Posted on 07/23/2013 1:50:01 PM PDT by SatinDoll
This gets really tiring....(Robert Reich vomits forth)
"In other words, much in modern America depends on where you draw boundaries, and who's inside and who's outside. Who is included in the social contract? If "Detroit" is defined as the larger metropolitan area that includes its suburbs, "Detroit" has enough money to provide all its residents with adequate if not good public services, without falling into bankruptcy. Politically, it would come down to a question of whether the more affluent areas of this "Detroit" were willing to subsidize the poor inner-city through their tax dollars, and help it rebound. That's an awkward question that the more affluent areas would probably rather not have to face." (Quote from Robert Reich.
It is?
Look Robert, I happen to know more than a bit about what happened in Detroit. My family on my father's side grew up and lived in River Rouge. Yes, that suburb of Detroit -- a place of steel plants, car plants and other industry. A gentrified area that slowly turned into a sewer.
Here's the real "awkward" question -- what is your rational response when crime starts to move higher where you live? Should you simply sit and take it as your cars are stolen, your building defaced, your daughter raped, your grandmother mugged on the way back from church, and in addition pay ever-higher taxes in order to "suppress" these changes? Or is it more rational to move and let the animals fight among themselves -- a process that continues until there are only animals left?
Exactly who's fault is it when someone chooses to rape, rob, beat someone, murder, deface or steal someone elses property and generally behave like a thug? If you argue that it's anyone's responsibility other than the person doing it then you are claiming that all men and women are not equal, that some are lesser, and that those who are lesser are incapable of taking care of themselves -- that they are infants or worse -- not really human.
That's not really what you're calling the folks who you claim are "oppressed" -- right?
Or is it?
More to the point, is there some requirement that I be forced to subsidize the life of those who prefer to live by raping, robbing and murdering? If you think this is an abstract of only Detroit, you're wrong. Here's a news story from Chicago -- and it's recent too.
A 15-year-old Florida girl was punched when she tried to help a 51-year-old Michigan woman being robbed Friday night on the Mag Mile by eight juveniles, officials said.
Two 15-year-old girls, a 14-year-old girl, a 13-year-old girl, three 15-year-old boys and a 16-year-old boy were arrested and charged with robbery, police said.
One of the 15-year-old girls -- who punched the Florida teen who tried to help -- also was charged with battery, and one of the boys was additionally charged with theft because police said he had another person's iPhone that had been either lost or stolen earlier Friday at North Avenue Beach.
The target of the robbery is white. All of the assailants are black. Yeah, I know, that's not in the Tribune article. That would be politically incorrect, you see; race is only included in news stories when the alleged perpetrator is white and the victim(s) are black. But Second City Cop tracked it down and confirmed it. Gee, it's not about race eh? How come this time it's not but the other way around invariably is?
And exactly how many people should be frequenting Chicago and spending money, thereby providing the economic activity the city needs to prosper, if animals -- of any race -- are roaming around attacking and robbing people at random?
Answer: Nobody in their right mind.
This has nothing to do with whether someone is black or white.
It has everything to do with whether or not you're a thug. That there is an over-representation of thugs among certain groups is due to their individual choice in actions, not the color of their skin -- unless you, Robert, are arguing that some people are "lesser" because of their race.
I know no liberal would ever make such a claim -- right? That's for those white KKK members down in.... oh, some hillbilly little town in the South.....
Look if someone wants to be a wild thang then they can go right ahead and do it. They're slitting their own throat though, as Detroit discovered. People can "wild" all they want, they can commit all sorts of crimes, they can crap all over where they live.
But let's not kid ourselves -- that's exactly what they're doing -- crapping and whizzing in their own beds.
Why? Because neither they, or you, can force people to stay in a given place and reasonable, law-abiding, peaceful citizens will leave such an environment irrespective of their race, color or creed -- at which point you have no jobs, no chain grocery stores with reasonable prices and no economic opportunity. Eventually the thugs find themselves with no ambulances, no street lights (because they stole all the wiring) hulks of burned out buildings and no tax revenue for pay for services.
Then people like Robert wring their hands and whine when the city cannot pay its cops, firefighters, EMTs and teachers -- and economically collapses.
Oh, and it's not just "let's get whitey" either. It's also "let's get lesbians"
As many as ten men punched and kicked the women, pressing them up against a car in the South Austen neighborhood of Chicago’s West Side, and hurling anti-gay slurs. They were allegedly laughing as they assaulted the couple.
Does race matter here? Nope. But what does matter is the key question that nobody wants to bring forward -- are he -- and his friends -- thugs?
Oh, and if you think this was some "random" attack, no it was not. At least one of the assailants knew the victims:
The attack occurred after a man, who had gone to high school with one of the women, recognized her and followed her down the street, taunting her for her gender-nonconforming attire. He punched her and, after the couple tried to fight back, was joined by other assailants.
But see, in Chicago you still can't legally carry the means of effective self-defense. So these two women who had every right to be where they were and to be left alone had no means of defending themselves against a mob of thugs that attacked them.
