Personal finance website WalletHub has released its rankings for the worst big cities in the country and found that several high-profile places are at the bottom of the list when it comes to city management and operating efficiency.
Showing posts with label Detroit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Detroit. Show all posts
Thursday, July 12, 2018
Personal finance website WalletHub has released its rankings for the worst big cities in the country and found that several high-profile places are at the bottom of the list when it comes to city management and operating efficiency.
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Detroit Has Fewest Cops Patrolling Streets In Nearly 100 Years
DETROIT (WWJ/AP) – The Detroit Police Department is suffering from its worst manpower shortage in nearly a century.
There are currently fewer officers patrolling the city than at any time since the 1920s. At one point, the Detroit police force was over 5,000. Today, the force is just 1,590 officers strong — and not all of those are on the street.
The city has lost nearly half its patrol officers since 2000 and ranks have shrunk by 37 percent in the past three years alone, according to the Detroit News. It’s so bad that precincts are reportedly left with only one squad car at times.
“This is a crisis, and the dam is going to break,” Mark Diaz, president of the Detroit Police Officers Association, told the newspaper. “It’s a Catch-22: I know the city is broke, but we’re not going to be able to build up a tax base of residents and businesses until we can provide a safe environment for them.”
It’s important to note that the city’s population has fluctuated greatly over the years. Here’s a breakdown of data segments comparing the number of officers to Detroit residents, according to the report. The city’s current citizen-to-officer ratio is 448 to 1.
Read More: http://detroit.cbslocal.com
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Friday, April 17, 2015
Detroit Man Whose 21-Mile Walk To Work Inspired $350,000 In Donations Moves To Temporary Home
By Dylan Stableford, Feb 11, Yahoo NewsThe Detroit man whose determination to walk more than 20 miles a day to get to and from work inspired an online campaign that raised more than $350,000 for him abruptly moved on Tuesday after telling police that he did not feel safe with his newfound fortune.
According to the Detroit Free Press — whose profile of 56-year-old James Robertson led to the outpouring of donations and gifts, including a new car — the factory worker was moved to a temporary home after consulting with local law enforcement officials.
"We had a meeting with him [and] he expressed interest that he did not feel safe," Detroit Police Capt. Aric Tosqui told the newspaper. "People were actually asking him for money."
Read the full story: www.yahoo.com
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Saturday, February 7, 2015
Detroit Man Who Walks 21 Miles To, From Work Receives New Car
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| James Robertson Credit: Ryan Garza / Detroit Free Press / AP |
The Detroit man who made national headlines for walking his 21-mile commute to and from work broke down after receiving a new car.
James Robertson, a factory worker from Detroit, has been walking over 10 miles to and from his job for the past 10 years since his last car broke down.
On Friday, a local Ford dealership invited Robertson to test drive cars and surprised him with a new red Ford Taurus.
Flood of Donations for Detroit Man With 21-Mile Walk to Work
“I don’t like it. I love it,” he said, sitting in his new car. “If only my parents could see me now.”
Robertson walks most of his 20-plus mile commute daily, leaving his home in Detroit early each morning to get to work at a $10.55 per hour factory job in time for his 2 p.m. to 10 p.m. shift.
Read the full story: www.abcnews.go.com
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Friday, August 15, 2014
The New Shame Of The Cities
American politics is dominated by an enduring myth—that Democrats are the party of the common man; the voiceless, the powerless, the poor. That if you care about what happens to the least among us, you will cast your vote in the Democratic column.
But the reality is this: the vast majority of voiceless, powerless and poor people are concentrated in Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago, Atlanta, and America’s other large urban centers. All of them are run by Democrats and have been for 50 to 100 years. On the Democrats’ watch, these cities have become the equivalent of holding cells for the poor and minorities. Everything that’s wrong with America’s cities that can be affected by policy, Democrats are responsible for. There are poor to be helped, but Democrats have buried them deeper in poverty and powerlessness. There are minorities who seek opportunities, but Democrats have kept them second-class citizens. Democrats have been the problem rather than the solution.
In 1904, Lincoln Steffens, a major figure in the group of journalists Teddy Roosevelt called “muckrakers,” published a groundbreaking book calledShame of the Cities. In it he examined the inner workings of America’s great urban centers and found them swarming with graft and corruption. In his searing portraits of these cities, Steffens documented the inner workings of political machines across the country which were then imitating the apparatus built a few decades earlier by Tammany Hall’s notorious Boss Tweed, first of this new breed of crooked backroom Democratic princes of the city. Steffens showed how these machines ran over and flattened the lives of ordinary working people. But even more than corruption itself, Steffens was incensed by the complicity of intellectuals and opinion makers—people who knew that the political machines mangled democracy but had nonetheless allowed them to make America’s cities cesspools of poverty and despair.
