There are a few things brought up about Detroit since yesterday that I want to address.
First, there is no shortage of highly qualified STEM graduates in the area. A large portion of them are leaving the area or working in other fields (where they can) because there aren't enough jobs. Even though hiring for engineers has picked up since the auto industry rebounded, and some jobs are coming in, the last thing this area needs is a new stream of immigrant STEM workers.
Second, when businesses are coming / coming back to the area, they generally aren't moving to Detroit. They are building out in the various suburbs throughout Metro Detroit. Areas that can afford to provide millions of dollars of infrastructure improvements and tax breaks to court those businesses. All Detroit can provide is cheap space, and we've got a lot of counties around here that already have that in spades.
Third, the buildings and infrastructure in Detroit city are outdated. The factories that haven't been torn down were built a half century or more ago, and it's far cheaper to buy a tract of farmland out in Dundee, or some brownfield in Trenton or Sterling Heights, and build a new modern / modular factory there. Old factories aren't designed for modern flexible manufacturing - they are designed for built in processes - and take long times to retool - say nothing of the hazardous material cleanup costs.
Fourth, and I'm sad that I need to even say this...is that Detroit, from ~1967 to present IS a de facto ghetto. After the White Flight, property values dropped so hard and so fast, and had such an impact on everything from city services to education that it destroyed the wealth of the black community that remained. Business income tanked. Add a few decades of nakedly discriminatory policies in the outside communities, and it's nearly impossible for the 700k or so people who remain in the city to get out.
The 'concentrate the poor people' idea DIDN'T WORK.
Now, you can say 'but if we do it right it would'...and maybe it's true...but it's not going to be done right. Without fail, throughout human history, when the poor and disenfranchised are concentrated into an area, the wealthy have no stake in continued support of those poor and the situations do not improve.
Ok, here's a pipe dream, and every bit as tyrannical as what's happening in Detroit. But if we are going to do it, we should do it right. The EM should step up and provide a legal justification that the issues of Detroit are directly linked to the surrounding communities. As a result, those are also failed communities, and the powers they have over Detroit's government will also apply to the governments of the surrounding communities in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties.
Make Dearborn, Livonia, Novi, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Warren, Sterling Heights, Trenton, etc boroughs of Detroit City, with a central city government, you would sure as shit see this law get overturned or Detroit's problems get fixed FAST.
Not that that would ever, ever happen in a million years. This isn't a law that should affect white people, or at least not rich ones.
Make Dearborn, Livonia, Novi, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Warren, Sterling Heights, Trenton, etc boroughs of Detroit City, with a central city government, you would sure as shit see this law get overturned or Detroit's problems get fixed FAST.
Or break up most of Detroit and make it part of those communities. Either way, the problem gets fixed fast. Again, it's totally impossible. But oh my god would doing that put a smile on my face for a long time.
PHASE 1
-Consolidate the city. Buy out the people in the areas that are decaying and don't have a large enough population to justify providing services too. Would probably help them if the city offered to move them to areas that are being kept for free.
-Level the parts of the city that aren't being used.
-Try to recoup costs from the consolidation by selling off any scrap from level structures or that was lying around that is worth selling. Look at land on the outer fringes of the city, that has been cleared and consider selling that off.
Everybody agrees that's what needs doing. But the problem is so big and expensive, the already broke city can't afford it. It will take outside money. Then the second you propose it in Michigan politics: "Hey dudes, Detroit totes needs cleaning up. Let's help them!"
all the rich, white, conservative fuckers that run state politics go: "Ew! Don't give money to those people. Let's eliminate $1.8B in business taxes by cutting it out of education instead.*"
*Not hyperbole. Snyder's actual signature election achievement. His next agenda item: business tax cuts that reduce funding to education. I'm not making this up.
I wold love to see the look on ol' Patterson's face if this directly effected Oakland County. That'd be worth a lot of political capital to make happen no matter how impossible it is.
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Make Dearborn, Livonia, Novi, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Warren, Sterling Heights, Trenton, etc boroughs of Detroit City, with a central city government, you would sure as shit see this law get overturned or Detroit's problems get fixed FAST.
Or break up most of Detroit and make it part of those communities. Either way, the problem gets fixed fast. Again, it's totally impossible. But oh my god would doing that put a smile on my face for a long time.
I don't think that this would even be a fair solution. Why should those few communities bear the cost of Detroit's failures based on nothing but proximity. The costs should fall on the whole state or even the whole nation, not on the people that just live near it. Not to mention that the practical effect if this would be hyper white flight where people don't only flee poor minority areas, they flee 5 towns over.
Make Dearborn, Livonia, Novi, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Warren, Sterling Heights, Trenton, etc boroughs of Detroit City, with a central city government, you would sure as shit see this law get overturned or Detroit's problems get fixed FAST.
Or break up most of Detroit and make it part of those communities. Either way, the problem gets fixed fast. Again, it's totally impossible. But oh my god would doing that put a smile on my face for a long time.
I don't think that this would even be a fair solution. Why should those few communities bear the cost of Detroit's failures based on nothing but proximity. The costs should fall on the whole state or even the whole nation, not on the people that just live near it. Not to mention that the practical effect if this would be hyper white flight where people don't only flee poor minority areas, they flee 5 towns over.
Because it is not based on nothing but proximity. Those communities directly had a hand in how Detroit is today.
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Make Dearborn, Livonia, Novi, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Warren, Sterling Heights, Trenton, etc boroughs of Detroit City, with a central city government, you would sure as shit see this law get overturned or Detroit's problems get fixed FAST.
Or break up most of Detroit and make it part of those communities. Either way, the problem gets fixed fast. Again, it's totally impossible. But oh my god would doing that put a smile on my face for a long time.
I don't think that this would even be a fair solution. Why should those few communities bear the cost of Detroit's failures based on nothing but proximity. The costs should fall on the whole state or even the whole nation, not on the people that just live near it. Not to mention that the practical effect if this would be hyper white flight where people don't only flee poor minority areas, they flee 5 towns over.
What you consider 'fair' isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Anyway, that's why I suggested all of Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb county instead of just the bordering communities.
The problems of Detroit City are the direct result of the actions and policies of the communities in Metro Detroit. There's no reason they shouldn't shoulder a major portion of the burden of fixing Detroit. It's not like the state and nation won't have to shoulder a significant portion of that burden as well - both directly and indirectly.
EDIT - Besides, I thought you were for holding people responsible accountable for their actions. What those surrounding communities have done to the city of Detroit is comparable to the intentional destruction of a vandal, and you've given your opinion on how that intentional or negligent destruction should be treated.
zagdrob on
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Make Dearborn, Livonia, Novi, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Warren, Sterling Heights, Trenton, etc boroughs of Detroit City, with a central city government, you would sure as shit see this law get overturned or Detroit's problems get fixed FAST.
Or break up most of Detroit and make it part of those communities. Either way, the problem gets fixed fast. Again, it's totally impossible. But oh my god would doing that put a smile on my face for a long time.
I don't think that this would even be a fair solution. Why should those few communities bear the cost of Detroit's failures based on nothing but proximity. The costs should fall on the whole state or even the whole nation, not on the people that just live near it. Not to mention that the practical effect if this would be hyper white flight where people don't only flee poor minority areas, they flee 5 towns over.
What you consider 'fair' isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Anyway, that's why I suggested all of Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb county instead of just the bordering communities.
The problems of Detroit City are the direct result of the actions and policies of the communities in Metro Detroit. There's no reason they shouldn't shoulder a major portion of the burden of fixing Detroit. It's not like the state and nation won't have to shoulder a significant portion of that burden as well - both directly and indirectly.
EDIT - Besides, I thought you were for holding people responsible accountable for their actions. What those surrounding communities have done to the city of Detroit is comparable to the intentional destruction of a vandal, and you've given your opinion on how that intentional or negligent destruction should be treated.
Vandals beak the law. Selling your home in a city and moving to a suburb and then supporting policies that benefit the community that you move to is hardly comparable. Also, like I said before, it punishes the people that did not flee far enough, along with people that never lived in Detroit, while people that moved further away pay nothing.
