I would just be more concerned by towns and cities that can't afford pension plans anymore than Texas, Florida, or Tennessee who are still going strong economic wise.

And using the term racist when it doesn't apply is truly a refuge for non thinkers. What I said was true.

They vote democrat for the entitlements. Is that actually up for dispute? Seriously. Thats a racist comment? If its racist, then the truth is racist. Like Dr. MLK said (a great african american, and a REPUBLICAN), "the truth shall set you free."

Yes, it is. Because you said that all minorities vote democrat so that they can work the system, freeload and suck from actual workers.

Yes, that's a racist statement. Because I know LOTS of minorities who work very hard and contribute LOTS to society. I know doctors and teachers and small businesspeople who are minorities. They all work, they all contribute to society, they don't freeload, I daresay that some of them might even be Republicans.

The white population’s abandonment of the city left Detroit with a shrinking tax base and deteriorating, segregated public schools — a system locked in place by a Supreme Court order that halted busing across school district lines. But blacks still in Detroit had one thing left — political power. And they would guard it jealously against any encroachment, real or imagined.

Thus, the city’s black political class sees conspiracy theories everywhere. The investigation of the last mayor by the Detroit Free Press, and his indictment by a prosecutor, are seen as a white conspiracy to undermine black “home rule” of Detroit. The governor’s appointment of an emergency financial manager, once it became clear that Detroit cannot manage its own fiscal affairs, is again seen as a hostile, racist takeover by the state over the city’s elected black leadership.

Racial politics, and that racial prism, long ago ruined Detroit, and now they hamper any chance the city has at a modest recovery. As a longtime friend, one who has stayed in Detroit and worked to help the city, once put it to me succinctly: “Some people would rather be the king of nothing than a part of something.”

So this bankruptcy is sad. But it was, in a sense, inevitable — the final chapter in Detroit’s long slide from glory. Maybe this will be the kind of shock therapy the city needs, the hammer blow that gets the remaining residents to stop living in the past, recognize that the old Detroit is never coming back, and start making the painful sacrifices necessary to build a new, smaller city with what’s left.

I hope so. But somehow I doubt it. If we Detroiters have one fault, it’s that we are addicted to nostalgia and living in our highly selective view of the past.

And do those unfunded liabilty issues exist in states historically controlled by the republican party?

Which states have the strongest economies by in large? STates that are more business friendly.