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 ...
“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.”
Wow. God forbid we have food, a home or a job.
It sends a shiver down my terrified spine that these Obama Regime monsters are in power.
Nope. Farmington and Livonia. And before that Lincoln Park.
By day, I make the cars,
by night I make the bars.
LOL! I love how libs when they have no idea how to fix anything, usually by getting the hell out of the way, they say we need to do it “smarter.”
Detroit was a textbook example (not the propaganda textbooks in public schools) - on how liberalism, unions and corruption destroy everything like the plague.
Smart Growth is antithetical to human nature where most would prefer to live in a suburban or country setting. Be well aware your tax money is being spent to drag you into the cities.
Smart Growth is antithetical to human nature where most would prefer to live in a suburban or country setting. Be well aware your tax money is being spent to drag you into the cities.
I went to Detroit on business in the mid 1980s.
The hotel had free newspapers, and on the front page was a story about a well-know local heroin dealer who had bee found dead. On page one, the story said that speculation was that the cause of his death was switching from selling "Johnny Sunshine" brand heroin, to "Whipcracker" brand.
The whole concept of this being front-page news was alien to my thought process. But, the revelation that heroin was sold under brand names in Detroit convinced me that the entire city was gone beyond any hope of recovery.
Have you watched any of the videos on You Tube? Falluhja (sp?) in Iraq probably is nicer than Detroit or Camden, NJ.
My tale has been told in other posts but I'll share it here again since this thread concerning Detroit seems appropriate.
I'm from Pittsburgh -- born and raised there. Several decades ago, I finally got fed up with the entrenched DemonRAT machine controlling Allegheny County and the city (Connie Scully, David Lawrence, Joe Barr and Pete Flaherty were the RAT mayors during my time there).
Likewise, although I'm proud of getting a union decertified at my workplace, I was just getting too old for the fight against union thugs. I also grew to despise the anti-capitalist, anti-business attitudes that pervades much of the working class in western Pennsylvania. They still blame the collapse of the steel industry on the "big shots" instead of realizing that big labor and exorbitant wages and benefits made it uncompetitive.
I actually wrote a Fortran program years ago to find the place in the lower 48 that would most appeal to me. After sifting through the considerable data on the Hollerith cards, the ancient IBM/1130 indicated that the Dallas, Texas area would be best for me. It's pretty good here and I have no desire whatsoever to return to Pennsylvania for more than a quick visit.
In fact, last summer was my first time back in some 25 years as part of a vacation that included Western Pennsylvania on the itinerary. I was struck by just how dreary Pittsburgh was, the state of the worn-out housing stock (aside from some nice areas in Cranberry) and the terrible shape of the pothole-filled roads. The only thing I found appealing after living here in Texas for so long is that virtually no one speaks Spanish. It was a nice change to go into an Eat 'n Park and not hear a word of that jibberish by either the waitstaff or the customers.
Spent a lot of my childhood at Pontiac Lake. My parents liked waterskiing.
BS. Texas is infested with open-border RINOs like Perry, Kay Bailey, Coryn and others. The GOP is run by LBJ Republicans. This is not a slight against Texas/ns but they need to dump open border RINO scum.
God look what Suzanne Martinez did in her first month in more hispanic NM. She banned D/L for illegals. Rick Perry should stop worry about his hair. HE is a one worlder like the Connecticut Bush clan.
“It’s called White Flight.”
Otherwise known as “Ethnic Cleansing”.
Hilarious.
I agree. The Messkins are a real problem here and that situation must be addressed. Look what they did to California.
Having commuted to Detriot from the east coast for a few years, Detroit is truly an amazing city.
Henry Ford built the Rouge plant, a totally self sufficient auto manufacturing plant. Barges would offload coke and the steel mills created metal; the glass shop made auto glass; the rubber entered the tire department; the spoked wheels were shaped in the wood shop.
Every part, of every automobile, was produced within the confines of the absolutely huge Rouge plant. Model T’s rumbled out of this plant at thousands per day - all hand built, all components produced on site.
To produce so much output Ford needed labor, and they increasingly brought in under-employed blacks from the South, then brought in arabs to supplement his workforce.
The city center is amazing: unbelievable concert halls, beautiful theatres, huge opulent hotels, wide boulevards - mostly built in the 20’s/thirties, some later. The population that remains, lives on the circular ring roads to Detriot: Two mile, three mile; five mile; eight mile,etc, mostly 50/60’s type housing.
Today, all this downtown wealth lies in a pit of sh!t. Unwalkable downtown, poverty abounds all within 1/2 a block of GM headquarters.
If the US were to want to test the effects of an urban nuclear bomb, downtown Detriot is the place to drop it. Yet, it might not be a fair test, since all the bricks, mortar, and concrete that is the hellhole called Detriot is already at least seventy years old.
Incredible city!
That is lovely. Thank you.
When you leave, DON'T LOOK BACK!
Lived in Livonia till I was 13 and graduated high school in Farmington Hills. The riots in 67 and Coleman Young being elected mayor were the death knell for Detroit. I live out West now, but the weird thing is that I find myself defending Michigan and the Detroit area when confronted by the West Coast snobs from Seattle and Portland who have absolutely no idea what the area is like.
When I was a kid you only went to the city on field trips and sporting events if you were a Tigers or Wings fan. It was like a black enclave surrounded by white folks. All of the money fled to the suburbs, where it has pretty much remained. I enjoyed hearing my grandparents talking about what a great city it was in the day. My parents have memories of that greatness too, and of the 82nd Airborne locking the city down during the 67 riots. They blocked liquor sales off and my paternal grandfather went out to Howell to get his supply of spirits.
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