[martin14]

Thanos Thanos:

Your uncanny ability to personalize practically everything is probably the main reason that I rarely bother to respond to any of your posts.

And your constant need to personalize yours just shows the big hole
in your way of thinking.

Only the right are bastards, everyone else gets kid gloves.

[Thanos]

Longtime GOP stronghold Orange County, CA had to declare bankruptcy in 1994, thanks to the corrupt shenanigans (including consulting psychics on investments) that it's Republican bosses were engaging in.

Traditional Democratic cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Nashville, Portland, and Boston remain some of the most economically vibrant and pleasantly livable places in the US for people to reside in.

You don't know what the fuck you're talking about, as usual, because you're too partisan and too damn dumb to ever look past a party label.

[martin14]

Thanos Thanos:

Traditional Democratic cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Nashville, Portland, and Boston remain some of the most economically vibrant and pleasantly livable places in the US for people to reside in.

http://www.fourwinds10.net/siterun_data ... 1319562351

It's from last year, 7 U.S. Cities on the Verge of Bankruptcy,
San Francisco is on that list. All democrats.

$1:

You don't know what the fuck you're talking about, as usual, because you're too partisan and too damn dumb to ever look past a party label.

Obviously, so are you.

[Lemmy]

martin14 martin14:

I could agree with you if places like Dearborn, Livonia or Troy was also
100% in the shitter.

Not to say everything is all hunky dory, but those towns aren't 20 billion in the hole.

Something else at work there.

There's a lot at work in the story of Detroit's collapse and you're missing 99.99% of the story in attempt to blame it on leftist municipal politics. You should read Charlie LeDuff's Detroit: an American Autopsy. If bad municipal government could kill a city there wouldn't be a city on earth.

[BartSimpson]

Thanos Thanos:

Traditional Democratic cities like San Francisco, Seattle, Nashville, Portland, and Boston remain some of the most economically vibrant and pleasantly livable places in the US for people to reside in.

Nashville, Tennessee is a Republican stronghold that strongly supported the GOP in last November's elections:

http://www.wkrn.com/story/17060692/election-results

$1:

President
99% of 2071 Precincts Reporting

Mitt Romney (R) 1,450,595 58%

Barack Obama (D) 951,406 37%

San Francisco is teetering on the edge due to a combination of unfunded pension obligations (see link) and then the factors that are impacting other California cities such as flight of capital, flight of the wealthy who pay the majority of the taxes, and the impacts of aging infrastructure.

http://www.businessinsider.com/employee ... ars-2011-5

[N_Fiddledog]

Thanos Thanos:

Longtime GOP stronghold Orange County, CA had to declare bankruptcy in 1994, thanks to the corrupt shenanigans (including consulting psychics on investments) that it's Republican bosses were engaging in.

Hang on now...sorry but I had to double-check that. Explain please.

"Robert Lafee Citron (April 14, 1925 – January 16, 2013) was a Democratic Party politician who was the longtime Treasurer-Tax Collector of Orange County, California, when it declared Chapter 9 bankruptcy on December 6, 1994. Citron was the only Democrat to hold office in heavily Republican Orange County at the time. The bankruptcy was brought on by Citron's investment strategies,["

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Citron

[BartSimpson]

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

Thanos Thanos:

Longtime GOP stronghold Orange County, CA had to declare bankruptcy in 1994, thanks to the corrupt shenanigans (including consulting psychics on investments) that it's Republican bosses were engaging in.

Hang on now...sorry but I had to double-check that. Explain please.

"Robert Lafee Citron (April 14, 1925 – January 16, 2013) was a Democratic Party politician who was the longtime Treasurer-Tax Collector of Orange County, California, when it declared Chapter 9 bankruptcy on December 6, 1994. Citron was the only Democrat to hold office in heavily Republican Orange County at the time. The bankruptcy was brought on by Citron's investment strategies,["

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Citron

BAM!!!

I'd rep you for that even if I were on the receiving end of it! Well done!

[martin14]

Lemmy Lemmy:

martin14 martin14:

I could agree with you if places like Dearborn, Livonia or Troy was also
100% in the shitter.

Not to say everything is all hunky dory, but those towns aren't 20 billion in the hole.

Something else at work there.

There's a lot at work in the story of Detroit's collapse and you're missing 99.99% of the story in attempt to blame it on leftist municipal politics. You should read Charlie LeDuff's Detroit: an American Autopsy. If bad municipal government could kill a city there wouldn't be a city on earth.

No, I put up the other reasons a page ago.

Massive corruption; untold money being stolen and
the unwillingess of people to do anything about it, just keep voting
the same gang in to continue looting.

Consistently making the "murder capital of the USA' list.

avg police response time 58 minutes, as opposed to 11 in the US.

40% of the streetlights don't work.

50% of people didn't file a property tax return last year, never mind pay it.

Idiocy like selling property and then asking for the backtaxes.


The other towns I mentioned don't have these problems.


Oh, and half of that 20B debt is health care and pensions for 10,000 city workers,
and 20,000 former city workers.

Shall we guess what professional affiliation all those workers have,
and which organization is opposing this bankruptcy ?

[Zipperfish]

Thanos Thanos:

Your uncanny ability to personalize practically everything is probably the main reason that I rarely bother to respond to any of your posts.

he's very angry.

