Detroit: The Audacity of Math

The city of Detroit has filed for bankruptcy. Like Stockton and San Bernardino California before her, Detroit has woken up from a thirty year bender and surrendered to the brutal nonpartisan reality of mathematics.

The voluntary relocation of a million people out of a formerly great, innovative and iconic city in a mere twenty years is quite a complicated story that cannot easily be reduced to a bumper sticker like “Democrats Suck”. However, since one of the goals of this blog is to make complicated things understandable while displaying as few actual credentials as possible,…here goes.

First, let’s destroy a few straw men.

“Detroit is bankrupt because it’s been run by blacks for forty years.”

Ok, aside from the fact that this is a blatantly racist notion, it is my belief that if the policies of Detroit over the past forty years had been administered by Opie Taylor and his band of blond Swedes, the results would have been the same.

“It’s all the fault of free markets.”

Yes, by all means, if it weren’t for those pesky Japanese and their annoyingly dependable cars, General Motors would still be making Chevettes, and auto mechanics would be the richest men in America.

“It’s all because of the greedy unions.”

It’s not the job of the municipal unions in Detroit to look out for the interest of the city of Detroit. Their job is to get the most lucrative contracts for its members. By all accounts, they performed splendidly.

 

So, Dunnevant, why is Detroit bankrupt? It’s all the fault of long division. A divided by B = C, where A = Detroit’s pension obligations, B= the number of taxable citizens and C= Solvency. So, what we have here is the City of Detroit piling up more and more A, while at the same time the number of B’s are dropping faster than Congress’ approval rating, all of which flows from two basic problems, one party rule, and the unionization of public employees.

 

 

Detroit’s politicians are 99% democrats, and as such it is the most monolithic government in America. Unfortunately for the citizens of Detroit, the most dependable voting block is the public sector unions, ie, city workers. So, here’s how this works. When it’s time to negotiate union contracts, there are democratic politicians on one side of the table, and on the other side are union bosses, the same ones responsible for their reelection. As a consequence of this incestuous relationship, there is no one in the room representing the tax payer. In this room, the unions do what they do which is wrench every possible nickel they can, and the politicians do what they do which is take care of their biggest and most dependable constituency. So, even during times of tight budgets, in lieu of pay raises, offer hugely rich retirement packages, kicking the fiscal train wreck down the road. The results of such an unhappy negotiation are contracts that pay the “horseshoer” who works for the Detroit Water and Sewer Department $56,000 a year, even though he has no horses left to shoe.

So, a city with only 700,000 citizens left looks at its future obligations and says, “no mas”. By filing for bankruptcy protection they are hoping that its Congressional delegation will have the clout to pressure Washington to step up for one more bail-out. My hunch is that they are correct. How can Obama rationalize bailing out the auto workers four years ago, and now turn his back on their corrupt city? The term “moral hazard” practically leaps off the page here, but to bring that up would probably shower me with charges of insensitivity.

“All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”

What knuckle-dragging, union-hating, big-business loving conservative Republican said this, you might ask?

FDR.                   

The Trip To Hatteras

Yesterday, three groups of Dunnevants left three different locations headed for Hatteras, North Carolina. Kaitlin left from Winston-Salem, the law firm of Schwartz, Hawkins, Garland and Roop from Richmond, and Pam, Patrick and yours truly from Princeton, New Jersey. Kaitlin left at 11:00, the Richmond contingent at 9:30, and the New Jersey group at 7:30. What follows is mostly true.

We got our first text from Paula around 11, “As God is my witness, I will NEVER make this trip again!!” She was in her first back up on 64 and was handling it with her characteristic calm and understated detachment. Meanwhile, Kaitlin was sending YouTube videos to us featuring profane black women raging about the heat wave. “I’m not tropical, I ain’t no toucan!”

