What Democratic voters get for supporting Obama: the Detroit edition

Could GM leve their Detroit HQ AP Photo/Paul Sancya

It never surprises me when voters from a single party state, like Michigan, support the most liberal of Politicians and policies and within months it comes back to really bite them where they live.

President Obama won big majorities among all of the key Detroit voting demographics; Union Workers, Urban Voters, and Collegiate age voters. These voters not only helped Obama win Michigan in the last election but helped carry him to an Electoral College victory.

So what had Obama given back to his loyal supporters?

First and foremost Obama has wasted billions of dollars trying to keep Chrysler and GM out of bankruptcy court. Chrysler is already there awaiting a buyout from the Italian car company Fiat. GM is likely to join their cross-town rival there any day now.

On top of that the Federal government now virtually owns and is operating both of these privately held companies. They are the ones making the decisions, and they are the ones that may ultimately force GM to leave its downtown Headquarters in the Renaissance Center.

In effect the Government is forcing GM to get so small that at some point the expense of operating the Ren Cen will become another budget item for a bankruptcy judge to look at and determine if it is justified.

When that happens it is very likely that GM would move the majority of its white collar work force, those who survive the Obama Administration purge, to its Technical Development Center in Warren, Michigan.

The net effect of a move like that would be to eliminate another key element in the tax base of the city of Detroit. Since anyone who earns an income within the city is subject to a city income tax (regardless of which city they actually live in) another mass migration of workers out of the city will leave the city with a larger budget deficit than the current 300 million dollars.

This would be so bad for Detroit hat we do not even have to discuss the legality of taxing non-residents on their income when they have not right to vote how that tax money is spent (Taxation without representation sounds familiar to me, in fact I do believe we fought an entire war around that subject once before).

The city of Detroit’s unemployment rate is around 21% right now. Moving the rest of GM’s white collar work force out of the city could send that number skyrocketing. Let us not forget all the other downtown businesses, and restaurants that would be affected by losing another key demographic of their business as well.