Detroit's Leaders Borrow a Page From Government Motors and Chrysler

We're going to get the shaft again, folks! A True Progressive Dumorat! SPEND MONEY YOU DON'T HAVE TO BORROW MONEY THAT ISN'T THERE! Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has cooked up a true-and-tested scheme to rescue Detroit from its impending bankruptcy (which would have happened by now had the state not already given it a $137 million-loan on the state credit card). The scheme doesn’t involve implementing his promised layoffs of city workers to bring the city's expenditures in line with its revenues. Nor a full-scale privatization of city services. Nor does it require persuading Detroit's bellicose municipal unions to renegotiate retiree contracts to lighten the city's legacy obligations that make up half of its accumulated $12 billion debt.

Bing’s scheme is clean, simple, and painless: Shaking down Uncle Sam for $1 billion in emergency bailout money, just like GM and Chrysler.

Bing has hired a Washington lobbying firm for $330,000 to aid his efforts. His quest has the full backing of Rep. Hansen Clarke, who represents the city in Congress, and has been arguing since March that the feds need to step in and rescue Detroit just as they did New York City in 1975.