If Lincoln Steffens was alive today, he would feel even greater outrage at the current disastrous state of America’s cities, as documented by John Perrazo in The New Shame of the Cities. Steffens would see in Perrazo’s portraits of the present-day machines of the Democrat Party, which have ruled America’s cities for a generation, today’s equivalent of Tammany Hall. He would see their governance not simply as an expression of failed policies, but as a massive human rights violation that has delivered the poor and minorities into a state of hopelessness and made them a permanent underclass. And, as he did in his own time, Steffens would feel contempt for today’s political class that has stood by and watched this urban tragedy unfold and bought into the Democrats’ myth that they are actually protectors of the poor.
By John Perazzo, Aug. 15, 2014, Frontpagemag.com
American politics is dominated by an enduring myth—that Democrats are the party of the common man; the voiceless, the powerless, the poor. That if you care about what happens to the least among us, you will cast your vote in the Democratic column.
But the reality is this: the vast majority of voiceless, powerless and poor people are concentrated in Detroit, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago, Atlanta, and America’s other large urban centers. All of them are run by Democrats and have been for 50 to 100 years. On the Democrats’ watch, these cities have become the equivalent of holding cells for the poor and minorities. Everything that’s wrong with America’s cities that can be affected by policy, Democrats are responsible for. There are poor to be helped, but Democrats have buried them deeper in poverty and powerlessness. There are minorities who seek opportunities, but Democrats have kept them second-class citizens. Democrats have been the problem rather than the solution.
In 1904, Lincoln Steffens, a major figure in the group of journalists Teddy Roosevelt called “muckrakers,” published a groundbreaking book calledShame of the Cities. In it he examined the inner workings of America’s great urban centers and found them swarming with graft and corruption. In his searing portraits of these cities, Steffens documented the inner workings of political machines across the country which were then imitating the apparatus built a few decades earlier by Tammany Hall’s notorious Boss Tweed, first of this new breed of crooked backroom Democratic princes of the city. Steffens showed how these machines ran over and flattened the lives of ordinary working people. But even more than corruption itself, Steffens was incensed by the complicity of intellectuals and opinion makers—people who knew that the political machines mangled democracy but had nonetheless allowed them to make America’s cities cesspools of poverty and despair.
If Lincoln Steffens was alive today, he would feel even greater outrage at the current disastrous state of America’s cities, as documented by John Perrazo in The New Shame of the Cities. Steffens would see in Perrazo’s portraits of the present-day machines of the Democrat Party, which have ruled America’s cities for a generation, today’s equivalent of Tammany Hall. He would see their governance not simply as an expression of failed policies, but as a massive human rights violation that has delivered the poor and minorities into a state of hopelessness and made them a permanent underclass. And, as he did in his own time, Steffens would feel contempt for today’s political class that has stood by and watched this urban tragedy unfold and bought into the Democrats’ myth that they are actually protectors of the poor.
Read the full story: www.frontpagemag.com
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Monday, August 4, 2014
Detroit: Setting Taxpayer $ On Fire
Growing up in the 1940s, Robert Fogelson remembers banging on the typewriter and peering out the window at his father’s office in a Manhattan skyscraper. Then "[my dad] would take us for lunch to a nearby Schraft’s, a chain of restaurants that was popular with housewives like my mother, who regularly went downtown to shop…to socialize ...or to meet my father for a play or a movie." Fogelson hadn’t decided yet what he would do with his life, "[b]ut I took it for granted," he writes, “whatever I did, I would do downtown."
As much a concept as a physical location, "downtown" was "the most powerful and widely recognized symbol of the American industrial metropolis," wrote historian Sam Bass Warner Jr., and it evokes sentimentality even in those of us who grew up long after flagship stores and corporate headquarters had relocated to the outskirts, leaving urban commercial districts empty and decrepit. Tourists still pack Times Square in New York City, where they can revel in a Disneyland-like recreation of downtown’s bright lights and crowded sidewalks. Fogelson never became a denizen of a towering skyscraper; he’s an urban historian at MIT and the author of Downtown: Its Rise and Fall, 1880-1950, an examination of how center cities have shaped public policy.
Read the full story: www.reason.com
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Saturday, July 19, 2014
Detroit Police Chief Gives Credit To Armed Citizens For Drop In Crime
By George Hunter, Jul. 16, 2014, Detroitnews.com
Detroit— Fed up with crime, some armed Detroiters have developed itchy trigger-fingers — and Police Chief James Craig said lawbreakers are getting the message.
In the latest incident, police say an 88-year-old who was beaten and robbed inside his east side home last week probably thought he was defending himself against attackers when he opened fire Monday on a television news crew.
On Thursday, a woman appeared on his front porch asking for help, and when he opened his door, two men rushed in, assaulted him and tied him up with a phone cord before robbing him of several items.
