Panic in Detroit: 35,000 line up for federal poverty help, conservatives laugh

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/10/11/792124/-UPDATED:-Panic-in-Detroit:-35,000-line-up-for-federal-poverty-help,-conservatives-laugh

Which is why I call then assholes

during the '77 NYC blackout, hoping that the socialistic corrupt world would soon fall in on itself (of course, this is coming from a lunatic money-worshipping version of Rosa Klebb who wore a cape, inspired BioShock (and not in a good way), was inspired by someone who Black Dahliaed a 12-year-old in '27, and had a 33% chance of having boinked Alan Greenspan)

right in the middle of Detroit's poorest neighborhoods and tell the locals who he is and what he says about them.

both. And Beck, too.

edit grammar

On second edit, just the notion of Limbaugh et al experiencing a role reversal of sorts - something akin to Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Past/Future in A Christmas Carol that would jolt them a bit, wake them the f up, is what I had in mind. Maybe that sounds silly, but it crosses my mind when people like that denigrate the poor, blame the housing crisis on folks living beyond their means, etc. - Hannity is always talking about how he's seen poverty, how he was poor once. He knows shit about being poor.

After all, the poor are used to going to jail. Aren't they?

Primarily because there aren't enough (or any in some cases)

Highland Park might be a good place to dump him off!

Let me guess - you just can't stand to see poor widdle Wush get picked on by a GIRL?

Plus, in case you hadn't noticed, I DON'T LIVE IN DETROIT!!!!

rush doesn't.

it is there policies that shaped this disaster and now they get to see the fruits of their crimes?

SEE.

On the other hand, what gets me is some who are applying for this assistance are those who have also derided it in the past.

What goes around......

http://www.detnews.com/article/20091011/OPINION03/91011...

Sunday, October 11, 2009
Laura Berman
Rush-ing to judgment: National commentators don't understand Detroit's plight



They came in droves.

By 10 a.m. Wednesday, Cobo Center was drawing a bigger crowd than you could squeeze into Comerica Park for a free Eminem concert.

All that was in the air was a whiff of hope -- the promise of help -- and that hope drew tens of thousands, so many people that 150 police officers arrived on the scene to contain people. There was jostling, minor injuries and the frenzy of a crowd excited about rumored promises that weren't going to be delivered.

What was just as predictable as Detroit's chaotic botched application process for Detroiters seeking access to federal stimulus dollars was the national and international response: Laughter.

Nobody laughs at Indonesians buried under rubble. They don't sneer at hurricane victims whose houses float away. But to the media conservatives who feed on the despair of the poor, Detroit's economic Katrina is an opportunity to stir up the rabble. In this week's case, it created a rush to Google and YouTube and provided fodder for fringe hate groups.

"Detroit's Model Citizens Line Up for Money from Obama's 'Stash' " is the way Rush Limbaugh's Web site headlined a story about the stampede for grant applications at Cobo. Two breathless days of commentary were devoted to the appalling greed of broke Detroiters. He also nationally aired WJR-AM's (950) onsite interview with a Detroit woman who explained she'd come to Cobo for "Obama money."

"Where did he get it?" asks WJR reporter Ken Rogulski.

"I don't know, his stash," the woman responds. "I don't know where he got it from, but he's giving it to us, to help us."

She added: "We love him. That's why we voted for him."

How did this woman's anticipation and excitement become a trigger for ridicule? For contempt and loathing?

From that brief exchange, Limbaugh extracted a wealth of knowledge about this anonymous woman. He went on to describe her as "dumb, uninformed, shockingly, saddeningly stupid, the model citizen for Barack Obama."

The truth is that her answer wasn't stupid: She believed she had a chance to qualify for assistance from the federal government. She received an application.

But she said, "Obama money," a phrase that he uses to then disparage the entire mass of people in attendance, people he assumes lack all good qualities, from work ethic to intelligence to education. Those are qualities he and his audience apparently share automatically, by virtue of their enjoying of his program and their shared ability to sneer at desperation.

This spirit -- of denunciation and contempt for poor, black people -- has been picked up by white supremacist sites that are unapologetically and openly racist.

Big surprise.

If Limbaugh came to Metro Detroit, he could visit virtually any street in any suburb and find unemployed engineers and teachers and executives who would happily walk to city hall for legally available grant money.

He could find hard-working, well-educated white people who have lost their jobs and whose seemingly guaranteed futures -- the reward for all those years of enterprise -- just ran out of warranty.

Why not sneer at them? Because most of them might become "us" at any moment? Because "we" need a "them" to keep the yawning abyss at bay?

more...

You'll discover firsthand all the contempt and loathing y0u can possibly handle.

