If I were Mitt Romney, I would give a high profile speech outside of the mayor’s office in Detroit to emphasize the impact of big government, big-public sector union policies.  These are the policies that destroyed a thriving industry and led to a nearly 1/3 exodus of residents in the last 60 years.  Detroit is the model that reflects the very economic principles that drives national Democrats and Barack Obama.

In other words, if allowed to progress long enough, leftist politics and economics will most certainly turn any population into Detroit.  And that goes for the nation as a whole too.

The simple fact is, as the saying goes, you eventually run out of other people’s money.  High taxes, insanely high minimum wage laws, luxurious compensation packages for auto workers, union goons and retirees have destroyed a thriving business climate.  GM may be holding on to breath today thanks to Obama but only because he salvaged it from the wreckage of Democrat economic tommyrot.

Detroit needs a Giuliani revival and a Romney touch.  The political and economic climate in Detroit that has driven out untold businesses, professionals and entrepreneurs is the same atmosphere that has the left beside itself over US companies seeking better business climates ‘offshore’.  Democrats think they can take what they want and companies are expected to just sit, take it and continue to thrive and employ.

Take New York City for example.  After 49 years of liberal leadership where New York was a filthy, crime ridden, tense metropolis of racial demagoguery, the residents came to their senses and elected Rudolph Giuliani.  By the end of his two terms, New York had cleaned up, expanded and was dubbed one of the safest large cities in the nation.  This was after Democrats, in a parallel to their views of the former Soviet Union, declared that New York couldn’t be fixed but should rather just be contained.  Giuliani showed what common sense, law & order conservative leadership could accomplish.

And yet Americans keep electing leftwing Democrats.

Cities like Detroit are also the result of what happens when politicians demand increased taxes to save fundamental government service providers like teachers, cops and fire fighters and then funnel the money to unions, bureaucrats and experimental pet projects.  Every election cycle people put the “Say YES to Kids!” signs on their front lawns asking for referendums to be passed to help the students in public schools and every time they are passed money goes somewhere other than the classrooms.

And yet Americans keep electing leftwing Democrats.

Continuing to support people like Obama, Pelosi and Reid for positions of supreme power is akin to the University of Alabama making Forrest Gump the head coach based on his ability to dash quickly into the marching band.  The simple fact remains:  eventually you run out of other people’s money.  The problem is that those people run out of their money first, specifically those who are no longer willing to risk their money when surviving Democrat policy is riskier than surviving the market.  As Romney summarized in last week’s debate, you can’t grow the economy and increase jobs when the policies are to take, take, take.

The Obama campaign celebrates the perception that by spending money on green companies, failed businesses (and their unions) and health care, they did what was necessary to avoid a depression.  But not even Detroit was a basket case when leftist economic policies were implemented.  It took time and many indicators suggest that by remaining on the path we’re on, the worst is still yet to come.  Detroit has been suffering the depression that Democrats in Washington have patted themselves on the back for staving off on a national level.  To paraphrase Romney, the country isn’t holding on because of Obama/Detroit style policies; it’s holding on in spite of them.

And yet Americans keep electing leftwing Democrats.

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In 2005, Bay Area Center for Voting Research determined Detroit to be the most liberal city in the nation, surpassing even famously leftwing kingdoms like Berkeley, CA and Washington DC.  Michigan, as if to epitomize the ‘blueprint’ strategy, went into recession long before any other state did in 2008.

Minimum wage: 

• $7.40, (over 20% higher than the already rising federal minimum wage when it was passed) and for city contractors, minimum wage is $8.23-$10.28, almost double the federal minimum wage at the time.  If Democrats were able to get Detroit any closer to a "living wage" (whatever that is), we would have had to shift the northern US border to the southern border of Michigan and hope the Canadians didn't notice.

Unemployment:

• Detroit, August 2012: 10.7% unemployment, a 2012 high but not the highest it’s been in recent years.
• A poll in 2007 of University of Michigan students showed that 40% planned to leave the state after graduation.  This doesn’t show how much money the state is spending to subsidize higher education but the taxpayers there are essentially paying out of pocket to send students off to seek opportunities in other states, likely states like Arizona, South Dakota and Texas with very business-friendly climates.
• Unemployment numbers do not take into account the rapidly declining population – 1 in 4 residents have fled since the start of the century and Detroit population has dipped over 1% in just the last year leading to its lowest population since 1910.

Other Economic Indicators:

• Homeownership is about 25% below the state rate and home values are about 44% below the state average.  In some areas, they are practically giving houses away or demolishing them.  10.31% of Detroit homes are vacant, sometimes encompassing entire neighborhoods where those brave enough to enter are turning these neighborhoods into full blown crime zones (or at least swinging through to drop off random corpses from out of town).
• Median household income is about 40% lower than the state.
• Compared to the state, well over twice as many Detroit residents are below the poverty level.
• Mayor Bing’s response in 2011 to bad population indicators was to insist on a recount with the fear that lower population will mean lower subsidies from the state and federal government.  He is more concerned about handouts and band-aids than about fixing the severe and entrenched policies, crime and corruption that is absolutely killing the city.
• Detroit is working on cutting utilities, street lamps and public services to entire areas of the city in an effort to force residents out of areas that are either not economically viable or safe to continue supporting.

Crime: 

• The crime in Detroit is so bad that police officers are refusing to live and even work in the city, despite incentives by the city to entice officers to move there.  Police officers are orchestrating abandonment of entire neighborhoods.  The chief of police just resigned over a sex scandal (OK, this is more a show of Clintonesque leadership than Obama)
• According to NeighborhoodScout.com, a neighborhood-by-neighborhood data site, Detroit has a Crime Index of “1”.  That is out of 100 with 100 being the safest, boasting one of the highest crime rates in the country compared to virtually every small town or large city.
• Of violent crimes, just accounting for murder, rape and robbery alone, Detroit boasts 10,000 annually in a population just over 700,000.  That is seven times the national average.  Statistically, every 42^nd resident in Detroit is the victim of a violent crime and one out of every 56 residents has a vehicle stolen.

Unions:  unions, like a parasite, have sucked the vitality out of Detroit’s bread and butter. 

• Union strong-arming had led to a climate where the average compensation for an autoworker was $70/hour.  Even more amazing, the unions have fought for and protected outrageous compensation packages for retirees and laid-off autoworkers.  Those laid-off in an industry struggling to stay afloat were still collecting $31/hour – and GM was covering these excesses by adding $1,200 to the price of a car – paid for by the consumer and resulting in slower sales.  It’s like a self-defeating prophecy.  This is precisely why we had to bail out the auto industry in 2009.  Democrats weren’t saving it from merely bad circumstances; Democrats were saving it from decades of Democrat policies.
• In public education, the Detroit public school system, as of 2011, was $327 million in the red with 1 in 5 students dropping out.  Teachers unions, in what unions do best – putting self-interest above the children/parents and beyond fiscal sanity – have fanatically opposed any efforts to give children alternatives, including a $200 million private gift pledged for the creation of 15 charter schools.  The Detroit Federation of Teachers protested and the plan was killed.  Democrats "Say YES!" to the unions before they "Say YES!" to the kids.
• Detroit is a case-in-point as to why public sector unions should not be allowed to exist – as long as they get a political footing, they will continue to kill anything good and healthy in order to grow.  In medicine, we call that cancer.
• Even as government, fiscal solvency and law & order crumble (Detroit isn’t the only problematic city in Michigan – just the worst), some forces in Michigan are more concerned about potential public union busting then they are about the survival of once great cities.

And Americans keep electing leftwing Democrats.