I like this idea from Goldy.
When nature destroys a US city, we open up our hearts and our wallets. But when economic forces beyond the control of local citizens—forces that are the direct result of our nation’s free trade policies—wipe away jobs and savings and even entire landscapes, we turn a collective blind eye. Why?
US taxpayers have spent over $60 billion rebuilding Iraq and nearly $100 billion in Afghanistan, and with questionable results. So what would be so awful about spending $20 billion to help rebuild a major American city?
This! We have lost the notion that we’re all in this together. We have lost the notion that there is a common good. You can lecture about moral hazard, or responsibility, or bootstraps all you want, but we have lost our collective responsibility to help one another out in this country. On the individual level and from region to region.
We have lost the idea that when our policies, quite naturally, produce large swaths of economic losers that it is up to the places that have gained to help out. Much of the country has benefited from free trade, but Detroit has been crippled. It is up to those of us who gained by being able to sell planes, software, and agricultural goods around the world to help the places that have lost their advantage selling cars. We have to be able to help them find out what’s next for them.
While Detroit, or the Midwest, or the rust belt, or however you want to define it is the place currently in trouble, it’s only a matter of time before Seattle’s — or Washington, or the Northwest or however you want to define it — turn comes. That’s how our current vulture capitalism works, I’m afraid. When our hour of need comes, I want us to be able to say to Detroit, “we had your back” and be able to mean it. It’s the moral thing to do and in our long term best interests.
“We” never lost any of that stuff. “They” did. And I don’t need to explain who “we” and “they” are. But I will anyway. “They” are the people who think of everyone else as “they” instead “we.”
” …it’s only a matter of time before [our] turn comes.”
I was thinking about that today after reading the news stories about Detroit. I suspect that if Republicans ever get control of our state or city governments, they won’t wait for an actual fiscal crisis (although they’ll do their best to create one); they’ll immediately file bankruptcy with the intention of wiping out our (solvent) public pension systems, because they can’t stand the idea of people who worked hard for a modest living (teachers, librarians, groundskeepers, etc.) getting a pension in their old age.
Why do Republicans hate workers? Workers made them rich. All of their own wealth came from the labor of workers. What kind of sick twisted psychopaths hate the very people who made them prosperous?
Read ‘The Shock Doctrine”
Here.
Buy it here.
Create crisis. Shock the populace into inaction. Enact your policy. Rape the world.
It’s how the sociopaths who seek to exploit us all operate. It was feudal aristocracy before, it’s the ‘1%’ now. Same old, same old.
Corrupt politicians destroyed Detroit. The city was dependent on the auto industry. Does any leftard moron remember Dr. J Edwards Deming?
Dr. Deming who origanally took his theories of quality to Detroit and they outright rejected him. 3 year car obsolescence was Detroit’s plan. Once Dr. Deming was rejected by the Detroit Big 3 he went to Japan, and became the gaint who rebuilt their economy. In the mid-60s Detroit made cars were being delivered to dealers with an average of 24 defects a unit, many of them safety related. Remember the Corvair and Ralph Nader? In 1970 Japanese car quality surpassed Detroit and the rest is history. Now Big 3 quality has come a long way but the American public has NOT come back. BTW Puddy drives big American iron. What do you HA libtards drive?
We see what corruption has done. Say thank you Kwame Kilpatrick!
Goldy’s is a good question, but honestly, Republicans don’t repair US cities struck by natural disasters any longer, either. Or their idea of “repair” is to funnel sweetheart contracts to their con artist cronies. New Orleans was left to drown; aid for Sandy victims last year was delayed months because Republicans in Congress kept voting it down.
If this were still the 1990s, the difference to many conservatives, consciously or not, would be that being black and poor are both moral failings, whereas being victimized by weather is not.
That’s no longer true. Today’s Republican Party is so isolated from reality that since it’s all God’s will – and since the weather is now yet another liberal conspiracy – and since any money going to liberals and/or non-whites is TYRANNY!! – the modern Right Wing Nut Job is perfectly happy to let US cities drown. All of them, figuratively or literally. Big cities are considered The Enemy, even though they’re the economic engines that make their precious lifestyles possible.
As for Detroit – it’s absolutely true that the city has been crippled by decades of seriously corrupt and incompetent local politicians. But that’s not why the city’s population has dropped by half since 1950. The city never recovered from the 1967 riots and the subsequent white flight, followed on hard by the near-total loss of the manufacturing economy that defined Detroit more than any other major US city. The companies are still (sometimes) profitable, but most of the working class jobs are long gone. That’s not something either the people or the political leaders of Detroit have had any control over.
He’ll Owebamma blew nearly 7 trillion so far and what do we have to show for that other than a bankrupt government institution.
@5 “Now Big 3 quality has come a long way but the American public has NOT come back.”
