First of all, one car fire hardly means that St. Louis and Missouri “are burning.” But, St. Louis does have potentially fatal problems. Its population has dropped from 850,000 to about 320,000 over the last 60 years. This means that there are large stretches of abandoned buildings—homes, businesses and factories that are deteriorating. Most of these are in the north part of town which also happens to be where most of the blacks live.
Many of these areas are dominated by street gangs. Problem is St Louis is physically quite small, so gang territories are all jammed close together, so turf wars are frequent, resulting in St. Louis being one of America’s most dangerous cities.
And to top things off, the city can’t tap into the coffers of St. Louis county. Over 100 years ago, the city got the legislature to separate St. Louis city from the county—so it can’t expand or increase its tax base without a state constitutional amendment. (Which is as likely as residents of the Falklands voting to become part of Argentina).
StL. proper is the bastard child of Missouri. No one wants her...