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Detroit Betrayed: The Radical Wrecking Of An Iconic City
Forbes ^ | 01/14/2013 | Spyridon Mitsotakis

Posted on 01/14/2013 7:23:13 AM PST by SeekAndFind

Sometimes it’s better to tell a story backwards, from end to beginning. This story ends on December 10, 2012, when President Obama traveled to Michigan—a state with unemployment over 9 percent. He made a stop in Detroit, Michigan’s largest city, which is bankrupt. There, Obama made the ironic boast: “You only have to look to Michigan where workers were instrumental in reviving the auto industry to see how unions have helped build not just a stronger middle class but a stronger America.”

Of course, the auto industry, like much of the rest of Detroit, is in ruins. This is the state of the city and its main industry … at the end of the story.

Flashback some 20-plus years, to 1988, when Howard Johnson—who had been one of the leading communists in Harlem during the Great Depression—told interviewer Kay Takora about his return home from World War II: “I came back into activity in the Communist Party…. I at first became county educational director. New York county was the biggest county organization. From ’46 to ’49. And during that same period, I was assigned to help build a national Negro veterans organization which was called the United Negro and Allied Veterans of America [UNAVA]. And that had the backing of the party and I was assigned by the party to work in that along with my duties as educational director of the county organization.”

Howard Johnson continued, eventually bringing the conversation to Detroit, and to Detroit’s mayor, Coleman Young: “When UNAVA was formed, I was elected national vice-commander in charge of education, which fit my training, and the other national vice-commander was Coleman Young, who was national vice-commander in charge of labor.

(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: Michigan
KEYWORDS: decay; detroit
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To: wardaddy

Detroit is a city with a mostly apathetic population. Unfortunately its a population that sees all things through the lens of race and they repeatedly elect corrupt politicians based on that alone. They really couldn’t care less how corrupt their leaders are because they’re the right race.

Detroit is a city where candidates have openly compared their skin tone with the skin tone of the other black (but not black enough) candidates. Monica Conyers openly declared that companies that were too white would not be getting city contracts regardless of whether they could do the job or not.

Detroit is not a liberal city, its an apathetic and corrupt city.


21 posted on 01/14/2013 8:45:21 AM PST by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: taildragger
As you can imagine the Detwaa City Coucil blew a head gasket!

The crack addicts are unwilling to accept anything less than a blank check and no oversight.
22 posted on 01/14/2013 8:50:25 AM PST by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: SeekAndFind

The problem is in defining what is “success” and what is “failure”.

To a traditional American - Detroit is a failure.

To a Coleman Young or an Obamugabe - it’s a spectacular success. To them the political class has all the money, all the power, and the people are completely dependent on them for their daily sustenance.

The problem here is that a RAT looks at Detroit and in their most candid moments says “What’s not to like?”


23 posted on 01/14/2013 9:16:05 AM PST by 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten
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To: wardaddy

Thanks for speaking truth. Glad someone finally had the balls to do it. Detroit’s nightnare, (while the democrat party most assuredly has a hand in it) can be blamed on one thing only in the end; the residents of that city. A certain group comprises around 90 plus percent of the population, along with the entire city council, mayor, school board, etc. If liberal democrat rule was the only criteria needed for a mess like this to develop , wouldn’t Seattle and many towns in Conneticut and Vermont be similar to Detroit? They have very liberal governments in those places, but, the population is comprised of an entirely different group. Being a realist in these days is tough. That’s what we are. More people better start waking up to the real facts and problems we have allowed to take root in this country. The truth is out there, waiting to be found by those that want to see.


24 posted on 01/14/2013 9:17:16 AM PST by 383rr (Those who choose security over liberty deserve neither; GUN CONTROL= SLAVERY)
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To: SeekAndFind
Coleman Young was the worst mayor Detroit's had, but there were major problems before that. The riots happened four years after the progressives took over. Jerome P Cavanagh was mayor. It started going downhill in 63, although the 67 riots and Coleman's election accelerated it. The cycle still continues.

The Northwest side of Detroit was white and later mixed as black professionals move in. Ghetto (mostly black, some white like Eminem types) followed the black professionals. Whites move out. Black professionals move out to Southfield and Oak Park. The ghetto follows the black professionals and takes "Detroit" with them. Unfortunately even a lot of the black professionals (and white academia) vote the same way as the ghetto.

