Move over Detroit

"No major American city has failed at the same level as Detroit, whose population dropped from 1.85 million people in 1950 to about 630,000 today. Move over Detroit, here comes San Francisco, which lost 6.3 percent of its population between 2019 and 2021, a rate of decline larger than any two year-period in Detroit’s history and unprecedented among any major US city."

San Francisco Falls Into The Abyss | Hoover Institution San Francisco Falls Into The Abyss

. . . drug and crime issues, its poorly performing public schools, its homelessness, its extremely high cost of doing business, and other issues that people have tolerated for so long, . . .

While Pelosi has been ruining the lives of the rest us, she hasn't done much for her district.

Neither Democrats nor Republicans can make promises about Detroit

Comments by Mike Smith

"Neither China nor Mexico "killed Detroit." Detroit committed suicide. The Democrat led city government loaded the gun and the labor unions pulled the trigger. When wages and taxes got to a point that the cost of doing business made companies noncompetitive, they had two choices - cut costs or go out of business. Since capital flows to wherever it is most efficiently used to generate profit and companies follow capital, the work went to locations where cost could be reduced. It is as simple as that. Detroit wasn't left behind because China and Mexico had some sort of secret plan to kill it, Detroit died because it gave jobs away, jobs that Mexico and China were happy to accept.

Progressive economic policies are the equivalent of salting the earth. Without changes in those policies, there can be no fertile ground in which companies can plant seeds of job growth."

Flint and Detroit

Flint, MI sort of stole the news last week, because I don't remember seeing much about this union protest in front of Obama's venue in Detroit. I haven't been watching much news lately, so maybe I missed other stories of Democrat contolled unions and black groups protesting when Obama’s in town, which if he were Bush, would be a call for total rebellion. There must be a lot of corruption in the city government if they can't make schools tick with $16,000 per student plus all the other wealth transfer programs.

"According to the U.S. Department of Education, just 8 percent of Detroit eighth-graders can read proficiently. And just seven in 10 students graduate. Detroit public schools spend roughly $16,000 per pupil per year but the schools have many code and building violations. (All Democrat mayors since 1962.) The unionized teachers went on strike last week with complaints about conditions and charter schools. The protest was outside Cobo Center before President Barack Obama's visit to the auto show." (from my FaceBook wall)

http://dailysignal.com/2016/01/20/detroit-public-school-teacher-sick-out-underway-while-just-8-of-students-can-read-proficiently/

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2016/01/21/obama-takes-credit-for-auto-industry-comeback-during-visit-to-detroit/

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/latest-union-teacher-sick-tied-obamas-detroit-trip-36398081

First things first

Don’t blame Obama for Detroit . . .

Blame Democrat control since the 1960s.

“Detroit is an apropos metaphor for Obama's America. It is the prototypical terminal manifestation of the Democratic Party's socialist economic policies that have created ever-expanding urban poverty plantations in once-great cities across the nation. That in turn drives the departure of middle-class families for greener pastures in outlying suburban counties with better schools and lower crime.

Over just the last decade, some 240,000 of Detroit's residents (25 percent of its population), and thousands of businesses, fled the city's oppressive taxes and corrupt one-party government. Indeed, Detroit was a bustling city of nearly 2,000,000 residents as far back as 1950; today, that number is just over 700,000. (Not coincidentally, Detroit's last Republican mayor, Louis Miriani, served more than a half-century ago, from 1957 to 1962.)”  Mark Alexander, Patriot Post

But who’s counting?

The puzzle for which there is no answer

Don’t look down on Detroit

"If you want to know what the future of America is going to be like, just look at the city of Detroit. Once upon a time it was a symbol of everything that America was doing right, but today it has been transformed into a rotting, decaying, post-apocalyptic hellhole.

Detroit was once the fourth-largest city in the United States, and in 1960 Detroit had the highest per-capita income in the entire nation. It was the greatest manufacturing city the world had ever seen, and the rest of the globe looked at Detroit with a sense of awe and wonder. But now the city of Detroit has become a bad joke to the rest of the world. Unemployment is rampant, 60 percent of the children are living in poverty and the city government is on the verge of bankruptcy. They say that Detroit is just a matter of "weeks or months" away from running out of cash, and when Detroit does declare bankruptcy it will be the largest municipal bankruptcy in the history of the United States.

