The city of Windsor, Ontario lies to the south of Detroit in one of those twisted pairings of land mass which make my region so much fun. It is a clean, polite, prosperous city. It also owns half of the under-river tunnel through which about a million vehicles pass every year.

The other half is up for grabs. The U.S. side's owners want to go bankrupt, and that is greatly worrying a lot of people who have followed the antics of Matty Maroun, a billionaire who owns the Ambassador Bridge not far from this same tunnel. He wanted to build a bridge in the wrong place to prevent Michigan and Ontario from building a bridge without him.

Worried may not cover it. Now that Detroit has declared bankruptcy, it's possible this tunnel may go on the auction block, meaning anybody could buy it and run it the way they like. 

The Windsor Star says the City of Windsor may buy the U.S. half of that tunnel, to keep Maroun from grabbing it. It's an ongoing war between Maroun and the State of Michigan, Province of Ontario, and before it's done the U.S. Government.

Here's the link. It's got a couple of Windsor photos about work underway for the Canada/Michigan bridge which Maroun would dearly love to see uncompleted. The Canadians are willing to pay the Michigan half of construction costs and pay that back from bridge revenues. THAT'S commitment to a coordinated response to handling the second largest vehicle crossing in North America.

http://blogs.windsorstar.com/2013/07/19/tunnel-sale-not-ruled-out-in-detroit-bankruptcy/?NewsWatchCanada.ca

This is a big problem with having short term elected officials in power.

When my county or commune as it is called in Norwegian faced deficit after the socialist party had played stock market brokers instead of doing their job (they used taxes to invest in companies of their choice which led to massive deficits) they decided to save the communal budget by selling off major communal companies, property and assets to foreign and federal agents. This led to one year of massive surpluss which was used in incredible amounts of art project (one of the million expense project was converting a rooftop into a flickering wave) around the city, as it turned out most of these suddenly rich artists were socialist party members themselves.

After that year the budget was in even more deficits than it was before as now the commune did not have the revenue from the assets and companies they had sold, assets that were bringing in surpluss of capital. The commune was one of the most financially sound communes in Norway until the socialist screwed it up.

I don't think Detroit selling off all these assets are going to help at all, in fact I think they will be detrimental long term. Cutting spending is the issue, doesn't help that you earn a million by a one time sell if your annual deficit is in the billions.

It reminds me of these tv shows that are so popular today, like the luxury trap and so on, where these "experts" enter the lives of these individuals that are spending up too 5 times and sometimes even more their salary on items, cars, food and other stuff.

The first thing the experts do is is tell the retard to cut the spending, and then start paying off debt. Everyone nods and agrees, and thinks what a retard.

But what is true at the microlevel is also true at the macro, but when it comes to government people don't understand why debt is bad, they think taxes are unlimited.

Why? 

Quote from: Mountainshield on July 26, 2013, 05:31:26 AM
It reminds me of these tv shows that are so popular today, like the luxury trap and so on, where these "experts" enter the lives of these individuals that are spending up too 5 times and sometimes even more their salary on items, cars, food and other stuff.

The first thing the experts do is is tell the retard to cut the spending, and then start paying off debt. Everyone nods and agrees, and thinks what a retard.

But what is true at the microlevel is also true at the macro, but when it comes to government people don't understand why debt is bad, they think taxes are unlimited.

Why? 

Because deep in their hearts leftists believe that wealth isn't earned. They see it as money, grown on a "money tree"; that can be picked off and use as needed. They're like three year olds, staring at the ice cream in the refrigerator. All they know is that they want some. The fact that their parents had to earn the money, and go to the store to get it, never enters their minds.

Quote from: mdgiles on July 26, 2013, 07:56:55 AM
Because deep in their hearts leftists believe that wealth isn't earned. They see it as money, grown on a "money tree"; that can be picked off and use as needed. They're like three year olds, staring at the ice cream in the refrigerator. All they know is that they want some. The fact that their parents had to earn the money, and go to the store to get it, never enters their minds.

Sounds pretty much like how the unions treated the rest of Detroit. They got theirs, and moved to the suburbs and left the city to fester.

Mark Steyn illustrates just how deep Detroit's woes really are. Footage was evidently shot east of the Renaissance Center and downtown, although Manny Maroun's mammoth, spooky train station does get a walk-through.

Good line here: "Unlike the Central African Republic (which was ruled by a cannibal emperor), Detroit was ruled by Democrats. Now they want to turn empty city blocks into farmlands, so they can grow Holsteins in between crack houses."

Mark Steyn on Detroit, America's third world city.

...And the bonus round, a stirring reflection of Detroit Public Schools......

I'll Show You How To Run The City Of Detroit, Melinda Brown Duncan Goes OFF

Quote from: mdgiles on July 26, 2013, 07:56:55 AM
Because deep in their hearts leftists believe that wealth isn't earned. They see it as money, grown on a "money tree"; that can be picked off and use as needed. They're like three year olds, staring at the ice cream in the refrigerator. All they know is that they want some. The fact that their parents had to earn the money, and go to the store to get it, never enters their minds.

Well, there's a little more to it than that. I agree with every word you said, but at the federal (national) level, there are printing presses that turn out $100 bills at a phenomenal rate, and they're backed by... nothing. Oh, wait, they're backed by the "full faith and credit of the United States."

