Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

December 16, 2010

Detroit?s municipal government is planning to withdraw basic services ? including road repair, trash collection, and even street lights ? from an area amounting to twenty percent of the city. The city is writing off everything but seven neighborhoods within its 139 square miles.

The Mayor?s advisors bristle when asked if the city is downsizing, insisting that they aren?t abandoning sections of the city, but rather ?repurposing? them. This kind of thing won?t stop in Detroit.
The New York Times observes observes that ?the finances of some state and local governments are so distressed that some analysts ? are reminded of the run-up to the subprime mortgage meltdown or of the debt crisis hitting nations in Europe.?

Civic ?repurposing? of the kind undertaken in Detroit is likely to become quite commonplace as tax bases shrink, revenue pools dry up, and investors flee from the municipal bond market. Detroit, once the gem of our industrial economy, is now foreshadowing our national economic future.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.