Posted on 07/05/2008 4:59:44 AM PDT by Zakeet
If you've seen HBO's "The Wire," you know why those of us who live in Baltimore are often asked whether our city really is the hellhole it is portrayed to be on TV.
Our answer is, well, yes. Baltimore deserves the Third-World profile it has developed because it has expanses of crumbling, crime-riddled neighborhoods populated by low-income renters, an absent middle class, and just a few enclaves of high-income gentry near the Inner Harbor or in suburbs.
This wasn't what Baltimore looked like in the 1950s. Then it was a prosperous, blue-collar city.
[Snip]
Today, the city has a population that is almost 50% smaller, and about 40% of families with children live at or near the federal poverty line. Among the country's 100 most populous cities, Baltimore ranks a shameful 87th on median household income.
How did this happen?
Most people think of cities as dense concentrations of people. They are that, of course. But they are also dense concentrations of capital – homes, offices, factories, theaters and roads. All of these assets are attractive to people because, when they are in close proximity to each other, they offer the chance of a more prosperous life.
The problem is that once capital is built, it can become a target for tax-and-spend politicians who bank on the fact that physical capital will continue to draw people, even as it is taxed more heavily. This is what has happened in Baltimore. The city has waged a war on capital for more than 50 years, raising property taxes an astonishing 21 times from 1950 to 1985.
But what politicians don't seem to understand is that the target may be degraded or destroyed in the process.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
What's needed is the political will to tighten the bureaucracy's belt in the near term, and the ingenuity to create a fiscal bridge to a recapitalized, healthier city. So far, Baltimore is sticking with its "capital punishment" policies and it's killing the city.
Mr. Walters is an economics professor at Loyola College in Maryland. Mr. Hanke is a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
Look at it this way.....you could be in Detroit.
Loks like any inner city after the ravages of the WOP, War on Poverty.
Get a ‘community organizer’ to clean things up. [sarcasm intended]
You laugh, but...
I used to live in a small Southern city that had a large university. Every year, the fraternities would do a community service project that consisted of going to the black neighborhood and cleaning it up.
The black neighborhood received exactly the same municipal trash pick-up and other services as the rest of the city, btw. However, from year to year, the residents trashed the place, dumping garbage everywhere.
The fraternities used to give out candy to the neighborhood kids to try to encourage them to help. But the thing that really stunned me was that some of the adult residents would actually bring out lawn chairs to sit and watch the fraternity members bagging their garbage and sweeping their streets. The rest of the population of the neighborhood didn’t even appear to notice, and next year, the neighborhood would be filthy again.
The thing that’s got to change is the attitude of the people who live there. Granted, they were undermined by Great Society institutionalized dependence programs, but it’s time to get a grip and accept some responsibility now.
Only 1 GOP Mayor of Baltimore since 1950, and that was 45 years ago. I wonder which party could be to blame... hmmm...
What I'd like to know is this: I live in a house that's 50 years old for which I have a mortgage and pay dearly for. Has anyone ever seen a housing project that's 50 years old? My point being that if you are not going to require some sort of personal responsibility these are the results that you will get every time. It's sad, it's predictable, and it's the truth.
How do you attract new people when they know the people living there in the low income districts are darn near savages? What will change the mentality of generations of welfare, entitlement, familial neglect and amoral behavior?
Why would anyone want to but property and improve it just to find out all of his neighbors resent and hate him because he has "money" and they don't?
I have thought about this recently. The people in ghettos and down trod neighborhoods all around the U.S. have us over a barrel. They know that they will get money and welfare as long as the threat of insurrection exists. The money can't be cut off because there will be hundreds of thousands of people who can't fend for themselves left to their own devices. They know this and will riot if the money is taken away.
Then there is the issue of the young inner city denizens. Those who are 12 to 19 years of age. As it is most of them have no direction; no force directing them towards good. The schools can't (and shouldn't) be responsible for teaching them how to be good, grateful ciitzens. But, who will?
There is a time coming where this will have to be addressed. It won't take money - there is not enough.
The great society murdered these people's souls....they will never get that soul back....only the substituion; the gunmint check.
The blame goes to all of us that accept this as normal not aberrant and do nothing about changing it.
Name one vibrant, successful city in the USA that is led by a minority mayor.