You don’t know what you’re talking about.
http://www.foxbusiness.com/new.....uto-sales/
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/SAARDTOT:IND
@5 ” BTW Puddy drives big American iron. What do you HA libtards drive?”
Two Fords. Do I own Ford stock? Guess …
@7 I assume you’re counting the GI payroll as part of that
$7 trillion he “blew” … in other words you’re saying our soldiers don’t deserve to be paid.
I drive a Jeep. S’gotta 6 inch lift and 33 x 11s on full four wheel positraction. I’ve put about 100,000 pretty reliable miles on it and had it for 10 years.
The only foreign cars I’d be interested in owning in the future would be a new Subaru, or a Koeneiggsegg.
But, I’ll never be able to afford to own a Koeneiggsegg.
Sigh.
As aways the DUMBASS SENILE and LUNATIC Wabbit finds a “story” and touts it.
So history is wrong Roger DUMBASS SENILE and LUNATIC Wabbit?
Dr. J Edwards Deming didn’t try to help Detroit with their quality issues?
Dr. J Edwards Deming didn’t go to Japan and improve their car quality Roger DUMBASS SENILE and LUNATIC Wabbit?
Ralph Nader didn’t make a name for himself on the Corvair Roger DUMBASS SENILE and LUNATIC Wabbit?
Do tell Roger DUMBASS SENILE and LUNATIC Wabbit!
Fox Business Roger DUMBASS SENILE and LUNATIC Wabbit? Puddy thought Fox was verboten here on libtard hindends? So your article is back in April… And when you look at the values, you see truck sales not car sales! Well here’s June, two months later than your links and it’s from Bloomberg too Roger DUMBASS SENILE and LUNATIC Wabbit.
Oh yeah here is a better link because there is a special four latter word which reminds Puddy of you. Right after Motley!
BTW Roger DUMBASS SENILE and LUNATIC Wabbit, the best selling American “cars” are two trucks… And when you look at annualized sales, the Chevy Cruze is below the Honda CR-V for June. The Chevy Cruze didn’t crack the top 10 until June. So much for a Detroit made Government Motors (Obummer Motors) cars!
It really sux to be you Roger DUMBASS SENILE and LUNATIC Wabbit! Looks like Roger DUMBASS SENILE and LUNATIC Wabbit doesn’t know what he farting about again! Puddy wins again!
Do you really think $20 Billion is going to rebuild Detroit? $18.5 Billion and climbing is just the cost of their existing pensions and outstanding bills? What happens next you two? The bills are still accumulating. Are you going to continue to fund Detroit for services to 2 million people when there are only 700,000 left?
Where is the tax base to fund the repaired city and keep it “vibrant”? 40 percent of Detroit street lights are in disrepair. The police and ambulance fleet is Are you going to demolish the 75,000 vacant homes in Detroit or rebuild them? Detroit’s police, fire and ambulance fleets are in disrepair. Puddy heard on Detroit radio yesterday the ambulance fleet is down by 30% due to non-working vehicles.
Average Detroit police 911 response times lag the national average by a large margin. Detroit residents wait an average of 58 minutes for police, while the national average is just 11 minutes. Five times longer. only 8% of Detroit crimes are solved. Puddy lost a third cousin to a mistaken identity shooting in February. This was was an easy crime to solve. Many witnesses. My third cousin was 46. The killer was 16.
Then when you decide the Detroit reconstruction is complete, which city is next? Or which county is next? What happens after that city is rebuilt? What happens when the county bills are paid? How much money are you going to spend?
So Carl and Goldy, open your wallets and start funding Detroit! Call on your rich 1% friends Libtard SCHMUCKO discussed above. The 1% Wall Street types OWS Racist Fraggy hates so much; seem to be backing Obummer right now so call your chits in now to help out Detroit!
Libtards, always looking for ways to spend money without viewing the down the road consequences!
Give it 10 years at the most maybe..
Ugh. More word salad from the village idiot. Somebody pass me the Haldol dart gun….
@ 15
Ack, thpphpp, aaack, thpphpp….
Fucking Bill the Cat is more coherent.
@16
Yup – I’ve often thought that that analogy was quite apt.
So BUTTPUTTY, please enlighten us.
How could W. Edwards Deming, who has been dead for 20 years, protect Detroit from a RETHUG controlled state government?
(I can hardly wait for the GOATFUCKER’s incoherent reply)
I agree. Bail them out.
Once again everyone can see how stooooooooooooopid ekim and his goat are. This problem has been happening for decades. The bill has now come due. Kevyn Orr cut his teeth during the Chrysler bailout when he was involved. BTW ekim and goat, this problem was happening during the DUMMOCRAPT Grantholm was guvnur. Also ekim and goat, you keep skipping over that real scumbag Detroit ex-mayor Kwame Kilpatrick… occupying a jail cell!