Soon, I hit my first toll booth, one of the many plagues afflicting our northern states. There was the $2.90 one for the privilege of travelling 28 miles on the New Jersey Turnpike, a road dedicated to some long dead New Jersey Governor. Then I was separated from another $8.00 for going over the Delaware Memorial Bridge, and here I was, so ignorant I wasn’t even aware that Delaware had died! Each time, and I mean each and every time I sat in the long line to pay my toll, my son would remind me that if we had an EZ Pass, we would already be on our way. Each time, I would say something like, “Yes Patrick, and if I only had a son who looked like Trayvon Martin, I would be President.” But just about the time I thought the tolling was over, we reached the Chesapeake Bay Bridge tunnel, a 21 mile feat of engineering which featured not one but two tunnels. When described this way, it makes the $12.00 price tag seem almost like a bargain. Almost. When the total toll expense exceeded the $25 dollar mark, it occurred to me that in 2013 America, it even takes money to be a drifter.

Meanwhile, down south, Paula had reached Def Com 5 on the freak-out meter. “It’s useless. We will never get there. We will die in this car.” Kaitlin sailed through North Carolina listening to country music, blissfully unaware. The New Jersey group was getting very cocky, since our all-knowing GPS women kept rerouting us around traffic backups with steely precision, notifying us in her slightly creepy accent that she was busy, “seeking alternate routes”, but then all of a sudden, around 10 miles west of the bridge leading to the Outer Banks she dejectedly announced, “Mother of all backups detected ahead. You are screwed.”

10 and a half hours after leaving our Hampton Inn, we finally pulled up into the driveway of our beautiful beach house, the last to arrive, whereupon Patrick reminded me that if we had an EZ Pass, we probably would have beaten everyone.

A Year's Worth of Hard Work...Down the Drain.

What’s the only bad thing about going on vacation? Knowing that the squirrels will have free uninhibited access to my back yard, that’s what! All year long I have been out there standing guard, putting the fear of God into those rabid, twitchy little rats. I have worked hard trying to penetrate the dense thickets of their tiny pea-brains with the notion that my yard was a place of death and destruction, hoping that at some point they would desire an end to the slaughter, that the mysteries of the squirrel DNA would reveal this deadly truth to them, and I would at last be free of them. No such luck.

They keep coming. They devise ill-fated schemes to penetrate the bird feeder; they cast covetous glances at my tomato plants. Meanwhile, I pick them off one by one, killing a few, injuring many and scaring the living bejeezees out of all of them. They never know exactly where I am, because I come at them from all fronts, even going so far as setting up a snipers nest in the movie room window upstairs where I rain down a barrage of BB fire from the sky, hoping the pure terror of it will get through to them that the back yard of my house is where squirrels go to die! But still, they keep coming.

And now, for the next 10 days I won’t be there to maintain order. There will be no death or destruction. I might as well put up a sign in the pine tree by the fence gate announcing, “CRAZY MAN GONE…PARTEEEEEEY-TIME!!”

It’s almost enough to make me hire some trigger happy teenager as a stand in. But, that wouldn’t work. The squirrels would know that he was just a nervous kid firing off shots every time he saw something move. They would laugh at me and my feeble attempts at deterrence. No, these next 10 days belongs to them, and there’s nothing I can do about it, furry little bastards!

Don't Be a Garbage Parent

This Friday is my wife’s birthday. What will we be doing? We will wedge all of our vacation gear into the back of the car and leave the house around 10 am for the white knuckle thrill ride that is I-95 north to Princeton, New Jersey. 5 hours and several near death experiences later, we will check in to our hotel, rest a bit, then get dressed for my son’s choir concert. He has been taking part in some sort of advanced choral workshop thing with all these high powered choral big shots from all over the country for the past two weeks and they will display the fruits of all their labor Friday night.

It just so happens that the Dunnevant family vacation of 2013 begins Saturday, in Hatteras, North Carolina, which means, that after this night of singing and frivolity, we will add Patrick and his suitcase to the back of the car, and make the 8 and a half hour drive from New Jersey to the Outer Banks. Why would we do such a thing? Why not make him drive himself? Why not fly him down?