Cities are built on families. Destroy the family structure and you have Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans etc. Live by the government hand-out, and die by the government hand-out.
"an absent middle class"
It goes much deeper. High taxes and a failing school system which triggered flight to the suburbs. Most families could not pay city taxes AND send their kids to private or religious schools in the county, free from crime, like the former mayor or the professors at these universities. You could write a doctoral dissertation on how the organized blockbusting in the '40s and the '50s destroyed the city neighborhoods and the politics behind it.
Well, they got rid of D'Alesandro's and O'Conor's voting base along with the neighborhoods like they wanted to. And the bigots still oppose school choice so don't expect any turnaround. Maybe Nancy Pelosi could look into it? The People's Republic in Annapolis has not yet tired of raising taxes through the roof.
But as with the Roman Empire, destroy the middle class, you destroy the civilization.
Or they move to southern Pennsylvania or Delaware.
“Live by the government hand-out, and die by the government hand-out.”
This really is a d*mn shame. Some (formally) beautiful old neighborhoods with (formally) great old houses all around Baltimore. There are also some great opportunities and incentive plans for local investors if they could just put in a little hard work.
http://www.healthyneighborhoods.org/
These people have already destroyed their own neighborhoods. Everyone else moved as far away from the ghetto as they possibly could to escape the inner city. That being said, what exactly are the urban welfare recipients going to burn down should our monthly gift to them be cut off? As long as they can't get to me, I couldn't care less if they choose to destroy what is left of the inner city.
so high taxes = garbage in the yard... go figure
.....it is beyond me how people who LIVE in a neighborhood can STAND living amid all that dirt and garbage?
Wouldn’t you think they’d get together and spend a weekend day cleaning up?
Am I missing something here?
I have often wondered exactly what, if anything, can be done about this. There are individuals, one at a time, who escape it and become real, independent adults. But waiting for this to happen one person at a time is going to be a long wait.
The odd thing is that I have often noticed, driving around in the country here in the south, how many of the older rural black people seem to keep their little cabins very tidy and swept. Yet their grandchildren are probably living in squalor in town. I really think it has everything to do with these government dependency programs and wealth transfers (which is what these heavy taxes are meant to do, essentially) which began in earnest about 45 years ago. People got rewarded for being dysfunctional.
A book that I found very interesting is Justice Clarence Thomas’ autobiography, My Grandfather’s Son. He was brought up by his grandparents, and his grandfather was a tough, hardworking guy who built up a little heating oil business out of nothing in segregated Savannah. He was a remarkable man, but it shows you the type of attitude that a lot of black people had - before the Great Society focused on them was its social experiment.
As to what can be done now, I really don’t know. Unwinding the Great Society and stopping all these programs might be a place to start, though. But this population is so passive and unable to fend for itself that I don’t know if this would even be feasible.
But...but...th-th-that would be RACIST!
Remember, these people have no real clout to speak of. They are backed by generations of politicians who have control of the purse strings. Your purse strings. If, by living in the suburbs you think you are insulated, think again. They will start creating regional tax entities instead of local. States will be forced to provide money to the cities in order to avert the chaos. That money will come from you like it or not.
I will never forget working on the Baltimore Harbor Project in the late 80s. Baltimore had the most schizophrenic feel of anyplace I had ever seen. In a row of houses on any given street there would be a nice well kept house next to a run down house next to a vacant lot next to a burned out hulk of a house etc. Weird.
The liberal method has been to try to get more federal money pumped in and to export Section 8 and crime out into the counties, claiming more Big Government and higher taxes are the solution rather than law enforcement. It's hypocrisy. The current Governor wants this for the whole state.
According to Democratic sources, Obama wants the new mayor to head the Department of Education in his administration. "They can do for America what they did for the city?" Or more federal graft money for Democratic contractors?
Don't high property taxes "soak the rich" most of all? And isn't that what the Rat party and Libs are all about---soaking the rich? Is it really true that if you soak the rich they will vote with their feet and leave behind only . . . the poor?
Can some Rat help me out here on what I'm missing about how Baltimore became a very, very poor city?
Uh, right.
Why doesn’t garbage accumulate in the yards of the rich-—or even in the yards of the middle class? Or even in the yards of ALL poor people?
