Midwest
New Chicago Tour from Margaret Hicks at Chicago Elevated: The Disaster Tour!
Margaret Hicks is an absolute riot.
She’s a local tour guide from Chicago Elevated who gives the most amazing tours of various parts of the city, with as much emphasis on humor and fun as history. If you are coming to Chicago and looking for something interesting to do, then Hicks’ walking tours are a really fun way to do something different…and actually SEE Chicago, instead of looking at mostly the tops of cars driving by while on other tour buses.
Hicks’ new tour is about famous Chicago diasters.
Devastated Black Neighborhoods: Change You Can Believe In?
Abandon HopeyChange, All Ye Who Enter Here.
A map showing abandoned properties in Dayton, Ohio, in the Third Year of the Obama Regime
One of the most purposefully unreported legacies of the Leftist “Social Justice” agenda is devastated inner-city (predominantly black) neighborhoods.
The City of Dayton, Birthplace of Aviation, and the former home of eight General Motors assembly plants, has seen quite a bit of change during the Obama Regime. The one thing that is conspicuous by its absence is hope.
Thanks to vile, corrupt socialists like Barney Frank, for over two decades banks have been forced at gunpoint to lend mortgage money to people with little hope of paying it back. Many, if not most, of those people are black.
Historically, blacks in inner cities were often the targets of “redlining,” a discriminatory lending practice whereby lenders refused to make loans, based on the color of the borrower’s skin–instead of considering their income or ability to pay. This kind of bigotry is wrong.
The Community Reinvestment Act purported to put an end to this discriminatory practice by coercing lenders into making loans based on the borrower’s skin color instead of their income or ability to pay.
(I’ll give you a moment to digest that. You may have to read it a couple of times.)
Most middle-class black folks in rust belt cities like Dayton, Ohio, moved to black suburbs during the 1960s thanks to another government social engineering program, forced busing.
So most of the black folks who were left in the inner city in Dayton were people who couldn’t afford to go anywhere else. For years it was a blend of the working poor, the leeching poor (members of a permanent welfare-fueled underclass) and a handful of middle class residents (AKA City employees forced to live inside the city limits because of a civil service residency rule).
Banks HAD to lend in majority African-American neighborhoods to make up for alleged past discrimination or face massive penalties. No matter what. No matter if that particular bank had never discriminated before. No matter if anyone in the neighborhood had a job, no matter if property wouldn’t appraise high enough, no matter if the person applying for the loan was on welfare and had no hope, ever, of making payments.
And the moment those loans were originated, that worthless note was sold to Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae, so what did the banks care? They wouldn’t have to service the loan or be on the hook when the borrower inevitably defaulted. So for 20 years the banks went along with the “lend money to people who can’t afford their mortgage payments of we’ll call you a RAAAAACIST and put you out of business” scheme orchestrated by the radical Leftists like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd.
For awhile, home ownership statistics rose in the black community as redlining was reduced and the black middle class grew along with the overall economy.
Enter the two biggest-spending Congresses in American history, starting in 2007 (when Democrats got control of the House again). And its biggest-spending President in 2009. Goodbye, any hope of a balanced Federal budget. Goodbye, economic growth. Goodbye, manufacturing jobs. Goodbye, any kind of jobs.
Dayton used to have eight General Motors plants. High school dropouts could make obscene amounts of money working the assembly lines…and they could retire with huge pensions and “free” healthcare for their entire family. But over the years, the UAW made it impossible for GM to build high-quality cars and trucks cost-effectively. And then Obama took over GM. So now we have zero GM plants in Dayton, Ohio, and a lot of abandoned brownfields.
In the first year of the recession, the black underclass–those who got no-money-down, no-income-verification mortgages–started losing their homes. In the second year, it was the working poor. In 2011, the third year of the Obama Depression, the few remaining members of the black middle class in Dayton are starting to lose their homes, too.
The map above shows the result…entire neighborhoods have been emptied. Every red rectangle on the map is an abandoned property.
The City is broke. There are so many abandoned properties in the City of Dayton, Ohio–over 10,000 at last count–that the City cannot afford to keep all of them mowed. So they’ve created the “Care A Lot” program to encourage neighbors to “adopt” these abandoned homes and cut the grass.
And just to put this into context, the city as a whole has only 77,000 total housing units.
Dayton’s “West Side,” the area west of the river where most of the black population is concentrated, has been devastated. (Parts of the white and Hispanic East Side have problems too, but nothing like what the West Side is facing.)
Democrats and Leftists (redundancy alert) love the African American man and woman…when they need their votes. Collectivists specialize in identity politics, knowing that 95% of black voters (and 100% of dead voters) will pull the “D” lever no matter what.
And yet, what has 70 years of voting Democrat earned the black population of Dayton, Ohio? What has Teh Won done for the average African American family?
Dayton is 44% black. The per capita income is $15,547. Only 31% of Dayton residents 25 years old and up have managed to graduate from high school. Rates of single-parent households have doubled since 2000. Unemployment in Dayton is twice as high among blacks than among whites.
Poor people who should never have been lent money in the first place are now in an even worse position than they were before the Social Justice crowd swooped in to “rescue” them. Now more of them are homeless. More of them have a foreclosure and/or bankruptcy on their credit report that will make it almost impossible for them to qualify for a mortgage for the next several years. The few remaining homeowners in these predominantly black neighborhoods may never regain the equity they’ve lost by being surrounded on all sides by boarded-up, bank-owned properties-turned-crack houses.
Yes, things certainly have changed for poor black folks in Dayton, Ohio, since its residents voted overwhelmingly for The Historic and Godlike First Black President.
Hope!
Change!
Unicorns!
Vacant Lots!
“I never thought I would feel like a refugee living in the nation of my birth”
Dear HillBuzz,
There are those who have been impressed with Sarah Palin and then there are the rest of the folks who seem to be running on venom.
At the age of 74, it seems to me that a large part of the folks in the USA have gone crazy. Racist this, ignorant that, sluts, whores, if you disagree with them. Someone calls me racist I tell them to get lost that I am not impressed.
It seems to me that the government is broken and cannot fix itself, ever.
Political people are laughably transparent.
I never thought I would feel like a refugee living in the nation of my birth.
W.B.
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I know there are many out there who feel the same as W.B.
A good friend of mine who’s a former Marine said the only antidote to fear is action.
I think that antidote applies to the whole spectrum of fear and anxiety and frustration.
What are some things you think you can start doing in your own lives, in your own circles of friends and family, to nudge people towards addressing the broken government W.B. described…which we all know really CAN’T fix itself (or do anything right, for that matter)?
What think you?
Counting error puts Prosser in the lead in Wisconsin.
Waukesha County clerk Kathy Nicholaus says it was a simple case of human error. She entered the votes in the computer but didn’t hit save. This has led to a 7,000 vote gain by incumbent Justice David Prosser. Yesterday’s recount had been moving back and forth between Joanne Kloppenburg and Prosser and was as close as 11 votes at one time.
Read the rest of this entry »
Wisconsin Ground Report: Get out the vote for Justice David Prosser
Wisconsin is having elections tomorrow and they really need help re-electing Justice David Prosser (who has been endorsed by Sarah Palin).
This is a message from Hillbuzzer nat…
nat Says:
April 4, 2011 at 8:11 am e
Just wanted to put out a call for those in and around Wisconsin. We need Justice David Prosser to win reelection tomorrow. His opponent is an unqualified, flaky, uberleft, union puppet. The unions are out in full force.
There’s a get-out-the-vote call center in the Milwaukee area: 311 W. Silver Spring Dr., Glendale WI. Only 1.5 hours from Chicago. There may be one closer to the border too. We need help!!!
