Government has no Business in the Art Business

Why not sell the paintings and statues and various artifacts in the Detroit Institute of Arts in order to help the city out of bankruptcy? Isn't that what any individual would be expected to d in a similar situation?

Please don't bother about their cultural value to Detroit. How many Detroiters actually go to the DIA? How many folks are attracted to the city because of it? Not very many, we would wager.

Don't bother about the importance of art, either. Art is a special interest, when you get down to it. It is fair to question whether the government at any level has any business in the art industry.

The artistic and cultural snobs will tell us that we're neanderthals. Whatever; we don't stick our hands in their pockets when we go to baseball games. Why do they have the right to stick their hands in ours when it comes to symphonies and museums? Because it's art?

Sell 'em. Sell every last artifact which the DIA owns. Then sell the land on which the museum itself sits to the next Whole Foods.That would serve the city of Detroit and the community better than a plethora of items few people actually bother to see.

Detroiters Deserve Bankruptcy

The whole situation is a mess. Detroit has become the largest city to declare bankruptcy, and outside of actually trying to set a better course, everything is wrong about it. People voting for people whom they expect to be given everything, that's wrong. Politicians buying off unions with money rather than standing up to them, that's wrong. Retirees looking at losing significant parts of their pensions, that's wrong. All the urban blight within the city limits, caused, not by so many people fleeing to the suburbs as by their flight caused by inept and downright hateful political leaders, that's wrong. Citizens, the ones who took their vote seriously anyway but stood by Detroit now faced with what is at least a momentarily bleaker situation, that's wrong. Big spending Democrats who ran the city for years without regard for the future as though Lansing or Washington held moral imperatives to bail Detroit out eventually, that's wrong. Some folks are getting a necessary comeuppance, to be sure, but this whole thing is wrong. And it really all began with the voters, the people of Detroit themselves. At least, that is, the unthinking ones who voted this disease upon themselves. What's sad is, they won't learn. And that's the real wrong above all the others. The second Detroiters get a chance to govern themselves again, it will happen all over again. All of it. Make these words.

Detroit stews in its own Kettle

Many Detroiters are unhappy with the situation the city now faces: a multi-billion dollar bill in current and future debt. The situation is so bad that the State of Michigan has appointed an emergemncy manager to solve it. The EM, Kevyn Orr, wants all city assets inventoried to see what can be done to cover the deficit. This, of course, has raised eyebrows, if not outright anger.

Why? Because inventorying every asset means looking at what the city's museums may be able to sell to get cash. It could mean selling the Detroit Zoo or the animals within, Belle Isle, or even the half of the Detroit-Windsor tunnel which the city owns. It may mean selling classic cars owned by the Detroit Historical Society. In short, as an analysis of what must be done to save Detroit from bankruptcy, anything and everything which might bring in money is on the table.

They should be, of course. And before all the liberals and Democrats begin whining about how wrong this is, they need to honestly answer one question: who put Detroit in this position? And, further, who did you vote for, Detroit residents? People who would run the city well, or the people who did this to the city?

It was not the GOP or the conservative movement, folks, who did this to Detroit. Detroiters, overwhelmingly liberal and Democrats, did this. Lansing did not do this. Rick Snyder did not do this. The Republican dominated legislature did not do this. You did, Detroit. And now you must face the facts.

City jewels, things which actually give city residents a proper sense of pride, may have to be sold off. Should it happen, should things of real social and cultural value be liquidated, it's on you, Detroit. And no one else.