Well, my friends, here’s the deal. This side trip to Jersey serves three noble purposes. Number one, it saves Patrick’s very old and hanging by a thread car the pain and agony of a sixteen hour drive in 1000 degree heat. Number two, it saves me the pain and agony of having to be a part of the famous Dunnevant beach convoy, where 5 cars turn a 4 hour drive into an all day scenic tour of the finest bathrooms between Richmond and Hatteras. But lastly we do it because we have no real choice. We can’t afford to miss the concert.

Half of parenting is just showing up. If your kid has a ballgame or a play or a concert, you make sure your fanny is in a seat watching it. There are no excuses for not being there. When I hear some guy say, “my kid is in a play tonight and I wish I could be there, but I have to get this proposal ready. Ha, somebody’s gotta pay the bills,” I usually say, “you’re a fool.” No, seriously, I say that to his face, because it’s total garbage. The entire debate between quality or quantity time is complete garbage. If it’s important to your kid, it better be important to you or you’re a garbage parent.

So, Pam and I will make a ten hour detour to hear our son sing his heart out in a chapel at Westminster. Somewhere along the way we will celebrate the birthday of the woman who brought him into the world, perhaps at a rest stop in Pisquataway.

Break a leg, son.

Old School vs. No school

"The jury, they old. That's old school people. We in a new school. Our generation."

                                                                                         Rachel Jeantel


If this particular child of God is an example of the new generation of America, then my advice would be to sell your United States Treasuries....TODAY. Miss Jeantel thinks that the jury of six women who decided George Zimmerman's fate were "old school" people. Listening to excepts from her appearance on the Piers Morgan show last night leads me to the conclusion that Rachel Jeantel must represent the "no school" generation.

I don't know Miss Jeantel, I know very little of her background since what little I can find in the media is distorted beyond believability by the biases of the media. Depending on the source, I can choose to believe that she is a terribly misunderstood victim or an illiterate embarrassment. Either way, she doesn't present a desirable outcome. If Miss Jeantel is any indication of what is being produced by the public school system in Florida, then there isn't any amount of money in the world that can correct it. This is one bitterly angry girl who is either semi-literate or deliberately ignorant. From the looks of it, I would guess that she comes from difficult circumstances and most likely a one parent home.

But she no more represents African Americans, than Albert Einstein represents White Americans. The number of blacks who overcome poverty and terrible schools to become leaders of industry, entertainment and academia indicate that it can be done. The fact that it doesn't happen very often is a National disgrace. There are of course many factors involved in producing the Rachel Jeantels of this world, but a major one is the notion among many urban blacks that education is for suckers. Any young black boy or girl who decides to apply themselves and excel in school has to fight through a barrage of accusations by their peers of being an Uncle Tom sell-out. Until this mindset changes, we better get used to more and more Rachel Jeantels.

But I refer to her as a child of God because she is, and any analysis of her must begin and end with that fact. When I hear her speak, when I see her anger and ignorance on display, I feel a sense of pity and shame. She has been the butt of a thousand jokes ever since her bumbling testimony, but there is nothing funny about the world that produced her.


 

Vacation Logistics

As is my custom at 6 am on Monday morning, I just finishing writing out my action plan for the week. I say “action plan” because it sounds more masculine and aggressive and less pathetic than a “to do list”, which is more accurately what it is. These are the things that I must accomplish for the week before I can start my weekend. As a business owner, and my own boss, if I manage to check off the last item by Wednesday afternoon, well, my weekend starts early. However, this week everything must be checked off by Thursday evening or, the barnyard manure will hit the fan. See, this is the week before my vacation, which means I must work twice as hard as I do any other week, so as to earn the right to officially goof off for a week. It’s all very much a matter of cosmic justice.