Just saying.

Maybe she could report on that.

Being invisible is painful. She should shame the 'Murkin people for their treatment of us.

Ahem.

for Detroit's downfall.

Bull, rather it was the government that were trying to prop up failing automakers since the 1970s that brought the downfall of Detroit. If you can't pay the prevailing wage then get out of business.

http://www.freep.com/article/20091004/COL33/910040419/1203/col33/What-Time-and-time-really-demonstrate-about-Detroit&template=fullarticle

POSTED: OCT. 4, 2009

What Time and time really demonstrate about Detroit
BY STEPHEN HENDERSON
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

Read Comments(83) Recommended(10)PrintE-mail this articleLetter to editorShare


Editor's note: A previous version of this story misstated that Time bought a house in Indian Village this summer. This version is correct.


Yeah, 1961.

Nearly 50 years ago, Time -- which this summer bought a house in West Village and bunked a handful of reporters there to chronicle the Motor City's woes over the next year -- dispatched a scribe to Detroit to write the city's obit. What the magazine wrote back then about our problems, their origins, and their pernicious effect on our quality of life, should sound familiar to anyone who today knocks around 6 Mile Road and Livernois or 12 Mile and Orchard Lake.

The similarities speak volumes -- about how the national media always descend on Detroit during tough times to report on urban decay and dysfunction and, sadly, about us. The lack of progress this area has made in solving pretty endemic problems is frightening -- and embarrassing.

In case you hadn't noticed, Detroit is the story of the moment for national media. The city is called "An American Tragedy" on Time's Oct. 5 cover. The Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and other publications in print and online all have also recently devoted significant ink (and kilobytes) to us.

Most of the pieces show Detroit as a post-industrial backwater, overwhelmed by abandonment and decay, stifled by racial estrangement and bitterness, aimlessly clinging to the remnants of largesse created by an industry that can no longer provide it.

50 years of closures

The problem with the coverage is not that it's wrong. Some of it is dead-accurate. And the pictures -- of decrepit factories, burned-out homes, schools that look like they've been through a hurricane -- are especially telling.

But as the Time article from 1961 highlights, there's important context missing. The folks writing about Detroit today approach everything as recent vintage or first impression. The Packard plant, shuttered in 1957, is not distinguished from Michigan Central Station, closed in the late 1980s. The dramatic contraction of the auto industry is often recounted as if it began with federal bailouts last year. But as Time reported in 1961, it was already well under way in the late 1950s, when Chrysler (then the city's leading employer) cut its workforce from 130,000 to 50,000 amid a horrible recession.

The national media are telling a half-century story as if it unfolded over a few years, and, in the process, they're missing important explanations and underpinnings.

Time's live-in effort at least promises to be more textured. The magazine says it intends to add clarity to a Detroit story that has been "underreported, stereotyped, avoided and exploited for decades." But its Oct. 5 cover piece, written by Detroit native Dan Okrent, still indulged some of the canards about how and why the city finds itself in the current predicament.

more...

WAL-MART! Land of low wages and working hours to match.

Detroit area folks have been looking for ANY kind of job for a long time now.

Here's the news article:



August 6, 2007

More than 5,000 people applied for 300 new jobs at the Wal-Mart Supercenter that opens Wednesday in Livonia.

The 210,000-square-foot store is the first Wal-Mart in metro Detroit to sell groceries. The store will employ 530 workers, some of whom transferred from the smaller Livonia store that closes tomorrow evening, said store manager Rita Acosta.

The old store sits at I-96 and Middlebelt, across the street from competitors Costco and Meijer. The new Wal-Mart Supercenter is the focal point of the new $80-million Wonderland Village development at Middlebelt and Plymouth roads.

The store opens Wednesday at 8 a.m. with free product samples and giveaways. Normal hours will be 6 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week.

http://www.wzzm13.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=78939

I bet the number of people who apply for that store will be double the number who applied in 2007.

and had to deal with the deceased woman's Republicanite niece, who was a major donor to the Republican Party of California.

At one point, the Republicanite niece told her, "We're going to get Ronald Reagan into the White House, and he's going to cut back on welfare. We're going to kick all those lazy n*****s and white trash off welfare, and when they riot, we'll shoot 'em down."

My mom is not the world's most racially enlightened person, but she was appalled by this, way back in the days when the idea of electing Reagan to the presidency seemed absurd.

The Republicanites have been racist and classist for a long time.

And the way things are going there will be a LOT more people joining those people very soon. :argh:

the apps should have been spread out, say at libraries, senior citizen centers etc,
not at a central place downtown.. How could they not think this would happen?

We're getting closer to the breaking point...