Detroit firefighters don't have toilet paper. (Pictured right, a white firefighter.)

Detroit firefighters say toilet paper, cleaning products scarce at stations, Detroit Free Press, November 23, 2012

Or bathroom soap, or other personal hygiene basics.

I don't know what's causing the shortages.  My bet is it's ultimately traceable to the incompetence emanating from a city that's 82 percent black, and black-run.

Pictured below: Detroit City Council

Here's what I do know.  For a year of my life, I worked for city government in the Bronx.  The Bronx, at about 11 percent white, is the least-white borough in New York City.

There was no soap in the bathroom.  No paper towels, either.  Employees brought their own soap.  They kept it on their desks, and took it with them when they trotted off the bathroom.  Ditto paper towels.

We had a black Haitian woman whose job it was to procure office supplies.  She did no such thing.  If you went to her with a complaint, you could not communicate in anything resembling English.  What office supplies we had were tossed into a single large drawer in a large, undifferentiated pile.  If you wanted something, you had to root around.  You probably wouldn't find what you were looking for.

I bought my own three-hole punch, and my own stapler.  I still have the three-hole punch.