Is picking up garbage that intrudes upon your living space a learned skill?
Having seen this phenomenon in different parts of the world, I still don’t understand it. Once while visiting a remote beach in a remote part of the world, I saw locals standing in the beautiful ocean, drinking soda and then throwing the empty cans in the water. Not even throwing them away from where they were swimming, but dropping them right around them, as if they thought the cans would dissolve into helpful marine nutrients within a few minutes.
Yes, Libs will say people act this way because they feel hopeless or whatever, but these people weren’t hopeless. They were having a great time. Then they had to pick their way out of the ocean, being careful not to step on the garbage that had sunk to the bottom previously. Yet this little graphic lesson did not give them pause at all about throwing their own garbage into their area.
Or is it any coincidence that Detroit (another Democrat haven) is an economic nightmare? Baltimore is an example of what many Democrat-based cities will become when, as some have pointed out, families are devalued, the government is viewed as being a surrogate mother, people have zero sense of personal responsibility and absolutely no work ethic.
If we were to divide the country down the middle and segregate its residents based on political persuasion, I guarantee whichever side the Republicans landed on would be the prosperous half, with lower crime rates, higher morality, lower unemployment, etc. And the Democrats' half? Look at the picture in the article.
Yep, the good old War on Poverty. LBJ was in office little more than four years and, even though he was universally despised and hated by other politicians, we are STILL dealing with his INFINITE LEGACY of the welfare state and all the destruction it has wrought, and WILL visit, upon our nation.
Anyone who thinks it’s no concern of theirs if their disenchantment with McCain facilitates the election of Obambi needs to think again-—hard.
Not only, if elected, is Obambi likely to serve two terms, if he chooses the right VP, it’s quite likely we’ll get SIXTEEN YEARS of quasi-Marxism.
IOW, what the Rats can do to us if they win this election makes the fall-out from the War on Poverty look like a pimple on the backside.
People want the War on Poverty exponential? Refuse to vote for McCain.
It sure wasn’t William Donald Schaeffer Mayor of Baltimore 1971–1987 and a Dem
Corey Booker is really trying to straighten out Newark, NJ.
Thing is, those were quite serviceable buildings, and were they in England, I’d imagine you’d see flowers blooming in the back gardens and maybe a tall tree or two, maybe some cabbage or something like that.
One thing you almost never see in a predominantly black neighborhood: good landscaping. I’ve never been sure why that is.
There’s generally a lack of pride in these communities, and I guess that’s probably the answer more than any other. It doesn’t take much money to tend to a decent looking yard.
Yep, been there, done that.
Still don’t understand it.
I lived in a poor neighborhood once and people actually sort of dissed on us because we kept the front yard nice and planted a few flowers.
We also had a vegetable garden. One day a little girl who was 4th generation single-mom welfare dependent child told me her mother said it was “low-class” to have a garden. This was a family that had a blanket nailed over the opening where there used to be a front door in their house.
One day this girl also said to me: “Every time I come over here, you’re reading those big books. Why are you reading those big books all the time?” I said, “So I can graduate from college and get a good job.” She thought for a minute, then said quite seriously, “Can’t you just get a check from the government?”
I kid you not. She was all of maybe 8 or 9 years old.
We all live mostly to the standard we can tolerate. When my environment reaches a certain level of chaos, I want to change it and get up and do so, whether it’s doing laundry or sweeping the walk. All I can say from my experience and observations is that some people can tolerate a lot of chaos.
I know Libs would say, “oh, come on, do you think people want to live like that?” All I can say is, I don’t know, but clearly it doesn’t bother them enough to do anything about it. I mean: I know some people who keep their homes spankin’ clean and others who don’t get busy until there’s a certain amount of clutter, dishes in the sink, clothes on the floor. Maybe there are just natural variations in what people consider intolerable.
If that’s the case, I don’t see the point in the type of “service projects” you describe. Nothing wrong with them, mind you, but truly, what is the point? What do we hope to accomplish with such projects (maybe just clean-up for the sake of clean-up, which is not bad)? What is accomplished, besides the fact of a temporary clean-up?
What do (in this case) the fraternity members learn about their fellow citizens and their neighborhoods and what do those fellow citizens learn about people who go to college and join fraternities?
