As Detroit – beset by violence, debt and social woes – prepares to undergo a historic takeover by the Michigan state government, the city of Atlanta could be sliding toward a similar fate.

Some are quietly wondering whether Atlanta is in danger of becoming “the Detroit of the South.”

The city has experienced an ongoing succession of government scandals, ranging from a massive cheating racket to corruption, bribery, school-board incompetence and now the potential loss of accreditation for the local DeKalb County school system.

For several years, problems of this sort have fueled political reforms, including the creation of new cities in northern Atlanta suburbs. Due to the intensification of corruption scandals in DeKalb, some state-level reform proposals could become national news very soon.

‘Super-white majority’ cities

As a result of the unsavory politics in urban Atlanta, northern suburban communities acted to distance themselves. Beginning in 2005, many communities began the process of incorporating into cities.

Thus far, Milton, Sandy Springs, Brookhaven, Dunwoody, Chattahoochee Hills and Johns Creek have done so.

These cities, after breaking away politically from urban Atlanta, have become so successful that a libertarian think tank, the Reason Foundation, has featured Sandy Springs as a model of effective government. The Economist has also applauded the northern Atlanta cities for solving the problem of unfunded government pension liability and avoiding the bankruptcy that looms over some urban areas. The new cities may soon be able to create their own school districts, which would free them even further from the issues besetting Atlanta.

While incorporation has been popular with residents of the new cities, not all of Atlanta is as satisfied. The Georgia Legislative Black Caucus filed a lawsuit in 2011 to dissolve the new cities, claiming they were a “super-white majority” and diluting the voting power of minorities.

A key leader in the black community and a driving force in support of the lawsuit, who wishes to remain anonymous, bemoaned the “disturbing tendency of black electorates to not elect the smartest and brightest, or even the cleverest.”

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/suburbs-secede-from-atlanta/#2Ir67gtHYZL9wcwq.99

Open Europe news summary:

German tabloid Bild asks “Will Italy’s political clowns destroy the euro?”, while in an op-ed, Ernst Elitz argues that “After these elections it is clear that the future of our continent will not be decided in Brussels or Berlin but in individual member states that have almost been declared dead already. If the voters there do not vote with understanding but rather on a whim then no bailout fund can help”. Writing in FAZ, Anton Börner, President of the Federation of German Wholesale, Foreign Trade and Services (BGA), argues that “Monetary stability cannot be negotiated and we need to send a clear message to the South: For us there is life after the euro.”

I hope the 65% of Germans who oppose the Euro support these guys, but I doubt it.

Well, it was probably only a matter of time: a German anti-euro party has just come onto the scene.

Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten reports that the new party will launch in April under the name “Alternative for Germany”. The party appears to be an offspring of “Wahlalternative 2013″ (Election Alternative 2013) – a group consisting mostly of academics but also including Hans-Olaf Henkel, the well-known and outspoken former head of Germany’s employers federation BDI. (Read more)

Hadi Mezawi has never set foot on the Caribbean island of Dominica, has never seen its rainforests or black-sand beaches. But he’s one of its newest citizens.

Without leaving his home in the United Arab Emirates, the Palestinian man recently received a brand new Dominican passport after sending a roughly $100,000 contribution to the tropical nation half a world away.

“At the start I was a little worried that it might be a fraud, but the process turned out to be quite smooth and simple. Now, I am a Dominican,” said Mezawi, who like many Palestinians had not been recognized as a citizen of any country. That passport will help with travel for his job with a Brazilian food processing company, he said by telephone from Dubai.

. . . .

It’s such a booming business that a Dubai-based company is building a 4-square-mile (10-square-kilometer) community in St. Kitts where investors can buy property and citizenship at the same time. In its first phase, some 375 shareholders will get citizenship by investing $400,000 each in the project, which is expected to include a 200-room hotel and a mega-yacht marina. Others will get passports for buying one of 50 condominium units. (Read more)

Paddy Roy Bates, who occupied an abandoned fort in the North Sea and declared it the sovereign Principality of Sealand with himself as its prince, has died aged 91, his son said on Wednesday.

Michael Bates said his father died on Tuesday at a care home in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. He had been suffering from Alzheimer’s.

In the 1960s, inspired by the “pirate radio” movement, Bates set up Radio Essex on an offshore fort. When that was closed down, he moved in 1966 to Fort Roughs, a disused second world war platform in international waters about seven miles off the coast. (Read more)

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100199825/53-percent-of-british-voters-want-to-leave-the-eu-barack-obama-and-david-cameron-should-take-note/

The parliament of Spain’s powerful northeastern region of Catalonia has approved a largely symbolic declaration stating the region is a sovereign entity, paving the way for a referendum on independence from Spain.

The proposal was carried Wednesday by 85 votes in favor, with 41 against and two abstentions. (Read more)

Great collection of quotes on mises.org.

Maybe the citizens of tiny Sedgwick on the Maine coast were listening to the calls of Dave Milano, Ken Conrad, and others for more trust and community, and less rigid one-size-fits-all food regulation.

On Friday evening, they became perhaps the first locale in the country to pass a “Food Sovereignty” law. It’s the proposed ordinance I first described last fall, when I introduced the “Five Musketeers”, a group of farmers and consumers intent on pushing back against overly aggressive agriculture regulators. The regulators were interfering with farmers who, for example, took chickens to a neighbor for slaughtering, or who sold raw milk directly to consumers.

The proposed ordinance was one of 78 being considered at the Sedgwick town meeting, that New England institution that has stood the test of time, allowing all of a town’s citizens to vote yea or nay on proposals to spend their tax money and, in this case, enact potentially far-reaching laws with national implications. They’ve been holding these meetings in the Sedgwick town hall (pictured above) since 1794. At Friday’s meeting, about 120 citizens raised their hands in unanimous approval of the ordinance. (Read more)

Gérard Depardieu has said he is handing back his French passport and social security card, lambasting the French government for punishing “success, creation, talent” in his homeland.

A popular and colourful figure in France, the 63-year-old actor is the latest wealthy Frenchman to seek shelter outside his native country by buying a house just over the border in Belgium in response to tax increases by the Socialist president, François Hollande.

The prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, described Depardieu’s behaviour as pathetic and unpatriotic at a time when the French are being asked to pay higher taxes to reduce a bloated national debt.

“Pathetic, you said pathetic? How pathetic is that?” Depardieu said in a letter to the weekly newspaper le Journal du Dimanche.

“I am leaving because you believe that success, creation, talent, anything different must be sanctioned,” he said.

An angry member of parliament has proposed that France adopt a US-inspired law that would force Depardieu or anyone trying to escape full tax dues to forgo their nationality. (Read more)

Fatca calls for foreign financial institutions to file an annual report to the I.R.S., either directly or through its own national tax authority, on each U.S. taxpayer for whom it holds more than $50,000 in assets at the end of the year.

This is why a friend in Singapore gave up his US citizenship. He couldn’t get any financial institution to do business with him. It’s also why some Swiss banks have dumped US clients.

The law also requires account holders to file an I.R.S. form themselves, 8938, detailing their foreign holdings, though American expatriates need file only if their financial assets exceed $200,000 at year’s end. To make sure account holders stay in touch, the agency levies a $10,000 penalty for failure to file a required 8938, and any underreported income will be subject to an additional 40 percent penalty. (Read more)

$200k — I aspire to have these problems. :)