Yeah, that's the ticket. Thanx Army Air Corps!
Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 02/11/2011 9:28:43 PM PST by wheresmyusa
AMID THE animated rodents, smushed test-babies, snack-food perversions, and crude humor of Sunday’s Super Bowl ads was a powerful, two-minute homage to Detroit, America’s most abject city. Over a pulsating soundtrack of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself,’’ viewers were treated to panning shots of some of Detroit’s lovingly restored landmarks from the days when the auto industry made it the richest city in the United States. Today it is the poorest, with a 36 percent poverty rate.
Far from avoiding its grim, rust belt image, the ad — ostensibly to introduce a new Chrysler luxury sedan — celebrated the city’s guts-and-grit industrial base, its smokestacks, its hard times. “It’s the hottest fires that make the hardest steel,’’ the narrator intoned.
It was a goosebump moment for sure. But it will take more than an appeal to regional pride to save Detroit, home to 80,000 abandoned buildings and an unemployment rate of 29 percent. It will take a national urban policy the likes of which the United States hasn’t seen for 40 years.
Detroit is only the starkest symptom of decades of wholesale disinvestment in the nation’s older urban centers. The same conditions obtain on a smaller scale from Trenton to Buffalo to Lawrence. “If you don’t have a platform of national policy you’re really sailing against the wind," said Bruce Katz, vice president and director of the Metropolitan Policy program at the Brookings Institution.
But Katz would broaden the lens to include a new economic plan for the whole nation. For too long, he says, America’s economic policy has focused on consumption, home ownership, and the financial industry.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Yeah, that's the ticket. Thanx Army Air Corps!
Typical idiotic advice from a liberal. To sum up this moron’s analysis: when you have dug yourself a deep pit, keep on digging. All the biggest and best progressive ideas for Detroit and other cities like it won’t make a dent in the picture until the attitude of the people who live in those cities changes.
The two greatest lines ever written in a country music song. To make it more interesting, I first heard that song when I was thirteen, and my family was returning from a trip to a big city visiting relatives. That city was Detroit.
Look at all that great stone work in that house. In the early 20th century, German and Italian craftsmen and masons arrived in the Midwest and built beautiful homes. You can see their work in Milwaukee, too.
Wainscoated walls. Really unique cabinetry - made of oak and birdseye maple - in the kitchens and dining rooms. Hardwood tongue and groove floors. Walk-in cupboards with etched glass cabinets.
It would take a fortune today to duplicate what was done for ordinary middle class folks back then.
Sigh...
I spent most of my life living in a Detroit suburb. About 25 years ago, I worked for a contractor doing weatherization work on lots of welfare ghetto houses. While the homes bore great testament to the artisans who built them, decades of neglect rendered them unsaveable. The was over 20 years ago. It’s only worse now.
My solution. Close entire multiple square mile tracts of land. Everyone moves out. Majority of buildings are not owner occupied anyway. Buy out the landlords for fair market value. Lease the land for 1-5 years to US Military, SWAT teams, Allied military, fire departments etc. as a urban training site. Then, using the lease money, tear down what’s left. Down to the sewers. Remove the basements and let the land lie fallow.
They had some photos of people exploring from roof tops. So many vacant lots it looks like almost a rural small midwestern town from the 16th floor of some buildings.
One local TV news show talked about wild animals moving back, a beaver making a dam, etc. The trees taking back buildings. Let nature take it all back. Wild animals are more civilized then these welfare parasites.
GM and Chrysler need to get cut off from federal money NOW. I am not that crazy about Ford letting the vermin roll them.
“Smart growth” huh? Detroit is dead. It would be like going into a morgue and trying to use “smart growth” with a cadaver.
The danger in that scenario is that rather than a municipality or county getting its hooks into Honda, they have to be careful that the STATE government doesn’t end up having them feed half of Cleveland & Cincinatti. I hope it works out well for them!
Agree - but with enough Reps getting into power, hopefully the voices of the failed cities of the North will be ignored.
They probably will be; who was our last “Yankee” president?
Kennedy?
Detroit cannot be saved.
Bush I grew up in the Northeast. Reagan was originally from Illinois. Ford was from Grand Rapids, MI.
Last democrat yankee is this dips**t, although he's a transplant from Hawaii/Indonesia/Kenya.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.