Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Gingrich calls Detroit a disaster, draws ire
Detroit News | July 31, 2007 | Jennifer Mrozowski and Tony Gonzalez

Posted on 07/31/2007 11:26:37 AM PDT by CutePuppy

Link only due to copyright restrictions
http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070731/METRO/707310344&imw=Y&template=printart


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; Politics/Elections; US: Michigan
KEYWORDS: bluezone; cities; detroit; education; gingrich; michigan; newt; union
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 161-169 next last
Refreshing, a politician calling spade a spade, taking on unions and horrors of "free and universal" public education system... Just think how well "free and universal" public healthcare system for all would work. States and cities should be laboratories and experiments of failures and successes of different approaches, not one-size-fits-all undunded mandates by federal government. The ones that succeed will draw in the best and will be followed by others who want the same, with differences in approach only dictated by differences in local and state cultures or economies. That's also the way to free market approach winning in vast majority of the states. That's why welfare states and national politicos are rushing to institute "universal" healthcare, before people will see the "Sicko" failures of the states that tried it.
1 posted on 07/31/2007 11:26:41 AM PDT by CutePuppy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: CutePuppy

“knows much about the true graduation rate”
Gingrich was probably being kind.
Clickable link:

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070731/METRO/707310344&imw=Y&template=printart


2 posted on 07/31/2007 11:29:23 AM PDT by dynachrome (Henry Bowman is right.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: CutePuppy

Correction. Detroit is not a disaster. It is a Samuel L. Jackson motherf&cking disaster.


3 posted on 07/31/2007 11:29:23 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (~~~Jihad Fever -- Catch It !~~~ (Backup tag: "Live Fred or Die"))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: CutePuppy
Which type of disaster complained about the comparison? Hurricanes, tornados, or earthquakes?

-Eric

4 posted on 07/31/2007 11:31:32 AM PDT by E Rocc (Resident Smartass and Myspace "Freepers" group moderator)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: fieldmarshaldj

The middle American metropolises should model themselves on Chicago.


5 posted on 07/31/2007 11:31:51 AM PDT by Borges
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: fieldmarshaldj

I live in the suburbs of Detroit and the reason it never changes is nobody listens when someone tells the truth.
Right on Newt!


6 posted on 07/31/2007 11:32:10 AM PDT by kempster
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: fieldmarshaldj

“Correction. Detroit is not a disaster. It is a Samuel L. Jackson motherf&cking disaster.”

Yep.


7 posted on 07/31/2007 11:32:40 AM PDT by EEDUDE
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: CutePuppy

And it also demonstrates that a Black Stalinist run city could kill and ruin more Black lives, hopes, and aspirations than the wettest Klansman’s fantasies.


8 posted on 07/31/2007 11:33:12 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (~~~Jihad Fever -- Catch It !~~~ (Backup tag: "Live Fred or Die"))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: dynachrome

Anybody thats actually driven through downtown Detriot knows this is true.


9 posted on 07/31/2007 11:34:19 AM PDT by Badeye (You know its a kook site when they ban the word 'kook')
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: CutePuppy
I've been fed up with Newt for about ten years, but I'm beginning to think that a Fred/Newt ticket would work.

Newt is smart. Fred's not.

10 posted on 07/31/2007 11:34:38 AM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum (Islam is a religion of peace, and Muslims reserve the right to kill anyone who says otherwise.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: E Rocc

Think Borg.


11 posted on 07/31/2007 11:34:48 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (~~~Jihad Fever -- Catch It !~~~ (Backup tag: "Live Fred or Die"))
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 4 | View Replies]

To: CutePuppy

The problem is, by calling it a disaster, Gingrich is making it a disaster. Remember, if you close your eyes and wish hard enough, all your dreams can come true!


12 posted on 07/31/2007 11:35:18 AM PDT by Aquinasfan (When you find "Sola Scriptura" in the Bible, let me know)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: fieldmarshaldj

rofl.


13 posted on 07/31/2007 11:35:40 AM PDT by darkangel82 (Socialism is NOT an American value.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: fieldmarshaldj
Detroit is one of the few places I can think of that would IMPROVE with an influx of illegals.

My dad worked in the auto industry for 35 years. He HATED traveling to Detroit, and had three of his closest friends leave after less than two years living in its suburbs. A rather depressing place and a cultural wasteland. The CITY, of course, should be evacuated and turned into a national park.

14 posted on 07/31/2007 11:36:12 AM PDT by Clemenza (Rudy Giuliani, like Pesto and Seattle, belongs in the scrap heap of '90s Culture)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: dynachrome
Thanks for making hyperlink clickable. Here is also an excerpt from transcript from original Fox News interview :

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,291301,00.html

WALLACE: All right. So people are going to say, "All right, Newt Gingrich, you come up with some ideas."

You're putting together what you call the American Solutions Conference where you're going to come up with big ideas. It's going to be in late September.

Give us an example. What is the kind of bold, transformational change that you're talking about that would really shake up Washington?