A reporter from Channel 2 (WJBK) knocked on the man’s door on Arndt Street Monday, and conducted a short interview, although the man, whose name was not released, would not open his door. After a crew from Channel 7 (WXYZ) came onto the man’s porch, he fired a single shot. No one was hurt, and the bullet lodged into a tree.
Police took the man into custody, where he is undergoing a psychological evaluation, Assistant Chief Steve Dolunt said.
“I think he was traumatized; he got beat up pretty good,” Dolunt said. “When the second reporter went onto his porch, he may have thought she was the woman who had tricked him, and he probably thought he was defending himself.”
Dolunt said police are investigating the matter, and it will be up to prosecutors to decide whether to bring charges.
The incident was the latest in a string of homeowners opening fire to defend themselves, although after a flurry of such shootings early this year, before Monday there hadn’t been a reported incident since May 4 — an indication that criminals are thinking twice about breaking into people’s houses, Craig said.
Detroit has experienced 37 percent fewer robberies in 2014 than during the same period last year, 22 percent fewer break-ins of businesses and homes, and 30 percent fewer carjackings. Craig attributed the drop to better police work and criminals being reluctant to prey on citizens who may be carrying guns.
Read the full story: www.detroitnews.com
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| Detroit Police Chief, George Hunter |
Detroit— Fed up with crime, some armed Detroiters have developed itchy trigger-fingers — and Police Chief James Craig said lawbreakers are getting the message.
In the latest incident, police say an 88-year-old who was beaten and robbed inside his east side home last week probably thought he was defending himself against attackers when he opened fire Monday on a television news crew.
On Thursday, a woman appeared on his front porch asking for help, and when he opened his door, two men rushed in, assaulted him and tied him up with a phone cord before robbing him of several items.
A reporter from Channel 2 (WJBK) knocked on the man’s door on Arndt Street Monday, and conducted a short interview, although the man, whose name was not released, would not open his door. After a crew from Channel 7 (WXYZ) came onto the man’s porch, he fired a single shot. No one was hurt, and the bullet lodged into a tree.
Police took the man into custody, where he is undergoing a psychological evaluation, Assistant Chief Steve Dolunt said.
“I think he was traumatized; he got beat up pretty good,” Dolunt said. “When the second reporter went onto his porch, he may have thought she was the woman who had tricked him, and he probably thought he was defending himself.”
Dolunt said police are investigating the matter, and it will be up to prosecutors to decide whether to bring charges.
The incident was the latest in a string of homeowners opening fire to defend themselves, although after a flurry of such shootings early this year, before Monday there hadn’t been a reported incident since May 4 — an indication that criminals are thinking twice about breaking into people’s houses, Craig said.
Detroit has experienced 37 percent fewer robberies in 2014 than during the same period last year, 22 percent fewer break-ins of businesses and homes, and 30 percent fewer carjackings. Craig attributed the drop to better police work and criminals being reluctant to prey on citizens who may be carrying guns.
Read the full story: www.detroitnews.com
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Saturday, June 14, 2014
Friday, May 16, 2014
Is Detroit destined to become a Chinese city? Chinese homebuyers and Chinese businesses are starting to flood into the Motor City, and the governor of Michigan is greatly encouraging this. In fact, he has formally asked the Obama administration for 50,000 special federal immigration visas to encourage even more immigration from China and elsewhere. So will Detroit be the first major city in the United States to be dominated by China? It could happen. Once upon a time, Detroit was the greatest manufacturing city in the history of the world and it had the highest per capita income in the entire country. But now it is a rotting, decaying, bankrupt hellhole that is in desperate need of a savior, and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder appears to be fully convinced that China can be that savior.
To Snyder, encouraging foreigners to invest money and buy up properties won't cost the state government much, but it could potentially have great benefits...
Under a plan to be unveiled Thursday, Gov. Rick Snyder will request 50,000 special federal immigration visas over the next five years to attract foreign professionals who are willing to work and live in the city.
Mr. Snyder, in an interview Wednesday, said that “this is one way for the federal government to step up to provide significant value without cost that could have a huge impact on the city’s future.”
At a news conference announcing his plan, Snyder was not shy about declaring his intentions...
"Let's send a message to the entire world: Detroit, Michigan, is open to the world."
In other words, Snyder wants China to save Detroit since nobody in this country is going to.
Snyder has also taken a couple of additional steps to encourage immigration and foreign investment, including opening up something called "an Office for New Americans"...
Opening an Office for New Americans to attract and help immigrants better adjust to life in Michigan, and designating the state as an Employer Based or EB-5 center to expedite visas and permits for immigrants who want to open business in the state with investments of at least $500,000 and 10 employees.
In essence, Snyder has done just about everything except roll out the welcome mat for the Chinese.
But this is nothing new for Governor Snyder. In fact, he has been making overtures to China for years...
Snyder, who was a businessman before starting his political career, believes that automobiles can no longer change the fate of Detroit. He said that he has learned from the history of the United States that what has made the nation great is immigrants.
In the early 1990s, Snyder went to China to develop the automobile market. After he was elected as the governor of Michigan, he made at least one trip to China every year, with the aim of recruiting talent.
He hopes that well-educated Chinese people can revitalize the Motor City in the new era. And as he desired, after Detroit announced its bankruptcy in 2013, the Chinese began to take the dying city by storm.
Rich Chinese men see Detroit as a rare opportunity for investment outside their home country.
In 2013, without any field investigation, Dongdu International Group of Shanghai — whose assets total 5 billion yuan (US$800 million) — spent US$13.6 million to buy the David Stott building and the Detroit Free Press building at auctions in September.
Read the full story: www.theeconomiccollapseblog.com
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Wednesday, April 30, 2014
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| Credit: Eric Seals / Detroit Free Press |
Even as bankrupt Detroit’s residents have resorted to gunning down neighborhood burglars, its police await money for patrol cars, radios, armored vests and modern computers.
Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr last month pledged $36.2 million for police from a $120 million loan from Barclays Plc approved by U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stephen Rhodes. Department officials wouldn’t discuss plans for the money, though Orr’s shopping list includes vehicles, station houses and a training facility for the city, which piled up $18 billion of debt by the time it filed for bankruptcy in July.
The money can’t come soon enough for a shrunken department that patrols 139 square miles (360 square kilometers) scarred by blight and poverty with decade-old cruisers. Although crime is down under new Police Chief James Craig, attacks in recent months have residents on edge and reinforced the city’s image as a danger zone.
“People don’t feel safe,” said Barry Ross, co-founder of Detroit Coalition Against Violence. “The new chief is trying, but the odds seem insurmountable.”
“I’m not saying it’s not possible, but it’s like climbing Mount Kilimanjaro without equipment.”
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Wednesday, April 16, 2014
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| Credit: Reuters / Rebecca Cook |
By Matt Helms, Stephen Henderson and Todd Spangler, Apr. 16, 2014
The Obama administration and state officials are in discussions on a deal that would free up an additional $100 million to soften the blow to Detroit pensioners, two people familiar with the talks told the Free Press late Tuesday.
The two sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to disclose the information, confirmed that there have been talks about the federal government supporting a move by the state to give Detroit $100 million in federal money for blight remediation. That, in turn, would free up $100 million of the more than $500 million that emergency manager Kevyn Orr planned to spend for blight removal over the next 10 years. Orr could then use that money to reduce pension cuts.
The federal funds would come from the Hardest Hit Fund, a $7.6-billion Obama administration effort established in 2010 to help the 18 states most hurt by the housing downturn. Read the full story: www.freep.com
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Monday, April 7, 2014
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| Steve Utash, Beating Victim |
**** UPDATE, 4/4/14: Steve Utash:
Pray for Comatose Victim of Racist Black Detroit Mob ***
If Barack Obama had 10-20 sons . . . .
Funny, no Trayvon Martin-style outrage over this: a White
driver accidentally hits a kid with his car in Detroit. He pulls over to see if
the kid is okay (BIG MISTAKE!) and is beaten almost to death by a mob of 11 Black
guys who also rob him. Yeah, that’s Detroit and that’s the REAL racism in
America.
Reports say the kid he hit sustained only a broken leg as a
result of the accident, but for pulling over and doing the “morally right”
thing in the American killing field I call Detroitistan, the poor White schnook
was rushed to the hospital where he is in critical condition and clinging to
life. He was also lucky that some random, courageous Black woman stepped in and
yelled at the Black mob to stop (assuming her story is accurate). She saved
this guy’s life. And, sadly, she is the real minority in “Get Whitey” Detroit.
She refused to give her name to a Detroit news radio station.
Read the full story: www.debbieschlussel.com
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Sunday, April 6, 2014
Detroit Free Press, Apr. 3, 2014
A motorist is in critical condition after being beaten by a
large group of people on the city’s east side after his truck struck an
10-year-old boy today, Detroit police said.
“He got his,” said one witness to the beating who declined
to give her name. “He got beat up real bad.”
Sgt. Michael Woody said officers believe the driver pulled
over to check on the child after he was hit around 4:10 p.m. He was then
assaulted by people in the neighborhood near Morang and Balfour streets.
“Our chief indicated there was a large group of approximately
30 or more people,” Woody said. “But that’s not to say they all took part in
the assault, but they did come out to assist the child, and it was a large
group at that time. They could have been from that large group.”
Read the full story: www.freep.com
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