[commanderkai]

Lemmy Lemmy:

martin14 martin14:

I could agree with you if places like Dearborn, Livonia or Troy was also
100% in the shitter.

Not to say everything is all hunky dory, but those towns aren't 20 billion in the hole.

Something else at work there.

There's a lot at work in the story of Detroit's collapse and you're missing 99.99% of the story in attempt to blame it on leftist municipal politics. You should read Charlie LeDuff's Detroit: an American Autopsy. If bad municipal government could kill a city there wouldn't be a city on earth.

Eh, municipal politics played a much larger role than I think you realize. Certainly the shrinking of America's manufacturing played a major role in Detroit, but other cities have survived better than Detroit has, even though they were also manufacturing centers (Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, etc). Detroit is not solely a victim of the decline of the manufacturing sector. Much more played a role here, and, in my view, the nature of the various municipal governments of Detroit for the last 40 years played a huge role. I don't think you can really discount Coleman Young, and later Kwame Kilpatrick, in the city's downfall. Coleman Young basically pissed on the suburbs for 20 years, and allowed crime to run rampant. Of course, it could have been alright, if Kwame Kilpatrick turn himself into the Don of Detroit, dividing neighborhoods into his personal fiefdoms, and sucking the city dry even more.

The suburbs (Southfield, Troy, Dearborn, Romulus, Ann Arbor,etc. ) are all doing much better than Detroit. I honestly think there are more active skyscrapers around Southfield than Detroit these days. The Detroit municipal government didn't want to acknowledge their fate, and the suburbs were not willing to sacrifice their taxpayer funds to Detroit, knowing the sheer corruption within the city. Business moved north of 8 Mile and west into Dearborn.

I'd split the blame somewhere like this 15% collapse of manufacturing center, 35% white flight/sububs, 10% crime, 40% Detroit's government. Certainly individuals can make a thesis making a case for any of those examples, but I don't think anybody should downplay how Detroit's government failed its city.

[Thanos]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Thanos Thanos:

Your uncanny ability to personalize practically everything is probably the main reason that I rarely bother to respond to any of your posts.

he's very angry.

The bizarre thing is that I actually blamed the black Democrats that destroyed Detroit, and lots of other US cities too, for what happened to those towns and he completely missed it altogether.

[martin14]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

Thanos Thanos:

Your uncanny ability to personalize practically everything is probably the main reason that I rarely bother to respond to any of your posts.

he's very angry.

Naaaah, just stirring the pot.... cup... kettle... something.

[Thanos]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

N_Fiddledog N_Fiddledog:

Thanos Thanos:

Longtime GOP stronghold Orange County, CA had to declare bankruptcy in 1994, thanks to the corrupt shenanigans (including consulting psychics on investments) that it's Republican bosses were engaging in.

Hang on now...sorry but I had to double-check that. Explain please.

"Robert Lafee Citron (April 14, 1925 – January 16, 2013) was a Democratic Party politician who was the longtime Treasurer-Tax Collector of Orange County, California, when it declared Chapter 9 bankruptcy on December 6, 1994. Citron was the only Democrat to hold office in heavily Republican Orange County at the time. The bankruptcy was brought on by Citron's investment strategies,["

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Citron

BAM!!!

I'd rep you for that even if I were on the receiving end of it! Well done!

Still have that autographed photo of Duke Cunningham up on the wall of your Batcave?

I'm also fairly certain that the $2 trillion spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, which will include all the accrued legacy costs that will extend into the next thirty or forty years, dwarf the debts and stolen money in all of America's large cities combined, regardless of which party controls those local governments. Should we talk about which political party is largely responsible for that particular gift to the US taxpayer, or is that kind of thing off the table? I mean, if I were GOP like you I wouldn't want to talk about the $30 billion or so in cash either, wrapped in plastic and stacked on pallets, that disappeared into the wastelands of post-Saddam Iraq, never to be seen again.

[commanderkai]

Thanos Thanos:

I'm also fairly certain that the $2 trillion spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, which will include all the accrued legacy costs that will extend into the next thirty or forty years, dwarf the debts and stolen money in all of America's large cities combined, regardless of which party controls those local governments. Should we talk about which political party is largely responsible for that particular gift to the US taxpayer, or is that kind of thing off the table? I mean, if I were GOP like you I wouldn't want to talk about the $30 billion or so in cash either, wrapped in plastic and stacked on pallets, that disappeared into the wastelands of post-Saddam Iraq, never to be seen again.

Sure you can, but what does that have to do with how horribly corrupt and poorly managed major American cities are? It's not like the sheer cost of the Iraq War (and Afghanistan) hasn't been discussed ad nauseam in topics that directly link to the the Iraq War, or Bush's presidency, so why even bring it up in a discussion in the sorry state of the finances of major municipalities in the US?

I don't think even Bart or Fiddle would disagree that the GOP has made major blunders in managing finances of the United States, but that doesn't excuse away the financial mismanagement of the Democrat politicians on the municipal level.

[Thanos]

And the corrupt antics of Democrat mayors and council members don't whitewash the terrible economic legacy of GOP leaders either. Especially not the ones at the White House level who've made all Americans (not just a few at the local level in horribly mismanaged cities) liable for their last thirty years of bad policies, sell-offs to financial sector criminals, and corruption.

Democrats are bad, GOP are usually worse, and the numbers prove it too.