Make Dearborn, Livonia, Novi, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Warren, Sterling Heights, Trenton, etc boroughs of Detroit City, with a central city government, you would sure as shit see this law get overturned or Detroit's problems get fixed FAST.
Or break up most of Detroit and make it part of those communities. Either way, the problem gets fixed fast. Again, it's totally impossible. But oh my god would doing that put a smile on my face for a long time.
I don't think that this would even be a fair solution. Why should those few communities bear the cost of Detroit's failures based on nothing but proximity. The costs should fall on the whole state or even the whole nation, not on the people that just live near it. Not to mention that the practical effect if this would be hyper white flight where people don't only flee poor minority areas, they flee 5 towns over.
What you consider 'fair' isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Anyway, that's why I suggested all of Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb county instead of just the bordering communities.
The problems of Detroit City are the direct result of the actions and policies of the communities in Metro Detroit. There's no reason they shouldn't shoulder a major portion of the burden of fixing Detroit. It's not like the state and nation won't have to shoulder a significant portion of that burden as well - both directly and indirectly.
EDIT - Besides, I thought you were for holding people responsible accountable for their actions. What those surrounding communities have done to the city of Detroit is comparable to the intentional destruction of a vandal, and you've given your opinion on how that intentional or negligent destruction should be treated.
Vandals beak the law. Selling your home in a city and moving to a suburb and then supporting policies that benefit the community that you move to is hardly comparable. Also, like I said before, it punishes the people that did not flee far enough, along with people that never lived in Detroit, while people that moved further away pay nothing.
It's a little more complicated than that though. What really happened was that they sold their homes, moved to the suburbs with the majority of the money, and then did everything they could with their economic might to make sure Detroit could not recover.
Seidkona on
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Make Dearborn, Livonia, Novi, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Warren, Sterling Heights, Trenton, etc boroughs of Detroit City, with a central city government, you would sure as shit see this law get overturned or Detroit's problems get fixed FAST.
Or break up most of Detroit and make it part of those communities. Either way, the problem gets fixed fast. Again, it's totally impossible. But oh my god would doing that put a smile on my face for a long time.
I don't think that this would even be a fair solution. Why should those few communities bear the cost of Detroit's failures based on nothing but proximity. The costs should fall on the whole state or even the whole nation, not on the people that just live near it. Not to mention that the practical effect if this would be hyper white flight where people don't only flee poor minority areas, they flee 5 towns over.
What you consider 'fair' isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Anyway, that's why I suggested all of Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb county instead of just the bordering communities.
The problems of Detroit City are the direct result of the actions and policies of the communities in Metro Detroit. There's no reason they shouldn't shoulder a major portion of the burden of fixing Detroit. It's not like the state and nation won't have to shoulder a significant portion of that burden as well - both directly and indirectly.
EDIT - Besides, I thought you were for holding people responsible accountable for their actions. What those surrounding communities have done to the city of Detroit is comparable to the intentional destruction of a vandal, and you've given your opinion on how that intentional or negligent destruction should be treated.
Vandals beak the law. Selling your home in a city and moving to a suburb and then supporting policies that benefit the community that you move to is hardly comparable. Also, like I said before, it punishes the people that did not flee far enough, along with people that never lived in Detroit, while people that moved further away pay nothing.
Actually, quite a few of the actions of the surrounding communities were breaking the law.
Such as refusing to honor the Schools of Choice mandate when the students are minority students from Detroit, Dearborn's residency restrictions on public parks, redlining and other discriminatory practices, etc.
Besides, these policies aren't designed to punish the individuals in those communities. They are intended to punish the communities as the entities that violated the laws and contributed directly, knowingly, and willingly to the issues in Detroit. The individuals who are affected aren't necessarily the ones who took did those things, or were responsible for those things, but they aren't being punished. Any impact on them is simply incidental...no different from how the kid of that vandal you want imprisoned will suffer because dad lost his job.
EDIT - Anyway, that's the last of today's 'wow, SKFM REALLY BELIEVES THIS' tangent.
zagdrob on
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Make Dearborn, Livonia, Novi, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Warren, Sterling Heights, Trenton, etc boroughs of Detroit City, with a central city government, you would sure as shit see this law get overturned or Detroit's problems get fixed FAST.
Or break up most of Detroit and make it part of those communities. Either way, the problem gets fixed fast. Again, it's totally impossible. But oh my god would doing that put a smile on my face for a long time.
I don't think that this would even be a fair solution. Why should those few communities bear the cost of Detroit's failures based on nothing but proximity. The costs should fall on the whole state or even the whole nation, not on the people that just live near it. Not to mention that the practical effect if this would be hyper white flight where people don't only flee poor minority areas, they flee 5 towns over.
What you consider 'fair' isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Anyway, that's why I suggested all of Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb county instead of just the bordering communities.
The problems of Detroit City are the direct result of the actions and policies of the communities in Metro Detroit. There's no reason they shouldn't shoulder a major portion of the burden of fixing Detroit. It's not like the state and nation won't have to shoulder a significant portion of that burden as well - both directly and indirectly.
EDIT - Besides, I thought you were for holding people responsible accountable for their actions. What those surrounding communities have done to the city of Detroit is comparable to the intentional destruction of a vandal, and you've given your opinion on how that intentional or negligent destruction should be treated.
Vandals beak the law. Selling your home in a city and moving to a suburb and then supporting policies that benefit the community that you move to is hardly comparable. Also, like I said before, it punishes the people that did not flee far enough, along with people that never lived in Detroit, while people that moved further away pay nothing.
Actually, quite a few of the actions of the surrounding communities were breaking the law.
Such as refusing to honor the Schools of Choice mandate when the students are minority students from Detroit, Dearborn's residency restrictions on public parks, redlining and other discriminatory practices, etc.
Besides, these policies aren't designed to punish the individuals in those communities. They are intended to punish the communities as the entities that violated the laws and contributed directly, knowingly, and willingly to the issues in Detroit. The individuals who are affected aren't necessarily the ones who took did those things, or were responsible for those things, but they aren't being punished. Any impact on them is simply incidental...no different from how the kid of that vandal you want imprisoned will suffer because dad lost his job.
EDIT - Anyway, that's the last of today's 'wow, SKFM REALLY BELIEVES THIS' tangent.
Can you elaborate on the illegal acts? You seem to know a lot about the history of the region, and I am interested.
Remember that entity liability is a strange thing though. Shift enough cost onto a town and the people living there will leave, and noone will be left to pick up the tab.
Zagdrob, yeah, I think we can all agree that the shitty GOP of Michigan won't fix Detroit properly because their platform pretty much runs counter to all the methods that would fix the city. One of those being instead of instant short term profits, you have to spend a metric shit ton fixing and modernizing the core of Detroit so that businesses would have some incentive to move there.
The fact that people in this day and age are willing to fucking hose up perfectly good farmland over reusing land that isn't in adequate shape for farming kills me. One of these days, were going to have a shortage of farmland and someone is going to point out "man, were people fucking stupid for paving over those tracks when we had places of urban decay that would would have cost a little more, when one factors in clean up, that could have been used instead.
Make Dearborn, Livonia, Novi, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Warren, Sterling Heights, Trenton, etc boroughs of Detroit City, with a central city government, you would sure as shit see this law get overturned or Detroit's problems get fixed FAST.
Or break up most of Detroit and make it part of those communities. Either way, the problem gets fixed fast. Again, it's totally impossible. But oh my god would doing that put a smile on my face for a long time.
I don't think that this would even be a fair solution. Why should those few communities bear the cost of Detroit's failures based on nothing but proximity. The costs should fall on the whole state or even the whole nation, not on the people that just live near it. Not to mention that the practical effect if this would be hyper white flight where people don't only flee poor minority areas, they flee 5 towns over.
What you consider 'fair' isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Anyway, that's why I suggested all of Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb county instead of just the bordering communities.