When seconds count the cops will be by in a few minutes -- to sweep up the mess.
Two nice little pistols -- one for each of those ladies -- and there'ld be a bunch of dead thugs instead of two injured women -- and I'd call that just desserts.
Robert and the media would probably call it "racism."
But instead we have one guy who's been busted and the cops are (I'm sure half-heartedly) looking for the others in Rahm's paradise, while the women live in fear -- sufficient and well-founded fear. Enough fear for them to decide to move.
Note carefully that by moving they are withdrawing their economic support of the city.
There are those who want to call that decision "white flight." I call it rational behavior. When some group wants to behave like a pack of wolves and on top of it the city government makes it difficult or impossible for the rest of the people to defend themselves don't be surprised when those good and decent individuals and families say "screw that!" and leave.
They can, they have, they will and they should.
I know people who had multiple vehicles and wheels stolen from their cars in the 1970s and 1980s in Detroit, from the parking lot of their workplace, in broad daylight. More than once they came out to their car after work to find their car on four cinder blocks. Yes, the thieves were that brazen. They weren't worried about the shop-owner popping out of the front door with a 12ga and splattering them all over the sidewalk. Why not? Because defending your property in that fashion would be "illegal".....
Into the middle of this you have abject financial fraud in the pension system and that is not limited to cities like Detroit. And this sort of use of force is so common that nobody even identifies it for what it is -- theft, exactly identical in form and fashion to stealing those wheels -- or the entire car.
The common rubric was that 8% or even 10% returns would be "modeled" and used to "compute" the contributions that are required for all those cops, teachers, school administrators and firefighters.
This might work for a while -- in an expanding credit environment it can. Indeed, isn't it funny that this almost-exactly matches the credit expansion in rate over the last 30 years?
But a pension plan is a forward, indefinite-duration thing because new employees come in to replace the ones who retire.
As such the claimed "return" that is embedded in to the promise is impossible to provide because it grossly exceeds the real return of the economy over any long run period in history. Leverage expansion returns can run in this range for a few decades but not permanently because leverage expansion is predicated on stealing purchasing power from the people on a continual basis.
The people eventually run out of marginal income that you can steal and ends -- it mathematically must because the alternative is that everyone starves!
Any and all such plans are thus scams. The people on both sides of the table either know or should know that this is the case. Those who argued for it and those who agreed to "pay" those amounts are equally at fault for either demanding or agreeing to give that which is impossible over the long run.
So in addition to the financial scam of these pensions that are spread far and wide in the United States we then add the physical crime of thugs thinking they can, without consequence, victimize the people who produce in a given area and they'll keep producing and paying into the government so they can not only be thugs but receive various forms of welfare and subsidy besides.
That sort of thought process goes beyond dumb -- it's criminally insane.
The pension promises of all of these "public" employees across the United States must be repudiated as fraudulent from inception and thus void. Transfer the balance of whatever is in there now into a separate fund, appoint someone to manage it to pay current beneficiaries and whoever is "vested" in ratable proportion to whatever is there, and let it run off until it's gone. Done.
Next, get the Sheriffs and Chiefs of Police out into the streets. Explain to the residents that they have two choices -- stop acting like thugs and find a way to be industrious in a lawful and reasonable fashion or they will starve. Start tapering the "welfare programs" in all forms at 5% a month from today's baseline until they're gone in less than two years. Keep hammering it -- vote for whoever you want, but this is how it's going to be because you're all there is and you're not, at present, earning any money to fund the services you want!
At the same time drop all the regulations that prevent private charity from running soup kitchens and similar, if they're willing to do so. Some churches and other organizations will do so provided they're not getting shot at. Whether they get shot at is up the residents.
You can't force people to stay, you can't tax someone who's not producing and those who were "promised" rich pensions that have payouts exceeding economic progress will not receive them because the promises were impossible to fulfill at the time they were made.
Those are facts folks, and Detroit, along with ****cago and other towns can either face them or face destruction.
Oh and if you think this is a problem only in big cities like Chicago and Detroit, you're wrong. It's a problem across the country wherever an entitlement mentality has taken hold -- including smaller towns and places where you wouldn't expect it.
Does anyone else believe that allowing CCW in Chicago will make a difference in the crime rate? I certainly do.
From what I've read, Detroit hasn't any gun control laws. If I am wrong on that, -- please! Don't hesitate to correct my ignorance.
Not when they're drawing lines to protect their liberal vote and create garbage pits like Detroit. In that case they want to keep certain people out. The only time they want them is to try to take their money and property.
Basically, there is enough money for Detroit and other cities if they can get the money in the suburbs. But then, the people there will just move further away. Why would anyone want to have his or her money finance corrupt Democrat politicians, Union bosses, bloated Union pay, and lawless cities? The Democrats always run out of success when they can shake other people down to pay for their own incompetence.
