with antennae coming out of their heads.

There are millions of stalwart conservatives who are not afraid to face down the blowhard bullies of the left. They're in the House and Senate, on Twitter, on talk radio, in congressional hearings, on Internet forums across the land, in your workplace and on the street. I say, don't be afraid to push back. Conservatism's leaders have often been inarticulate and ineffective. We conservatives have been too timid, passively allowing a corrupt, compromised press to paint a distorted picture. We have not been up in arms sufficiently about the leftist control of K-12 schools and academia. We have not gotten the word out about how the federal government's enormous size facilitates a lack of accountability and the blatant politicization of various government agencies.

I say, PUSH BACK. And push back with vim and vigor. After all, we've got a country to save.

The futility of the surveillance state

There is much discussion on the right side of the blogosphere as to just how damning the recent revelations about data-mining and gathering phone records are to the new administration.  On the one hand, the Wall Street Journal and Bush-era officials defend the practice as essential to national security.

Rising in opposition are conservatives who rightly point out the blatant hypocrisy of the Democrats embracing and expanding programs they once denounced.  These people are in turn called hypocrites because they tolerated similar programs under Bush.

Long-time readers of this blog know that we are naturally sympathetic to the needs of national security and the imperative of protecting the public.  This need transcends politics and the change of adminsitration.

That being said, there is a thing called a "learning curve" and what we have discovered since the dark post-Sept. 11 days is that all the data-mining in the world is useless without the will to do anything with it. 

The most recent terror attacks were not developed by skilled covert operatives whose clever and encrypted communications could only be discovered by the most sophisticated equipment available.  Far from it - the Boston Bombers were self-proclaimed jihadis that we were warned about by the Russians who openly traveled to get their terrorism training under the very noses of our security.

Similarly, Maj. Hassan Nidal openly proclaimed his desire for jihad and the U.S. Army did nothing about it.  No amount of data-mining will overcome the political correctness that has blinded our institutions to even the most obvious threats.

At the same time, we have learned that the IRS, EPA and other agencies determined that the Tea Party was the one enemy they would pursue to the ends of the earth, using every tool in their possession to destroy.  This is the realization of the classic paranoid conspiracy theory - the government builds up its power in response to an external threat and then uses it against domestic opponents for utterly unrelated reasons.

One need not be a rabid libertarian to now undestand that these agencies and their secretive powers are a threat to our freedoms - one must only have a healthy dose of common sense.

For all its computing power, the NSA was helpless to find the Boston Marathon Bombers - that fell to a guy checking his boat.

Similarly, all the phone records on the planet couldn't stop a radicalized Army major from shooting up his own base.

I should make it clear that I do not blame the NSA for its efforts.  Like all bureaucracies, they want to build out their edifice to the maximum extent possible.  All departments want the shiniest toys, the largest number of employees and the minimum amount of accountability they can achieve.  It is inherent in human nature.

It is up to our elected officials to step in and stop this from happening, and they have done a poor job in this respect.

Like with gun control, I might support the surveillance state if it actually worked.  But we know it doesn't.  While the whiz kids play with computers, the enemy builds bombs with pressure-cookers.   Just as with gun control, when the inevitable massacre happens, no one will be held accountable for the failure to connect the dots and the citizenry will be blamed for not giving up even more of their liberties.

If there is once trend in American intelligence capabilities it is to consistently misread the intentions of our enemies.  Blinded by our own prejudices, complacent in our superior technology, we assume that the adversary will do what we want - playing into our own limited defenses rather than bypassing them.

Pearl Harbor is said to loom large in the American psyche, but the lesson there is not danger of the sneak attack but our own ineptitude in detecting them.  Failing to note the signs of an attack was not unique to that instance.  We also failed to detect the German buildup at Kasserine Pass, failed to detect their buildup at the Bulge, missed the obvious signs of impending Chinese intervention in Korea - in fact one could write a book on all the Cold War stuff our best and brightest got wrong, up to and including the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The point is that admitting one's own weakness is the first step in fixing it.  We still keep pretending that it is all a matter of finding a "smoking gun" when we have countless examples of them being offered up to us only to ignore them in favor a theory we like better.

So we monitor email, web pages and Skype with great dilligence and hassle crippled grandmothers at airports while waving through military-age men fresh from summer training camp in Dagestan.  Oh, don't get me wrong, I think that if we tried to use racial profiling we'd screw that one up, too.  It is a mentality and the hardest thing to fix is stupid.

More than 200 years ago some stuffy white  guys without any internet or iPads figured out that giving up liberty won't buy any more security - it just makes you a servant to the state.  It says something about our pathetic educational system that people are today acting like this is a new discovery.

Enough.  Tear the thing down.

Thank you, D-Day heroes

It was 69 years ago today that thousands of brave soldiers, sailors and Airmen invaded the shores of Normany, France to help liberate that nation from the evil tyranny of Nazism.

Over 5,000 ships, 13,00 aircraft, and 160,000 allied troops took part in the audacious amphibious invasion, at a high cost in terms of deaths and serious injuries.

President Franklin Roosevelt offered a poignant and moving prayer to the nation, broadcast on the radio. Let us never forget the character, courage and sacrifice of these brave heroes who changed the course of history.

Regrettably, many World War II veterans are deceased,  and fewer and fewer remain, since most of them are in their late 80s or 90s. The other day I just happened to learn about a terrific World War II vet, 86-year-old Jack Apostol, whose Memorial Day interview aired on a Detroit TV station. 

Although he was not involved in the Normandy invasion, he paid a heavy price and laid his life on the line as 58 percent of his division was killed in battle. Mr. Apostol describes in vivid detail his harrowing battlefield experience, after which he said he saw an image of Jesus Christ in the sky.

If God allows me to live into my 80s, I hope I am half as lucid as Mr. Apostol. What an incredible man! It is people like him who make this the greatest nation on earth.

Thanks, Jack, and thanks to all World War II veterans and indeed, all who have served our country.