The 1 percent comes to Detroit’s rescue

Posted by hpayne on April 30, 2013

Gilbert

On Saturday night in Grand Circus Park, a tony Metro Detroit crowd paid up to $90 a ticket to fill the Detroit Opera House, laugh with comedian Martin Short and raise thousands of dollars for Detroit’s hungry. In just half an hour, for example, $14,000 was raised in a live auction of items donated by corporations like GM and Borg Warner.

That pays for 70,000 meals served by the Forgotten Harvest charity, which collects unused food from restaurants and distributes it to the poor. Corporate sponsors like Quicken Loans and Mercedes Benz headlined the evening, hosted by PVS Chemical executive and Harvest Chairman David Nicholson, who honored One Percenter Mitch Albom, a generous giver to the charity.

Walking through Grand Circus before the event (truth in advertising: I have been a Forgotten Harvest donor for years), I viewed a panorama of the business community’s commitment to the city — from Comerica Park to the Detroit Lions’ Ford Field to Ilitch-owned businesses to the Opera House itself. On Friday, multimillionaire Dan Gilbert encouraged Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores to move his team to the Grand Circus area where a stream of private investment has spawned restaurants and other small businesses.

Without the capital and charity of these extraordinary entrepreneurs, Detroit today would be a shell of abandoned storefronts and empty streets. Yet, these builders have collectively been met by America’s governing class with contempt.

Eighteen months ago, Rep. Gary Peters, D-Detroit, rallied in Grand Circus Park with Occupy Detroit protesters to demonize businessmen for not doing their fair share. “What did you do in the Class War, Daddy?” read one protest sign. At Central United Methodist Church on the park, former Obama preacher Jeremiah Wright was invited to rant against “rich folks” preying on Detroit’s poor. The Occupy protests — celebrated by the media and embraced by Obama’s re-election campaign — blamed “the wealthy” for our economic troubles.

Businessmen were the scourge of Detroit. Capitalism was their poison. “You didn’t build that!” claimed President Obama, caricaturing an America where government created jobs while entrepreneurs hid their profits in offshore bank accounts.

Detroit proves that vision is a fiction.

The biggest obstacle to Motown’s renaissance today is government. Despite the highest income and property taxes in the region, its poor services have driven the middle class — black, white and ethnic — out. Vice President Joe “They gonna put ya’ll back in chains!” Biden was in town last week for a Democratic fundraiser championing his party’s commitment to the middle class, yet liberal governance has made Detroit unlivable for the middle class.

Into this void has stepped Detroit’s business class.

Recognizing that a thriving urban center is vital to attracting young people, these wealthy industrialists have the means — and the thick skin — to endure the city’s poisonous government and union culture. In 2003, philanthropist Robert Thompson was run out of town for wanting to invest a quarter of a billion dollars in Detroit charter schools — yet he persisted, providing poor neighborhoods with school choice long enjoyed by the wealthy. Gilbert has moved Quicken Loans downtown — paying his employees’ 1.2-2.4 percent Detroit income tax to overcome that government obstacle. And One Percent homebuilder Bill Pulte has formed the Detroit Blight Authority to clear 40,000 abandoned structures, which serve as incubators for crime.

In the face of such commitments, the federal government this year has taken more of their money — a 60 percent rise in capital gains and other taxes — diverting needed dollars from Detroit and its charities to wasteful Washington.

Detroit’s government and media class reflexively tar Metro Detroit as the most segregated community in America. In truth, the region is a family (a diverse family that funds Forgotten Harvest with $80 million a year) that cares about its mismanaged city.

In a break from the Harvest fundraiser’s comedy routine, Huntington Bank president and Harvest contributor Mike Vezzey exclaimed to Martin Short’s Jimmy Glick character: “Detroit is coming back!”

Detroit will be back when government leaders join Detroit’s business leaders in doing their fair share.

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