Flint will not make the same mistake twice

When I was a kid I really liked the film Roger & Me, which I thought was subversive and hilarious. But when I saw it as an adult it bothered me the extent to which director Michael Moore played the sad-sack, economically devastated residents of his hometown of Flint, Michigan for laughs. Which is par for the course for a man who in a later documentary manipulated an Alzheimer-ridden Carleton Heston to make a point.

But even without Moore's cruel characterization, Flint would still be an ongoing symbol of epic industrial failure. And what has the city learned from its Rust Belt nightmare? That unless decline is dealt with quickly and with overwhelming force there is a risk it will become the permanent reality. Hence Flint's new ordinance on saggy pants: