The median sale price on a house or condo in Detroit < $10,000

[MicroBalrog]

This naivety is also why so many of the people on here tend to point out your youth and inexperience as limiting factors in the validity of your opinions.

Age and experience are only two ways to acquire knowledge about political reality. Getting an education and reading the reports of old, smart, experienced dudes is one such method.  Sure, I've not actually lived in the 1940's, but I know about the differences between the Zionist factions that founded Israel (for example), or about the changes in party platforms that occured in the recent past, because I actually read the platforms, not the media renditions of them. I believe that makes me a better voter (for example) than my downstairs neighbor - she maybe very experienced and twice my age, but she is not exactly a clueful user.

But that should be a separate thread.

P.S. You do of course realize I did not really refuse to accept the truth of Manedwolf's post? I admit I thought it was exaggerated in some way, but I was part-humorous in my reply.

[Tuco]

Wait, wait, wait.

You now tell me that an American official received bribes from book publishers to order hundreds of thousands of unneeded books,

Or hammers or chairs or snow tires or radios or any countless other consumable product needed to operate the gluttonous business that municipal, state and federal governments have become...
 

that these books were then abandoned en masse with the building they were stored in

Looks that way by the photos.  Occasionally, excess durable items like chairs or snow tires or radios are auctioned....

(because, according to this story, in America even middle-class children do not buy their own schoolbooks),

This is true, although some free thinkers will supplement their child's education by buying books.   We have (conservatively) over 1000 children's books in our house, mostly used softcover readers and non-fiction (dinosaurs, animals, geography), for my daughters, 4 and 6 years...

even as the local public school system suffered a shortage of books?

The schools are funded (in this state) by a per-student stipend, paid by taxes.  There are constant pleas to the parents for pencil sharpeners, tape, construction paper etc while tenured teachers are making in excess of $65,000 per year in schools that cost $1800 per square meter ...

I'm sorry, but that is seriously not very believable.

Please reconsider in light of the testimony you are reading here...

There's just so many ways in which this doesn't make sense.

That's exactly how I feel about big government, It makes no sense in so many ways.


That is why the mantra of small government rings true to many of us.

Thank you, sincerely, for asking such an important question(s).

Steve
 

[thebaldguy]

A friend of mine went to Detroit a few years ago. He said it was in tough shape then.

This is a great site that shows the "Ruins of Detroit". I'm old enough to know that Detroit was not always like it is today.

http://www.detroityes.com/home.htm

[BridgeRunner]

A colleague of mine was a substitute teacher in Detroit public schools before heading for law school.  He taught at a few schools for extended periods of time.  Many of his classes simply had no books.  They had a half dozen or so worksheets that they were supposed to do over and over again.  Forget computers; in some schools there was no chalk, and no chalk board anyway.

Yet my high school English teacher left her post at the private religious school to work for Detroit.  Hard jobs to get without the right connections.  She teaches in a pretty decent school last I heard.  There is plenty of good in Detroit. The bad areas are really bad.

My colleague, btw, is hoping to buy a house there, for himself and his wife and baby.  There is a future to be had in Detroit. There was a good mayor for a few years. Maybe Kilpatrick was a wake up call.

[SteveS]

Maybe Kilpatrick was a wake up call.

I wish I could believe that, but he was re-elected even after the people knew about many of his misdeeds.

[txgho1911]

The school district my kids attend in Indianapolis charges book rental.

[grampster]

The public school in my town have a building that is packed with functional old computers, desks, books inter alia.  The public schools are out of control and rarely can the public challenge them.

[txgho1911]

Reviewing that detroityes website convinces me they will never run out of the next ready built movie sets for all the TEOTWAWKI movies. Don't tell Hollywood.

[Manedwolf]

Reviewing that detroityes website convinces me they will never run out of the next ready built movie sets for all the TEOTWAWKI movies. Don't tell Hollywood.

They know already. The mentioned Michigan Theater was used in The Island as part of a wasteland LA of the future.

[Tuco]

The Michigan legislature has recently (2007?) passed legislation that makes the state financially attractive to filmmakers.

[bedlamite]

Here's a few pics from AR15.com of the Highland Park Police Dept that was abandoned after the city went bankrupt.

[Brad Johnson]

Something fishy about that book depository pic.  There is visible charring on the books and soot marks on the ceiling and walls.  Looks to me like the aftermath of a fire, not a simple abandonment.  The quote even mentions something about it...

Pallet after pallet of mid-1980s Houghton-Mifflin textbooks, still unwrapped in their original packaging, seem more telling of our failures than any vacant edifice. The floor is littered with flash cards, workbooks, art paper, pencils, scissors, maps, deflated footballs and frozen tennis balls, reel-to-reel tapes. Almost anything you can think of used in the education of a child during the 1980s is there, much of it charred or rotted beyond recognition. Mushrooms thrive in the damp ashes of workbooks. Ailanthus altissima, the "ghetto palm" grows in a soil made by thousands of books that have burned, and in the pulp of rotted English Textbooks. Everything of any real value has been looted. All that's left is an overwhelming sense of knowledge unlearned and untapped potential.

Methinks the story is long on drama and short on fact.

Brad

[Manedwolf]

Something fishy about that book depository pic.  There is visible charring on the books and soot marks on the ceiling and walls.  Looks to me like the aftermath of a fire, not a simple abandonment.  The quote even mentions something about it...

Methinks the story is long on drama and short on fact.

Brad

Because nothing abandoned in Detroit ever gets set on fire by people who have nothing else to do...









That's what they do there. Every night.

[Tuco]

That's what they do there. Every night.

Quoted for the truth.

[Perd Hapley]

Is Detroit worse than other major cities?  Why?  Too heavily-dependent on a now-sluggish auto industry? 

I was just looking at a French map of the Tsushima Strait, and found out what "detroit" actually means.  Very fitting.   

[Gewehr98]

No, Fistful, Detroit has good and bad parts, believe it or not.  I know, shocking, ain't it?

Manedwolf just likes to focus on a narrow view for the sake of his typical and now-famous posting style here.

It's as if he's totally unaware that other large, old cities in the U.S. don't have their own particular problem areas.  Corrupt city government?  Say it ain't so...

Urban blight is not the exclusive domain of Detroit.  Far from it.  You could take those pictures of burned-out residences and abandoned buildings, and attach a different city name like Sacramento, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, etc.
 
I doubt anybody could really name them all, there are so many, but even I've seen a bunch of them up close and personal, and I live a fairly sheltered life.

Detroit is just his target du jour in the general OMG, WTF, outrage & superiority scheme of things this week.  Stay tuned... 

[Viking]

bedlamite: link to that topic?

[MicroBalrog]

Manedwolf just likes to focus on a narrow view for the sake of his typical and now-famous posting style here.

So who is right? Gewehr and Brad, or Balog and Manedwolf?

I have a tendency, personally, to doubt Manedwolf, (which an emotional more than a logical thing and may be a subconscious response to his writing style) and it may be coloring my view of this subject, so I would like to apologize if this question offends him in any way, this is not my intent.

Can any Detroiters explain?

[BridgeRunner]

I doubt there are any bona fide Detroiters here. Seems we're pretty suburban and rural, and mostly white.  I grew up 2 miles north of Detroit.  They are both right.

Once, my car broke down at Five Mile.  Seemed ok to me, but several black women expressed concern and one sent a guy to wait with me. No place for a white girl was the concensus. My father, for a while, managed apartments for an absentee landlord. One building was in Highland Park. He witnessed some pretty bad stuff.  A friend lived downtown in a cool old apartment. No problems.

City services are mostly nonexistent.  Drunk drivers are told to go straight home. No resources to maintain a drunk tank. Eh, it goes both ways.  The good spots are now very troubled too though.

[Manedwolf]

Yes, certainly, Detroit isn't That Bad at all, and when sociologists, doing multi-year studies use the words "beyond help", they're just exaggerating. When they have to level entire abandoned neighborhoods to stop the crackhouses, leaving urban prarie (google urban prarie) with grids of streets among weeds, that's overreacting. When there's articles about "Should Detroit be abandoned?", that's hyperbole as well.

 

There are few American cities that are THAT bad that many sociologists consider them irrecoverable. Detroit, with what even residents consider a "false facade" area of a stadium and casinos, is one. Camden NJ is another.

