I don’t know what has been more infuriating this week; watching the one-sided coverage on what unfolded in Charlottesville last week or watching what passes for “leadership” in the republican party seeing who can get away from President Trump the fastest?
The sad part here is that I can easily see what happened last week spread to Michigan much sooner than people think.
{More after the fold}
(9)Nuh Uh.
(0)Detroit's Decline And Bankruptcy Were Indeed Due To Its Riots - Plural!
Apologists for the 1967 Detroit rioters and the feeble responses of Mayor Cavanagh and Governor Romney to that mayhem usually start off by noting that Detroit’s population and economy peaked in the early 1950’s. The implication being that the 1967 riots were just another incident in the long running, preordained decline of Detroit. Detroit’s population did peak in the early 1950’s, but its economy continued to grow right up to the 1967 riots due to productivity increases. And Detroit’s economic decline was not preordained, it was very much the consequence of both of its two major 20th Century riots.
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) also studied the aftermath of the 1960’s riots in urban America, specifically their effects upon African-American economic well being. Two key NBER Working Papers examine the effects of the 1960’s riots on African-American income, employment, and real estate holdings. Unsurprisingly, these NBER Working Papers found the effects were decisively negative. Surprisingly, these NBER Working Papers found the adverse economic effects actually accelerated over time, with the worst hits coming well into the following decade.
The deceit in the apologists’ chronology of the decline of Detroit is their failure to mention or consider the June 1943 race riot in Detroit. The 1943 Detroit riot was unequivocally a race riot and its deaths and injuries were on a scale quite comparable to the 1967 Detroit riots. During the 1943 Detroit riots, 34 people were killed and 433 were wounded. Property destruction was then estimated at $ 2 million ($28.3 million in 2017 US dollars), but this estimate is probably quite low due to lower casualty insurance coverage rates at that time. By comparison, 43 people were killed and 1,189 were wounded during the 1967 Detroit riots. Property destruction in the 1967 riots is disputed, but was somewhere around $ 50 million ($ 366.7 million in 2017 US dollars).
The different ratios of deaths and injuries to property damage in the two 20th Century Detroit riots also reflects the fundamental difference in their basic character. The 1943 riot was most certainly a race riot whose participants targeted people, but not much property. The 1967 Detroit riots were an all out economic attack on small businesses, but 1967 rioters did not target people to any particular degree.
Prior to the 1967 Detroit riots, the 1943 Detroit race riot was tied with the 1965 Watts riot for the second worst American riot death toll during the 20th Century, and probably tied with Watts for the third worst American riot death toll of all time. The 1943 Detroit race riot had only been surpassed in death toll during the 20th Century by the 1921 Tulsa race riot at the time of the 1967 Detroit riots. The 1943 Detroit race riot has not been studied by academia or covered by the media in much detail because it exposed New Deal incompetence and reflected very poorly on the American war effort underway at the time.
The 1943 race riot certainly did affect the thinking of Detroit residents and Detroit’s economic actors well into the 1950’s. Most of them lived through those 1943 race riots and were intimately familiar with the the racial tensions it revealed, even if they were not much publicized. You need to consider the causality issue underlying the decline of Detroit’s population during the 1950’s.
Were the factors usually cited for Detroit’s population decline in the 1950’s sui generis, or a response to the 1943 riots?
(16)Nuh Uh.(0)A Cure Always Requires a Correct Diagnosis
All Americans alive in 1967, of all races, called Detroit’s five day long spasm of violence, arson, and looting in July 1967 a riot. Some labeled it a race riot, others just a riot. Not for long. Within a year, government and media were plying the public with a long list of racial grievances said to be responsible and an even longer list of expensive liberal programs which promised to cure them.
The Detroit riots were deceitfully recast as an insurrection, rebellion, or an uprising to drive those liberal programs, but ultimately this revisionism just glamorized base criminality, Fifty years later, billions have been doled out in Detroit through those liberal programs and Detroit is in even worse shape by every metric.
