Posted on 11/01/2009 7:37:29 AM PST by cycle of discernment
( Atlanta has thrived in SPITE of it's useless, tax everything, do nothing, give perks to officials city government, NOT because of it!! It's the entreprenuers, transportation hub, and the climate that have Atlanta humming!)
White candidate scrambles vote, attitudes in Atlanta race By Joseph Curl
For decades as white residents fled to the suburbs, Atlanta's black political establishment, led by a string of strong mayors, revived the moribund economy and so revamped the city's image that it earned a national reputation as "Hotlanta."
Ironically, that success - including a winning bid to host the 1996 Summer Olympics and a slew of Fortune 500 companies relocating to the city - has brought white voters flocking back to the city and, for the first time in 36 years, could put a white candidate back in the mayor's office when voters go to the polls Tuesday.
In a race testing racial harmony in Georgia's largest city, some veteran black power brokers say their hold on power is being undercut by their past successes running the city.
"We haven't always gotten the credit for that, no," said former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, who oversaw the early days of the city's rebirth during the 1980s. "I brought in 1,100 companies from around the world - $70 billion in private investment - and generated more than a million new jobs.
"But most people think that's automatic, that that would have happened anyway," he said with a laugh.
Mary Norwood, who has served on the Atlanta City Council for eight years has been expanding her lead over the past six weeks. In a poll released last weekend by Survey USA, 46 percent of respondents said they would vote for Mrs. Norwood over several black candidates. State Sen. Kasim Reed
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
LOL! What a load of Barbara Striesand.
Atlanta's been called "Hotlanta" forever. Not because of it's Black mayors but because of it's nightlife and party atmosphere.
Ask the local businesses if it was a 'success.'
They know better and so did many in Chicago who didn't want a reprise of that debacle, ego trips for MO & BO notwithstanding.
Did they mention jailbird, Bill Campbell?
It makes it more difficult to search an article when you change the title.
I read this yesterday and thought maybe it was a reference to an Atlanta in another part of the world. It sure didn’t have anything to do with one down in Georgia.
Got caught up in that Freaknic a coupla times in Hotlanta
a coupla times by mistake..the Drags at Commerce were the
same week-end. One scary event,worse than people can imagine
Would be great to see a change in Atlanta politics.
The Dim machine won`t go down quietly
Why anybody would want to be a White candidate in that city is beyond me. The opposing forces would find or invent ammunition for their slime machine beginning the day of the election.
Judges? The judges say no.
The correct answer?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_%27Lanta
It's one of the better songs on easily the best album of all time. When people (eg, ESPN's Chris Berman) refer to Atlanta as "Hot 'Lanta", that is really the reason why.
“The Dim machine won`t go down quietly”
...you got that right!...this talk about a white mayor won’t happen...black community organizers will round up enough votes for a black to win...plus, blacks control the polling places....they control the voting apparatus of every urban area in the country for that matter...the fix is in....and will stay in....make no mistake about that.
My first impression of Atlanta occurred about 20 years ago when I was passing through the Atlanta airport. I was in uniform and had stopped at a brand-new USO for a cup of coffee. Before I could finish my coffee, a group of black airport police appeared and chased all of the military out of the USO. From our vantage point a hundred feet down the corridor, we soon saw why we were chased out. Strutting down the corridor like a third-world dictator, then-mayor Maynard Jackson, surrounded by a large entourage of blacks and preceded by a TV camera crew walking backwards, had come to the USO for a photo-op for the evening news. Although we couldn’t hear Jackson’s speech, it was apparent that his photo-op was far more important that the welfare of the GI, for whom the USO had been provided.
Maybe, but my niece that was a long haul driver referred to it as hotlanta for years! that and ring around, but that was her CB slang speaking.
If you gaze at the various steps that Detroit took almost forty years ago....Atlanta is taking the same steps. It may take another thirty years...but it will eventually reach Detroit-status...and start to deteriorate. The established money-makers in Detroit eventually moved forty miles outside of town....and left the rest of the city to folks to destroy. You see the same effort in Atlanta today.
Can they do the job or not? I’d back a black conservative or moderate over a white liberal. It was white liberals who started the major decline of Detroit, not the black liberals who just accelerated it.
I lived there for 12 years, arriving just before the Olympics, and the first major thought I had on arrival turned out to be the explanation of what’s wrong with Atlanta that I left the area with. And that is jurisdiction.
You have a black political power center in the City of Atlanta, which is part of Fulton County, and not the better half. You have several counties which intersect in the center of what would be called the Atlanta metro area, like pie slices. And you have the major economic generator in the area, Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, owned by the City of Atlanta, despite the fact that it is an island of city property (i.e., not located within or contiguous with the City of Atlanta).
Each of the counties competes with each other for things like housing starts and commercial development – so there is no regional development perspective to help guide development in some coordinated fashion with transportation networks.
Then you have things like MARTA which are an overlay across several jurisdictions – a massive, post-office like, make-work enterprise. The rail portion of MARTA is a joke, utterly ineffective for most metro Atlantans because it does not offer origins or destinations relevant to where they live, work or want to go.
Politically – the City of Atlanta will never agree to cede power to any metropolitan government (something made up of as many as 8-10 of the present counties around the city of Atlanta might be the right scale and make some sense), so I think there is no solution. You have problems which require metropolitan solutions and you have political power compartmentalized in the City of Atlanta and the counties and never the twain shall meet. If Norwood is elected – she will be frustrated by the bureaucracy of the City of Atlanta – much of which is a make-work, full employment scheme for Democratic voters in that city.
When present Atlanta Mayor Franklin was elected a major accounting firm agreed to provide the City with a free benchmarking analysis of city operations. It showed that the City of Atlanta had roughly 125% of the number of employees relative to other cities (measured on a per capita basis) but that its total payroll was something like 81% of other cities (again on a per capita basis) – so you had a bloated staff of underpaid (and presumably – and may I say from personal experience, demonstrably) - poorly qualified employees. Say it with me – p-a-t-r-o-n-a-g-e.
If Norwood is elected she will bump into that pretty fast. So I wouldn’t consider this to be a watershed moment. Until someone rationalizes the jurisdictional basis for the governmental units which have responsibility for the government services in the metro area (water issues, transportation, development, etc.), things will just stumble along.
.Gary Indiana, West Compton, East Orange, Lawnside New Jersey, Camden, Newark, West Memphis, Calumet, Dolton Illinois, St. Louis, East St. Louis, Flint, East Cleveland, Miami-Gardens, East Dunbar Florida, Birmingham Alabama, Blue Hills Connecticut, New Orleans, Baltimore, Detroit, Flint, Highland Park Michigan, Cleveland, East Cleveland, Lincoln Heights, Jackson Mississippi ... just the reverse Midas touch I guess... everything they touch turns to sh#t.
Did anyone else notice that the LIBERAL NEWS reporter spend the entire articvle focusing on RACE rather than which political party will win?
This is a REPUBLICAN winning because of a large number of DEMOCRAPS (including blacks) voting for her
No, it’s not the black folks that are the problem. Black liberals are just as corrosive as white liberals. Liberalism is the problem.
Get some solid Black conservatives in there, and clean the place up!
“Did anyone else notice that the LIBERAL NEWS reporter spend the entire articvle focusing on RACE rather than which political party will win?”
Here’s the test: Can ANYONE find an article on this election that totally ignores race? Just names three people (no pictures) and says what they will do and what their background is. I somehow doubt it.
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