Usually there are 10-15 items on my list, er.. action plan, all of them business related. But this week there are 27 items, only around half of which have anything to do with making money. The rest are all about the intricate details involved in vacation logistics, when one goes on vacation with 15 of your closest relatives. Yes, once every two years we Dunnevants engage in a week long exercise in communal living on the Outer Banks, where everything is shared, from each according to his/her abilities, to each according to their needs. We even establish a communal bank of sorts, which involves a large white envelope stuffed with cash. Karl Marx would be proud, except for all of the religious music.

To complicate things (another hallmark trait of the Dunnevant clan), Pam and I have decided to pack up a couple of days early so we can drive up to Princeton New Jersey to hear Patrick perform in a concert. Then we will rise early the following morning and stuff Patrick’s vacation suitcase into the back of the car and make the 9 hour trek from Jersey to Hatteras, through the byways and highways of the Garden State, then down the coast, a trip never before attempted on a Saturday in July since the Great Boll Weevil infestation back in the 1920’s.

Nevertheless, I will hack my way through this prodigious list one item at a time until I check off the last one, which reads, “follow up TransAmerica money-laundering requirement”, which is much less sinister than it sounds, but regardless, must be done. Then Pam and I will leave town for nine days away from life, and for the first time in twelve years, not have to leave instructions for someone concerning Molly’s care. Strange how we mark the passage of time.

The Zimmerman Verdict

http://doug-thetempest.blogspot.com/2012/03/conversation-about-trayvon-martin.html

 

In March of 2012, I wrote the above blog about the Trayvon Martin case. Now that the jury has rendered a verdict, a few observations.

Re-reading my old blog, I find that not much has changed in my views on this subject. Back then, I thought it odd that a 28 year old man could shoot a 17 boy and be released simply on his word that it was an accident. Much of the anger back then from the black community centered on this point and on this point they were right. No 28 year old black man would have been so breezily sent on his way for an accidental shooting of a 17 year old white boy.

However, my observations about the unseemly nature of the race-hustlers and their roll in enflaming tensions have likewise not changed. The Al Shartons and Jesse Jacksons of this world are a scourge on our nation. They practically break their necks trying to beat the other to the closest microphone whenever something like this happens, assuming for themselves the roll of “spokesman” for every African American in the country. Meanwhile, since the day over 16 months ago when Trayvon was killed, 480 blacks have been murdered, the vast majority of them by other blacks, in Chicago alone! Jesse Jackson, call your office.

I must here confess that I didn’t watch any of the trial. I only read summations. I found the wall to wall coverage by the cable networks an appalling spectacle. It was very difficult finding anything approaching dispassionate coverage of the facts in question. From the beginning, The New York Times, and most of the mainstream press were heavily invested in a guilty verdict, so much so that the Times went to the trouble of creating an entirely new racial classification, the heretofore unheard of “White Hispanic”. Under this new Times standard, from now on I suppose that the Times will refer to the President as a “White African American”, since he too had one white parent. On the other side of the political barricades, Fox News was absolutely convinced of Zimmerman’s innocence, even going so far as calling the proceedings a “show trial”. Conservative talk radio was nearly unanimous with accusations that the fix was in, and that Zimmerman would be found guilty to appease the race hustlers.

But, despite the alleged “fix”, I read this morning that Zimmerman was cleared of all charges by the jury of six women. Unlike me, these six women sat there in court for every second of the testimony, every preening speech, and the presentation of every item of evidence. These six women decided unanimously that George Zimmerman was innocent. Now comes the hard part. Will there be riots? From some of the stuff popping up on social networks, it seems inevitable. But perhaps, the ability to anonymously vent on Facebook, the technological gift of being able to spew forth vile epithets without consequence on the internet will take the place of actually destruction of property. Instead of a thousand cars turned upside down, burning, looting, rape and murder, we will only have to endure a virtual riot. If so, we should nominate Mark Zuckerberg for the Nobel Peace Prize.