But don't look down on Detroit, because the truth is that Detroit is really a metaphor for what is happening to America as a whole. In the United States today, our manufacturing infrastructure has been gutted, poverty is absolutely exploding and we are rapidly approaching national bankruptcy. Detroit may have gotten there first, but the rest of the country will follow soon enough..."
Read more: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/bankrupt-decaying-and-nearly-dead-24-facts-about-the-city-of-detroit-that-will-shock-you

Detroit coach shoots two thugs last night

"Police sources in Detroit say that a women's basketball coach, 72 years old and a reserve police officer, from Martin Luther King, Jr. Senior High School shot two men who attacked him as he was walking two basketball players to their cars in the school parking lot Friday night." [7NewsDetroit]

The man was accosted by the teens, former students at MLK school, who attempted to rob him with a gun, but the coach had a permit to carry. One teen is dead, the other hospitalized. He probably saved his own life, and maybe that of the girls, but strangely, I can't find this story in any of the major news outlets, or liberal news web sites like HuffPo or Daily Beast that have been saying there’s no reason to arm school personnel. If I weren't subscribing to a black conservative news source, I wouldn't have seen it.

http://newsninja2012.com/detroit-mi-mlk-jr-high-school-70-year-old-coach-shoots-attackers-who-tried-to-rob-him-one-teen-died-on-scene-other-survives/#axzz2JlX0GryJ

Jalen Rose Leadership Academy

This is an inspiring story of a famous athlete returning home to save the children by starting a charter school.

Every weekday, 120 high-school freshmen from these neighborhoods attend Mr. Rose's academy, some arriving after two bus trips and all before 7:30 a.m. Located in a former public school building, the school has spartan facilities—a science lab with almost no equipment, cracked windows—and few modern frills, though every student is given a computer. . .

Mr. Rose plans to start with this freshman class and add a new grade each year until there are some 500 kids in grades 9-12. "This is college prep. We expect 90% to 100% to go on to college"—no mean feat when many students are entering ninth grade with only fourth-grade levels of reading and math proficiency. . . .

At the Leadership Academy, "we have a 20-to-1 student teacher ratio and 10-to-1 in math and English. We want to invest in every young man or woman who comes here." That means tailoring achievement standards for every student. "There may be a kid reading at a fourth-grade level [when he enters ninth grade] who when he graduates is reading at a tenth-grade level. That's a victory."

His school also doesn't have tenure for teachers. "I hate tenure. Tenure allows teachers to put their feet up on the desk and possibly have a job forever. That's why I got turned on to charter schools. It's a business model. Every employee and every teacher will be monitored by performance."

The Weekend Interview with Jalen Rose: From the Fab Five to the Three Rs - WSJ.com

Detroit is Functionally Illiterate

Over 50 years of Democrats' stranglehold on the city, and 47% of adults in Detroit are illiterate. That means they can't read, or don't care about the report that says "Detroit spent $15,945 per pupil for the 2010-2011 school year. By comparison, the average per pupil expenditure during the 2007-2008 school year nationally was $10,259."

And look folks, it's certainly not the Teachers' fault--and their union will tell you so.

"The Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT), however, is adamant that the problem actually lies with the city’s failure to effectively enforce school attendance.

“I don’t think that that the teachers’ union has a responsibility for making sure that adults can read,” DFT president Keith Johnson told TheDC."

Detroit | Functionally Illiterate | National Institute for Literacy | The Daily Caller

The Report

Detroit's Liberal Nightmare

"What happens when a city buys the liberal dream hook, line and sinker? Just take a look at the City of Detroit. The once-great city lost 237,493 residents over the last decade according to the 2010 Census, bringing it to 713,777 – a population plunge of 25%. That's its lowest population since 1910, and it marks the city's fall from a 1950s peak of two million, over 60%. And that’s just the people who can afford to leave."

Detroit's Liberal Nightmare | The Foundry: Conservative Policy News.

Other articles by Mike Brownfield

And look at what Hiroshima, which we destroyed in 1945, was able to accomplish by embracing the free markets in about the same period of time, compared to Detroit which took the "easy" progressive road. And now Obama and the Democrats want that for the whole nation. Looks like they will get it too, with the help of the union thugs, socialists and Muslims mixing it up in Madison and Columbus.

Glenn Reynolds law: "The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them." via Belmont Club

Or maybe it was Union greed?

RealClearMarkets - Who, or What, Killed Detroit? Union Greed

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick Sentenced To Prison

Did anyone really believe this crook was going to pay back what he owed? At $6 a month, how long does it take to pay back a million? And Obama campaigned for him. Because I listen to Detroit radio local talk shows when we're at the lake, this is all we heard in 2008. Someone should have been listening more closely to the wealth transfer promises through health care and cap and trade of a certain candidate. That is a much bigger loss to honest taxpayers than this clown.

Epoch Times - Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick Sentenced To Prison

Obama finally gets on board

Maybe it's the time change; or the rainbows. Maybe the TOTUS of the POTUS finally arrived in Hawaii. But today Obama changed his lackadaisical, let-me-get-to-the-golf course attitude. From CNN.

Detroit Attack

The CounterTerrorism blog, Dec. 27, by Roderick Jones asks:

"What has caused this [new round of inconveniences for the passengers]? At this point, it is the reaction of United States Department of Homeland Security to any terrorist event involving aviation [which then spreads throughout the global aviation system], which heightens the operational success of militant Islamist terrorists against aviation targets. The noted, counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen expertly puts this into focus [in his book Accidental Guerrilla] by highlighting the detrimental effects of US counter-terrorism policy. In short al-Qaeda does not represent an existential threat to the US, it has no path to victory looking at any reasonable scenario including the use of WMD-- but the US can defeat itself by unnecessary over-reaction and a fundamental misunderstanding of basic risk management and terrorist theory. Once again this is being demonstrated by the events in Detroit and the DHS reaction, which creates more disruption than the attack itself, destroys DHS and US credibility by mandating absurd responses, which focus on securing events after they have happened (for example, turning off in-flight entertainment because passengers can see a map - passengers can still look out the window or use their watches).

If the US and other states are to contain terrorism they needs to adopt the more thoughtful responses, which have been developed within and outside of government. The work of inside/outside experts such as Killcullen largely moves in one direction conclusive direction -- less is more and multi-agency approach is paramount. The central thesis of Kilcullen's book is that the west creates 'accidental guerrilla's' by using military force and thus creating 'guerrilla anti-bodies'."

Apparently, even when we change presidents, it's still our fault. Call me crazy but I think profiling for militant islamists (act smartly and speak softly) might be called for instead of pulling my husband over and asking him to practically disrobe when we were already late for our connecting flight. But maybe that's what he was implying and wants to keep his day job.

One of the worst education stories I've read

A blogger from Detroit who has a fascination with photographing abandoned buildings came upon a middle school building abandoned in 2007. I was browsing his photos of the library (it would rip out the heart of any librarian) and then found this horror story. He could find no one who cared, so he's destroying the stash himself.

"After my first visit to the shattered middle school, I am haunted by what I found in one office: hundreds of file folders containing student psychological examinations complete with social security numbers, addresses, and parent information. I sat and thumbed through them. Many contained detailed histories of physical and sexual abuse, stories of home lives so horrifying I still can't get them out of my head: sibling rape, torture, neglect that defies belief. The detailed reports explained emotional impairments, learning disabilities. There was another box full of IEPs. The dates revealed that many of these students are still in the school system somewhere. I found several of their faces in the 2007 yearbook.

I spend the next few months trying to track down someone who cares. I send e-mails to the school's former principal, offering to go back and collect these records for her or destroy them. She never responds. I call my mom, a retired special education teacher and erstwhile administrator to determine the extent of malfeasance. Then I call the school district's legal department and leave voice mails warning them of the liability of this gross violation of student privacy. I never receive a response. I track down the school psychologist to some address in Troy. Nothing. It turns out a daily newspaper reported abandoned records like these within many of the 33 schools closed in 2007 and the district did nothing. No one is responsible. Someone else was supposed to destroy them. The company that had been paid to secure the school never did its job."

It's enough to make you homeschool, isn't it? And to cry for those poor, pitiful children that no school, no matter how good, will ever be able to save. But what excuses do the adults--the administrators of Detroit's school system have? They took the tax money to teach, test, classify and pigeon hole the children, and then abused them yet one more time. I'm ill. I'm sorry I read this.

It's not Halloween--it's Detroit

Photo from Sweet Juniper and there are many more

Feral Detroit. What handing out entitlements and destroying the white middle class will get you. The President needs to tour some of these neighborhoods where the current mayor Dave Bing "recalls how, during the campaign, he would travel through neighborhoods where only a house or two remained occupied on each block, where weeds had reclaimed abandoned lots, and where storefronts sat empty. Today, officials estimate, the city contains an astonishing 70,000 abandoned structures—many of them houses, but also some commercial properties. In downtown Detroit alone, a local newspaper identified 48 office buildings with “no outward sign of life.” " . . .

"Though some blame Detroit’s population losses on larger economic forces, economists Edward Glaeser and Andrei Shleifer argue in a groundbreaking paper that the city’s problems are mostly self-inflicted. (The paper, called “The Curley Effect,” gets its name from legendary Boston mayor James Curley, who favored Irish residents and pushed other groups out.) After winning election in 1973, Detroit’s first black mayor, Coleman Young, consolidated his power, driving white residents, who had voted against him, out of the city by withdrawing services from their neighborhoods. Eventually, Glaeser and Shleifer write, Detroit became “an overwhelmingly black city mired in poverty and social problems”—and shrinking fast." From City Journal, Autumn 2009.

