No comment.

If’s fashionable to call Detroit a third world country in the midst of the United States, but really — that’s unfair to the third world.

Take the time to browse the photo gallery. It’s simply beyond belief.

Posted at 3:40 pm in Uncategorized |
 

21 responses to “No comment.”

  1. john c said on April 4, 2008 at 4:14 pm

    I saw that story today and thought: This is a completely failed city. I’ve covered towns and cities large and small. And even in the ones that aren’t exactly paragons of efficiency or good government or whatever you want to call it, there are people who get some basic things done like, oh, locking up a building properly. That’s the thing here. It wasn’t a vandals-break-in-and-trash-the-school story. The was the city, closing a school, and leaving it completely unsecured!

    475 chars

  2. nancy said on April 4, 2008 at 4:48 pm

    That’s almost a redefinition of the word “failure.” Did you note, too, all the unopened equipment, textbooks and other things in there? Computers still in their packing cases? A room full of apparently usable monitors, thrown in together like popcorn? I see things like that, and I utterly despair of ever getting the sort of city/suburban cooperation this area will need to survive. When suburbanites see that — particularly at a time when the felon in the mayor’s office is still pulling higher approval ratings than George Bush — they feel perfectly justified in turning their backs on the city.

    My friends John and Sam, when they visited last, showed me one of those little toy computers nice liberals like themselves are donating to undeveloped countries. If I’d known I could pick up a few free for the taking a few miles away, we could have made it a real relief effort.

    Perhaps the harshest comment: The computers, tools for knowledge, were relatively unplundered, while vandals tore the place apart in search of scrap metal. I ask you.

    1053 chars

  3. brian stouder said on April 4, 2008 at 4:55 pm

    Well, one feels almost compelled to offer this story – of a fellow who won $60,000,000 on his 60th birthday – April Fools Day – and is staying in Michigan

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23958892/

    an excerpt –

    Sneath turned 60 on Tuesday, the day he won the jackpot. Friends and relatives at first thought it was an April Fool’s joke. “I called my sister; she didn’t believe me. I called my daughter; she thought I was nuts,” said Sneath, who said he made his first call to his ex-wife, Deborah. Deborah, whom he called “my significant ex,” attended the Thursday news conference where Sneath was presented with a large replica of a $136 million check. His daughter was there with her daughter, as was his son, who had bought the winning ticket on his father’s behalf during trip to a gas station to get cigarettes.

    Sneath plans to take a lump payment worth $84.3 million, or $59.6 million after taxes. On Thursday, he got the first $1 million; he’ll get the remainder in a second payment. At the warehouse, he made $60,000 to $70,000 a year.

    and

    Sneath plans to buy a cottage on Mullett Lake in northern Michigan and maybe a new fishing boat or two to help him land the walleye he loves to catch. He’s tired of misplacing his glasses and may get laser surgery to correct his vision. And he’ll probably move out of his three-bedroom, two-bath ranch home, although he plans to stay in Michigan.

    1435 chars

  4. michaelj said on April 4, 2008 at 5:50 pm

    So sad about Ree. It’s difficult to think this isn’t intentional. Yea, the mayor’s a jerk, but the neglect is ractionary reaction to Chocolate City.

    Don’t you find it odious when people say white people are intrinsically racist? Even MLK said so, and there are commentators on the anniversary of his assassination that say the same thing. I’m not, and I’m sure nobody in my family is.

    But the federal government, as it’s currently constituted, sure is. Homes will be rebuilt, with no questions asked, in the Sierra Nevada before they’re rebuilt in the Ninth Ward.

    If there’s prosecutorial energy and exuberance that needs expending, why aren’t they all going after the greatest war criminals and human rights violators since the guy that only had one?