Unfortunately, the racial attitudes back then made blockbusting possible. Unscrupulous real estate agents would spread the word that a black family had moved into the neighborhood, in order to list the properties of neighbors who were frightened by the prospect.
But, looking back to that time, the blacks who were able to buy into middle class neighborhoods were generally quality people (they had to be, just to get financed); professionals, small businessmen, skilled blue collar workers. Had the folks who look like you and me stuck around to see what kind of neighbors they'd be, things might have worked out differently.
Instead, they panicked, sold at discount prices and fled. Most of their homes were picked up by investors and became rental properties.
Then LBJ's "Great Society" spelled the destruction of the black family...but that's another topic.
It wouldn't be any more feasible than turning all the animals in the zoos loose to fend for themselves. The "battle cry" in these neighborhoods is that they want "reparations" for the enslavement of their ancestors while they are getting their government "slave" check today.
“What’s needed is the political will to tighten the bureaucracy’s belt in the near term, and the ingenuity to create a fiscal bridge to a recapitalized, healthier city”
If that picture is anything typical, looks like things there are reaching the point where “capital” isn’t going to help anymore....
- John
I read elsewhere the the Dems hope to use high gas prices to destroy the Republican suburban middle class. I guess they’re finished destroying the urban underclass.
“Wonder when it will dawn on people that there is a direct correlation between an area’s politics and the quality of life there.”
I might ruffle a few feathers by saying this, but I think it’s more of a cultural thing than a liberal-conservative thing. Though liberalism absolutely fuels the problem when the right demographics are in play.
I’m just saying that the quality of life in San Francisco is pretty darn high. Same thing goes with coastal cities all up and down the California coast. Same thing with Santa Fe, New Mexico, or with Boulder, Colorado. It’s only when certain populations begin moving into these regions that things really go downhill.
I think those liberal communities that do offer higher qualities of life are generally that way because they’ve driven the price of real estate high enough to keep out the riffraff. There might be other reasons, of course, but that’s what first comes to mind.
In general, there's not one person who cannot get out of these neighborhoods if they want to. In fact, the "flight of the able" has been ongoing for decades and, in part, explains the culture in these neighborhoods.
If someone says to themself "I want more than this for my life and my family," that in and of itself likely demonstrates that they are able to attain that "more."
There was a fascinating thread here on FR after Katrina that became about stories of freepers who had gotten out of poverty, left housing projects behind, etc. Several times I asked and wondered how they had done that---IOW, what had made the difference between them and those who had stayed behind in poverty? Mostly, the answer just came back that it was simple desire and the willingness to do whatever it took, job-wise.
Desire and willingness to do whatever it takes are innate characteristics that a person either has or doesn't.
But here's the kicker that's even MORE important: Outsiders to these neighborhoods see them only in negative terms. Those horrible, crime-ridden, drug-infested, poverty-stricken neighborhoods. All true. But to many of those who live in them, they are also neighborhoods very rich in family ties, friendships, informal social support networks---the residents know everybody and everybody "belongs."
That sense of community---even if, by other standards, it's a crummy environment for community---is very valuable. Many rich people wish they had even 1/10th of the ties to the neighborhood that people have in these poor 'hoods.
I guess what I'm saying is that, yes, our first reaction understandably is "these people need to change their attitude." But then I wonder: if these neighborhoods, despite all their problems, offer some people a valuable sense of community, family and friends (and those to whom the neighborhood does not appeal manifestly can get out), and if these neighborhoods---like everyone else's home---reflect the conditions those people find tolerable---then are we barking up the right tree to say they need to change or change their attitude?
Something to think about, I think.
Wherever liberalism is applied in full, property is destroyed, freedom is lost, and millions of people are made miserable while the liberal elite lives a life of luxury. (see the former Soviet Union).
Thank you for bringing up this point. I would love to see some social scientist study this phenomenon. I'd wager that it's got a very strong correlation with NOT being on welfare.
Most of it happened between the 1940s and late 1960s. #12 (above). The political opponents of Governor O'Conor and Mayor D'Alesandro (Nancy Pelosi's father) had organized blockbusting to destroy the neighborhoods which provided support in elections for Catholic politicians in the Democratic party. With federal help in the desegregation movement they succeeded in driving the white middle-class out of the city into the surrounding counties. Federal programs did the rest with the collusion of Democratic politicans.