GROUND REPORT: Madison, Wisconsin rally to support Governor Scott Walker with photos from Tea Party protest
- Rally in Madison, Wisconsin at Capitol
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Dear HillBuzz,
Well, at the last minute, I decided to see if I could hop on a bus from WI State Fair Park, supplied free by Americans For Prosperity. It turns out there was only one bus, and enough people to fill two, so I just shouted out, “Hey, I’m willing to drive if someone wants to come along in my car.” And some older ladies took me up on my offer. So, it was me and two ladies that are active in the WI Republican Party here, driving 70 miles to Madison. I was concerned about parking, because it’s very hard to come by near the Capitol, but lo and behold, I was able to snag what I think was the last parking spot left, on the rooftop of this structure. It was only a block away from the Capitol square – (not really a square, more like the center of a bike spoke, with streets fanning out from the Capitol building).
Well…the Lefties still outnumbered us law abiding, tea partying, better looking ones (snark), but there were quite a few very clever signs there. I managed to capture six here, but one that I couldn’t capture had a baby crying, and a caption that said something like “WAAAAH. I have to pay some towards my own health insurance and pension!” And there was another one with a picture of Scott Walker with the word “COURAGE” on the one side, and a picture of fleeing Democrats in a school bus, on the other, with the word, “COWARDICE”. Sorry if the pictures are a bit poor quality, but I took them from my phone.
The speakers were Vicki McKenna, a local radio host, Herman Cain, ANDREW BREITBART (who must have flown from California!), Joe “The Plumber”, and a few more that I can’t remember. The Lefties had their drums and bullhorns, and were shouting “Kill the Bill”, and we were shouting “Pass the Bill”. The rally was put together in just a couple of days, so the speaker system was kinda bad, but it was nice talking to like-minded conservatives all there to support our Governor.
The ladies and I left a bit early, to beat the crowd, and we had to walk through and amongst the Lefties that were marching in a circle around the Capitol hub – and around us tea partiers. They didn’t seem to be violent (thank God), and none of us were carrying signs, so we didn’t get assaulted or anything. One union-printed sign said “Wisconsin taxpayers should care about teachers, like we care about your children.” Laughable. Calling in “sick” for three days in a row, to protest in Madison, INSTEAD of teaching Wisconsin’s children, is not caring about anyone but yourselves.
It was a wonderful learning experience, and a lesson in civic responsibility. I’m glad I was able to go.
Rightmindedmom in Wisconsin
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UPDATE: There’s more great coverage of the Madison, Wisconsin rally over at LittleMissAtilla
Wisconsin Ground Report: Media not reporting that Democrats fled the state without doing their jobs and teachers’ unions are harming children with their work stoppage
Dear HilBuzz,
I live 40 miles north of Madison, and our school is closed today so the teachers can join the protest. There is a state wide school rule that states that if school is canceled on Friday any activities Friday evening or during the weekend are also canceled. What that means for the school athletes is no basketball games and no wrestling completions. I know a few parents that are incredibly angry about this. Sports participation is expensive in both time and money. The teachers are lying when they say this is for the children. The teachers are following the union marching orders. The teachers are getting no sympathy from anyone, anymore. They had it for awhile and now it’s gone.
This morning on AM620 I heard an interesting interview with the majority leader, State Senator Fitzgerald. He wanted to clear up a miss conception about our run away Democrats. They left without doing their job. This is not being reported. They did not offer any amendments they did not stick around long enough. They had the opportunity to participate fully in the process, and they did not take it. They took a bus to Rockford instead. You can listen to AM620 here: http://www.620wtmj.com if you click on listen live at the top of the page. Charlie Sykes is on until noon. He is very informative and was in the capitol yesterday. He broadcasts out of Milwaukee.
I think anyone living in any of the districts of these runaways should contact their offices and tell them to get back to work. I support the Governor and have told my representatives as much. There are reports of a TEA Party counter protest being arranged for Saturday at Noon at the capitol. I hope attendance is overwhelming. The unions are bussing in from other states. Let’s show the capitol how much support they have for the Budget Repair Bill from all over the State of Wisconsin.
Thank you for your time.
J.T. in WI