GINGRICH: Well, let's start with education. The Detroit public school system currently graduates 22 percent of its entering freshmen on time and fails to serve 78 percent of the young people in Detroit.

And if you're an African-American male, you have a 73 percent unemployment in your 20s if you drop out of school and a 60 percent chance of going to jail.

Now, faced with a catastrophic collapse of that scale, we should basically fundamentally replace the Detroit school system with a series of experiments to see if they'll work.

I would include paying kids in very poor neighborhoods the equivalent of working at McDonald's if they took math and science and got a B or better.

I would include the system, which is a private school system that graduates — 85 percent of its students in the inner city go to college.

Instead, because of the unions — and let's be clear. This is entirely about the unions. It's about . Because of the unions, in San Diego, I was briefed yesterday, there's a school that has great scores that is a charter school that's going to be closed because the teachers aren't unionized.

And you look at Detroit, which is a disaster. Just one quick thing. Detroit in 1950 had 1,800,000 people and the highest per capita income in the United States. Today, Detroit is at the 62nd per capita income with 950,000 people.

WALLACE: And is that the kind of thing that you as president would want to get involved in and run, or is it the kind of thing, I mean, that you would leave — most people would say you'd leave that to the city of Detroit and the state of Michigan.

GINGRICH: Well, first of all, I think that the reason we created — and we're having workshops nationwide online in late September — is because there are 513,000 elected offices in the United States.

And the reason that I've chosen to focus on creating a nationwide movement is precisely your question. I think we ought to challenge the Detroit school board. We ought to challenge the Detroit city council. We ought to challenge the Michigan legislature. We ought to challenge the governor of Michigan.

But by the way, while you're doing that, if you don't challenge the union and the education bureaucracy, and you don't challenge the UAW, you are not going to save Michigan.

Michigan has lost more jobs than any state in the United States except the impact of Katrina on Louisiana. And nobody stops and says, "What is the systemic reason for this collapse?"

I do think a president has an obligation to say to the country, "You can't compete with China and India if your education system is failing," and that has to be solved locally.

And frankly, I think the federal Department of Education is not a useful asset in trying to solve that.

WALLACE: Not surprisingly, your comments this week drew some pushback. You compared yourself to French General de Gaulle being asked in the '50s to join the pygmies, and here's what someone on the American Spectator blog wrote.

Take a look. "Newt is brilliant. Unfortunately, Newt knows he is brilliant. As a result, he has little control over his ego."

Mr. Speaker, how do you plead?

GINGRICH: Well, look. I was a child living in France in 1958. My dad was serving in the U.S. Army. We lived in Orleans. And I experienced what happened in France.

I watched the die, literally killed by the paratroopers after the Algerian war. I watched President de Gaulle, who had been the savior of France after World War II, who had retired to get out of politics because he thought it was a hopeless mess, brought back to create the Fifth Republic, which just elected a new president, the longest serving French system since the monarchy.

And my reference was as a teacher. I mean, I find it fascinating in the city that if you actually studied something and you actually know about something, you must be egocentric because you're actually talking about facts as opposed to what my consultant advised me that the focus group said last night that I should memorize.

I was relaying the systemic failure of the American system, Democrat and Republican, systemic in Sacramento, systemic in Detroit, systemic in Albany, systemic in Washington, D.C., and the fact that neither political party is producing the kind of campaign and the kind of candidates not just for president but across the system.

We are not coming to grips with how big our problems are.


15 posted on 07/31/2007 11:37:48 AM PDT by CutePuppy (If you don't ask the right questions you may not get the right answers)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: fieldmarshaldj
Detroit is a disaster ?

That's like calling The Black Plaque a major disappointment.

16 posted on 07/31/2007 11:37:54 AM PDT by San Jacinto
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: CutePuppy

The truth is always the biggest enemy of leftists. They simply cannot tolerate truth.


17 posted on 07/31/2007 11:38:04 AM PDT by vetsvette (Bring Him Back)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: CutePuppy
Monica Conyers, the council's president pro tem, acknowledged that Detroit Public Schools' graduation rate is too low, but she doubted Gingrich knows much about the true graduation rate in the school system or the city's progress.

Well, just in this one article there are three different graduation rates mentioned. If they can't even count and figure a ratio in Detroit, I'd say they have an educational problem. Further, I can't find one thing Gingrich said that seems untrue.

18 posted on 07/31/2007 11:38:44 AM PDT by econjack
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: CutePuppy

Any place you can buy several houses for the price of a new midrange ‘detroit iron” car is a disaster.


19 posted on 07/31/2007 11:39:23 AM PDT by Clam Digger
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: CutePuppy
1975:



2007:

NEWT TO MOTOWN:
YOU SUCK

20 posted on 07/31/2007 11:40:52 AM PDT by southernnorthcarolina (These are my principals. If you don't like them, I have others.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-4041-6061-80 ... 161-169 next last

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.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson