This is how unions jumped the shark. I'm grateful for what they did for improving working conditions and wages, but this crap is why they've rendered themselves irrelevant. Or the "you have to call a union electrician to plug in a PC and a union carpenter to hang a picture" shenanigans. My x/g/f was a manager at a large HMO and her underlings were union. She had one who was consistently late or just wouldn't show up; she had a little chat with (aka "wrote up") the retard, who immediately went out on "stress leave." GMAFB.

Why? Corporations don't pay taxes. They collect them from consumers and pass them back to the gov't. Tax them 100% and they'll just raise their prices in the US to cover that, we'll pay for it all, they'll still go overseas and they'll not ever think of coming back. Why shouldn't they go overseas where labor is cheaper and they don't have to deal with ridiculous unions or a regime than constantly demonizes anyone who turns a profit? We already have one of the highest corp. income taxes in the western world. Make it higher and see if jobs come back here from China. Uh huh.

How can you say union membership is declining when a;; public sector jobs are now unionized? I hate to say it but I am beginning to hate the public workers.

As for the section 8 renters homesteading - I seriously think it should be tried, but I suspect not one in ten are the type to try and go out and improve something. Good screening of candidates would be important - but what percentage of section 8 renters have any skills, DIY or better?

On the radio new this morn...Detroit Police Chief got the axe...details sketchy, but said something about a "reality TV show" being involved? Okay, Hugh...what did you do? :D

No one has mentioned Redlining yet.

What exactly is redlining?
What exactly is redlining? | Boykins for Michigan Senate

Redlining
Redlining - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...lining_map.jpg

I think it is sad, I love the old buildings, and was planning on starting a thread on Urban living last year. Who owns the buildings??? Seems to me that they could be call centers, at the very least. I look at that theater and it brings a tear to me eye, that had to be a show place, and could again. I have a couple friends who have bough, restored a few locally and used them for other venues, from showing old movies to Big Bands. George, in your line of work, you should be looking to get one of those building to convert to living, work, play space..

I have a wife and want to keep it that way. Besides Ann Arbor is more my scale and I could never give up Huron River Drive, where else can I drive a Porsche around here?

Look, I have no love for the man either. Richie clearly turned things around in his first term. You have a short memory what this city looked like 20 years ago.

On the news today, crime is less this year than last. I couldn't beleive that. But that is the media coverage for ya!

I live in this city and I don't know who will run against him. You can bet it will be more of the same. Sorry Leigon.

Simply put Unions have become BIG BUSINESS, in the business of providing LABOUR. After WW2 they had a monopoly on industrialized labour in the world, so they could put their hands in the pocket of business. Business was making so much money they agreed..Then things started to change around the middle 60's with the rise of Germany (Europe), Japan and then Korea and Taiwan. Now the competition hs spread to Indonesia, India, China and Brazil.

Remember the VW Beetle, Datsun and Toyota's...all cheap transportation...

So instead of smelling the roses and seeing which way the wind was blowing they kept on keeping on as if nothing had changed...the American people went to sleep thinking everything was fine...with their credit card and easy monthly payments. Nobody dared to wake them..Well that little slumber all burst in the fall of 2008.

BTW American business did wake up in the mid 80's as that was when they cleaned out the dead wood and got lean and mean...except those with big Union contracts like GM.....

Detroit would be a GREAT backlot for a studiio. Little traffic, plenty of old houses to burn down. Car wrecks, no problem. Lots of empty city streets that could be made to "look" inhabited. We're filming there pretty much for the tax credits on labor and materials, including the tax credits for the 90% of the crew we brought in from Los Angeles. Detroit, and other cities way of thinking is that if they offer tax credits for Season One of a TV series, we'll stay there for season two. Wrong. we can pretty much make any city look like another. NCIS which is supposed to be Virginia is shot in LA, ditto for CSI which is supposed to be Las Vegas. Ever notice when they're out in the woods how many Live California Coastal Oaks there are in Virginia? They shoot it in my backyard, so to speak.

nah... Unions (and politics) have become BIG BUSINESS, in the business of providing "representation." (WINK WINK)

. ..is there any bigger big-business?

There is a show on A+E called The First 48. A couple of months ago the film crew were filming a raid at a house when a girl was fatally shot.
Could be the reason he was fired.

