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Detroit goes under

Days

Commentator
Coleman Young killed Detroit. It once was a beautiful city full of ethnicity from the world over.

Now it's a ghost town. Try to imagine wide open spaces empty of everything... right on the cusp of downtown.

It is eerie.

Then, as you look upon the sparse building here and there, realize that every one of those houses or buildings are empty.

If you stop and stand and look around, it actually scares you, because it is so empty, you feel naked.

Those are my memories and they are a quarter century old by now, it is far worse, today, the city of Detroit has been removing 5000 houses per year and those are only the houses that are pure junk, demolition crying out to be done.

$18 Billion in debt and practically no revenue. So, after the city jilts the banks on its bonds, it will be forced to live solely on the annual budget.... fire depts, police depts, and other unnecessary items be damned.

nothing but the dead and dying in Detroit


as1_reutersmedia_net_resources_r__7c923270ce76eab8469ccb1884218cf1._.jpg
 

EatTheRich

President
Coleman Young killed Detroit. It once was a beautiful city full of ethnicity from the world over.

Now it's a ghost town. Try to imagine wide open spaces empty of everything... right on the cusp of downtown.

It is eerie.

Then, as you look upon the sparse building here and there, realize that every one of those houses or buildings are empty.

If you stop and stand and look around, it actually scares you, because it is so empty, you feel naked.

Those are my memories and they are a quarter century old by now, it is far worse, today, the city of Detroit has been removing 5000 houses per year and those are only the houses that are pure junk, demolition crying out to be done.

$18 Billion in debt and practically no revenue. So, after the city jilts the banks on its bonds, it will be forced to live solely on the annual budget.... fire depts, police depts, and other unnecessary items be damned.

nothing but the dead and dying in Detroit


as1_reutersmedia_net_resources_r__7c923270ce76eab8469ccb1884218cf1._.jpg
Detroit was in bad shape before they ever got a Black mayor. In fact, cities tend to get their first Black mayors after they find themselves in bad shape, just as the U.S. got its first Black president after it found itself in bad shape. If any one person is responsible, it is Orville Hubbard with his campaign to keep Dearborn white ... as author James Loewen proves in his book Sundown Towns, almost all the problems of the cities were caused by nearby white-only suburbs taking advantage of the cities.
 

JackDallas

Senator
Supporting Member
Coleman Young killed Detroit. It once was a beautiful city full of ethnicity from the world over.

Now it's a ghost town. Try to imagine wide open spaces empty of everything... right on the cusp of downtown.

It is eerie.

Then, as you look upon the sparse building here and there, realize that every one of those houses or buildings are empty.

If you stop and stand and look around, it actually scares you, because it is so empty, you feel naked.

Those are my memories and they are a quarter century old by now, it is far worse, today, the city of Detroit has been removing 5000 houses per year and those are only the houses that are pure junk, demolition crying out to be done.

$18 Billion in debt and practically no revenue. So, after the city jilts the banks on its bonds, it will be forced to live solely on the annual budget.... fire depts, police depts, and other unnecessary items be damned.

nothing but the dead and dying in Detroit


as1_reutersmedia_net_resources_r__7c923270ce76eab8469ccb1884218cf1._.jpg
That's the cost of Democrat leadership.
 

Mr. Friscus

Governor
According to EattheRich, this just in: White People sabotage Detroit to make the Black Mayor, and thus black people everywhere, look bad!

Women and Children effected the most!
 
We are not broke, folks; there is plenty of money to go around. We have beaucoup moolah to wage war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Syria; to spend one trillion dollars per annum on our bloated military, as well as fund Israel's insatiable war machine and national health system; and for nation building in those countries we have destroyed with smart bombs. And then there are those 750 military bases around the world that we maintain just so we can threaten those nations who will not do exactly as we tell them. Who says there is no money to fix Detroit? Or Gary (Indiana), or Camden (New Jersey)? Don't y'all be silly.
 

JackDallas

Senator
Supporting Member
We are not broke, folks; there is plenty of money to go around. We have beaucoup moolah to wage war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Syria; to spend one trillion dollars per annum on our bloated military, as well as fund Israel's insatiable war machine and national health system; and for nation building in those countries we have destroyed with smart bombs. And then there are those 750 military bases around the world that we maintain just so we can threaten those nations who will not do exactly as we tell them. Who says there is no money to fix Detroit? Or Gary (Indiana), or Camden (New Jersey)? Don't y'all be silly.
The best way to fix it is to let it go under, bust the public sector Unions and stop rewarding incompetence.
 

