He even erected a statue in honor of Joe Louis, which a giant black fist right at the freeway entrance to downtown Detroit.
That statement provoked my interest so I went and found an image of the thing.
(http://i1058.photobucket.com/albums/t413/winthroproberts/fist2_zpse9bf2a67.jpg) (http://s1058.photobucket.com/user/winthroproberts/media/fist2_zpse9bf2a67.jpg.html)
"Joe Lewis", huh? More like "In Your Face, Whitey"
Did anyone watch Hannity tonight. For some reason he loves having Austin Goolesby on his program and tonight was no exception. One heretofore unknown jewel emerged from their back and forth, however...... did ya'll know Detroit failed because it was a one trick pony (auto industry) which employed uneducated and otherwise unemployable men and women ....... and it has failed because the weather is cold.I remember the early-mid 70s when American cars started their downward quality and engineering spiral.
Kid you not. Cold weather caused Detroit to fail. Proof of the pudding was all the jobs moved to the southern or western states.
Either Professor Goolesby is a total idiot or disingenuous.. and leave it to Hannity to once again fail to mention the obvious....... they moved down there from MI because they were RIGHT TO WORK states.
"I remember the early-mid 70s when American cars started their downward quality and engineering spiral."
Ah, yes, the Pinto (my wife had one) and the Vega (my death trap). And then there was the Gremlin.
CALLER: It's true, and you're on my prayer list. Detroit's decline actually started with capital flight and not white flight. It began with Detroit Democratic Mayor Drone Cavanaugh who was elected around 1961 or '62, and with Lansing's approval, they imposed a Detroit city additional income tax of about one and a half percent, a property tax of one and a half percent, and a utility tax. And so on top of all the regular taxes everyone pays, now Detroit had these additional taxes. So Cavanaugh saw himself like a young JFK and wanted to turn Detroit into an Oz, actually became an ooze, and the capital began with the wealthiest, who, if they moved out of Detroit, could save that three or four percent in taxes, and so then their property values dropped --
CALLER: Well, there is right downtown just outside the City Center are districts called Boston Street, and there's huge mansions, and there was a lot of mansions like where the mayor lives in Manoogian Mansion, there's a lot of wealthy areas, very wealthy areas still in the city. They're declining, but they're still there. So back in the day, there was Indian Village, and I can't think of all the names of them right off the top of my head, but there was a lot of wealth in the city in homes. And plus their businesses. So their businesses got hit. Their personal property taxes got hit, real estate taxes. And so it was capital flight. I read this in an article at a local college I went to back in the nineties.
So then those property values dropped, and nobody with that kind of money was gonna move into the city and lose that kind of money due to the tax, and so all the property values began to decline, and so people just kept fleeing. And then of course the '67 riots didn't help and Coleman Young didn't help and everything else you've been talking about, but that's the real genesis of it is the capital flight due to the income tax. And the city of Pontiac and Flint also have these same taxes, and they're both the same.
RUSH: Well, but there was a lot of urban renewal that was taking place. This was prior to Coleman Young. There was a lot of urban renewal taking place, and all of the blacks ended up being crowded into very small neighborhoods. And there was racial tension in Detroit, I mean, look, I'm not disagreeing with you that money fled the city. Everything fled the city. Everybody that could get out, did, is the bottom line, for whatever reason. But after that happened, what is key about Detroit after the flight happened, nothing took place to reverse it.
It remained segregated, white versus black, poor versus wealthy. Wealthy was in suburbia and outside of town north of Eight Mile, and Coleman Young had his little fiefdom in town that was just going downhill rapidly, and he kept exacerbating racial tensions. I mean, I'm not trying to stoke any fire here, but I'm trying to honestly reflect what I've read about this period and what happened. 'Cause I think it all combines to lead to this mess. And there's no way to sugarcoat what happened or what is happening. None.
"I remember the early-mid 70s when American cars started their downward quality and engineering spiral."
Ah, yes, the Pinto (my wife had one) and the Vega (my death trap). And then there was the Gremlin.