Posted on 01/02/2011 10:05:35 AM PST by maggief
You've heard of Detroit's travails. Ben Schmitt lived them. Now he and his family are starting over in Pittsburgh, his hometown.
EXCERPT
I agreed, as a union member, to take a one-week paid furlough and knew more salary cuts were on the horizon as our contract came to a close. The staff agreed to 6.5 percent pay cuts in October.
During my furlough in April, I interviewed for a marketing position in Pittsburgh. After a second interview in May, I was hired.
I called the mortgage company. I explained the situation, said the apparent magic word, "Detroit," as my address. They agreed to work with me after learning that I had a job offer out of state.
The short sale, after five months of wrangling, went through in November.
My credit is shot for a year or two.
My chosen profession is a distant memory.
My former beloved colleagues are 300 miles away.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
It sounds like Pennsylvania Democrats have just added another voter to their rolls.
Great. Just great.
Scumbags like Schmitt foul their nests and then flee, only to take their destructive voting habits with them so they can foul the next nest.
Now that is funny. Who in his right mind would move from Detroit to Pittsburgh. My word. Certainly Cleveland is more inviting than either, and it’s dangerous!
We just reelected a tax and spend our way outta debt, Governor here in Illinois too.
you ask: “but what if it happens again in another city?”
Hate to bust your bubble and bring you the biggest story not being reported: this is happening to cities across this country.
buildings abandoned, malls closed and decaying, neighborhoods empty, downtowns falling into ruin -
Ask a truck driver who sees it all...
I don’t doubt it a bit. I was just sayin.....if we force the scum out of the cities and tear down the buildings, the scum will just head to other cities. We need to do something to handle the scum bags.
Normally I wouldn’t have much sympathy for this fellow. But I detect a little in my hardened heart. Here’s why- he doesn’t KNOW any better.
Reading this story it’s pretty clear how the man thinks, he tells us where he was educated and you can sense him struggling with the reality of Detroit. He STILL is unable to grasp how this happened. Possibly, somehwere in the back of his mind he blames drug abuse, or unhappy childhoods...or some equally vague reasoning.
Most freepers will be able to explain the cause of Detroit in short order. That doesn’t mean we’re smarter than this fellow- he’s not an idiot- he’s simply never been taught how to THINK about alternatives. He is trapped in the liberal way of thinking and sees nothing else.
Imagine- we’ve a country full of well-intentioned people who’ve been educated by clever means to think the way this man does.
May God help us.
“We just reelected a tax and spend our way outta debt, Governor here in Illinois too.”
But he handled the homosexual civil union problem. I’m glad that I don’t live in one of the three counties, that he won.
At some subconscious level this guy obviously rejected the “urban agriculture and smaller city mantra of the great hope and savior Mayor Bing” yarn that his former employer had been pushing in it’s editorial line for quite some time.
Yep, me too, I'm in Tazewell county.
Yes... He has no critical thinking skills to link the Johnson Administration, The Great Society, and It’s Welfare State to the demise of families without fathers and why all those young men wanted to live on the wild side in the house next door. Could it be the lack of a father or a positive Male Role Model? He can’t see it.... You are right, May G_d help us....
This is the poster child example of what happens after having lost the militia spirit, and the courage needed in order to bring it back. A neighborhood of committed men with rifles trump this garbage.
This is the price we pay after repeatedly tuning our TVs to “Happy Days”.
“I agreed, as a union member, to take a one-week paid furlough and knew more salary cuts were on the horizon as our contract came to a close. The staff agreed to 6.5 percent pay cuts in October.”
Find out if the top union officials are taking salary cuts. Maybe they could sell that lavish country club they just got through building.
Here's another Detroit goody...
No, you're right, I don't. But, I do see a massive change in his worldview. So does he. I am just not sure yet if he realizes the magnitude of what has happened to him.
This whole piece read like some sort of quasi-liberal secular "confession." He gives penance for the sin of rebuking much that is holy to liberal doctrine, to wit: that inner city neighborhoods just need some good 'ole leaf rakin' and group hugs.
You don't change human hearts unless God moves them. The cesspools that are urban blight won't change until hearts do.
All of us are sinners. We all need God.
The problem with these communities is that they suffer from MASSIVE moral breakdown. Period.
That is the dirty little secret.
In these neighborhoods, corruption is rampant. The few "black leaders" are on the take, and everyone knows it. Sexual immorality takes place on a massive scale. Out of wedlock births are explosive. Drug and alcohol abuse are the norm. Crime is epidemic.
In small corners, God's people are the one source of light. In the city of Camden NJ, there are little pockets of Christianity, and some people have erected little wooden crosses in the middle of urban war zones.
This guy found out that you cannot combat urban blight by trying all the wrong things.
In the end, his kids almost getting maimed or murdered knocked some sense into him.
The city council has been such a joke that one former member demanded 17 pounds of sausages as part of her $150,000 bribe. Its prognosis for respectability hasn't grown stronger with Monica Conyers, wife of congressman John Conyers, taking the helm. She has managed to get in a barroom brawl, threatened to shoot a mayoral staffer as well as have him beaten up, and twice called a burly and bald fellow council member "Shrek" during a public hearing. But with all the problems facing the city, the council still found time to pass a nonbinding resolution supporting the impeachment of George W. Bush. How bad is Detroit? It once gave the keys to the city to Saddam Hussein. Over the last several years, it has ranked as the most murderous city, the poorest city, the most segregated city, as the city with the highest auto-insurance rates, with the bleakest outlook for workers in their 20s and 30s, and as the place with the most heart attacks, slowest income growth, and fewest sunny days. It is a city without a single national grocery store chain. It has been deemed the most stressful metropolitan area in America. Likewise, it has ranked last in numerous studies: in new employment growth, in environmental indicators, in the rate of immunization of 2-year-olds, and, among big cities, in the number of high school or college graduates. Men's Fitness magazine christened Detroit America's fattest city, while Men's Health called it America's sexual disease capital.
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