The problems of Detroit City are the direct result of the actions and policies of the communities in Metro Detroit. There's no reason they shouldn't shoulder a major portion of the burden of fixing Detroit. It's not like the state and nation won't have to shoulder a significant portion of that burden as well - both directly and indirectly.
EDIT - Besides, I thought you were for holding people responsible accountable for their actions. What those surrounding communities have done to the city of Detroit is comparable to the intentional destruction of a vandal, and you've given your opinion on how that intentional or negligent destruction should be treated.
Vandals beak the law. Selling your home in a city and moving to a suburb and then supporting policies that benefit the community that you move to is hardly comparable. Also, like I said before, it punishes the people that did not flee far enough, along with people that never lived in Detroit, while people that moved further away pay nothing.
Actually, quite a few of the actions of the surrounding communities were breaking the law.
Such as refusing to honor the Schools of Choice mandate when the students are minority students from Detroit, Dearborn's residency restrictions on public parks, redlining and other discriminatory practices, etc.
Besides, these policies aren't designed to punish the individuals in those communities. They are intended to punish the communities as the entities that violated the laws and contributed directly, knowingly, and willingly to the issues in Detroit. The individuals who are affected aren't necessarily the ones who took did those things, or were responsible for those things, but they aren't being punished. Any impact on them is simply incidental...no different from how the kid of that vandal you want imprisoned will suffer because dad lost his job.
EDIT - Anyway, that's the last of today's 'wow, SKFM REALLY BELIEVES THIS' tangent.
Can you elaborate on the illegal acts? You seem to know a lot about the history of the region, and I am interested.
Remember that entity liability is a strange thing though. Shift enough cost onto a town and the people living there will leave, and noone will be left to pick up the tab.
When it comes to schools, Miliken v. Bradley (and the cases leading up to it) is the landmark case when it comes to school segregation. Basically, it said that de facto segregation is fine as long as it can't be proven that district lines were drawn with the explicit intent of segregation. Prior to this, suburban schools had refused to honor orders of lower courts to 'bus' students from the predominantly black schools of Detroit to the white suburban schools. This resulted in a failing public school system with over 90% black students.
A large part of the reason that Detroit schools were failing was because, prior to 1994s Proposal A, Michigan schools were funded by local property taxes. Due to the drop in property values following the 1967 riots and subsequent 'White Flight', Detroit Schools were grossly underfunded for over two decades (and still are, but that's an aside). Due to practices in all of the surrounding communities that were found to be discriminatory, black families did not have the opportunity to leave the failing Detroit schools and attend better schools.
Here are a couple of papers on housing discrimination in and around the area.
More recently, there have been issues with residency and 'Schools of Choice'. In Michigan, Schools are allowed to voluntarily participate in a system where students from outside their district can apply to, and attend school in other districts. A number of the wealthy or white suburban schools that participate in this system have been found to discriminate against minority students, and students coming from districts like Detroit. One of the ways that they have discriminated is that - despite receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state for participating in the program - they have required the students or the student's home districts to pay tuition.
Another issue is that in districts surrounding Detroit, there have been overwhelmingly onerous 'residency restrictions' on students that are suspected of 'residency fraud'. This is almost exclusively minority students, and they require them to submit monthly proof of rent, residency affidavits, and open investigations if they suspect they may not be from the district. In one case, a student who (lived with) one parent living in the district (Grosse Point IIRC) but had another parent living in Detroit was kicked out of the district and charged back tuition for 'residency fraud' because the parent living in Detroit had shared custody. Obviously, this was a minority student.
This story got some attention three or four years ago, and one of the main issues was that a number of (white) students in the district were in a similar situation, but were never initially required to complete or submit the affidavits, prove their residency, or investigated. It was found to be discriminatory, but the student had graduated before the case was settled. This case isn't particularly unusual.
Below is a summary of some issues with Schools of Choice and how it's been exploited by neighboring districts. This particular group is an incredibly right-leaning organization, so when they are accusing a rich white school district of segregation / racism, it's something...
We also have all the issues of straight up violations of Fair Housing laws, redlining, discrimination in employment both by communities, businesses, and individuals. These aren't unique issues, nor are they unique to the Detroit / Detroit Metro area. In our particular case, Detroit has a combination of factors - geography and transportation infrastructure that makes it easy to build out in suburbs, the wealth (and decline of) the auto industry, labor, important border crossing, a relatively liberal area in a largely conservative state, the level of violence in the 1967 riots, etc that make it's situation unique.
Below is an article dealing with some of the issues in the housing markets in Detroit and surrounding suburbs.
While I agree that there is a risk of shifting responsibility to the surrounding area, and having the people / businesses just leave, that shouldn't be a reason not to do what is right. I still would never, ever, expect to see the suburbs have to shoulder any of the burden for what they have done to the city of Detroit. The costs should really be assumed by the state and nation, but that's just not the political landscape. Instead, we're most likely going to see the same bullshit austerity 'cut our way to solvency' in a place that doesn't have anything left to cut.
To illustrate this situation a little more clearly:
Red=White
Blue=Black
What are the white enclave in the middle of the city, and the black enclaves to the south and southwest?
That white enclave is not in the middle of the City. That is Grosse Pointe. The most insular community you'd ever see.
I think he's asking about Hamtramck. Grosse Point is to the east. And yes, it's the most insular community you'll ever find. Aside from maybe Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills.
Hamtramck is traditionally Polish / Eastern European, although I think now there are a large number of first / second generation Middle Eastern immigrants. Pretty traditional, and a lot of old people. Think Gran Torino.
To illustrate this situation a little more clearly:
Red=White
Blue=Black
What are the white enclave in the middle of the city, and the black enclaves to the south and southwest?
That white enclave is not in the middle of the City. That is Grosse Pointe. The most insular community you'd ever see.
I think he's asking about Hamtramck. Grosse Point is to the east. And yes, it's the most insular community you'll ever find. Aside from maybe Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills.
Hamtramck is traditionally Polish / Eastern European, although I think now there are a large number of first / second generation Middle Eastern immigrants. Pretty traditional, and a lot of old people. Think Gran Torino.
Ahh, you're right. Hamtramck.
Just to give an idea of how insular Grosse Pointe is there are actually three divided areas. There is Park which borders Detroit and the people of Grosse Pointe look down upon (I lived there once), There is the Woods which is more upper middle class and then there is Grosse Pointe proper where the rich live. They require ID to use the parks and the parks are privately owned to get around the state rules for discrimination. Funny thing is as a Park residence you can't get into any of the Woods or Grosse Pointe parks. Same as Woods residents can't get into the Pointe parks.
Seidkona on
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
PHASE 1
-Consolidate the city. Buy out the people in the areas that are decaying and don't have a large enough population to justify providing services too. Would probably help them if the city offered to move them to areas that are being kept for free.
-Level the parts of the city that aren't being used.
-Try to recoup costs from the consolidation by selling off any scrap from level structures or that was lying around that is worth selling. Look at land on the outer fringes of the city, that has been cleared and consider selling that off.
Everybody agrees that's what needs doing. But the problem is so big and expensive, the already broke city can't afford it. It will take outside money. Then the second you propose it in Michigan politics: "Hey dudes, Detroit totes needs cleaning up. Let's help them!"
all the rich, white, conservative fuckers that run state politics go: "Ew! Don't give money to those people. Let's eliminate $1.8B in business taxes by cutting it out of education instead.*"
*Not hyperbole. Snyder's actual signature election achievement. His next agenda item: business tax cuts that reduce funding to education. I'm not making this up.
Again, I feel like you're ignoring the fact that when the city government of Detroit has gotten money, they've usually stolen it.
You can't keep talking about the rich white assholes in Lansing without also talking about the rich black assholes in Detroit. One of them just happens to have more power. Even the racism goes both ways. The Detroit City Council has run campaigns on race for decades, and that's how they've maintained their jobs. Take the argument away from performance and pin it on race.
There is no easy fix and that's regardless of who controls the state house.
Everybody agrees that's what needs doing.