Mr. Friscus

Governor
We are not broke, folks; there is plenty of money to go around. We have beaucoup moolah to wage war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and Syria; to spend one trillion dollars per annum on our bloated military, as well as fund Israel's insatiable war machine and national health system; and for nation building in those countries we have destroyed with smart bombs. And then there are those 750 military bases around the world that we maintain just so we can threaten those nations who will not do exactly as we tell them. Who says there is no money to fix Detroit? Or Gary (Indiana), or Camden (New Jersey)? Don't y'all be silly.
We have a fiat currency... just give the word to ol' Bernanke and he can print up all the money we need, thus lowering the worth of the currency and robbing all of us!
 

ARMCX1

Mayor
The effect of the bankruptcy will be to allow Detroit to reduce it's pension and healthcare benefits to Detroit retirees and future retirees.

Detroit has underfunded pensions by ~$3.5 billion and underfunded healthcare by $5.7 billion. Currently, Detroit's pension funds have over $5 billion in assets in support of the pensions for about 30,000 active and retired municipal workers.

Pensions and healthcare are responsible for about half of Detroit's ~$18.5 billion in debt, according to media reports.

The pensions funds have filed a suit asking for an injunction to prevent the emergency manager from cutting the city's pension benefits.

Retiree benefits have been on the chopping block for 3 decades -- whether public or private.

Detroit's bankruptcy will have significant economic and political ramifications for Michigan and the rest of the nation since it serves as a model by which overburdened state and local governments will divest themselves of pension and healthcare obligations to their retired workers and shift costs to active employees.
 

fairsheet

Senator
The effect of the bankruptcy will be to allow Detroit to reduce it's pension and healthcare benefits to Detroit retirees and future retirees.

Detroit has underfunded pensions by ~$3.5 billion and underfunded healthcare by $5.7 billion. Currently, Detroit's pension funds have over $5 billion in assets in support of the pensions for about 30,000 active and retired municipal workers.

Pensions and healthcare are responsible for about half of Detroit's ~$18.5 billion in debt, according to media reports.

The pensions funds have filed a suit asking for an injunction to prevent the emergency manager from cutting the city's pension benefits.

Retiree benefits have been on the chopping block for 3 decades -- whether public or private.

Detroit's bankruptcy will have significant economic and political ramifications for Michigan and the rest of the nation since it serves as a model by which overburdened state and local governments will divest themselves of pension and healthcare obligations to their retired workers and shift costs to active employees.
You raise a good point, ARMCX......BUT, today's active employees seem somewhat oblivious in this regard. All too many cheer the guvmint and corps on, in their efforts to cut retirees off at the knees. But, they're missing the fact that the guvmint and corps aren't making it up on the other end.

As I've noted before, if you were to quiz 10 young people as to the future of Social Security, 9 would say that it won't be there when they retire. They're wrong of course. But, if they truly believe what they say, wouldn't the be far more insistent than they are about the people for whom they're working, providing them a plausible alternative?

If truth be told though....I don't imagine all of 'em necessarily do believe what they say. It just makes them feel better to mimic the popular "wisdom".
 

JackDallas

Senator
Supporting Member
You raise a good point, ARMCX......BUT, today's active employees seem somewhat oblivious in this regard. All too many cheer the guvmint and corps on, in their efforts to cut retirees off at the knees. But, they're missing the fact that the guvmint and corps aren't making it up on the other end.

As I've noted before, if you were to quiz 10 young people as to the future of Social Security, 9 would say that it won't be there when they retire. They're wrong of course. But, if they truly believe what they say, wouldn't the be far more insistent than they are about the people for whom they're working, providing them a plausible alternative?

If truth be told though....I don't imagine all of 'em necessarily do believe what they say. It just makes them feel better to mimic the popular "wisdom".
I remember old folks telling me 30 years ago that SS would not be available to me when I got old enough to draw it. They were wrong; but that was before Obama and mis magic medical machine.
 

