Battlegrounders
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MICHIGAN: JUST SAY NON [Henry Payne 11/01 01:16 PM]

A car ride into Detroit is a reminder this election season of why public policy matters. Take Exit 54 (or any Detroit exit) off I-75 and follow Grand River Blvd. into the heart of a city that has been ravaged by years of the same Democratic agenda preached by John Kerry: class envy, racial resentment, high taxation, monopoly public education, and union empowerment.

This is a living laboratory for Democratic policies.

Abandoned buildings choke block after block of Grand River. Once alive with businesses, these storefronts were abandoned when the city stopped providing adequate city services, bowing to racial furies that declared white businessmen were unwanted here. A city government built on cronyism and union obedience has yielded a regulatory thicket that most small proprietors find impenetrable. Negotiating a business license is akin to pulling teeth, and even when acquired, city services dominated by public unions - privatization is a dirty word here - are haphazard at best in a city that boasts the state's highest taxes.

Behind these storefronts lie neighborhoods in severe decay. Seventy percent of families in this predominantly black city are without fathers, a calamity accelerated by years of Democratic Party welfare programs. A poor public school system is made worse by the lack of time these fractured families have for their children at home. Just 30 percent of high school students graduate.

For those families that do have ambitions for their children, state Republicans (there are no Republicans in Detroit city govt.) have approved charter schools over Democratic and union opposition. The waiting lists for these schools run into the thousands. This year, a major effort by Republican businessman Robert Thompson to seed Detroit charters with $250 million - that's right, $250 million - was rejected by the Detroit City Council and their union puppeteers. The Democratic governor, Jennifer Granholm, raised not a finger to prevent this catastrophe from unfolding.

In Pontiac last week, President Bush met with black church and political leaders to promote his ideas for school choice and tax cuts and how they can help revitalize urban America. Detroit will vote overwhelmingly for Kerry. But for the 1.5 million residents who fled Detroit in the last 30 years, they have already voted on Democratic policies with their feet.