That's absolutely not true. If Granholm or whoever were in charge, they still wouldn't be able to consolidate the city without overriding City Council. And there's still major downsides to leveling the unused parts.
Zagdrob, yeah, I think we can all agree that the shitty GOP of Michigan won't fix Detroit properly because their platform pretty much runs counter to all the methods that would fix the city. One of those being instead of instant short term profits, you have to spend a metric shit ton fixing and modernizing the core of Detroit so that businesses would have some incentive to move there.
The fact that people in this day and age are willing to fucking hose up perfectly good farmland over reusing land that isn't in adequate shape for farming kills me. One of these days, were going to have a shortage of farmland and someone is going to point out "man, were people fucking stupid for paving over those tracks when we had places of urban decay that would would have cost a little more, when one factors in clean up, that could have been used instead.
The cleanup costs to create farmland in Detroit are pretty substantial. The state wouldn't be able to go through with it now anyways.
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
Make Dearborn, Livonia, Novi, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Warren, Sterling Heights, Trenton, etc boroughs of Detroit City, with a central city government, you would sure as shit see this law get overturned or Detroit's problems get fixed FAST.
Or break up most of Detroit and make it part of those communities. Either way, the problem gets fixed fast. Again, it's totally impossible. But oh my god would doing that put a smile on my face for a long time.
I don't think that this would even be a fair solution. Why should those few communities bear the cost of Detroit's failures based on nothing but proximity. The costs should fall on the whole state or even the whole nation, not on the people that just live near it. Not to mention that the practical effect if this would be hyper white flight where people don't only flee poor minority areas, they flee 5 towns over.
What you consider 'fair' isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Anyway, that's why I suggested all of Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb county instead of just the bordering communities.
The problems of Detroit City are the direct result of the actions and policies of the communities in Metro Detroit. There's no reason they shouldn't shoulder a major portion of the burden of fixing Detroit. It's not like the state and nation won't have to shoulder a significant portion of that burden as well - both directly and indirectly.
EDIT - Besides, I thought you were for holding people responsible accountable for their actions. What those surrounding communities have done to the city of Detroit is comparable to the intentional destruction of a vandal, and you've given your opinion on how that intentional or negligent destruction should be treated.
Vandals beak the law. Selling your home in a city and moving to a suburb and then supporting policies that benefit the community that you move to is hardly comparable. Also, like I said before, it punishes the people that did not flee far enough, along with people that never lived in Detroit, while people that moved further away pay nothing.
Actually, quite a few of the actions of the surrounding communities were breaking the law.
Such as refusing to honor the Schools of Choice mandate when the students are minority students from Detroit, Dearborn's residency restrictions on public parks, redlining and other discriminatory practices, etc.
Besides, these policies aren't designed to punish the individuals in those communities. They are intended to punish the communities as the entities that violated the laws and contributed directly, knowingly, and willingly to the issues in Detroit. The individuals who are affected aren't necessarily the ones who took did those things, or were responsible for those things, but they aren't being punished. Any impact on them is simply incidental...no different from how the kid of that vandal you want imprisoned will suffer because dad lost his job.
EDIT - Anyway, that's the last of today's 'wow, SKFM REALLY BELIEVES THIS' tangent.
Can you elaborate on the illegal acts? You seem to know a lot about the history of the region, and I am interested.
Remember that entity liability is a strange thing though. Shift enough cost onto a town and the people living there will leave, and noone will be left to pick up the tab.
When it comes to schools, Miliken v. Bradley (and the cases leading up to it) is the landmark case when it comes to school segregation. Basically, it said that de facto segregation is fine as long as it can't be proven that district lines were drawn with the explicit intent of segregation. Prior to this, suburban schools had refused to honor orders of lower courts to 'bus' students from the predominantly black schools of Detroit to the white suburban schools. This resulted in a failing public school system with over 90% black students.
A large part of the reason that Detroit schools were failing was because, prior to 1994s Proposal A, Michigan schools were funded by local property taxes. Due to the drop in property values following the 1967 riots and subsequent 'White Flight', Detroit Schools were grossly underfunded for over two decades (and still are, but that's an aside). Due to practices in all of the surrounding communities that were found to be discriminatory, black families did not have the opportunity to leave the failing Detroit schools and attend better schools.
Here are a couple of papers on housing discrimination in and around the area.
More recently, there have been issues with residency and 'Schools of Choice'. In Michigan, Schools are allowed to voluntarily participate in a system where students from outside their district can apply to, and attend school in other districts. A number of the wealthy or white suburban schools that participate in this system have been found to discriminate against minority students, and students coming from districts like Detroit. One of the ways that they have discriminated is that - despite receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state for participating in the program - they have required the students or the student's home districts to pay tuition.
Another issue is that in districts surrounding Detroit, there have been overwhelmingly onerous 'residency restrictions' on students that are suspected of 'residency fraud'. This is almost exclusively minority students, and they require them to submit monthly proof of rent, residency affidavits, and open investigations if they suspect they may not be from the district. In one case, a student who (lived with) one parent living in the district (Grosse Point IIRC) but had another parent living in Detroit was kicked out of the district and charged back tuition for 'residency fraud' because the parent living in Detroit had shared custody. Obviously, this was a minority student.
This story got some attention three or four years ago, and one of the main issues was that a number of (white) students in the district were in a similar situation, but were never initially required to complete or submit the affidavits, prove their residency, or investigated. It was found to be discriminatory, but the student had graduated before the case was settled. This case isn't particularly unusual.
Below is a summary of some issues with Schools of Choice and how it's been exploited by neighboring districts. This particular group is an incredibly right-leaning organization, so when they are accusing a rich white school district of segregation / racism, it's something...
We also have all the issues of straight up violations of Fair Housing laws, redlining, discrimination in employment both by communities, businesses, and individuals. These aren't unique issues, nor are they unique to the Detroit / Detroit Metro area. In our particular case, Detroit has a combination of factors - geography and transportation infrastructure that makes it easy to build out in suburbs, the wealth (and decline of) the auto industry, labor, important border crossing, a relatively liberal area in a largely conservative state, the level of violence in the 1967 riots, etc that make it's situation unique.
Below is an article dealing with some of the issues in the housing markets in Detroit and surrounding suburbs.
While I agree that there is a risk of shifting responsibility to the surrounding area, and having the people / businesses just leave, that shouldn't be a reason not to do what is right. I still would never, ever, expect to see the suburbs have to shoulder any of the burden for what they have done to the city of Detroit. The costs should really be assumed by the state and nation, but that's just not the political landscape. Instead, we're most likely going to see the same bullshit austerity 'cut our way to solvency' in a place that doesn't have anything left to cut.
Some of that does sound pretty bad, to the point where I would approve of fines against the communities. Agree though that ultimately nothing will be done. The bottom line, as much as I hate to admit it for all of my principled stands, is that rich white people are going to do whatever they can to keep poor minorities away from them and their children.
Zagdrob, yeah, I think we can all agree that the shitty GOP of Michigan won't fix Detroit properly because their platform pretty much runs counter to all the methods that would fix the city. One of those being instead of instant short term profits, you have to spend a metric shit ton fixing and modernizing the core of Detroit so that businesses would have some incentive to move there.
You can't fix and modernize Detroit's core and expect businesses to move there without also fixing and modernizing it's tax incentive structure and eliminating the corruption in Detroit's government. Neither of those things are palatable to Democrats in power in the city and the voters in Detroit have demonstrated a number of times that blatant criminal behavior and rampant bribery and corruption are no barrier to re-election.
This entire theme of "if only white people and Republicans weren't so terrible then we could Save Detroit" is ridiculous. How about this:
1) Ban every current city council member, and every member of his staff, from citywide public office for life. Fire them all. Fire the leadership in every city department and hire outside talent unconnected to the city and preferably from out of state.
2) Cancel all current city contracts with every company and union.
3) Seize wide swaths of urban decay via eminent domain. Relocate the families and condemn it all.
4) Set up a certification board appointed by the EM to allow companies to ransack the condemned areas for whatever they want to haul off, for free.