    Anyway, I love Detroit, and looking like the West Bank is pretty hard to take. This is why the GOP opposes sampling for the census, even though there’s no scientific doubt that scientific sampling is hundreds of times more accurate. Racially condensed inner cities vote in large numbers for Democratic candidates for anything. The Gross Oil Purveyors would rather they ceased to be, or, better yet, festered and provided cannon fodder

    A more (though I’m still so pissed about the rape of Detroit I’m not fit for human company) felicitous subject: Go immediately to pandora.com and type in the name of your favorite band. I know lot’s of you have already done so, but it’s way too good not to share. One of my brothers said music critics should just shut up and tell you, if you like this you probably like The Pogues, so you’ll like this album. That’s sort of what Pandora does. It’s free, streaming, and endlessly entertaining.

    Maybe Hillary should move to someplace on 6 mile, in Jesu parish, and run for mayor. Free wireless for everybody and a laptop in every home with a subscription to Pandora and noted frequent-nonflyer political prisoner James Brown on the box. Say it loud.

    1961 chars

  5. michaelj said on April 4, 2008 at 6:21 pm

    Brian,

    I ‘d say if I won $60mil I’d be torn between Detroit and Boston. For vibrant music, it would have to be Boston in the 80s and 90s, although when I was a kid you could go to the Chessmate on 6th and Livernois, stand in the lockbox to prove you weren’t carrying, and see guest bows with John Lee by Buddy Guy and Memphis Slim and Pinetop Perkins, inter alia.

    But I guess if I had $60mil, I could drop in wherever I pleased. Chicago may be hog butcher, but Detroit made Cadillacs and the rides for 20th Century Manifest Destiny (albeit American home grown genocide. Indians have cars, they’re just sitting in yards on blocks, like the couches and washing machines on Appalachian porches). A great American city left to turn into Megacity 1. I don’t believe the decline of Detroit into the American West Bank is any coincidence.

    It’s like denying representation to the residents of DC. In the word’s of an astounding MC5 song, it’s the American Ruse.

    969 chars

  6. Jim G said on April 4, 2008 at 6:33 pm

    Something I noticed in picture 11: the “new apple printer” the caption refers to is an Apple ImageWriter II. There hasn’t been a new one of those in ten years.

    I’m not surprised no one took the computers. Old computers don’t have much value anymore, and who would by a CRT monitor today? Even so, it’s a little eye-opening that scrap metals are apparently worth more by volume or weight than an old computer.

    416 chars

  7. michaelj said on April 4, 2008 at 7:39 pm

    Jim,

    Isn’t collecting and recycling obsolete computer paraphernalia a function that ought to be taken up by the Federal government? There’s more than enough mercury and lead being ingested without jumking computers in landfills where the access to groundwater is virtually instant. It doesn’t carry the immediacy, but how is the threat morally seperable from the War on Terr (sorry, but as long as the Pretzeldent can’t enunciate since Barney pissed on his head after the pretzel took him down, this is Shrub English 101)?

    525 chars

  8. Dexter said on April 4, 2008 at 11:17 pm

    “Mister Prezbo” had a problem on “The Wire” , where computers had been locked away from student-access.
    This makes “Baltimrr” look pretty goddamned civilized!

    159 chars

  9. michaelj said on April 5, 2008 at 12:35 am

    Holy shit Dexter. Raising questions about all of those records required to be maintained going up in smoke? You could dissappear into a secret prison in Ratznestistan. This is howthese assholes have conducted themselves as the (il)legally constituted government. They robbed voters in Florida in 2000, including physical intimidation of Black voters. In 2004, Ken Blackwell just jobbed the machines. Blackwell actually said ahead of time he’d do it.

    I’m not personally comfortable with a nitwit ventiloquist dummy defending the decisions of psychopaths.

    But, you know, that’s what you’ve got at the moment. Thank moron voters. Thank the despicable Swift Boat liars (this calumny ought to be prosecuted as treason). Thanks indicted asshole Ken Blackwell, and he’ll have presidential pardon fast as W can spit out. Those extra few days will do him good.

    In the last week the misAdministration was whining about not being able to track terriss fundraising. Kerry figured this shit out in 1988, but the culprits were the Saudis and their girlfriends in the Bush family, and I don’t mean Quaker Oats. Kerry had the goods on funding al Quaeda, Saudi compliance, and Bush subservience. Lopk up BCCI. I’m sure y’all remember when the dickhead draftdodger mocked the actual war heroe’s ideas about battling al Qaeda. Well Stephen Adler. the New Centurion, says Kerry was right, but they don’t know how to do it without offending the House of Saud.

    I’d say the PNACenturions are assholes, but that would obscure the unmitigated traitorous behavior. In a fair world, Rummy, Cheney and all of their stovepipe accomplices should be in Guantanamo, and I’d suspend the rule of law a little bit longer.

    Had Kerry’s investigation been pursued initially, it’s entirely likely there’d be a way of following, and stymying terrorist cash flow. But it embarrased Raygun and Bush, who’d used BCCI to fund al Qaeda. One way or another, had Kerry been running anti-terrorism for the last four years, we would have been shutting down money trails instead of committing atrocities with no results besides the most despicable single document in the history of this country.

    I’d say, they stand up, we lock their asses up. They’ve trashed US and international law, with malice aforethought. They’ve a single excuse for their malfeasance: If the president did it it’s legal. OK. I think I heard this before.

    2403 chars

  10. michaelj said on April 5, 2008 at 12:41 am

    nancy says:
    April 4th, 2008 at 4:48 pm

    It’s entirely likely those components were obso;ete brfore they got there. Why leave profiteering to thr actual imaginary war?

    170 chars

  11. Harl Delos said on April 5, 2008 at 2:32 am

    Thank the despicable Swift Boat liars (this calumny ought to be prosecuted as treason).

    Kerry did admit the timeline was off, that he wasn’t in Cambodia the night Nixon gave that speech. Once it’s proven you’re a liar, people stop listening to you.

    I’m not saying they aren’t despicable. They are – but Kerry contributed to his own downfall. It’s not enough to be a hero, if people don’t trust you.

    420 chars

  12. Dexter said on April 5, 2008 at 3:18 am

    mj…Ken Blackwell and his wife come to Edon, Ohio (very near me) to shoot skeet. His misdeeds which probably ensured Kerry’s defeat in 2004 may have lost the statehouse for the Republicans, but they gave four more years in the White House to a president who bungled his first term so horribly he turned the world against us and committed us to a never-ending war presence in The Region.
    Now the economy has collapsed and the job market is spiraling downward.
    Many call W Bush the worst president in the history of the Republic.
    Still…he is incredibly popular in huge states like Florida.
    Many are saying a McCain administration is a Bush third term.
    Many say either Democrat can beat McCain.
    Don’t count on it. If the electorate returned a goober like W after a disastrous first term, even with low popuarity poll numbers, he’d probably be elected to a third term if it was legal for him to run.
    As far as lying? My god! Bush lied and took us into the worst disaster in our history, (WMD lies) and got re-elected! People believe what they want to hear, lies or not.

    1087 chars

  13. The Mighty Favog said on April 5, 2008 at 3:19 am

    I’ll see you Detroit and raise you Baton Rouge.

    Check out some of these posts dealing with my old high school. The pictures — most of which I took last fall during a visit home — are of a school which HAS NOT been abandoned or vandalized.

    You’d just *think* it has.

    http://revolution-21.blogspot.com/2007/10/home-is-where-heartbreak-is.html

    http://revolution-21.blogspot.com/2007/10/more-scenes-from-americas-next-great.html

    http://revolution-21.blogspot.com/2007/10/disbelief-in-omaha-or-no-frame-of.html

    http://revolution-21.blogspot.com/2007/10/when-we-let-our-kids-schools-turn-into.html

    http://revolution-21.blogspot.com/2007/11/my-reminder.html

    http://revolution-21.blogspot.com/2007/11/unfit-for-bums-just-fine-for-your-kids.html

    FORTUNATELY, after much hell-raising and the 10-year renewal of a penny school-construction sales tax, Baton Rouge High is slated to be fixed in a couple of years. The historic main building will be renovated . . . and the rest of the campus will be torn down and rebuilt.

    Thing is, BRHS is far from the only school down there in this kind of shape.

