WALTER RUSSELL MEAD: Detroit just looking worse and worse. “Rampant incompetence, administrative chaos and clueless mismanagement have so disrupted the ruined city’s faltering attempts to maintain some kind of early childhood education program that the Obama administration is threatening to close down all federal funding for early education in the once-bustling metropolis. The city is too incompetent to spend money. . . . It is hard to see how a city recovers when things have fallen this far. Detroit’s voters do not seem interested in good governance, either unwilling or unable to penalize incompetence at the polls; the political class spouts blue liberal slogans but appears to have the compassion and generosity of a pack of velociraptors; the city’s core institutions have been so corroded and degraded after decades of decline that there is little hope for improvement anytime soon. The status quo cannot stand.”

UPDATE: Reader Lloyd Daub writes: “Detroit is North Korea … with the Unions holding the same pride of place as the North Korean Army—keep them happy and they keep the kleptocracy in power. No matter who else starves.”