EatTheRich

President
According to EattheRich, this just in: White People sabotage Detroit to make the Black Mayor, and thus black people everywhere, look bad!

Women and Children effected the most!
No, white people living in Detroit's segregated suburbs--such as all-white Dearborn and Grosse Pointe--took advantage of Detroit until it was drained dry. For example, they had no facilities for dealing with the impecunious sick, the mentally ill, the juvenile delinquents, or the homeless--so when their own suburbs produced such people, they counted on Detroit to pick up the bill for caring for them.

You're also ignoring the fact that the state of Michigan owes Detroit tens of millions of dollars that it has refused to release.
 

Days

Commentator
No, white people living in Detroit's segregated suburbs--such as all-white Dearborn and Grosse Pointe--took advantage of Detroit until it was drained dry. For example, they had no facilities for dealing with the impecunious sick, the mentally ill, the juvenile delinquents, or the homeless--so when their own suburbs produced such people, they counted on Detroit to pick up the bill for caring for them.

You're also ignoring the fact that the state of Michigan owes Detroit tens of millions of dollars that it has refused to release.
There's a history of conflict that dates back to the French fort of Cadillac detroit, which the British utterly razed - until nothing was left but the riverside, itself: hence; detroit.

this is how it really looks:

acmsimg_freep_com_apps_pbcsi_dll_bilde_5160f2819fa1ac4cc6748ee5c014d0f1._.jpg

My father, older brother and I were the ones who first managed to make the window washing service go on RENCEN; I was 19 years old at the time (I'm turning 54 in September)

From 1910's to 1950's, Detroit manufacturing grew to be the most powerful in the world... and then declined to what is likely now the weakest of any major city in the nation. It rose fast and it fell hard.

Auto Plants Are Few, Manufacturing Jobs Scarce
The Chrysler Jefferson North Assembly plant and General Motors' Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant are the last two major factories in the city. In 1950, 200,000 Detroiters worked in manufacturing jobs; now, fewer than 20,000 do.

A Declining Population In A Widespread City
Detroit's population is close to the same size now as it was in 1910, before the city's automotive boom began. The city's population peaked at 1.86 million in 1950. The 2012 U.S. Census showed the city with about 700,000 residents. Detroit covers 138.76 square miles, with a shoreline of 4.12 miles. It is slightly smaller than Mobile, AL, and a little bigger than Las Vegas.
 

EatTheRich

President
The government could provide a lot of jobs rebuilding that city's infrastructure and employing people there in manufacturing.
 

N.B. Forrest

Council Member
No, white people living in Detroit's segregated suburbs--such as all-white Dearborn and Grosse Pointe--took advantage of Detroit until it was drained dry. For example, they had no facilities for dealing with the impecunious sick, the mentally ill, the juvenile delinquents, or the homeless--so when their own suburbs produced such people, they counted on Detroit to pick up the bill for caring for them.

You're also ignoring the fact that the state of Michigan owes Detroit tens of millions of dollars that it has refused to release.
The condition of 90%+ black Detroit in 2013 should convince whites to rethink everything they know about law, order, biology, genetics, and integration...
 

N.B. Forrest

Council Member
Detroit was in bad shape before they ever got a Black mayor. In fact, cities tend to get their first Black mayors after they find themselves in bad shape, just as the U.S. got its first Black president after it found itself in bad shape. If any one person is responsible, it is Orville Hubbard with his campaign to keep Dearborn white ... as author James Loewen proves in his book Sundown Towns, almost all the problems of the cities were caused by nearby white-only suburbs taking advantage of the cities.


Detroit, a city that went black in 1973 with the election of a black mayor and never, ever looked back, saw the unleashing of a black wave of violence eerily reminiscent of the one taking over America since Barack Obama took power in 2009:
The summer of 1976 was shocking even by Detroit standards. Looting of downtown stores became an everyday sport – not something reserved for special occasions. In on struggling neighborhood in the northwest of town, shopowners reported replacing plate-glass windows as often as twice a week. Black and white, shopmen and customers, in big department stores and mom-and-pop grocers: among the few businesses remaining inside the city line, no one was spared. Against this background of daily robberies and muggings, a handful of particularly grisly individual crimes stood out. A popular community priest was robbed and brutally murdered in his rectory. A legal aid lawyer’s leg was broken when an auto thief ran over him in his own car. But most terrifying – and relatively new to most whites – were the teenage gangs that flourished that summer. Groups called the Bishops and the BKs (short for Black Killers) waged open warfare in the neighborhoods. They also ventured occasionally into the central business district to prey on suburban shoppers and one evening rampaged through the expensive Pontchartrain Hotel. Coming by chance on a private party, 20 youths tore through the opulent dining room, overturning tables, stealing pursues and screaming, “Black killers! Black killers! It’s all about the Black killers!
In truth, whatever happened now, the damage had been done – to Detroit’s image, its hope for economic revival, its chances for sharing in the prosperity of an integrated region. White perceptions of the city, already soured by 1967, would never recover from the summer of 1976. (p. 333-336)