The problem with Detroit wasn't Coleman Young or Jerome Cavanagh or Carl Levin. The problem was and is the voters who kept voting for Cavanagh, Levin, Young, Kilpatrick, Pugh, Conyers, Barbara Rose Collins, Sharon McPhail, and the entire Detroit School Board.

25 posted on 01/14/2013 9:37:17 AM PST by Darren McCarty (If most people were more than keyboard warriors, we might have won the election)
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To: wardaddy
It's culture. I had family that was still in the city. They moved out. They also walked away from the house they could not sell. Literally. Homes on that street were advertised for 4K. It was opposite of a park. Normally that's good. Not there. Drug dealers were operating in daylight outside of the house. It was broken into at one point. They retired and moved to North Michigan far away from that.

15 years ago, that neighborhood was the last of the non-Wayne State/Downtown white areas. It was an old style white ethnic neighborhood. City workers lived there because they were required to live in the city. After the residency clause was lifted they got out of dodge. Now that neighborhood is like 90% of the others in Detroit.

26 posted on 01/14/2013 9:54:46 AM PST by Darren McCarty (If most people were more than keyboard warriors, we might have won the election)
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To: wardaddy

“and every time I am there I wish I could take some daft preachy freepers with me for a tour and a history lesson”

Only if you get to leave them there.


27 posted on 01/14/2013 9:55:55 AM PST by Pelham (Betrayal, it's not just for Democrats anymore.)
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To: cripplecreek; PGalt; Hot Tabasco; Darren McCarty; MichCapCon; Shellybenoit; chicagolady; ...
There has been web site up since 1997 offering virtual tours of "The Ruins of Detroit." (detroityes.com). As the old adage goes, pictures are worth a thousand words.

Touring ruins is something generally associated with places like Rome and Athens, not with a major American city - although some other US cities have similar ruins but to a lesser extent.

There is something very atypical of the United States that has been going on in Detroit for decades, and the posted article explains it: decades of ultraleftist rule.

28 posted on 01/14/2013 10:48:02 AM PST by justiceseeker93
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To: justiceseeker93

One thing about the Ruins of Detroit. Places like the train station and other industrial properties are owned by one of the richest men in America. You can blame the city for no forcing him to care for those properties but he’s a long term owner of the Detroit city council.

He keeps a low profile but Matty Maroun infamous here in Michigan.


29 posted on 01/14/2013 10:53:26 AM PST by cripplecreek (REMEMBER THE RIVER RAISIN!)
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To: SeekAndFind

That was a really good article. And I am pleased to see that at least one University in New York actually has a course/program on the Cold War! Refreshing to see a history student..and one who gets it. I hope I can read more of his work.


30 posted on 01/14/2013 12:03:57 PM PST by SueRae (It isn't over. In God We Trust.)
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To: 383rr

Similar things happened in New York. White flight as a term distracts from another term that could be used, ethnic cleansing. Yugoslavia isn’t so far, nor so foreign.


31 posted on 01/14/2013 1:06:31 PM PST by OldNewYork
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To: wardaddy; SeekAndFind; Pelham; dixiechick2000; mrsmel
As usual not a lot I can add to WD's analysis. However being a young kid from the country and only getting to go to Jackson on rare occasions,like if someone was really really sick and had to have surgery or to meet a relative at the train station once a year.
I do have fond memories of the big beautiful clean city "that was". I saw my first self opening door(which made me run back to the car),my first escalator and my first wind blown skirt while watching the Belles of Southern Bell crossing the street at the red light on Capitol street.

A little older and not much wiser I was approached by my first homo sexual pedophile while waiting at the aforementioned train station.
It was then I realized Jackson was on the way down.(no pun intended).
I have 2 Doctors on North State Street. seeing them is the only time I see down town Jackson.

To quote a famous black comedienne "Every city has 2 malls the one the white folks go to and the one the white folks used to go to. Jackson proper is ready for mall #3.

