Imaginary Horses And Real Horseshit

As many people have pointed out (including the alcoholics at GGDF), the city of Detroit is in a world of hurt.

The Left’s answer to the deficit: raise taxes to protect spending. The Left’s answer to the weak economy: raise taxes to enable new spending. The Left’s answer to the looming sovereign-debt crisis: raise taxes to pay off old spending. For the Left, every deficit is a revenue-side problem, not a spending-side problem, and the solution to every economic problem is more spending, necessitating more taxes. The problem with that way of looking at things is called Detroit, which looks to be running out of money in about one week. Detroit is what liberalism’s end-game looks like.

There are many reasons for Detroit's downfall, not the least of which is the overwhelming influence of unions on local government and businesses.

One lesson to learn from Detroit is that investing unions with coercive powers does not ensure future private-sector employment or the preservation of private-sector wages, despite liberal fairy tales to the contrary...

Here's a perfect example.

Despite having no horses, the water and sewerage department for the city of Detroit employs a horseshoer.

Yet even with a department so bloated that it has a horseshoer and no horses, the local union president said it is "not possible" to eliminate positions.

Union rules have turned the department into a government jobs program, some critics say.

The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) has a large debt, rising water prices and inefficient services — using almost twice the number of employees per gallon as other cities like Chicago.

A recent independent report about the DWSD recommends that the city trim more than 80 percent of the department’s workforce. The consultant who wrote the report found 257 job descriptions, including a horseshoer. Capitol Confidential sent a Freedom of Information Act request to the department for the salary, benefits and job description of the horseshoer position.

In response to the report, John Riehl, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Local 207, which represents many of the DWSD employees, told the Detroit Free Press that the department needs more workers.

An independent report says cut jobs by 80%. The union says it needs even more people. Which one do you think is more believable?

The answer to that question can be found by going back to the opening sentence of this article:

"Despite having no horses, the water and sewerage department for the city of Detroit employs a horseshoer."

BTW, the city pays $29,245 in salary and about $27,000 in benefits for the horseshoer position. That's around $57K per year for shoeing non-existent horses.

Un-friggin'-believable...