U mean Mickey is going to screw Detroit....

The Mayor banned reality filming after that IIRC. Then the cheif got all duded up w/ semi-automatic weapon, cigar, etc. and did some sort of publicity stunt/shoot. Oh, that and boinking a subordinate in the department (even though both are unmarried) was more than Bing could tolerate. Me thinks there is more as the chief left rather quietly.

This was the way it was in the New York city area...everyone was fleeing the hostile and expensive city to go live in the suburbs. You remember...the bad old days back when they made films about New York like

The Warriors and
Escape From New York

The came Rudy Guiliani

He concentrated on quality of life issues: Get the hobos off the street, jail the muggers, no graffiti,don't cater to fringe political groups, instead cater to businesses, give sales tax holidays...and what do you know? Suddenly New York became a GREAT place to live.

Cities that emulated this prospered, those that didn't suffered.

Let's be fair here. NYC is still an insanely expensive place to live and shop. It's grossly overtaxed and overregulated. But Bloomberg has done a lot of that, while Giuliani cleaned up the crime, which helped the property values and thus prop. taxes a lot. Giuliani also cut taxes a lot. I read that some huge percentage of NYC's tax revenue comes from around 20,000 residents and that if even a handful of those folks decided to move, the city would go BK very quickly. However, having grown up in NJ during the Koch and Dinkins days, I knew NYC very well and there was a very noticeable difference once Giuliani went to work on the place. I remember my frist trip there after he became mayor and I saw those blue police barricade lining all the sidewalks, so people would only cross the street at crosswalks. That was a real shocker.

Yes, it took a REPUBLICAN to fix the liberal mess...;)

I find it hard to believe this could happen to a city like Detroit.
To me this is really sad. How long before the older people die off and the whole area is virtually abandoned? Then what?

What about cities like Chicago or Philadelphia? Could the same thing happen there?
Were did these people move to?

I just can't get my head around such a big problem. :(

I've never been there but it was always "the" car city...

What wrong with your car industry over there? (Maybe a title for a new thread)

To be fair to Bloomberg, NYC always was and always will be an expensive place to live and run. The maintenance on public infrastructure alone is a huge cost to be carried, let alone the expansion of it.

As for regulation...let's take the congestion pricing for traveling to lower manhattan. As somebody who has put up with that commute and traffic more than a few times, I'd say something has to be done. Bad traffic is another quality of life issue. More Path tubes, more ferries, more mass transit...but those things aren't going to pay for themselves, initially anyway. So, a punitive tax might not be a bad idea if it REALLY supports the solution , and again, makes NYC a better place to live in the long run.

Too bad the congestion pricing basically died on impact.

In my opinion of NY mayors, Bloomberg is pretty high up there.

Great place to live? Where the cops perform 100,000 "stop and searches" a year, where you need a special permit just to own a firearm for defense, where it's almost impossible to drive around, and where the cost of living is so freakin' crazy that a 3 br apt in Harlem costs $1000+ a month?

Seriously...

PS: Bloomberg is one of THE most anti-gun politicians EVER.

A lot of people immigrated to the south, less regulation, more job opportunity. Also less job security here, but its better to have jobs you can move into if yours disappears.

Many of the union rules stood in the way of automation, automation can increase quality in addition to reducing work force to make the same amount, so its hard for a company to stay in business when their competitors make better quality products for less.

I've been with the company I work for since my early teens, and any time a process got automated, no one got canned, they just found something else for them to do and steadily grew the business. There are more employees than when I started despite increasing automation. In a hard ball union land they wouldn't of been able to use the new machines, would of lost the competitive edge in the market, and eventually faded away.

In the Auto industry, if the market shrinks, the big three have a choice of closing plants in foreign countries, that are more recently built, and with more advanced equipment(better quality, lower production cost), or closing plants in the US with older lower quality machinery, and employees that are harder to deal with. That is a no brainer right there.

The US steel industry is doing quite well in areas without unions, we get our steel from South Carolina. The quality is excellent, and for that quality its not worth the price difference to get it else ware.

1. Seriously...one of the greatest cities in the world. As for not being able to drive around...that applies to DC, Houston, Seattle, SF, many other US cities but especially LA... in spades. But at least NYC has a real functioning mass transit system and a plan to expand it even more. Many cities have no plan...period.