Prick acts like the stuff that happened to Detroit happened in a vacuum. Just totally spontaneous. Input from residents of wealthy surrounding suburbs wasn't sought by the leftists that ran the place when the seeds for this fiasco were being planted, now those people are supposed to "share" the harvest?
FURR!
Detroit is open and concealed carry.
One overlooked point is that cities have always been places of violence pretty much all over the world throughout history. Detroit was a rough town when my great grandfather arrived there in 1912 and it was even rougher when he worked for the purple gang during prohibition.
Urban violence is largely a natural result of the urban environment. Large numbers of people packed into small areas.
I agree, but only to a point. Detroit has ccw AND high crime rates. CCW's do give some protection to the innocent.
I used to live in Portland, Oregon, and now live 65 miles north. Conservatives refer to Portland as “The Peoples Republic of Portland”. The mayor is gay, the society brittle with libtards, and the place is generally drunk with the self-indulgence of leftward intelligentsia.
About three decades ago the City of Portland and the County of Multnomah merged to form METRO. This has financed light rail and enables those ‘producers’ living at the edge of the county to commute into downtown Portland. It has also financed other liberal moves, like city beautification, at the expense of definitely more practical and hygienic projects, like fixing the sewer treatment system.
Great piece by KD. Too bad there are so many people feeding at the trough across the country hoping reality won’t catch up with them.
Good article, but know that Karl Denninger thinks that you wanting secure borders and enforcement of our immigration laws is only because you are a racist bigot.
From a June 2007 WSJ editorial board meeting: Karl Denninger states “Their objection is fundamentally cultural, and they can’t say that” which, in the context of that meeting, is a polite way of calling us all racist bigots.
At the same Paul Gigot also calls conservatives wanting our immigration laws enforced and borders secured “irrational.”
They are no doubt toeing the WSJ’s official editorial stance of open borders, but ever since seeing the video of this WSJ editorial meeting I take everything from the WSJ, Karl Denninger or Paul Gigot with a large grain of salt.
I find it interesting that what I see happening are small, localized version of the book Atlas Shrugged. The producers are going on strike and leaving...what is left behind crumbles under the weight of it’s own incompetence.
This writer has clearly lost his mind...if he ever had one.
Yeah, but it does seem to be spreading. I hope the bad zones don’t grow till they merge and it does become a nationwide problem and there’s nowhere left to run away TO.
The sad thing about driving producers out of one area is that you eventually lose the secondary jobs over a much wider area.
Here along the I-94 corridor of southern Michigan not a single town was left untouched by the industrial flight out of Detroit. There were the big guys like Corning Glass, and Goodyear along with hundreds of other little shops that made screws, wire harnesses,, radio knobs etc. Along with those were the shops that catered to all those people working in the automotive industry in some form. Companies like Yard Man and Clark Equipment.
In reality the fall of industrialism in Detroit devastated an area from Pittsburgh to Chicago.
And that is where it gets scary.
Oh yeah, that's right. Before he gets clear to the West Coast (he hopes!), he'll be dead, and those who came behind will get to live in the Liberal stench he has made. No worries.
Oh, Happy Day.
I suggest you read #14. I’ve seen the exact same scenario, on a much smaller scale, when a nuclear plant closes in a rural area.
Spread the wealth baby!
Take from the workers, and give freely to the abusers (through appropriate Democrat party vote buying centers, of course)
I got your message. Just let me say, back in 2007 I didn’t believe in conspiracies — thought they were for stupid people!
It has always been my practice (since 1980) to research the candidates running for President and VP. So, I’m researching BHO2 and am disappointed that so much material is literally being wiped as I’m reading it. Since some of the information says he was born in Kenya, I go to African publications.
Holy-Mother-of-God! It was all over the African media that BHO2 was born in Kenya! There were even quotes from his family members to that effect.
So I posted comments on FR to such observations, and my computer was hacked and hard drive COPIED before it was wiped. My nephew, who was a terrific hacker himself, tracked the hacker to a Senate office building in Washington, D.C. I contacted the FBI but they did nothing.
It happened three more times: twice from Chicago before the election, and once from Washington, D.C., after the inauguration (I suspect that last one was out of spite).
I started answering my front door with a loaded shotgun, and in fact, sleep with one near my bed. Butterdezillion, who is investigating the Hawaii Department of Health’s records, has had her family targeted by vandals, including one incident involving snipped brake lines on her daughter’s vehicle.
During the past six years a very great deal has changed including the opinion of Rush Limbaugh towards illegal aliens. Yep, he used to think they were beneficial to our economy, so I stopped listening to him. He has changed his message on illegal aliens. Unfortunately, the same people who influence the WSJ contribute to Gov.Perry in Texas — “no security fence, thank you very much!”
Karl Denninger has admitted to voting for Obama. He has been scathing in his criticism of the do-nothing Indonesian for quite some time now. Whether that includes illegal aliens or not, I don’t know.
A lot of minds can be changed in six years.
We pass through Portland now and then and are always amused at the empty metro trains passing us. But, what can you expect in a county that was creating an $80,000 a year job for a Klingon interpreter in the social services department?
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