Ed Schultz on Why Detroit Went Bankrupt: The City Became a 'Conservative Utopia

Agreeing with fellow MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, Ed Schultz claimed that Detroit had filed for bankruptcy because the city had a government that was just too small. On Saturday, Schultz argued "Republican policies" led Detroit to become a "conservative utopia."

Harris-Perry last week said what is happening in Detroit occurs "when government is small enough to drown in your bathtub."

“Detroit, Michigan, used to be really a symbol of industrial strength and manufacturing in this country. But, thanks to a lot of Republican policies, the city is now filing for bankruptcy," Schultz said over the weekend.

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He also argued that "Detroit going bankrupt is exactly what the Republicans want."

"The Ed Show," recently "upgraded" to weekends, then flashed a graphic featuring former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, President Ronal Reagan and Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder with the accompanying headline, "Conservative Utopia."

Schultz went after emergency city manger Kevyn Orr for selling off city assets in a bid to achieve solvency. He claimed this caused more people to leave the city, apparently ignoring that residents have been fleeing Detroit for years.

“It is a very vicious cycle,” Schultz added. “It’s the Republican way.”

In 2011, it was estimated that one resident left Detroit every 22 minutes, Mediaite's Noah Rothman noted last week. MSNBC's efforts to pin Detroit's downfall on conservative policies seemingly ignore that Detroit has routinely had one of the highest violent crime rates in the nation and a lingering poverty rate of around 40 percent.

Further, as TheBlaze reported last week, National Review’s Kevin Williamson in 2011, in the lead up to Detroit’s demise, wrote:

Detroit maintains 13,000 government workers but has 22,000 government retirees burrowed into the body politic, and their health-care subsidies alone account for nearly $200 million of the city’s budget. Pensions alone already account for a quarter of city spending; in three years, they will account for half. Pensions and city workers’ health-care subsidies account for $561 per year from every resident of Detroit, which has a very poor population — average monthly income of barely $1,200 before taxes, a fifth of the population in poverty, etc. The official unemployment rate is 30 percent; the real rate is much higher.

However, for now, this is all Republicans' fault, despite the fact that the city has been run by Democrats and progressives for decades.

For more facts on Detroit's collapse, click here.

(H/T: Mediaite)

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