Detroit in RUINS! [[Crowder goes Ghetto)

[Alexis1]

Thank you Johnny5

[Lorax]

Wow. Self-indulgent capitalization and punctuation [[as if what he's saying is news, and furthermore that it needs to be shouted), and "goes ghetto?" Well played, sir. Stay classy, Steve.

Anyone see Redstate.com listed in his video description? Yeah, go try and follow that site for a day or two and see if you make it through. It's worse than Huffington Post and Daily Kos on the other side of the spectrum, and that's a hard feat. Yes, sometimes you can be judged by who you friends are...

Difference is, Huffington Post and Daily Kos speak the truth. I have yet to find a right wing rag that dares to cross that line.

[FlyingJ]

Hokey schmokes, you guys are completely attacking this guy on a politicial level..which makes no sense. I never thought of how unique the Problems Of Detroit were 'til a guy who hung with the Sex Pistols, spending years squatting in abandoned London slums told me when he visited Detroit in the mid 90's he "never saw anything like it in [[his) life". I can go home, and I KNOW I'm in a failed city...it makes me sad, but I know it. I can also go & walk thru other Major American Cities with far greater % of registered Democrats, like San Francisco, Seattle, Portland Oregon, Austin, Minneapolis-& they're doin' alright, despite the economy. And I can ask those people in these other cities what kind of car they drive-& the first 3 towns probably all have buspasses, but I know the rest won't answer with a nameplate that employed any of your or my ancestors & relatives. Does that make them bad? Anti-union? Red staters? What are THEIR politicians doing that Michigan's AREN'T? Running ads narrated by Jeff Daniels implying Michigan's a businessman's Wonderland? The one interesting thing-maybe the only thing, McCain did is tell a Michigan Rally what's what & step away from the entire state. He knew Michigan was political kryptonite, but that meant from then on Obama owned/owed it. So Obama is now stuck going to Macomb County Community College & repeating the same thing McCain said in Grand Rapids a year & a half earlier but trying to sound optimistic, yet when the President extolls the future of transportation technology, he's not in the 313-but rather at an electric car plant outside L.A.;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/0..._n_176971.html
So there has to be a serious inventory on this board, in the state, about the reality of the situation. No matter how much you hate Sarah Palin, that won't get one Seattle barrista to buy a GM product. Sorry. The barrista's got a Japanese hybrid she's perfectly happy with-she probably doesn't like Sarah Palin either. This guy's video warns, if the lousy politicians & policies that made Michigan this way are running the country, pretty soon we'll ALL be like Michigan.

[ccbatson]

Isn't Dave Bing a Republican? A very good precedent if he is a conservative and proactive major.

[Lorax]

Flying J, it wasn't just the local corrupt politicos that did this to the Detroit region- national policies enacted at the corporate level, and implemented from Reagan to Bush were largely responsible for the demise of this industry.

Trade imbalances caused much of it, and the car companies seeking to union bust by moving to other states, or overseas in search of cheap slave labor was a big part of it as well.

Local politicos can only react to these forces, and react badly they did. Instead of insisting on proactive changes, they just milked the system for their own benefit, and moved on.

For as corrupt as Chicago politics is, it was never at the expense of the physical city. Chicagoans love their city, and it shows. The losers here gave in to a corrupt corporate and national political setup designed to destroy rather than promote the region's industries.

[rooms222]

300,000 views, In the Freep now with 400 comments, and other media outlets.

http://freep.com/article/20091230/BL...all-of-Detroit

I was really puzzled why this was transferred to Non Detroit. This is prompting discussion about Detroit, some for the better, and much for the worse. Still, it appears directly related to our area

[Retroit]

Excellent video.

"Government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem." - Ronald Reagan

Lorax: ...national policies enacted at the corporate level, and implemented from Reagan to Bush were largely responsible for the demise of this industry.

Trade imbalances caused much of it, and the car companies seeking to union bust by moving to other states, or overseas in search of cheap slave labor was a big part of it as well.