Let’s start with some definitions from Merriam-Webster:
Note that the definitions of insurrection, rebellion, and uprising all state that these events are a defiance of established government, while the definition riot does not.
Were the events in Detroit from 23 to 27 July 1967 a defiance of established government?
(14)Nuh Uh.(0)Another GOP candidate emerges in the race to defeat Stabenow
Veteran and businessman joins other GOP hopefuls in bid for US Senate nomination.
Consider me intrigued.
Thoughts?
(10)Nuh Uh.(0)So over the weekend, I’m catching up on some odds and ends like chores around the house, reading several websites and more than few e-mails.
Guess which order I tackled that list in?
Some of them I would categorize as the social ones with jokes and “gotta see this” images &video. Some of them asking me for my $0.02 on goings on. But one of them that stood out was a little bit of both.
A friend of mine sent me a link to President Trump’s Twitter feed where he posted a video of himself clotheslining “CNN”.
If you haven’t seen it yet, all it was, was a quickly done re-edit from Wrestlemania 23’s “The Battle of the Billionaires” which featured a pre-President Trump at the top of the card.
It was a short clip where, after the various “interferences” leading up to it, Trump clotheslines & pummels “CNN” in typical professional wrestling fashion and then just simply walks away.
I smiled, took it for what it was, replied to my friend and went about the rest of my day.
What surprised me, though, was how often I would come across that very same clip again and again, and again, and again…
{Continued below}
(10)Nuh Uh.(0)Making The Democratic Process In Michigan Just A Little Bit Less Democratic With A 21st Century Poll Tax
Representatives Steve Marino, Tommy Brann, Julie Calley, Kimberly LaSata, and Jim Lilly have just introduced six bills, HB 4745 to HB 4750, to increase filing fees for various down ballot political offices across the State of Michigan by 50% to 300%. These are the fees prospective candidates can pay to get on the ballot in lieu of filing nominating petitions.
As you might expect, the highest (300%) filing fee increase proposed applies to candidates for State Representative (and Senator).
The kicker here? The filing fee is also no longer refunded to the runner up. So running for political office in Michigan just became more expensive exclusive.
(13)Nuh Uh.(0)Will common sense ever return to our state?
I believe the power of stupid people in large numbers is reaching a climax.
Michigan has its share of both (people and numbers) in all corners of the state. In Traverse City, it might be the new cause-du-jour ‘sanctuary city’ effort, gender fluid/creative/neutral bathrooms‘ or our political class simply not seeing the forest for the trees.
Funny thing about that last. One of the commissioners cannot accept a sale of county property for an amount less than it is worth. But as things always seem to bear out, political classic and commissioner Cheryl Gore Follette was for it – before she was against it.
“There is frustration, but as I’m learning, it’s government,” says Clous. “Government can’t make a decision and stay with a decision and live with it.” He says he’s at “a loss for words” over Gore Follette’s “making an issue out of selling property for less than market value, or making the assumption that we are” after the board accepted a below-market bid for 160 acres of Whitewater Township property last week.
Yes, ‘cognitive dissonance’ is a real thing.
But the hinterlands is not alone in such net-less mental acrobatics. On the opposite corner of the mitten, we have even more willful ignorance. MI Dems were introducing bills to make the world safe for ISIS terrorists last week, the feds arrested a naturalized resident of Dearbornistan for:
(14)Nuh Uh.(0)On the plus side, I've just found a sizable down payment for that Michigan Income Tax cut.
Can anyone find an exemption for “sensitive places” in either the Michigan or US Constitutions?
I cannot.
And just who makes the asinine argument for “sensitive places”?
{Click below to find out.}
(9)Nuh Uh.(0)And no. I don’t mean that thing where we exercise out "right" to set off large quantities of fireworks next month.
Last weekend, I spent some time with some friends who now live out of town.
We did the “usual touristy” things like Greektown and the Casinos.