2. $1000 a month for a 3 bedroom apt in Harlem?

I guess you don't know NY real estate. Most of Harlem is seriously gentrified and you'll never touch a 3 bedroom, 2, bedroom, or one bedroom for that price. If you can find it...I'm sure it will come with some other "price" attached.

Like anything else, if you want something nice, you're going to have to pay for it, and that includes the city where you live.

4. Fortunately if you live in NYC you are probably making the gravy to pay for it all.

$1,000/month generally won't get you a one bedroom in most of Los Angeles. My MIL's one bedroom condo, in a nice complex in a nice part of town is $1,200 plus utilities.

And the stench of urine comes at no extra charge:)

This would be good for some sort of movie/TV show ... the old velodrome on Mound and Outer Drive. They cleared the brush and are running some outlaw motorcycles on it :D

Dorais Velodrome, Detroit, MI

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Detroit
 

What's also sad is that in the same park was once the 2nd best hill to the one in Akron, Ohio for the Soap Box Derby.

When I race in the Derby back in the late 60's Detroit was the only city that had two derbies......one for Detroit and one for the suburbs drawing 600 cars for the two.

During those years Mitt Romney's father George was Governor and he came every year I raced to visit and mingle with the crowd.

What great memories and a shame what has happened to my hometown!!!

It's going down in flames...

High winds fuel fires across Detroit - U.S. news - Life - msnbc.com

How odd this thread came up today. I'm back here in Detroit as of last night for the same TV show. I'll report back on the fires and stuff later today. I'm a SoCal boy, its about 50 degrees out right now and very windy. I'm used to warmer weather.

Hugh you go from one fire to the next. You sure you aren't a fire fighter?

50s that's nothing. Wait around for winter to set in... lol

I'll be there from 15 - 17 October. Actually looking forward to the trip. But I do NOT like that city...

I was in Dearborn the other day - that is a surprisingly nice city. I plan to visit the Ford museum on my next visit - according to my FIL it is the history of mechanization of America, and even includes Edison's laboratories.

Detroit
 

Let me know when you plan your trip to the Henry Ford
I live only 20 minutes from there.

Will do. I am due in Hillsdale on 10-15 so maybe the 14th.

Even Dearborn with it,s great museum and the Ford world headquarters is not immune to urban blight. I was there a few of years ago and while driving back home (Canada) I somehow ended up on Gratiot Ave and drove through an area which looked like bombed out Iraq. The American side approach to the bridge is also really awful looking. Even though it is being rebuilt now.How was it allowed to become so bad?

My Grandfather was a Speciality Mold Maker with Ford for 43 years starting in 1916. So every car that Ford produced from 1916 to 1959 has a part or two in it that my Grandfather helped to make. Further as a Speciality Mold Maker, he helped restore a great many of the items found in the Henry Ford Museum as he made the mold to cast the reproduction part. His comment was, "Why do I want to go to the Ford museum to see the parts I made."

The rest of the country is just a bunch of pussies compared to us, that's all.:D

The cynical Tabs says. "Burning Detroit down can only be an improvement,"

Detroit
 

Even Dearborn with it,s great museum and the Ford world headquarters is not immune to urban blight. I was there a few of years ago and while driving back home (Canada) I somehow ended up on Gratiot Ave and drove through an area which looked like bombed out Iraq. The American side approach to the bridge is also really awful looking. Even though it is being rebuilt now.How was it allowed to become so bad?


If you were on Gratiot you were NO where near Dearborn. That's Detroit's east side and yes that area looks like war zone. Dearborn still looks fine.

Can't make 10-14 at work but the Saturday 10-16 maybe

I don't think its the city of Detroit, but we filmed at a house in Grosse Pointe Park at the house next to this one which is for sale. I called the realtor and they're asking $995,000, look really nice, and on a street with lots of similar nice homes.

But six blocks away a lot of more burned out homes/storefronts.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1283978089.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1283978134.jpg

Look what $35,000 can get you
 

Sold for $35K - very sad. Some say it could now be worth $7K

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1283980598.jpg

In a (formerly) very nice historic part of Detroit known as Indian Village

HISTORIC INDIAN VILLAGE - Detroit, Michigan

Indian Village Historic District (Detroit, Michigan) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia