Soap Box

I was recently in a shopping mall near the city of Detroit; it was a fairly new facility, in pleasant surroundings, nicely landscaped, with plenty of parking. But about a third of the retail space had gone out of business and although there were still plenty of shops open and it was a Sunday afternoon, there were only a handful of customers in the whole place.

Empty storefronts, sparse shoppers and closed down industries are becoming a common sight in parts of America and what has happened in Detroit is only a harbinger of things to come on a national level, because the same policies that took Detroit down the tubes are poised to do the same thing to this whole nation.

The politicians and union leaders in Detroit knew years ago what was going to happen if they continued down the fiscal path they were on. They knew a day of reckoning was coming but as long as they could get theirs and get out before it arrived they simply didn't care.

They lied, cheated, stole and deceived thousands of people into believing that their pensions would be safe and waiting for them when they needed them, and now the people who voted for them and trusted them have drastically reduced pensions and no recourse.

The fact of the matter is that you simply can't spend more than you take in and keep borrowing to make up the difference and when the treasury is empty and nobody will loan you any more money, you finally have to face the fact that the party is over and profligate fiscal policies have claimed another victim.

Socialistic entitlement policies make for great politics and has continued to get it's proponents elected in local and national elections until the tipping point has been reached and the dominos are starting to fall, Detroit just being the first in line of major cities and entire states who succumbed to the siren call of "we can please everybody" politics.

The quality of life in Detroit has declined until just about everybody who can afford to has fled the city with just over seven hundred thousand people living in the town that was a few short decades ago held up as the model of American industrial might.

I remember being in towns in Louisiana and Texas during the oil bust of the seventies and seeing block after block of empty buildings and trash strewn streets, urban ghost towns where the economy had come to a sudden halt, payrolls had dried up and owners had been forced to walk away and leave businesses they had worked a lifetime to build.

It's a sad sight to behold and bad enough when the exodus is caused by international circumstances beyond the control of the powers that be in America. But when the situation is brought on by greed, sloth and carelessness, it is downright maddening and, as always, the people who end up getting hurt the most are the very ones the politicians and unions promise to help the most with their impossible promises and destructive policies.

Now we're hearing the words "bail out" raising their ugly heads again and if there's ever been a misnomer it's applying those two words to the fiscal situation of American cities and states who have continued to elect politicians who tell them what they want to hear rather than the ruinous truth that them and their children and grandchildren will have to face to pay for some scumbag politician's election.

Bail out what? The ability to continue a situation that never has and never will work to keep kicking the can down the road until the entire nation goes into a depression, a situation that is going to be hard to avoid, bail outs notwithstanding.

I don't know what the solution for Detroit and the other cities and states is but I do know it's simply not the duty of the American tax payers to fulfill the careless, self serving lies of politicians and union leaders who promised the moon and delivered chaos.

And the wall came tumbling down.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels​