Another conservative decries Detroit as 'poster boy for leftist policies'

[proud2BlibKansan]

This is the new meme and Detroit is their latest target. The teachers unions are the reasons kids are not graduating from school, and merit pay is the answer; the UAW is the reason GM failed, they wanted to build too many green cars, etc ad nauseum.

The model cities program and "leftist giveaways" are blamed. Also the fact that Detroit has had only Democratic mayors since 1961.

"A once great city brought to its knees by leftist policies and removing free market principles . . . This is what America could look like in a short amount of time."


http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/12/best_of_links_another_conserva.html

Long video and you'll need a shower afterwards.

This is a recurring theme being blasted on comment boards and on conservative websites. Gotta hand it to them for a more polished product than they used to put out but the ignorance and hate is still overwhelming. I doubt these people would be happy unless they had other people's misery to gloat about.

[twiceshy]

1. I agree it is too simplistic .....

to just blame the unions and the city leadership. I just wonder what are the reasons for the decline in our manufacturing cities? I know Detroit is the poster boy for decline, but you see this everywhere in the Midwest and Northeast - once proud cities that have lost their base of productive enterprises. Nothing done in the last 20 years seems to make a dent in the problem. My own city, Springfield MA, once manufactured Rolls Royce autos, Indian motorcycles, turbines and diesels,etc. Even the once local service industries, like banking have been stripped away as they became national in scope.

We need to return to a productivity-based economy, but I see no movement from either party in that direction. I think it's because that would require imposing tariffs, taxing imports of off-shore produced goods of USA corporations, and otherwise interfering with Multi-national corporations free reign.

Thinking seriously of moving to Peru.

[phasma ex machina]

2. Three big ogres eating all of the competition probably fits somewhere in the tale.

[twiceshy]

4. What three ogres? Ford, GM, Chrysler?

[phasma ex machina]

17. Yes. Dozens of car manufacturers used to call the Great Lakes region

home during the early 1900s.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. Capitalism

That quest for the almighty dollar. Profit over people. Those Rolls Royces can be manufactured cheaper somewhere else.

Of course you'll never find an ignorant selfish conservative criticizing capitalism. It's their god.

[Romulox]

9. Nonsense. The US taxpayer subsidizes the lifestyles of the wealth (e.g. TARP)

Manhattan didn't "win" in the marketplace--it "won" with back room payoffs. New York is just one city that would be a shell of itself without copious handouts. :hi:

[twiceshy]

10. It just makes me sad.......

How we got from where the USA was when I was a kid buying smokes out of a glass factory vending machine to a place where (in my city) half the kids don't graduate High School and the only jobs are McJobs. It's like there was a wealth siphon and it just emptied the bucket when I wasn't looking.

I went into IT and still working, but most of the young IT employees are Indian! What the f' happenned?

[phasma ex machina]

20. +1 Good question.

You can argue that some prosperity came from winning World War II. America, Germany, and Japan ranked as the world's three largest manufacturers. (What's the deal with threes and Detroit? LOL)

Anyhow, America emerged from the war as the last man standing.

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. And there is an underlying implication that anyone can be rich

You too can have backroom payoffs one day. That dream justifies the US taxpayer subsidizing the lifestyles of the wealthy.

[JVS]

3. HCR aside, since when is a bunch of big corporations dicking over an area leftist policy?

[proud2BlibKansan]

6. Bingo

[Romulox]

8. Since Bill Clinton's signature went on NAFTA, MFN/China.

:hi:

[JVS]

11. While Clinton has a share of blame in this, things in Detroit were declining well before his time

When we moved the grandparents out of Detroit to be with us in the mid-1980s they sold their house for the same $5K they paid for it back in 1940. Michael Moore's Roger and Me attests to the fact that GM was already giving Michigan the shaft at that time, nearly 10 years before NAFTA. I would say though, that the "peace dividend" proclaimed by many after the collapse of the USSR was really just their newly found license to fuck over workers without needing to answer to an alternative form of social organization, and they used this license with renewed vigor against workers.

[Romulox]

18. Right, but that's like saying "Billy's life was already going downhill before he tried crack..."

"Michael Moore's Roger and Me attests to the fact that GM was already giving Michigan the shaft at that time, nearly 10 years before NAFTA."

What you may not realize is that it is not the loss of GM jobs that has devastated either Detroit or SE Michigan--it is the virtual decimation of the mom and pop to mid size suppliers of the materials used to make cars.

Their destruction is Clinton's legacy.

[JVS]

21. Billy had already been doing a lot of coke when he also started using newly invented crack

Nafta didn't start the flight of businesses out of the American Northeast. Nafta simply made it cheaper and easier to move. This process had already been going on as industries in the North East moved to the South and to Mexico. I don't understand why you want to insist that it was Nafta, when this process was already well underway.

[Romulox]

24. I'm sorry JVS, but I've witnessed it with my own eyes. It's primarily happened in the last 15 years

"Nafta simply made it cheaper and easier to move. This process had already been going on as industries in the North East moved to the South and to Mexico. I don't understand why you want to insist that it was Nafta, when this process was already well underway."

Right. And it all goes back to man migrating from "Pangaia" in search of hunting grounds...

You can attempt to make an abstraction of this if you want, but NAFTA, as a policy, has had demonstrably disastrous effects for this entire region (if it were only Detroit, you may have had a point, but it is the entire industrial midwest that has been gutted.)

"I don't understand why you want to insist that it was Nafta, when this process was already well underway."

Throwing accelerant on a fire is arson.

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. That's definitely a factor.

[Canuckistanian]

35. Right. Detroit is actually a poster boy for FAILED RW policies

And yes, that includes Clinton's RW policies as well.

[Romulox]

7. Detroit is a centerpiece for BILL CLINTON'S NAFTA. nt

[goldcanyonaz]

13. Lots of corruption in Detroit politics. The state was run into the ground by Engler IMO.

[proud2BlibKansan]

15. Who's Engler?

[goldcanyonaz]

16. Engler was governor prior to Grandholm.

[safeinOhio]

26. John Engler emptied the bank and then

cut taxes to seal the deal.

[Romulox]

19. Umm, the state hasn't exactly blossomed under Governor Granholm's watch, either. nt

[goldcanyonaz]

23. You're absolutely right. I remember her big news of GEMA opening in Dundee (250 jobs)

with more than 15,000 applying for them.

Property taxes are sky high with no relief for those struggling to keep their homes.

We still have property in Michigan and it's costing more than 7 k a year in taxes and this is only for land.

We were lucky to have had the luxury to move out of Michigan.

[Romulox]

25. I can afford to move...my heart won't let me. nt

[safeinOhio]

27. I moved 3 years ago and Michigan taxes are way lower than

Ohio. 3.9 income tax with no tax on pensions. With those low Michigan rates came dirt roads and pot holes. No cops to be seen and schools falling apart.

[goldcanyonaz]

30. Our property is in Oakland county and the taxes are high there.

[Snotcicles]

28. Don't forget that POS jellyfish Spencer Abraham. nt

[goldcanyonaz]

29. Yeah, almost forgot about that POS.

[madmom]

22. My SO is a retiree from one of the Detroit big three. Waaaay back when we first got

married (in the early 70s) he and many of his friends/coworkers were complaining about the "14th floor" That was the name given to all the bigwig offices that took all the money from the company and left the union/blue collar workers to fight for everything they got. So this "theme" is way off base. This has been happening for far longer than their feeble little minds can grasp.

[area51]

31. "Detroit's doing poorly because of 'removing free market principles'..."

Yeah, I mean, the free market works so well -- just look at healthcare in this country ... oh, wait. :think:

[MrScorpio]

32. As a native born Detroiter, I can say with certainty...

That this asshole doesn't know what he's talking about.

Detroit fails because capitalism fails. It never even developed a viable public transportation system because the city has always deferred to the car companies, which have gotten everything they have ever wanted. That's just one example of many.

Don't blame the Democrats, blame the Capitalists, who have defied Democracy since day one.

[phasma ex machina]

33. As a Detroiter you might enjoy one of my favorites.

Put aside their negative image, so sensationalized by a self flagellating media, and view them, for a moment, as you might one of the celebrated ruins of the world. Then you may come to understand why I call them The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit.

[MrScorpio]

34. Thanks

A lot of interesting photos there

Perhaps Mike Illitch can scope them up and rebuild them

[JVS]

36. Exactly. The Capitalists