http://stuffblackpeopledontlike.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-summer-of-1976-from-ashes-of-white.html
 

Days

Commentator
Detroit, a city that went black in 1973 with the election of a black mayor and never, ever looked back, saw the unleashing of a black wave of violence eerily reminiscent of the one taking over America since Barack Obama took power in 2009:
The summer of 1976 was shocking even by Detroit standards. Looting of downtown stores became an everyday sport – not something reserved for special occasions. In on struggling neighborhood in the northwest of town, shopowners reported replacing plate-glass windows as often as twice a week. Black and white, shopmen and customers, in big department stores and mom-and-pop grocers: among the few businesses remaining inside the city line, no one was spared. Against this background of daily robberies and muggings, a handful of particularly grisly individual crimes stood out. A popular community priest was robbed and brutally murdered in his rectory. A legal aid lawyer’s leg was broken when an auto thief ran over him in his own car. But most terrifying – and relatively new to most whites – were the teenage gangs that flourished that summer. Groups called the Bishops and the BKs (short for Black Killers) waged open warfare in the neighborhoods. They also ventured occasionally into the central business district to prey on suburban shoppers and one evening rampaged through the expensive Pontchartrain Hotel. Coming by chance on a private party, 20 youths tore through the opulent dining room, overturning tables, stealing pursues and screaming, “Black killers! Black killers! It’s all about the Black killers!
In truth, whatever happened now, the damage had been done – to Detroit’s image, its hope for economic revival, its chances for sharing in the prosperity of an integrated region. White perceptions of the city, already soured by 1967, would never recover from the summer of 1976. (p. 333-336)


http://stuffblackpeopledontlike.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-summer-of-1976-from-ashes-of-white.html

In September of 1976 I turned 17 years old and began working for my father at Spider Staging Sales ... on Wyoming Avenue. My father was one of the few white business managers who chose to stay in the city. I took the John C Lodge freeway to work. At that time, those gangs were driving up and down the Lodge, shooting whole families in their cars. If they saw someone pulled over, they pulled over, and if it was anyone white, they shot "em all dead and drove off. The state police had to patrol the freeway for the explicit reason of stopping the gang murders. It was white genocide, it was intentional, and it worked. That's what created the concentric circles, that's how a city that had a black minority became 90% black in a matter of a couple of decades. The white people didn't want to leave their beautiful houses, so they had to be driven from the city at gunpoint. The message was clear and everyone who lived in Detroit heard it; whiteys leave now or be shot. ALL the whites moved out. Only the Arab population stayed... armed to the teeth. Most people have no idea what really happened in Detroit. Coleman Young destroyed a beautiful city, trashed and burned it, and left it in complete financial chaos. He was a radical black panther from the streets and they elected him to 5 staight terms, there was nothing left of Detroit business community by the time he left.

I'm no skinhead, I grew up there, and I lived in the city limits of Detroit, I worked downtown, I went to buildings and power plants and auto factories all over the city, I can remember chatting with a young black man in east Detroit about 22 years ago, he had ran out into the street and struck up a conversation with me, a real nice kid of 18 years... I asked him why he was so anxious to meet a complete stranger, he replied, "because you are the first white person I've ever seen in my life."

The '67 riots were probably the fiercest street fighting in American history. The black panthers were armed to the teeth and ready for a fight. The mayor had to ask for the state militia, and they were driven back, finally the heavy armor was rolled in, halftracks, 50 caliber machine guns, it took 30 days to gain control of the battle ground: ten city blocks along 10th Avenue that were utterly burned to the ground, nothing survived. The city rebuilt 10th Avenue and renamed it Rosa Parks Blvd. They then Rosa Parks her own house, and she lived out her years in that free house. Once, Rosa was robbed by some stupid kid who didn't know who the old lady was, that created quite an uproar in the black community.