Most of those who sought flight into the counties voted for Governor Ehrlich (Republican, from Baltimore County). Their parents and grandparents who had voted for Governor O'Conor and Mayor D'Alesandro would have voted for Reagan ("Reagan Democrats").
The desegregation and blockbusting policies which gutted the cities seem incomprehensible now because they have to do with the politics of the 1940s and 1950s when Catholic politicians in the larger cities were dominating the Democratic party and with those who wanted to end that. They decided the easiest way was to end the neighborhoods where the voters lived. It had very little to do with "civil rights" in any proper sense of the term.
You would have to be about about 70 years old or so to remember this clearly from direct experience.
After the riots in 1968, the white flight intensified. Democrats have ruled these cities for decades with millions of federal funds pumped in and no end in sight for solving the fundamental problems.
For a middle-class family, crime, education, and property taxes are the main issues. No one is going to pay high taxes for their children to be knifed or mugged in school.
The irony, of course, the Democrats are all still running around trying to woo the Reagan Democrats after systematically destroying their neighborhoods over several decades. Who thinks Obama will help them (in their "bitterness")?
We live in a community that is ETJed to a growing suburban town. We had a meeting with the fire chief who wanted us to pay $.10/$100 for fire/EMS protection. They contracted with another dense and lower priced housing community at around $160/yr/home. Ours would be a tax increase beginning at $300/home. We told them we’d pay $160 but no go! Now, consider that we have fewer calls per home than any area (we have an e-mail group for Neighborhood Watch issues and police ourselves for the most part) they serve, plus we pay for our EMS and fire truck calls (via insurance) and through county taxes. Well, when confronted that the Section 8 housing has more calls in a week than we have in a year, and that each time they take a fire truck to a 9-1-1 call, it costs about $100, we would be balancing their inflated budget for the Section 8 calls!! When we suggested they get a Prius and 2 parametics versus a fire truck with 4 firemen, he got really upset!! Ridiculous!
The only winners in the War On Poverty are Liberal politicians and their wealthy contractor buddies and donors.
Everyone else is a big loser.
True. "Little Italy" survived, for instance.
And now they are flipping luxury townhomes in Canton and Federal Hill. The gentrified urban subculture is real and it's possible for those who can afford it to live safely.
Bottom line though: people are not going to pay high taxes if they do not feel safe and the schools are unacceptable (or they cannot afford private education). Also, if they are looking at saving $350,000 to $400,000 in housing costs. The math is killing some cities.
However, if you have been mugged or you know someone who has been raped, maybe those fears were not unjustified.
The Democrats lost the "war on poverty" along with the Reagan Democrats. It will be interesting to see whether Obama is able to hoodwink them into supporting him and how little they will get for it.
“Liberalism always generates the exact opposite of its stated intent.” Jim Quinn. I live in Pittsburgh and we have the same thing here. We tax the wealth creators right out of our state. A lot of our downtown area looks like a bombed out third world country.
I was stationed in Frankfurt, Germany in the final years of the occupation after WWII. The city still had a lot of bombed-out rubble. Even it was cleaner than the pictures of Baltimore.
Liberal democrats ruined that city. I feel for the good people Baltimore that try to encourage economic development or get people to move to the area that I see all the time. They are fighting an uphill battle.
I got lost in the inner city of Trenton, NJ about midnight while trying to find a motel. I was one scared Honkey!
I can remember a time in the late 1960s when one could walk the streets of Camden,NJ. It was just starting to get bad. There were still Irish,Polish,Italian,etc.,neighborhoods. (Now there are just Hoods.)Those old row homes were really pretty nice with huge living rooms,kitchens and big basements. I can remember going down to the Polish butcher shop with my dad for some real kielbasi. I remember Christmas time going door to door,visiting the neighbors,being invited inside with a hearty “Merry Christmas”,loads of good food and good people. What changed Camden? The people. What kind of people. Guess. Like it or not it’s the truth.
I was just reading about Phily in NR. They have it all; white flight, bombed out inner city, high taxes, including a 4 percent payroll tax and hateful residents who would feel at home in Obammy’s high church.
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.