There are special cases, where a perfect storm of shifting industry, self-destructive behavior by some residents, and mismanagement by a lousy administration (usually entitlement Democrats) has turned a formerly thriving city into what is mostly a bad, bad place. It is not just the abandoned buildings, it's the CRIME. I think some people need to look up the violent crime stats for Detroit, which are absolutely outside of anything in the US, before accusing me of "Detroit is just his target du jour in the general OMG, WTF, outrage & superiority scheme of things this week.  Stay tuned..."

Maybe read some of the interviews with residents, who have had to put barbed wire around their house because the police don't even come.

The place, except for a few isolated and insulated enclaves, is truly horrific.

Fine, then. Detroit is an unfairly maligned paradise, and other cities ought to follow its Democrat example, I am misplaced in warning about what such policies might bring. Obama will solve all problems. The clouds are fluffy and pretty. Whatever. 

[Perd Hapley]

Once, my car broke down at Five Mile.  Seemed ok to me, but several black women expressed concern and one sent a guy to wait with me. No place for a white girl was the concensus.

Maybe they're afraid of white girls.   

I was just looking at a French map of the Tsushima Strait, and found out what "detroit" actually means.  Very fitting.   

Probably too obscure.  "Detroit" is French for "strait," meaning a narrow channel between two land-masses.  But it has come to mean a tight place or difficult circumstances.  As in the phrase "in dire straits," or even "straitened" in the King James Version.

1 archaic : strict  , rigorous
2 archaic a: narrow b: limited in space or time c: closely fitting : constricted  , tight
3 a: causing distress : difficult b: limited as to means or resources

Perhaps it's fitting that Detroit is on one, named for one, and apparently in one. 

[K Frame]

"Yes, certainly, Detroit isn't That Bad at all, and when sociologists, doing multi-year studies use the words "beyond help""

Numerous cities have been described as being "beyond help" over the years.

That seems to be a rather favorite catchphrase in the urban planning industry for "bulldoze the entire thing and put in an interstate."

It's funny, though, that many of the urban areas that have been described as being "beyond help" have made rather dramatic turnarounds.

Newark, New Jersey, is in the middle of such a transformation.

Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have both been written off in the past, and both have made amazing turn arounds.

[bedlamite]

bedlamite: link to that topic?

http://www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=772372

[Tuco]

I grew up within sight of the Renaissance Center (on a clear day).

In High school, I'd ride my bike through Coleman Gardens - the neighborhoods depicted in the "DetroitYes" link, Between JohnR and Woodward, Between I-75 and Warren.  I recognize some of those homes.  My senior prom was at the Detroit Boat Club, also depicted on that link.  I (like many other of my peers) had a beer can collection.  Mine had a brick from the demolished Stroh's brewery.  
I was standing in Trumbull smoking street reefer when Kurt Gibson hit one out of Tiger Stadium to win the '84 Series (or was it the pennant?).  The DPD mounted division had to run me (and several thousand others) out of the way hours later.  

I locked my keys in a friends van before a concert at Grand Circuis Theater in 1984 (Bon Jovi - 4 dollars, sat on the back of the seat in the second row).  We came out and asked a beat cop to help us unlock the van... He slim jimmed it, saw the bottle of Tennesse Whiskey on the motor cowling, laughed and said (this is a direct quote) "Jack'll kick your ass" and walked away with a chuckle.    

We had a number of bars we went to and drank underage, some were money fronts supporting the IRA, others had back rooms where we could buy anything that the bible warned against...  We got mugged at knifepoint, ran red lights, crossed the border...
Had a typical adolescence.

It was as bad as depicted.  In most places, it was worse, but not nearly as photogenic.

One of the starkest sights I ever saw was a federal housing project, roughly 5-10 acres, abandoned, vandalized, partially burned surrounded by 8 foot chain link topped with razor wire.
Holes were dug and fabric bent to allow access (for god only knows what purpose).  This was late college, 1988-89.  In 1990 I moved away.

I took my wife (not from Detroit) back through the 'hood for a Saturday afternoon drive in 1995 or so to check on those grand old architectural ladies.  I wasn't scared, Hell, I was a native, I own these streets..

It was worse than I'd remembered, and I've never wanted to go back.

The photographs, the corruption, the waste, the fire...
It's all real.  
It's typical.  
It's Detroit.

I'll be back tonight to answer questions.  I've got to move some firewood around and get groceries.

[Sergeant Bob]

Detroit has a cancer and it's inoperable. Their are no bad "parts" of town, but there are still some good parts where the cancer hasn't metastasized.