32 posted on 01/14/2013 7:04:23 PM PST by WKB ( Remember "Bush Lied and People Died" Now it's "People died and Obama Lied")
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To: Darren McCarty; blam; Pelham; WKB; 383rr

Culture doesn’t just spring up out of thin air.

and these cultural issues are the same relatively speaking in black populations worldwide

how do i know?

cause I lived in them from Sierra Leone to Port au Prince to Kingston and so forth

why they behave as they do groupwise is conjecture

but I sure ain’t denying all I’ve seen for nearly 60 years now

i would probably blame geographic isolation for 1000s of years while other races slowly as a rule moved around and picked up stuff and so forth...and the west got Christianized...a major civilizing factor..relatively speaking and my hunch we all do not precisely share the same origins contrary to what agenda drive anthropologists have long hoped for

ignoring group traits....or culture etc...has killed the America I knew

and like the Montgomery Gentry song “it’s gone...gone...gone...gone like a soldier in the Civil War bang bang...gone”

as a side note having just been in the Deep South...true Dixie in my opinion..blacks there are as rule much nicer and warm.....maybe not the young males so much but the older ones....and it’s always been that way even though they killed my hometown...they are sure less hostile than they are even here in Nashville or God forbid NYC where I first encountered black on white racism nearly 40 years ago now


33 posted on 01/14/2013 10:30:02 PM PST by wardaddy (wanna know how my kin felt during Reconstruction in Mississippi, you fixin to find out firsthand)
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To: SeekAndFind; justiceseeker93; 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten; All
Thanks for the article; ping; post; thread.

Excellent post in an excellent thread.

The problem is in defining what is “success” and what is “failure”.

To a traditional American - Detroit is a failure.

To a Coleman Young or an Obamugabe - it’s a spectacular success. To them the political class has all the money, all the power, and the people are completely dependent on them for their daily sustenance.

The problem here is that a RAT looks at Detroit and in their most candid moments says “What’s not to like?”

"the new normal" - sliding scale of slippery socialist metrics

45+ years after the '67 riots and Detroit is so much worse off (looming bankruptcy, still paying for Kwame, etc., etc.) than it was in '67.

34 posted on 01/15/2013 6:33:58 AM PST by PGalt
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To: PGalt

Sliding Scale of Slippery Socialist Metrics

I like it!

Yeah, there was a guy named Aristotle a long time ago who tried to come to grips with the question “What is Good?”.
Essentially trying to come up with a metric.

Before you declare something a “success” or “failure” you have to know what metric is being applied and by whom.

When I look around the world and over the scope of history, I see a consistent pattern. Dictators have invariably lived in splendor while the population around them lives in abject misery and fear. I can only assume that this is not by accident since the pattern is so universal.


35 posted on 01/15/2013 8:35:43 AM PST by 2 Kool 2 Be 4-Gotten
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To: WKB

Phone company belles....boy that brings back memories

My dad always had fine secretaries.....i spent 3 great years with one...an Arkansas delta belle.....Marmaduke....i was a bad boy

Me and the lads ate at Mayflower saturday nite...excellent and gorgeous women from young to wifeys

Mississippi never fails in that department


36 posted on 01/15/2013 9:15:50 AM PST by wardaddy (wanna know how my kin felt during Reconstruction in Mississippi, you fixin to find out firsthand)
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To: factoryrat

It’s sad to see good employees having to watch the current crop of kids feeling entitled to jobs. Sorry about your bad experience at Mound Road Engine.


37 posted on 01/15/2013 10:51:06 AM PST by zbogwan2
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To: 383rr; wardaddy

Thank you both. It is the truth. It’s the truth-liberal Austin TX will be undergoing the same change once it’s “majority minority”, as does any area which does the same. I despise liberal politics as much as anyone if not more, but what’s going on with Detroit and similar areas is not solely or even primarily due to liberalism. Prince George’s Co, the bastion of the black “upper class”, is in the process as homes are foreclosed because government workers-which supports the so-called black bourgeoisie-are losing jobs and their children regress to the mean.


38 posted on 01/15/2013 7:52:13 PM PST by mrsmel (One Who Can See)
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To: WKB

IIRC correctly Jackson doesn’t even a movie theater in Jackson proper anymore, I hear there’s one about 15 miles from the city limits (another county?) I also hear they’re gloating about getting a Whole Foods there-I wonder how that will work out after all the shoplifting etc? If I lived in one of the “white flight” counties, I wouldn’t drive to Jackson just to shop at Whole Foods, especially when there’s the internet for most specialty items (I even order my beloved winesap apples online).

I go around Jackson to get to Vicksburg, but never in it. (Not that Vicksburg’s much better now, but my family are in the boonies).


39 posted on 01/15/2013 7:58:32 PM PST by mrsmel (One Who Can See)
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To: wardaddy

It’s my understanding that our government just issued a travel warnimg for Haiti. If it’s so bad that THIS government would issue a travel warning, now, when Haiti is never a bastion of security and safety, it must really be bad.


40 posted on 01/15/2013 8:00:53 PM PST by mrsmel (One Who Can See)
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