What the hell? This airport is in DETROIT?!? Well, it's good to see that they have their spending priorities in order.

This sounds like a place you'd either have to be retired to live at (i.e. Palm Springs), or otherwise have access to one of the nearby airfields/military bases.
If people can't commute into a city center for growing industries, ... Well, from that perspective this is just a pre-Detroit.

It really is only a limited time before we turn a city or state into a prison; I think Escape from Detroit might become a real sequel.

@radx

It all comes down to the figures behind it. I'm no expert in this matter but most of the reporting I have read about advanced ageing economies like Germany suggests increasing health care and pension costs will substantially dwarf existing costs. Germany is of course much better placed than say China or Japan which have very restrictive immigration policies to begin with. This is purely looking at the cost rather the distribution of other funds and how that affects the deficit.

Germany's budget seems to be relatively well managed, but I think you will see many countries postpone the issue until the last minute or have some kind of crisis precipitate the problem (I'm comparing countries to the likes of Detroit's bankruptcy after house prices and thereby property taxes collected collapsed after 2008). When you look at immigration having very limited costs but huge potential humanitarian, cultural and economic benefits it seems to me that it's almost necessary to defend the argument to not raise it rather than vice versa (although I know you're not arguing against it).

A fantastic lesson for all of us.

Always check the source.

and holy shit, Saddam did get the key to Detroit!
At least, he did according to everything I can google, although now I don't know who to believe.

I was a big fan of Boingo since the moment I heard "Stay" back in 1986. I drove from Connecticut to Detroit on a weekend to see them because my sister had an extra ticket. Check out their last song "Change" on their last CD, an epic 16 minute tribute to the Beatles and just about everything else.

Glad to see Elfman is still going strong.

Detroit is SO FAR BEHIND Silicon Valley. They don't (they can't) hire the best engineers and they can't imagine hacking culture.
So sad.

Yes, that's one of my problems with police, lax recruitment. They should do a better job screening applicants, far too many bullies make it through the process. The image they present only attracts the wrong kind of people, and even screens out better applicants (allegedly for anyone over 110 IQ for instance). The right kind of person wouldn't be accepted in the current cop culture (as this story illustrates clearly), and the right kind of people also wouldn't want to associate with them.

I think some officers do make that much on salary, but quite true it's not many. When you count the benefits they get though, they are not under paid in most cases. Most get free medical, life insurance, retirement, many other 'freebies', and incredible overtime, so looking at only base salary is not an honest assessment.
Where I live, $200000 is probably more than 5 times the average pay rate...in some areas it may be the average pay rate. In high cost of living areas, I agree, it would be right to pay them better, (but conversely, that means those in Detroit should be paid less for a more dangerous job...how to reconcile that?) but we should DEMAND better performance everywhere, with zero tolerance for abuse.

EDIT: It seems we could retrain ex-military for the job. They've proven they are willing to take MORE dangerous jobs for far less money ($20-30K last I heard). That's a possible win win, vets get a good job program, we get an improving police force...as long as the retraining and testing is thorough.

My motorhead's guess, no differential but instead a spool in the rear and still turning while adding power caused differing loads in the rear tires, causing a terrible wobble as the tires fought each other (and the suspension), ending by ripping out the rear suspension.
EDIT: That's why I use a Detroit locker in my Jeep, it's a spool when you add power, and a differential when you let off power.

I would include looking the other way as a trait of bad cops, but I still don't believe the numbers are that high. I do see your point though.

It's interesting that the riots in Detroit back in the 60's are very similar to what happened in Ferguson and Baltimore. Blacks sick of getting killed by bad cops and finally having enough of it. 40 years later same shit.

I like this guy. He was also on an Anthony Bourdain episode about Detroit.

@bareboards2
@newtboy



Answer this Why is Baltimore such a shit hole in treating inner city poor folks like dogs?


Like many failed cities, Detroit comes to mind, and every city besieged recently by rioting, Democrats and their union pals have had carte blanche to inflict their ideas and policies on Baltimore since 1967, the last time there was a Republican Mayor. In 2012, after four years of his own failed policies, President Obama won a whopping 87.4% of the Baltimore city vote. Democrats run the city of Baltimore, the unions, the schools, and, yes, the police force. Since 1969, there have only been only been two Republican governors of the State of Maryland. Elijah Cummings has represented Baltimore in the U.S. Congress for more than thirty years.”
..."the Democrat-infested mainstream media is treating the Democrat like a local folk hero, not the obvious and glaring failure he really is. Every single member of the Baltimore city council is a Democrat. Liberalism and all the toxic government dependence and cronyism and union corruption and failed schools that comes along with it, has run amok in Baltimore for a half-century, and that is Baltimore’s problem. It is the free people of Baltimore who elect and then re-elect those who institute policies that have so spectacularly failed that once-great city. It is the free people of Baltimore who elected Mayor “Space-to-Destroy”. From a recent Allen West post

http://allenbwest.com/2015/04/the-dirty-little-secret-no-one-wants-to-admit-about-baltimore/

Not to mention the $1.5Million /year federal dollars for education. Total 18.3 Million from 2001 and today..

plus the 1.8 Billion from Obama's Stimulus.

Peace/ love sharing and caring. Yep a Democrat Utopia.

If you're ever in LA, check out Jon Brion at the Largo. He's a film composer (Punch Drunk Love, I Heart Huckabees), record producer, who also happens to be a multi-instrumentalist that puts on a live layered loop show, doing everything from a traditional drum kit, to bass, all styles of guitar, and piano. I've watched him go from Mozart to honky tonk piano and then up into industrial noise, on into a Detroit rock medley, using only the music he recorded on stage. First time I saw the show in this little low lit club facing a small stage, I had the biggest hard on. I went to jerk off in the bathroom and Fiona Apple walked out. Sorry if I'm being a bit raw here, but it was THAT good.

I liked the snow in Michigan so it's tempting to say East coast, but now that I'm older it's lost some appeal so I'm going to have to go with West coast. Portland is much better than any city in Michigan except for Detroit which is a mess right now.