Downtown, the panthers built their symbol, a black raised fist; it is supposedly Joe Louis' arm, but everyone knows what it is. It is their city now and they are trying to bring it back, but the economic tsunami that wasted Detroit was devastatingly thorough, Michigan went from the richest state in the nation to the poorest state in the nation... the city that out produced Berlin in WWII is now a manufacturing wasteland, they still have the armory, which still makes the best tanks in the world, but those two old auto plants are bound to close at some point; and the sad part of this bankruptcy is the arts; Detroit has a world class art collection in her museums and those works are owned by the city, which means they will need to be liquidated for the bankruptcy; that's like telling a rich lady to strip and taking her fine clothes and jewelry; it is the final humiliation for what was one of the finest cities in the world, people came the world over to enjoy our ethnic festivals downtown; it was a trip rewarded to new couples on the Dating Game and other tv shows; Michigan used to be #1 vacation spot in the nation.... Detroit was an opulent city, rich in culture and history, as old as the east coast cities, but it was pillaged badly, all the finest stores that lined Woodward Avenue were robbed into moving out; Hudsons used to put on the biggest fireworks in the world along the riverfront every 4th of July, I never missed those, no one did, they were free; imagine seeing the equivalent of the Bicentennial show in Washington DC every 4th of July; that was Detroit; summer in the city was fun, fun, fun if you was downtown, where all the lights were bright.

Today, if you travel into the once opulent downtown skyscrapers, it is like the slums in there, the pipework is falling to pieces, the walls are crumbling, the electricity doesn't work, the heat doesn't work, not RenCen, but all the old buildings; Detroit built them back in the day when NYC was going up; imagine this, my father outsold NYC Spider branch manager, every year, that's how much work was going on in Detroit. Now it is a city in need of a jump start. There's no love lost on Detroit, no one is going to help them, they will have to take the skewering from the Governor, and start over. Detroit was taken over by animals that now has handed their destruction to their kids, and the kids are trying real hard, but their parents fucked them over something fierce.
 

EatTheRich

President
1. Coleman Young was not in fact a Black Panther.
2. One percent of Detroit blacks favored "total separation" between the races in 1968, whereas 17% of Detroit whites did. African-Americans supported "integration" by 88%, while only 24% of whites supported integration.
3. The rate of decline in Detroit's population was higher in the 2 decades before 1967 than in the 2 decades after. And a far greater percentage of the Black people caught in Detroit's all-white-by-choice suburbs (Dearborn, Grosse Pointe) ended up killed compared to whites living in Detroit. In fact, Detroit, although heavily segregated, is over 10% white today.
4. The 1967 rebellion was in fact a massive battle between the army, national guard, and police on one hand, and the Black community of Detroit on the other, a battle that caused major damage, and a battle in which the Black community was decisively defeated and its organizations (such as the Black Panthers) significantly weakened. It came about as a response to social conditions in Detroit including, according to the U.S. government's own commission on the matter:

A) prior to the riot, 45% of police working in black neighborhoods were "extremely anti-Negro" and an additional 34% were "prejudiced"
B) 93% of the force was still European American, although 30% of the city residents were African American.
C) Police made street searches of groups of young men and single women complained of being called prostitutes for simply walking on the street. The police frequently arrested people who did not have proper identification. The local press reported several questionable shootings and beatings of blacks by officers in the years before 1967. After the riot, a Detroit Free Press survey showed that residents reported police brutality as the number one problem they faced in the period leading up to the riot.
D) unemployment among black men was more than double that among white men in Detroit
E) Certain business sectors were known to discriminate against hiring blacks, even at entry-level positions
F) many of the blacks who moved to the 12th Street area rented from absentee landlords and shopped in businesses run by suburbanites
G) Detroit Public Schools suffered from underfunding and racial discrimination before the riots
H) In stores serving black neighborhoods, owners engaged in "sharp and unethical credit practices" and were "discourteous if not abusive to their customers."

In other words, Detroit is paying the price for the racist policies of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.
 
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