It is the government's over-regulation of American businesses that has driven them overseas and has given the advantage to foreign competitors.

[oladub]

Not that I am a defender of liberals but there are some very nice liberal cities in this country. They haven't all wound up like Detroit and Cleveland. The variable must be something else or liberal government combined with some other factor. There are also Republican cities and rural areas where most people wouldn't want to live.
Would you rather have to live in Lubbock or Minneapolis?

The attempt to blame unions is a stretch. Working people have just as much of a right to hire unions to look after their rights as rich people have to hire personal lawyers and lobbyists to do the same. Some unions cut their own throats but that is another matter.

MOST LIBERAL PLACES TO LIVE,
MOST CONSERVATIVE PLACES TO LIVE

[lilpup]

300,000 views, In the Freep now with 400 comments, and other media outlets.

http://freep.com/article/20091230/BL...all-of-Detroit

I was really puzzled why this was transferred to Non Detroit. This is prompting discussion about Detroit, some for the better, and much for the worse. Still, it appears directly related to our area

No, it doesn't. Detroit has now become the proxy poltical punching bag for the bullshit partisan bickering that has held this nation back from 30 years now. All this blather has nothing to do with Detroit - there has been no assistance or solutions discussed, no real examinations of issues, nothing that is actually a working of the problem toward finding solutions. I was afraid of this when Time showed up since it seemed they blew into town with a political agenda and now it's all snowballed.

Fuck ALL politicians.

[barnesfoto]

"Government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem." - Ronald Reagan"
Thank you! You must be a lover of irony, as am I.
For it was Ronald Reagan that declared that government was a problem at home, yet oddly, went all over the world wrecklessly spending the tax dollars of Americans to shore up fascist governments and death squads in Central America and Islamic extremists in Afghanistan.
Ironically, Ray-Gun [[or maybe it was Patty Noonan, his speechwriter) tried to portray radical islamists [[like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar) as "The Moral Equivalent of our Founding Fathers"
Oddly, I have made numerous posts about Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and republican funding of terrorism, and yet our conservocrite posters never seem willing to discuss these themes....

Hilariously naive...reminds me of the parable of the blind men and the elephant.

It's kinda like going to Karachi, Guatemala City, or Port Au-Prince and declaring those cities successful bastions of conservatism..

Oh wait, they are , at least, if you are a member of Crowder's sick cult.

Imagine being face to face with this buffoon and asking him about how much Louis Mirihani and Donald Lobsinger did for Detroit.
Imagine asking him how Republican Robert "Bob" Blackwell improved Highland Park during his terms as mayor.

Even if you have no imagination whatsoever, you can still picture the blank stare.

[Sstashmoo]

Quote: "For it was Ronald Reagan"

No offense, but it's all conjecture at this point, who did what, their party affiliation and back and forth across the aisle bickering. Responsible Americans better start figuring out a way to get out of this. Seems this country hasn't had much leadership since Truman. Or government hasn't really functioned properly since then.

Historically, on average, the life of any government is around 200 years. The US is 30 years past that.

[GOAT]

He has a bit of an agenda but is he that far from the truth? I don't see a racist issue in what he is saying other than all of the massive handouts given to Detroit hasn't done a damn thing to help it.

A culture of entitlement can produce serious issues. I liken Detroit to many reservations. Throw money at it and hope it goes away.

[EMG]

This was sent to me in an email, and I just finished watching it. I figured there'd be a thread about it here so I did a search.

Sadly, this guy tells it exactly like it is. Not focusing on the 1% of Detroit [[downtown, isolated pristine spots of Belle Isle or a tony two-square block area of Indian Village) that can be used to paint a falsely positive picture, but on the conditions that the other 99% of the residents face every day...conditions wrought by the liberal gimme-everything-and-don't-expect-me-to-work-for-it mentality in which they continue to foolishly believe. The scene with Obama poster pasted right up among the graffiti on the side of the burnt out ruins was oh so appropriate and truly just about tells a complete side story in and of itself.