Bankruptcy will be better than bailout both for Big 3 and American consumer

These points come from Don Weil, however, I've mentioned particularly the need for change in the auto industry going back to the 1970s. Ohio's economy is closely tied to the auto industry, as is my son's job, so I do have mixed emotions on the bailout, however, for the country and the global economy, a bailout is much worse than a bankruptcy. Overpaid unions, overpaid CEOs. Head-in-the-sand industry. Over regulated already with Congress trying to run the business and push cars no one wants. And who was it that allowed the loophole on gasoline efficiency so that light trucks became the rage? Congress, of course. Lame duck Bush will do nothing, although he'll get the blame either way; Obama will wait so he can be savior, and it will definitely be called a success no matter what the results. Even if we stay in a recession or fall into a depression that lasts over a decade like we did with FDR who grew it to massive proportions, Obama will be lauded and praised at least until Americans wake up a few generations from now. My generation won't live long enough to have history sort it out, and our "free press" will certain be no help, if it even survives

• If the companies go into bankruptcy and come out stronger, the industry will employ about the same amount of people. If not, foreign auto makers will produce more cars in the U.S. and pick up many of these workers.
• A prepackaged bankruptcy could actually leave the major auto makers in better shape than they were prior to the financial crisis. Since the mid-1990s, the Big Three made most of their money on gas guzzling SUVs and trucks. That simply won’t cut it anymore. Bankruptcy will force the auto makers to quicken their shift to smaller cars.
• bankruptcy would give the Big Three an opportunity to rework their labor contracts, cutting compensation, and to jettison incompetent executives.
• Plenty of companies have emerged stronger from bankruptcy. Nearly all the major airlines have gone through that process and came out stronger than when they entered.
• The Big Three have had so many opportunities to change their practices since the first oil crisis of the early 1970s, yet they have been reluctant to budge. GM still has eight brands of cars, even though critics have pointed out for years that’s probably about seven too many.
• this current "bailout" bears no resemblance to the rescue of Chrysler in 1980. In 1980, Congress passed, and President Carter signed, a law giving a U.S. government guarantee of a private $1.5 billion loan to Chrysler. Not one dollar of taxpayer funds was ever used in the deal. Chrysler also had a clear plan to make a comeback and the loan was relatively small.

Dan Weil - Dec 8 at Newsmax
.
For explanation of how UAW labor costs compare with other workers, see Heritage.

Why they won’t change their ways--the big three

In July 1987 National Geographic published a map of the Great Lakes, 15th in a series of 17 maps, “The Making of America.” It is has very interesting information and we keep it at our lake house on Lake Erie. From 1890-1960 it reports that the “lake ports of Hamilton, Cleveland, Detroit and Gary emerged as steel making giants in the heart of one of the world’s greatest concentrations of heavy manufacturing. Lake side mills devoured iron ore shipped south from the Gogebic, Mesabi, and other Lake Superior ranges, as well as coking coal brought by railroad and lake boat from the coalfields of Illinois and Appalachia.” But there were hard times--some 225,000 were forced to leave the north country of Minnesota--the farms and mines--between 1940 and 1950 alone.

However, for the 1970s and 1980s, we see a turn down for this region--the area of the big three that now comes to Congress hat in hand, asking for a bailout. It says “in the 1970s U.S. manufacturing ran afoul of global economic ills, foreign competition, poor management and extravagant wage pacts (the pensions they are now worried about). Tens of thousands left the so-called rust belt for the Sunbelt. “Japan quick to adopt the latest technology, forged ahead of the U.S. as the world’s largest steel producer. The substitution of lightweight plastics and aluminum for steel hammered the industry harder. Meanwhile U.S. automakers floundered under an invasion of fuel-efficient foreign cars; in Michigan car and truck output halved between 1976 and 1980.” . . “Detroit’s population shrank from 1,514,000 in 1970 to 1,203,000 a decade later. . . Many migrated to the South and West, were the booming service and high-tech economy required them to learn new skills.”

So here we are, more than 20 years after this was written, 30 years after our auto industry and the UAW were put on notice that they absolutely had to change, to streamline and reduce wages. Did they learn? No. They survived making light trucks and SUVs with huge management and union salaries, wages and benefits and big profits for shareholders. Now they sit in front of sour faced congressmen, berating and ridiculing them, babbling about sharing rides, people with no business expertise such as Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi who haven’t a clue how to get us out of this mess, people who owe their own jobs to unions and big business both for more benefits and higher salaries. Those of us who didn’t make a fraction of the union wage or the CEOs salary, or a Congress salary, are expected to save them.

From little ACORNS grow squirrelly fraud

Still seething at the idiots who called our Lord and Savior a "community organizer" at the level of these crooks.

Yid with a Lid writes “Well we finally know what a community organizer does, if that community organizer is ACORN what they do perpetuate Voter fraud. One quick google search will show all the times it has been sited for voter fraud. Now the Detroit Free Press reports that this group with ties to the Obama campaign is trying their dirty tricks in Michigan:”