Most people think inflation is what happens when a gallon of milk or a postage stamp or a skid of 2x4's increases in price. But those things are merely the SYMPTOMS of inflation. Serious economists have a term for price increases -- "price increases." Crazy, I know.

Since the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913 and the effective decoupling of the currency from any monetary standard (like gold) in the early 1930s, the dollar's value has been shrinking steadily. That was the reason for doing it. FDR in particular, and LBJ in later years, had grand designs for increasing the federal government's involvement in just about every aspect of life, but that required MONEY, and lots of it, FAR more than any politician would dare to extort from taxpayers. The answer was to decouple the dollar from any sort of fixed value and put its management in the hands of an "independent" board of overseers.

Here's how it works: Today the dollar is worth a dollar. The government can print and immediately spend gazillions of "dollars" as fast as it can, and get full value out of them before markets can adjust to the sudden glut of "dollars." Next week, the "dollar" is worth 75 cents. Again, the government can crank out as many of those dollars as they need to pay off immediate expenses, then sit back and watch as the money is devalued because there's suddenly a lot more of it chasing roughly the same goods. This cycle repeats itself endlessly. These days, it's even easier, faster, and cheaper because there's no real need to actually print the paper money. It's all done on computers.

Inflation refers specifically and exclusively to the inflation of the money supply, and in the United States, that can be done ONLY by the federal government. Econ 101.

I read one hilarious article that opined that Windsor wanted to buy the Detroit half of the tunnel so they could wall it up.

The "Tunnel" is on par with Obamao's idiotic "Intercontinental" bullet Train
or the train to nowhere Los Angles (not) to Las Vegas.


Billy

Quote from: TboneAgain on July 26, 2013, 09:16:33 PM
I read one hilarious article that opined that Windsor wanted to buy the Detroit half of the tunnel so they could wall it up.

That's funny because it's almost true. The Windsor Star item alluded to Windsor's fear that Maroun could conceivably do that very thing at his end, which would force traffic up onto his new bridge (which MDOT won't currently let him build while the other, Michigan/Ontario bridge goes ahead).

This issue was first raised by retired Detroit Free Press reporter Joel Thurtell at his (then-new) blog. He caught my attention and that of the Metro Times, which also hammered Maroun until the Detroit Free Press and (much less so) the Detroit News all joined in.

Thurtell's blog is here: ( http://www.joelontheroad.com/ ) but the Me & Manny stories of specific interest are here: http://www.joelontheroad.com/?cat=687

Maroun is absolutely everything you do not want a successful businessman to be. He built a duty-free shop and gas station in exactly the wrong place, forcing the feds to close that down. His empty unused train station has become a towering symbol of Detroit neglect. In this case, the hard left is correct. He's part of what harms Detroit.

Quote from: BILLY Defiant on July 26, 2013, 09:24:16 PM
The "Tunnel" is on par with Obamao's idiotic "Intercontinental" bullet Train
or the train to nowhere Los Angles (not) to Las Vegas.


Billy

How so? Ontario traffic either crosses on Maroun's Ambassador Bridge or this tunnel. Is it all that idiotic to fear someone with half the traffic already to grab up even more, any way he can?

Perhaps what you say about Maroun has a kernel of truth. But isn't the harm to Detroit and surroundings you speak of already done? Wasn't it done decades ago?

Quote from: TboneAgain on July 26, 2013, 09:36:19 PM
Perhaps what you say about Maroun has a kernel of truth. But isn't the harm to Detroit and surroundings you speak of already done? Wasn't it done decades ago?

Fair question, and of course the answer is yes. Immediately after Coleman Young took office, Oakland and Livingston counties in particular saw massive population, housing and jobs increases across the board. The Ann Arbor tech area also gained Detroiters escaping the Third World.

Part of the harm was, very frankly, allowing unions to protect the worthless while the race-baiters called it everything but the gross incompetence that it was. Every time the reasonable people of ANY race tried to offer help, the howlers claimed it was Whitey tryin' to force us back to the plantation.... The sheer number of incompetents piled up. The unions fought to keep them. They became the government Detroit has and deserves today, entirely deserves from a 100% free citywide election bringing this crap upon themselves.

All this in a 100% solid-lock ironclad union Democrat town. Who was forcing whom there?

Quote from: quiller on July 26, 2013, 09:46:55 PM
Fair question, and of course the answer is yes. Immediately after Coleman Young took office, Oakland and Livingston counties in particular saw massive population, housing and jobs increases across the board. The Ann Arbor tech area also gained Detroiters escaping the Third World.

Part of the harm was, very frankly, allowing unions to protect the worthless while the race-baiters called it everything but the gross incompetence that it was. Every time the reasonable people of ANY race tried to offer help, the howlers claimed it was Whitey tryin' to force us back to the plantation.... The sheer number of incompetents piled up. The unions fought to keep them. They became the government Detroit has and deserves today, entirely deserves from a 100% free citywide election bringing this crap upon themselves.

All this in a 100% solid-lock ironclad union Democrat town. Who was forcing whom there?

I read somewhere else that there are 80,000 abandoned buildings in the city. Holy shit!

I can't believe this is actually happening...again. Next stop is the NHS. Then all TV channels going silent at midnight so the country will shut off the TV to conserve energy. (You know, the whole coal thing).

Been there, done that. It ain't fun folks.