They wanted me to go with them to the Grand Prix, but I’m more of a NASCAR Guy than IndyCar.
Afterwards, I insisted on changing things up and that we go down to Lafayette to eat.
I told them that it was part of the “Authentic Detroit” dining experience and that sort of thing.
They had never been down there and after initially scarring the hell out of them (along with equally confusing them with how the food was ordered/delivered), they settled down a bit and we started to catch up on things. They began to comment on local stuff, basically regurgitating what people like Gov. Snyder, et al, were shoveling to the rest of the country about how things have turned around since the bankruptcy.
I laughed at their comments and replied to the effect that, “Yeah! They wish!”
“Look at all of this new stuff downtown? How can you argue that things aren’t better?”, they replied.
I told them that “Yes”, the Downtown Area has improved. Large amounts of government money tends to eventually do that. “Yes” places like the Riverfront have gotten nicer.
But then I added, the same cannot be said for the rest of the city.
They didn’t believe me.
They couldn’t accept the fact that everything was as bad as I told them it was.
I told them, “Fine, want to go on a little trip?”
They were a little apprehensious to say the least, but we loaded up into their car and we went happy motoring…away from the freeways.
I took them in places where even Crowder wouldn’t dare to venture!
We went up and down places like Jefferson, and then Warren and Mack where it didn’t take that long to notice the large swaths of bombed out/burned out neighborhoods (at least I think they were neighborhoods at one time), large piles of trash and abandoned/stolen vehicles (along with boats…yes boats) strewn about, pretty much every other building covered with graffiti, I told my now visibly scared “driver” that I wanted to stop at the next party store because I wanted to get something to drink.
Yes, I did that on purpose.
So, while we parked across the street and started walking towards the party store, I got bombarded with a ton of questions (besides is this really safe) like why that particular store had a chain-link fence around the roof topped with razor wire, why there were thick metal plate doors next to the entrance and why was there a flashing green light on the sign outside of the building. When we went inside, they did a double-take at the walkway surrounding most of the perimeter of the inside of the building separated by 1-inch thick Lexan.
I casually grabbed a 2-liter of Rock N’ Rye, they didn’t get anything (I cannot imagine why) and we went back to their car. I still had more to show them.
Continuing our “tour”, they still couldn’t get over the flashing strobe light on the sign.
“Oh that? That’s Green Light.”
And here is where out story turns to next…
{More after the fold}
(7)Nuh Uh.(2)Traverse City Adhoc Committee faces proper and righteous indignation over direction toward sanctuary status.
The left, in its unbridled pursuit of one world lunacy, is fully embedded in Traverse City, Michigan.
Considering a sanctuary city policy that ties the hands of local law enforcement, an adhoc committee of the Traverse City Human Rights Commission (the most concentrated batch of lefties and progressive lunatics in the north) held a public meeting at the Grand Traverse County building yesterday. The meeting was met with (perhaps unexpectedly intense) opposition to the idea of a sanctuary policy from residents in, and out of Traverse City proper.
Outside the county building a couple hundred protesters gathered prior to the meeting to let the HRC know where they stand on the issue. Many had apparently never been moved to protest till this point, and others were regular guardians of good government, and our constitution.
By the time it began, the meeting had to be moved to the larger County chambers venue because of the sheer number of people who showed. The ratio of folks opposing the ‘sanctuary’ nonsense was about 10:1 to those who demonstrated support.
Interestingly, there were those who work with the migrant community as well who were in opposition to the sanctuary policy, because they feared increased ICE activity in the region as a result. Even those who carried the signs protesting the protesters of this may have had some second thoughts after the commenting was finished.
Misunderstanding the difference between migrants and illegal aliens is apparently too easy.
The HRC will make a recommendation to the Traverse City Commission, which will then vote on whether to advocate lawlessness, and neuter it’s police force fully.
Stay tuned for updates.
(16)Nuh Uh.(1)