5) Find a city that works economically (like, oh, Dallas or Miami or Fairfax) and structure the business tax base like they do. Launch an aggressive effort to locate business inside the city limits, with assistance from the state government. Perhaps a deal wherein the city meets revenue targets then contributes financially to state coffers once they meet the targets.
6) Extract from the Legislature a 3-5 year state income tax waiver for individuals and businesses located within the Detroit city limits.
7) Write a new budget, solicit community input, and provide services to a newer limited area.
If the city's history is what's plaguing it, then someone needs to wipe the slate completely clean and find new community leaders willing to work with the surrounding areas, led by officials who don't have baggage and can drive the special interests to the table with the threats of eminent domain and privatization as their weapons of choice.
It will absolutely take a pile of cash to do this, and political will at the state level. It will also take political will and courage within Detroit itself. From what I've read here and elsewhere, none of that will is available anywhere, among any of the affected parties.
I don't want to specifically discuss each of Spool's points, but - as far as I know - Pittsburgh faced an economic decline as serious as Detroit's, and the situation there is nowhere as bad as Detroit's.
PHASE 1
-Consolidate the city. Buy out the people in the areas that are decaying and don't have a large enough population to justify providing services too. Would probably help them if the city offered to move them to areas that are being kept for free.
-Level the parts of the city that aren't being used.
-Try to recoup costs from the consolidation by selling off any scrap from level structures or that was lying around that is worth selling. Look at land on the outer fringes of the city, that has been cleared and consider selling that off.
Everybody agrees that's what needs doing. But the problem is so big and expensive, the already broke city can't afford it. It will take outside money. Then the second you propose it in Michigan politics: "Hey dudes, Detroit totes needs cleaning up. Let's help them!"
all the rich, white, conservative fuckers that run state politics go: "Ew! Don't give money to those people. Let's eliminate $1.8B in business taxes by cutting it out of education instead.*"
*Not hyperbole. Snyder's actual signature election achievement. His next agenda item: business tax cuts that reduce funding to education. I'm not making this up.
Again, I feel like you're ignoring the fact that when the city government of Detroit has gotten money, they've usually stolen it.
You can't keep talking about the rich white assholes in Lansing without also talking about the rich black assholes in Detroit. One of them just happens to have more power. Even the racism goes both ways. The Detroit City Council has run campaigns on race for decades, and that's how they've maintained their jobs. Take the argument away from performance and pin it on race.
This is very true as well. All of the local governments in and around Detroit are fantastically corrupt. Detroit's city government is just more shameless and has smaller numbers, making it harder to hide the graft.
It's not like Finaco or Patterson are some paradigms of upright and honest behavior. Not to mention the city governments in the area...
But the answer to the City of Detroit stealing money isn't taking over their entire government...it's punishing the people who are stealing money, and forcing a cultural change. The FBI has been actually achieving something, even if it's a decade late, with Kwame. A lot of dirty laundry got aired, and we'll be watching fallout from that for a while.
Corruption isn't some new thing or unique to Detroit. There are ways to deal with it that don't involve putting an EM in charge and telling him to do pretty much whatever he wants to the city. There is also more than one kind of corruption - taking over a city and selling all of the assets off to your cronies is every bit as much stealing as using DPS funds to buy a Caddie and decorate your office with $100k in artwork.
But the people of Detroit wouldn't vote in the people they do if they didn't think they need them to protect them from the outside. It's a cycle and didn't happen in a vaccume. The idea that they just vote in corruption because of some misguided notion is bull.
They vote in the corruption because those people are the only one's who voice (it's all talk and not true) concern for protecting them against outside forces.
Mostly just huntin' monsters.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
All those tactics are things I would fully expect developing nations to do, but any tactics to be employed in Detroit are held to first-world standards, for good or ill. For instance, you cannot use eminent domain as a threat in the US, even if it would be highly desirable under local conditions. Likewise, you cannot simply cancel contracts by fiat.
PHASE 1
-Consolidate the city. Buy out the people in the areas that are decaying and don't have a large enough population to justify providing services too. Would probably help them if the city offered to move them to areas that are being kept for free.
-Level the parts of the city that aren't being used.
-Try to recoup costs from the consolidation by selling off any scrap from level structures or that was lying around that is worth selling. Look at land on the outer fringes of the city, that has been cleared and consider selling that off.
Everybody agrees that's what needs doing. But the problem is so big and expensive, the already broke city can't afford it. It will take outside money. Then the second you propose it in Michigan politics: "Hey dudes, Detroit totes needs cleaning up. Let's help them!"
all the rich, white, conservative fuckers that run state politics go: "Ew! Don't give money to those people. Let's eliminate $1.8B in business taxes by cutting it out of education instead.*"
*Not hyperbole. Snyder's actual signature election achievement. His next agenda item: business tax cuts that reduce funding to education. I'm not making this up.
Again, I feel like you're ignoring the fact that when the city government of Detroit has gotten money, they've usually stolen it.
You can't keep talking about the rich white assholes in Lansing without also talking about the rich black assholes in Detroit. One of them just happens to have more power. Even the racism goes both ways. The Detroit City Council has run campaigns on race for decades, and that's how they've maintained their jobs. Take the argument away from performance and pin it on race.
There is no easy fix and that's regardless of who controls the state house.
Everybody agrees that's what needs doing.
That's absolutely not true. If Granholm or whoever were in charge, they still wouldn't be able to consolidate the city without overriding City Council. And there's still major downsides to leveling the unused parts.
First of all, I'm in no way condoning the racial politics of the city council. I understand why it became that way, but we will have to move beyond it. Secondly, the money that has to be spent does not need to be given to the city directly. There are established policy tools in Michigan to fix urban blight that funnel the money through the state.
Examples include Brownfield Redevelopment Tax Credits (get money as a developer to rehab land as opposed to building on new farmland) and Renaissance Zones (build here and get a waiver from basically all city and state taxes for 15 years). And I'm sure we could spin others. The problem is the lack of political will to spend the money on Detroit.
PHASE 1
-Consolidate the city. Buy out the people in the areas that are decaying and don't have a large enough population to justify providing services too. Would probably help them if the city offered to move them to areas that are being kept for free.
-Level the parts of the city that aren't being used.
-Try to recoup costs from the consolidation by selling off any scrap from level structures or that was lying around that is worth selling. Look at land on the outer fringes of the city, that has been cleared and consider selling that off.
Everybody agrees that's what needs doing. But the problem is so big and expensive, the already broke city can't afford it. It will take outside money. Then the second you propose it in Michigan politics: "Hey dudes, Detroit totes needs cleaning up. Let's help them!"
all the rich, white, conservative fuckers that run state politics go: "Ew! Don't give money to those people. Let's eliminate $1.8B in business taxes by cutting it out of education instead.*"
*Not hyperbole. Snyder's actual signature election achievement. His next agenda item: business tax cuts that reduce funding to education. I'm not making this up.
Again, I feel like you're ignoring the fact that when the city government of Detroit has gotten money, they've usually stolen it.
You can't keep talking about the rich white assholes in Lansing without also talking about the rich black assholes in Detroit. One of them just happens to have more power. Even the racism goes both ways. The Detroit City Council has run campaigns on race for decades, and that's how they've maintained their jobs. Take the argument away from performance and pin it on race.
This is very true as well. All of the local governments in and around Detroit are fantastically corrupt. Detroit's city government is just more shameless and has smaller numbers, making it harder to hide the graft.
It's not like Finaco or Patterson are some paradigms of upright and honest behavior. Not to mention the city governments in the area...
But the answer to the City of Detroit stealing money isn't taking over their entire government...it's punishing the people who are stealing money, and forcing a cultural change. The FBI has been actually achieving something, even if it's a decade late, with Kwame. A lot of dirty laundry got aired, and we'll be watching fallout from that for a while.
Corruption isn't some new thing or unique to Detroit. There are ways to deal with it that don't involve putting an EM in charge and telling him to do pretty much whatever he wants to the city. There is also more than one kind of corruption - taking over a city and selling all of the assets off to your cronies is every bit as much stealing as using DPS funds to buy a Caddie and decorate your office with $100k in artwork.
I agree. The corruption dates back to the early 20th century, it's just that the city was successful then (and this is probably true for all major cities back then.) The EM situation is ripe for all sorts of potential corruption problems as well, with exactly what you're describing and what happened with the DPS.
The thing is if Detroit gets too bad, then the suburbs suffer as well. For all the talk about rich suburbs like Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield Hills trying to isolate Detroit (which they absolutely have), eventually the decay of Detroit is going to reach them too. Through crime and maybe even through water supply. That's the only hope I have that Snyder won't just gut the city and trade away any future assets... his neighborhood depends on the health of Detroit as well.
But the people of Detroit wouldn't vote in the people they do if they didn't think they need them to protect them from the outside. It's a cycle and didn't happen in a vaccume. The idea that they just vote in corruption because of some misguided notion is bull.
They vote in the corruption because those people are the only one's who voice (it's all talk and not true) concern for protecting them against outside forces.
That's another issue on top of race and corruption. There's no shortage of paranoia in all of Michigan, east and west.
All those tactics are things I would fully expect developing nations to do, but any tactics to be employed in Detroit are held to first-world standards, for good or ill. For instance, you cannot use eminent domain as a threat in the US, even if it would be highly desirable under local conditions. Likewise, you cannot simply cancel contracts by fiat.
You can cancel contracts because you don't have the money to pay for them, or because the entity writing them has dissolved, or because of fraud. Also, you definitely can use eminent domain to seize land for economic reasons in Michigan because their legislature didn't heed the SCOTUS warning from a few years ago and fix their law.
0
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
No need to be so aggressive. I suspect that a lot of Detroit is legitimately blighted, and would fall squarely within the ambit of traditional eminent domain.
No need to be so aggressive. I suspect that a lot of Detroit is legitimately blighted, and would fall squarely within the ambit of traditional eminent domain.
Absolutely. Detroit just doesn't have the money for clean up or the resultant lawsuits. Otherwise it's a textbook case of what standard eminent domain is for.
I don't want to specifically discuss each of Spool's points, but - as far as I know - Pittsburgh faced an economic decline as serious as Detroit's, and the situation there is nowhere as bad as Detroit's.
Pittsburgh is the model for Detroit's turnaround, no doubt. However, it's decline was nowhere near as serious. Just look at the relative population decline. Also, it didn't have the racism component and Pennsylvania politics actually gave a shit. Those are additional barriers for Detroit.
What is promising is that Detroit has the same sort of successful "meds and eds" core that Pittsburgh structured its revival around. So it's definitely possible.
All those tactics are things I would fully expect developing nations to do, but any tactics to be employed in Detroit are held to first-world standards, for good or ill. For instance, you cannot use eminent domain as a threat in the US, even if it would be highly desirable under local conditions. Likewise, you cannot simply cancel contracts by fiat.
You can cancel contracts because you don't have the money to pay for them, or because the entity writing them has dissolved, or because of fraud. Also, you definitely can use eminent domain to seize land for economic reasons in Michigan because their legislature didn't heed the SCOTUS warning from a few years ago and fix their law.
actually, you cannot
you can go into bankruptcy but then a court starts running through your assets, and you want those assets to do the investment thing
and you cannot use eminent domain to seize land at below market value anywhere - police power is the only exception. You can condemn land and then seize it. But you cannot transparently condemn land that is still usable, for the purpose of eminent domain
e: whoops, that was exactly Kelo, wasn't it. Still, Kelo required just compensation, which prevents you from paying below market value
Make Dearborn, Livonia, Novi, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Warren, Sterling Heights, Trenton, etc boroughs of Detroit City, with a central city government, you would sure as shit see this law get overturned or Detroit's problems get fixed FAST.
Or break up most of Detroit and make it part of those communities. Either way, the problem gets fixed fast. Again, it's totally impossible. But oh my god would doing that put a smile on my face for a long time.
A less extreme and possibly more likely option is just breaking up parts of Detroit's services and integrating them into those communities'. Not every service and not the city, but at least certain things like police and firefighters. Schools would cause the biggest outcry, so maybe starting small.
Make Dearborn, Livonia, Novi, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Warren, Sterling Heights, Trenton, etc boroughs of Detroit City, with a central city government, you would sure as shit see this law get overturned or Detroit's problems get fixed FAST.
Or break up most of Detroit and make it part of those communities. Either way, the problem gets fixed fast. Again, it's totally impossible. But oh my god would doing that put a smile on my face for a long time.
A less extreme and possibly more likely option is just breaking up parts of Detroit's services and integrating them into those communities'. Not every service and not the city, but at least certain things like police and firefighters. Schools would cause the biggest outcry, so maybe starting small.
white flight: 2010s edition
+1
Options
spacekungfumanPoor and minority-filledRegistered User, __BANNED USERSregular
All those tactics are things I would fully expect developing nations to do, but any tactics to be employed in Detroit are held to first-world standards, for good or ill. For instance, you cannot use eminent domain as a threat in the US, even if it would be highly desirable under local conditions. Likewise, you cannot simply cancel contracts by fiat.
You can cancel contracts because you don't have the money to pay for them, or because the entity writing them has dissolved, or because of fraud. Also, you definitely can use eminent domain to seize land for economic reasons in Michigan because their legislature didn't heed the SCOTUS warning from a few years ago and fix their law.
actually, you cannot
you can go into bankruptcy but then a court starts running through your assets, and you want those assets to do the investment thing
and you cannot use eminent domain to seize land at below market value anywhere - police power is the only exception. You can condemn land and then seize it. But you cannot transparently condemn land that is still usable, for the purpose of eminent domain
e: whoops, that was exactly Kelo, wasn't it. Still, Kelo required just compensation, which prevents you from paying below market value
Market value is incredibly low there now though. People buy houses for hundreds of dollars, because the home owners don't want to ever even have to go back.
I'm not too familiar with the tax code around Detroit. I do think business interests play it up as too much of a factor. Yeah, if you get a big enough difference between tax codes, the lower one will ultimately win. The thing is reliable labor and its availability will trump the taxes to a degree. A company is ultimately forced to set up shop where they can get the needed labor for the lowest price, while still be competitive with their competition.
I certainly wouldn't be letting any of the current local government leaders near any revenue that was found to fix Detroit, be they part of the Detroit City Council or one of the guys running the rich suburbs, given the history of corruption. Not unless they are found to be one of the few non-corrupt or you have a system in place where if someone tries to pocket the money they get instantly eviscerated and fined out the ass. Corruption certainly is an issue, but like tax codes, that is far less of a factor. Businesses are sadly quite willing to play ball with corrupt leaders, if those leaders can keep everything else stable.
Spool's number 4 would probably work well since that could in theory cut clean up costs. If a scrap company felt they could get a fair return and the only price is that they have to clear each block they loot, they'd probably do it.
Posts
First, there is no shortage of highly qualified STEM graduates in the area. A large portion of them are leaving the area or working in other fields (where they can) because there aren't enough jobs. Even though hiring for engineers has picked up since the auto industry rebounded, and some jobs are coming in, the last thing this area needs is a new stream of immigrant STEM workers.
Second, when businesses are coming / coming back to the area, they generally aren't moving to Detroit. They are building out in the various suburbs throughout Metro Detroit. Areas that can afford to provide millions of dollars of infrastructure improvements and tax breaks to court those businesses. All Detroit can provide is cheap space, and we've got a lot of counties around here that already have that in spades.
Third, the buildings and infrastructure in Detroit city are outdated. The factories that haven't been torn down were built a half century or more ago, and it's far cheaper to buy a tract of farmland out in Dundee, or some brownfield in Trenton or Sterling Heights, and build a new modern / modular factory there. Old factories aren't designed for modern flexible manufacturing - they are designed for built in processes - and take long times to retool - say nothing of the hazardous material cleanup costs.
Fourth, and I'm sad that I need to even say this...is that Detroit, from ~1967 to present IS a de facto ghetto. After the White Flight, property values dropped so hard and so fast, and had such an impact on everything from city services to education that it destroyed the wealth of the black community that remained. Business income tanked. Add a few decades of nakedly discriminatory policies in the outside communities, and it's nearly impossible for the 700k or so people who remain in the city to get out.
The 'concentrate the poor people' idea DIDN'T WORK.
Now, you can say 'but if we do it right it would'...and maybe it's true...but it's not going to be done right. Without fail, throughout human history, when the poor and disenfranchised are concentrated into an area, the wealthy have no stake in continued support of those poor and the situations do not improve.
Ok, here's a pipe dream, and every bit as tyrannical as what's happening in Detroit. But if we are going to do it, we should do it right. The EM should step up and provide a legal justification that the issues of Detroit are directly linked to the surrounding communities. As a result, those are also failed communities, and the powers they have over Detroit's government will also apply to the governments of the surrounding communities in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties.
Make Dearborn, Livonia, Novi, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Warren, Sterling Heights, Trenton, etc boroughs of Detroit City, with a central city government, you would sure as shit see this law get overturned or Detroit's problems get fixed FAST.
Not that that would ever, ever happen in a million years. This isn't a law that should affect white people, or at least not rich ones.
Or break up most of Detroit and make it part of those communities. Either way, the problem gets fixed fast. Again, it's totally impossible. But oh my god would doing that put a smile on my face for a long time.
Everybody agrees that's what needs doing. But the problem is so big and expensive, the already broke city can't afford it. It will take outside money. Then the second you propose it in Michigan politics: "Hey dudes, Detroit totes needs cleaning up. Let's help them!"
all the rich, white, conservative fuckers that run state politics go: "Ew! Don't give money to those people. Let's eliminate $1.8B in business taxes by cutting it out of education instead.*"
*Not hyperbole. Snyder's actual signature election achievement. His next agenda item: business tax cuts that reduce funding to education. I'm not making this up.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
I don't think that this would even be a fair solution. Why should those few communities bear the cost of Detroit's failures based on nothing but proximity. The costs should fall on the whole state or even the whole nation, not on the people that just live near it. Not to mention that the practical effect if this would be hyper white flight where people don't only flee poor minority areas, they flee 5 towns over.
Because it is not based on nothing but proximity. Those communities directly had a hand in how Detroit is today.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
What you consider 'fair' isn't worth the paper it's written on.
Anyway, that's why I suggested all of Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb county instead of just the bordering communities.
The problems of Detroit City are the direct result of the actions and policies of the communities in Metro Detroit. There's no reason they shouldn't shoulder a major portion of the burden of fixing Detroit. It's not like the state and nation won't have to shoulder a significant portion of that burden as well - both directly and indirectly.
EDIT - Besides, I thought you were for holding people responsible accountable for their actions. What those surrounding communities have done to the city of Detroit is comparable to the intentional destruction of a vandal, and you've given your opinion on how that intentional or negligent destruction should be treated.
Vandals beak the law. Selling your home in a city and moving to a suburb and then supporting policies that benefit the community that you move to is hardly comparable. Also, like I said before, it punishes the people that did not flee far enough, along with people that never lived in Detroit, while people that moved further away pay nothing.
It's a little more complicated than that though. What really happened was that they sold their homes, moved to the suburbs with the majority of the money, and then did everything they could with their economic might to make sure Detroit could not recover.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
Actually, quite a few of the actions of the surrounding communities were breaking the law.
Such as refusing to honor the Schools of Choice mandate when the students are minority students from Detroit, Dearborn's residency restrictions on public parks, redlining and other discriminatory practices, etc.
Besides, these policies aren't designed to punish the individuals in those communities. They are intended to punish the communities as the entities that violated the laws and contributed directly, knowingly, and willingly to the issues in Detroit. The individuals who are affected aren't necessarily the ones who took did those things, or were responsible for those things, but they aren't being punished. Any impact on them is simply incidental...no different from how the kid of that vandal you want imprisoned will suffer because dad lost his job.
EDIT - Anyway, that's the last of today's 'wow, SKFM REALLY BELIEVES THIS' tangent.
Can you elaborate on the illegal acts? You seem to know a lot about the history of the region, and I am interested.
Remember that entity liability is a strange thing though. Shift enough cost onto a town and the people living there will leave, and noone will be left to pick up the tab.
The fact that people in this day and age are willing to fucking hose up perfectly good farmland over reusing land that isn't in adequate shape for farming kills me. One of these days, were going to have a shortage of farmland and someone is going to point out "man, were people fucking stupid for paving over those tracks when we had places of urban decay that would would have cost a little more, when one factors in clean up, that could have been used instead.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
Blue=Black
What are the white enclave in the middle of the city, and the black enclaves to the south and southwest?
That white enclave is not in the middle of the City. That is Grosse Pointe. The most insular community you'd ever see.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
When it comes to schools, Miliken v. Bradley (and the cases leading up to it) is the landmark case when it comes to school segregation. Basically, it said that de facto segregation is fine as long as it can't be proven that district lines were drawn with the explicit intent of segregation. Prior to this, suburban schools had refused to honor orders of lower courts to 'bus' students from the predominantly black schools of Detroit to the white suburban schools. This resulted in a failing public school system with over 90% black students.
A large part of the reason that Detroit schools were failing was because, prior to 1994s Proposal A, Michigan schools were funded by local property taxes. Due to the drop in property values following the 1967 riots and subsequent 'White Flight', Detroit Schools were grossly underfunded for over two decades (and still are, but that's an aside). Due to practices in all of the surrounding communities that were found to be discriminatory, black families did not have the opportunity to leave the failing Detroit schools and attend better schools.
Here are a couple of papers on housing discrimination in and around the area.
http://content.knowledgeplex.org/kp2/img/cache/kp/1230.pdf
http://www.law.umn.edu/uploads/99/41/99413c1fc53095e4382976e4bd63a38f/38_Detroit_Metropatterns.pdf
More recently, there have been issues with residency and 'Schools of Choice'. In Michigan, Schools are allowed to voluntarily participate in a system where students from outside their district can apply to, and attend school in other districts. A number of the wealthy or white suburban schools that participate in this system have been found to discriminate against minority students, and students coming from districts like Detroit. One of the ways that they have discriminated is that - despite receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state for participating in the program - they have required the students or the student's home districts to pay tuition.
Another issue is that in districts surrounding Detroit, there have been overwhelmingly onerous 'residency restrictions' on students that are suspected of 'residency fraud'. This is almost exclusively minority students, and they require them to submit monthly proof of rent, residency affidavits, and open investigations if they suspect they may not be from the district. In one case, a student who (lived with) one parent living in the district (Grosse Point IIRC) but had another parent living in Detroit was kicked out of the district and charged back tuition for 'residency fraud' because the parent living in Detroit had shared custody. Obviously, this was a minority student.
This story got some attention three or four years ago, and one of the main issues was that a number of (white) students in the district were in a similar situation, but were never initially required to complete or submit the affidavits, prove their residency, or investigated. It was found to be discriminatory, but the student had graduated before the case was settled. This case isn't particularly unusual.
Below is a summary of some issues with Schools of Choice and how it's been exploited by neighboring districts. This particular group is an incredibly right-leaning organization, so when they are accusing a rich white school district of segregation / racism, it's something...
http://www.michigancapitolconfidential.com/18000
We also have all the issues of straight up violations of Fair Housing laws, redlining, discrimination in employment both by communities, businesses, and individuals. These aren't unique issues, nor are they unique to the Detroit / Detroit Metro area. In our particular case, Detroit has a combination of factors - geography and transportation infrastructure that makes it easy to build out in suburbs, the wealth (and decline of) the auto industry, labor, important border crossing, a relatively liberal area in a largely conservative state, the level of violence in the 1967 riots, etc that make it's situation unique.
