Rand Paul's Sham Plan to Save Detroit

If Nixon deserved points for going to China, Rand Paul deserves
points for going to Detroit — and trying to convert the GOP
from a pasty white guys’ party to a multi-hued one where everyone,
even people with “pony tails, tattoos and earrings,” are
welcome.

But his actual plan to try and save Detroit by creating Economic
Freedom Zones, I note in the Washington Examiner this
morning, is simply old garb with new accessories. It’s basic
premise that it is not government but entrepreneurs who can revive
economic basket cases like Detroit is obvious to everyone (except
liberals, communists and the Pope). But the problem is that the
lovers of America’s regulatory state will never unshackle
entrepreneurs and let them work their magic as this plan would
require. I note:

This approach worked well in England,
turning London’s depressed docklands into a super-dynamic hub for
finance and other businesses in the 1980s. It also transformed
India’s
Bangalore from a sleepy little town (that Winston Churchill once
compared to a prison) into a global IT powerhouse in the 1990s.

But it has been a disappointing failure in America. Why? Because
neither Republicans nor Democrats have ever managed to create
anything resembling a genuine enterprise zone.

Go
here to read the whole thing.