    1120 chars

  14. michaelj said on April 5, 2008 at 4:54 am

    Wow, Dexter. I’m cynical, but the idea of the American voting popilace being stupid enough to vote for incurious George three times is hard to comprehend. Oh wait. They didn’t vote for nim the first time. That was the Scalia election where Cheney appointed himself Mr. Interlocotur. And damn, they didn’t vote for him the second time when Kenny-boy Blackwell hijacked Cuyahoga County. So there’s been a coup. Snouldn’t concerned citizens have exercised their actual 2nd Amendment rights and raised armed rebellion against the clear usurpation of the government and subsequent serial subornation of the Constitution?

    And if Ken Blackwell wants to shoot skeet, couldn’t he stand in front of Cheney’s lady 20 gauge gun and save taxpayers money? Alan Drury was making stuff up, but these bastards have stolen the government. Their guiding principle is, if the Pretzeldent does it it’s legal, a syllogism so plainly illogical and undemocratic that representative democratic systems would abhor it more than nature abhors a vacuum. (And I swear that’s exactly what Dick Nixon said.)

    But you’re right. People are nothing but reliable. Confronted with self-government, they appoint themselves and choose democracy, because they know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. Worst? Sure. When Dante makes another round, he might find a 10th circle.

    1364 chars

  15. Danny said on April 5, 2008 at 10:47 am

    Guys, way OT, but I’m just getting my morning started and came across this story about Kenny Loggins’ son, Crosby Loggins. Great picture of him. Man, he looks like Kenny.

    He says something at the end of the article about his father repecting him for trying to disassociate from him until he made a break-through on his own, but from his spitting-image looks, I’d say that has probably been very difficult for the young man.

    Anyway, just something for a Saturday morn. We’ve seen Kenny a few times in the last 10 years. He is still amazing. What a talent. I hope Crosby is good to and gets a break. We need more Yacht Rock.

    809 chars

  16. jcburns said on April 5, 2008 at 5:21 pm

    “nice liberals”!?

    17 chars

  17. Danny said on April 6, 2008 at 10:35 am

    I know, jc. I read that and chuckled a little. Sorta like a pat on the head, eh?

    82 chars

  18. nancy said on April 6, 2008 at 1:30 pm

    OK, mean liberals. Cranky liberals? Don’t-speak-to-them-before-their-second-cup-of-coffee liberals?

    99 chars

  19. Harl Delos said on April 6, 2008 at 6:24 pm

    OK, mean liberals. Cranky liberals?Don’t-speak-to-them-before-their-second-cup-of-coffee liberals?

    How about “not liberals at all” liberals?

    John and Sam may be liberals, but if the “one laptop per child” project were a liberal thing, it would be the government paying for the things. It’s not. It’s charitable individuals that are paying for OLPC. Private charity is a VERY conservative notion.

    And in practice, conservatives actually outgive liberals by a considerable margin. I imagine that is due to the fact that the neo-con movement is tied to fundamentalist churches which are pretty strict about tithing.

    The seven sisters, those liberal Mainline Christian churches, emphasize giving your time and talents instead of simply writing a check. That wouldn’t get counted in the statistics. They also emphasize that gifts of cash and property should be anonymous or else they aren’t really charity. Those don’t get counted, either.

    But most of it, I think, is that liberals think most people are stingy stinkers who need to be forced to give, hence government programs. And if the government is handling charity, they figure they don’t need to.

    Or not.

    1186 chars

  20. Kafkaz said on April 7, 2008 at 12:29 am

    If you ever wondered where High Tech Trash goes, here’s one answer.

    Meanwhile, I’m a few days behind in my reading (I’ve been outside, without a keyboard, reacquainting myself with nature), but Nancy (and all) I wanted to say how sorry I was to learn about the death of your friend, Ashley.

    393 chars

  21. Hank Stuever said on April 7, 2008 at 9:39 am

    I love how the positive sloganeering that plagues school administrations is still on the walls — “Excellence Starts With YOU”, etc.

    Excellence starts with you — so help yourself. Start with the copper pipes.

    213 chars