Below is an article dealing with some of the issues in the housing markets in Detroit and surrounding suburbs.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/27/opinion/27Sugrue.html?_r=0
While I agree that there is a risk of shifting responsibility to the surrounding area, and having the people / businesses just leave, that shouldn't be a reason not to do what is right. I still would never, ever, expect to see the suburbs have to shoulder any of the burden for what they have done to the city of Detroit. The costs should really be assumed by the state and nation, but that's just not the political landscape. Instead, we're most likely going to see the same bullshit austerity 'cut our way to solvency' in a place that doesn't have anything left to cut.
I think he's asking about Hamtramck. Grosse Point is to the east. And yes, it's the most insular community you'll ever find. Aside from maybe Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills.
Hamtramck is traditionally Polish / Eastern European, although I think now there are a large number of first / second generation Middle Eastern immigrants. Pretty traditional, and a lot of old people. Think Gran Torino.
Ahh, you're right. Hamtramck.
Just to give an idea of how insular Grosse Pointe is there are actually three divided areas. There is Park which borders Detroit and the people of Grosse Pointe look down upon (I lived there once), There is the Woods which is more upper middle class and then there is Grosse Pointe proper where the rich live. They require ID to use the parks and the parks are privately owned to get around the state rules for discrimination. Funny thing is as a Park residence you can't get into any of the Woods or Grosse Pointe parks. Same as Woods residents can't get into the Pointe parks.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
You can't keep talking about the rich white assholes in Lansing without also talking about the rich black assholes in Detroit. One of them just happens to have more power. Even the racism goes both ways. The Detroit City Council has run campaigns on race for decades, and that's how they've maintained their jobs. Take the argument away from performance and pin it on race.
There is no easy fix and that's regardless of who controls the state house.
That's absolutely not true. If Granholm or whoever were in charge, they still wouldn't be able to consolidate the city without overriding City Council. And there's still major downsides to leveling the unused parts.
The cleanup costs to create farmland in Detroit are pretty substantial. The state wouldn't be able to go through with it now anyways.
Some of that does sound pretty bad, to the point where I would approve of fines against the communities. Agree though that ultimately nothing will be done. The bottom line, as much as I hate to admit it for all of my principled stands, is that rich white people are going to do whatever they can to keep poor minorities away from them and their children.
You can't fix and modernize Detroit's core and expect businesses to move there without also fixing and modernizing it's tax incentive structure and eliminating the corruption in Detroit's government. Neither of those things are palatable to Democrats in power in the city and the voters in Detroit have demonstrated a number of times that blatant criminal behavior and rampant bribery and corruption are no barrier to re-election.
This entire theme of "if only white people and Republicans weren't so terrible then we could Save Detroit" is ridiculous. How about this:
1) Ban every current city council member, and every member of his staff, from citywide public office for life. Fire them all. Fire the leadership in every city department and hire outside talent unconnected to the city and preferably from out of state.
2) Cancel all current city contracts with every company and union.
3) Seize wide swaths of urban decay via eminent domain. Relocate the families and condemn it all.
4) Set up a certification board appointed by the EM to allow companies to ransack the condemned areas for whatever they want to haul off, for free.
5) Find a city that works economically (like, oh, Dallas or Miami or Fairfax) and structure the business tax base like they do. Launch an aggressive effort to locate business inside the city limits, with assistance from the state government. Perhaps a deal wherein the city meets revenue targets then contributes financially to state coffers once they meet the targets.
6) Extract from the Legislature a 3-5 year state income tax waiver for individuals and businesses located within the Detroit city limits.
7) Write a new budget, solicit community input, and provide services to a newer limited area.
If the city's history is what's plaguing it, then someone needs to wipe the slate completely clean and find new community leaders willing to work with the surrounding areas, led by officials who don't have baggage and can drive the special interests to the table with the threats of eminent domain and privatization as their weapons of choice.
It will absolutely take a pile of cash to do this, and political will at the state level. It will also take political will and courage within Detroit itself. From what I've read here and elsewhere, none of that will is available anywhere, among any of the affected parties.
This is very true as well. All of the local governments in and around Detroit are fantastically corrupt. Detroit's city government is just more shameless and has smaller numbers, making it harder to hide the graft.
It's not like Finaco or Patterson are some paradigms of upright and honest behavior. Not to mention the city governments in the area...
But the answer to the City of Detroit stealing money isn't taking over their entire government...it's punishing the people who are stealing money, and forcing a cultural change. The FBI has been actually achieving something, even if it's a decade late, with Kwame. A lot of dirty laundry got aired, and we'll be watching fallout from that for a while.
Corruption isn't some new thing or unique to Detroit. There are ways to deal with it that don't involve putting an EM in charge and telling him to do pretty much whatever he wants to the city. There is also more than one kind of corruption - taking over a city and selling all of the assets off to your cronies is every bit as much stealing as using DPS funds to buy a Caddie and decorate your office with $100k in artwork.
They vote in the corruption because those people are the only one's who voice (it's all talk and not true) concern for protecting them against outside forces.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
First of all, I'm in no way condoning the racial politics of the city council. I understand why it became that way, but we will have to move beyond it. Secondly, the money that has to be spent does not need to be given to the city directly. There are established policy tools in Michigan to fix urban blight that funnel the money through the state.
Examples include Brownfield Redevelopment Tax Credits (get money as a developer to rehab land as opposed to building on new farmland) and Renaissance Zones (build here and get a waiver from basically all city and state taxes for 15 years). And I'm sure we could spin others. The problem is the lack of political will to spend the money on Detroit.
The thing is if Detroit gets too bad, then the suburbs suffer as well. For all the talk about rich suburbs like Grosse Pointe and Bloomfield Hills trying to isolate Detroit (which they absolutely have), eventually the decay of Detroit is going to reach them too. Through crime and maybe even through water supply. That's the only hope I have that Snyder won't just gut the city and trade away any future assets... his neighborhood depends on the health of Detroit as well.
You can cancel contracts because you don't have the money to pay for them, or because the entity writing them has dissolved, or because of fraud. Also, you definitely can use eminent domain to seize land for economic reasons in Michigan because their legislature didn't heed the SCOTUS warning from a few years ago and fix their law.
Absolutely. Detroit just doesn't have the money for clean up or the resultant lawsuits. Otherwise it's a textbook case of what standard eminent domain is for.
Pittsburgh is the model for Detroit's turnaround, no doubt. However, it's decline was nowhere near as serious. Just look at the relative population decline. Also, it didn't have the racism component and Pennsylvania politics actually gave a shit. Those are additional barriers for Detroit.
What is promising is that Detroit has the same sort of successful "meds and eds" core that Pittsburgh structured its revival around. So it's definitely possible.
actually, you cannot
you can go into bankruptcy but then a court starts running through your assets, and you want those assets to do the investment thing
and you cannot use eminent domain to seize land at below market value anywhere - police power is the only exception. You can condemn land and then seize it. But you cannot transparently condemn land that is still usable, for the purpose of eminent domain
e: whoops, that was exactly Kelo, wasn't it. Still, Kelo required just compensation, which prevents you from paying below market value
white flight: 2010s edition
Market value is incredibly low there now though. People buy houses for hundreds of dollars, because the home owners don't want to ever even have to go back.
I certainly wouldn't be letting any of the current local government leaders near any revenue that was found to fix Detroit, be they part of the Detroit City Council or one of the guys running the rich suburbs, given the history of corruption. Not unless they are found to be one of the few non-corrupt or you have a system in place where if someone tries to pocket the money they get instantly eviscerated and fined out the ass. Corruption certainly is an issue, but like tax codes, that is far less of a factor. Businesses are sadly quite willing to play ball with corrupt leaders, if those leaders can keep everything else stable.
Spool's number 4 would probably work well since that could in theory cut clean up costs. If a scrap company felt they could get a fair return and the only price is that they have to clear each block they loot, they'd probably do it.
battletag: Millin#1360
Nice chart to figure out how honest a news source is.
so that sinks all the "merge nearby community" ideas