And we waste our soldiers trying to turn around places like Iraq and Afghanistan? They need to be brought into places like Detroit! The occupation is needed right here! That, and not liberal wishful thinking, would have a better chance of effecting an actual recovery.

On a brighter note, I was surprised to actually see my old school - Carleton Elementary - featured near the beginning of the video. At least that area hasn't been diminished to burnt ruins - yet.

[6nois]

I watched the video and there are some serious issues and over simplifications. It doesn't explain anything and is merely trying to make Detroit more of a pawn in a political game.

Issue #1 Model Cities

Model Cities was proposed by Mayor Cavanaugh and would have granted over 982 million dollars for one city. Johnsons proposed plan in 1966 instead granted 400 million to over 75 cities in it's first year. Because funding was reduced to include more cities the city of Detroit changed the boundaries of their program from the entire city to a 9 square mile area. The area held 1/15 of the cities land area, and 1/9 of it's population, and contained the greatest areas of blight. The poor outside of the programs boundaries got little assistance and this included the 12th street area that bore the 1967. The Kern Report stated that many in the city felt untouched by federal programs and in 1969, Cavanaugh himself stated that the War on Poverty had scarcely been able to touch the lives of many of the poor.

Largely Model Cities was viewed as a failure. Detroit was lauded as having one of the best Model Cities program in the country, with moderate success in realizing urban development projects such as the West Side Industrial Project, and Developments in Lafayette Park-Gratiot area. And downtown hotel and office structure construction began after a 25 year hiatus.

Results overall were largely mixed with those who had access to programs seeing improvement in areas of job training, education, employment, health, and family income. Along with Model Cities success in some areas, between 1960 and 1990 the Model Cities area lost 63% of its population and 45% of its housing units. Another success of model cities was that of the growth of African American political leadership, which helped to change the way poverty programs were handled.

The above text is from: "Rebuilding Urban Neighborhoods: Achievements, Opportunities, and Limits" by Keating and Krumholz

So in reality he wasn't being totally truthful by just walking through abandonment while speaking of Model Cities, when one the of most celebrated urban redevelopment projects in the nation [[Lafayette Park) was bore of it here in Detroit, and he could have just as easily walked through there. Much like most poverty programs the results of model cities was largely a mixed bag. And I would be quite interested to see the effect of MC funding in the other 75 cities that were apart of the program.

Issue #2 Detroit School Funding

Here our speaker is just flat out lying

Detroit Public Schools in 2009 will get $7,580 per pupil NOT the $11,000 number quoted which I have a feeling is a regional average for Metro Detroit.

http://www.detnews.com/article/20080...22160972351042

Overall

The speaker babbles on about programs that dictated where one could remain in business and sort of this overloading government control but I am not sure what he is talking about. Yes, there is planning and zoning here but I don't believe it is any more intense than any other city. By no means does any of this mean that I totally support Detroit's leadership I don't but I also do not believe that this video has any relevance to the how or why Detroit is the way it is, or even more importantly how it will improve to be the best Detroit it can be. Oh and I have never heard of bears in the city? And I hardly feel the speakers demeaning blurb about urban gardening is a mention of the positive things happening in Detroit. Funny that this gardening is largely a community based activity of people doing things for themselves and he lauds it as a punch line in a joke.

[elganned]

Mere right-wing cant. Dismissable.

[Blarf]

His political views aside, has anyone found anything about this wild bear sighting he brought up?

Where this this take place, and by who?

[3WC]

Lorax and others of his ilk have one approach to those speaking the truth [[even thought not the bigger picture) when it conflicts with their rose colored view of the city or an issue:

"KILL THE MESSENGER."

[6nois]

So where was the truth? Oh was it the part about bears and wild dogs fighting. The only bears I have ever seen in Detroit are of the gay male persuasion. Hum maybe that was what he was talking about.