Assuming that corruption is a natural state in human affairs, exacerbated by politics-as-profession and long-standing economic blight, often gets you closer to the truth. Hello, depressive realism, my old friend.
Many major U.S. City Halls are notoriously corrupt (NYC, Chicago), but let’s face it, many smaller cities and towns can play dirty, too.
Via the City Journal: ‘Insult To Injury In The Rust Belt‘
‘In Harrisburg, a state audit found that the school district wasted millions on salaries, contracts, and benefits. This follows a two-year probation period served by six-term mayor Stephen Reed, who pleaded guilty in 2017 to stealing artifacts from the capital city’s museum.’
As posted: From The City Journal: ‘The Lessons Of Harrisburg‘
‘A Pennsylvania newspaper once described Reed as a mayor who “never met a bond deal he didn’t like.” Give a politician the chance to pile up debt on favored projects without answering directly to voters, and no one should be surprised if he takes advantage of it. That’s why the history of state and local finance is filled with reform moments.’
Much of this transcends party politics and goes more to political power, bad management and collective fiddling…
‘The Harrisburg School District, so impoverished that the state is helping it dig out of its financial and academic woes, has hit a mother lode of tax dollars, evidently due to several years of financial ineptitude.
In early October the district discovered it had nearly $12 million it didn’t know it had until someone started looking closely at the books.’
Perhaps that money will be put to better use than the incinerator and the Wild West museum boondoggle. Perhaps not.
Under new management again, Harrisburg might have a chance to not be as poorly run as Detroit.
Walter Russell Mead took a look at similarly bankrupt Jefferson County, Alabama, where Birmingham is located:
‘Will the market still lend to cities after they’ve gone bankrupt?’
Promises made for public employees simply cannot be met in many cases.
Reason used Harrisburg as a model for fiscal failure.
It doesn’t look much like progress to me, if, many mentally-ill, desperate for purpose, communists, socialists, anarchists and the black bloc anti-fascists run roughshod over your city.
If you don’t properly account for human nature, the bad and good in everyone, your model isn’t working. The people running these cities, without lots of growth and trade, would likely run them into the ground with such utopian ideas.
Time to grow up a bit, Portland:
Addition: As a reader points out, I don’t mean to be glib. Violence is serious, especially if it’s happening to you as the police stand-down, but if you’re expecting contrition from folks who are wedded to radical ideology, you can keep expecting.