EvilMonkey

Nice to see all the people on here who would just do nothing if they noticed a strange person walking around their neighborhood in the dark rain for 20 minutes or more, when the whole neighborhood is only about 3 blocks long. Don't look twice at him, that might be profiling, and certainly don't call the police, if he happens to be black that's racist.

QUOTE (pettie4sox @ Jul 12, 2013 -> 08:29 AM) Are you f***ing trolling?!?!?! Please tell me you're f***ing trolling. yeah, you're right. Detroit is such a shining example of Democratic policies and ideas in action that it should stand as a model for the rest of the country to emulate.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Jun 19, 2013 -> 11:27 AM) Essentially, they view it as a hipster paradise and want to bring in a really progressive culture to help rejuvenate the city. That's how it got so f*cked up to begin with. What other liberal idea do they think will work there? Communes? Organic farms? Solar panels?

Josh P. i think the game was started before i made my pick, so you can ignore this. my bad.

Sad. So sad.

QUOTE (NorthSideSox72 @ Jul 9, 2013 -> 09:36 AM) Here is my pie-in-the-sky idea... Most property values in Detroit proper are absurdly low anyway, and the city isn't getting tax receipt income from huge percentages of property that is empty and abandoned. So the best bet, really, is to re-condense the city. New Orleans should have done this too. Pick neighborhoods where the percentage of homes/businesses/lots are continuously and legally populated at a low percentage, and move everyone out. Take over abandoned properties (and buy others for dirt cheap) in neighborhoods with higher density. Set up a lottery system of some kind, with some user choice, to move people out of the awful neighborhoods and into the less awful ones that are at least somewhat populated. People who are up to date on taxes and mortgages get first choice. Apply for as many federal loans and grants as you can, put the money into rehabbing any homes that are not to code and/or below current living standards for those being moved. If they don't want to move to any of the choices, and if they are up to date on taxes etc., then try to buy them out. For the emptied neighborhoods, raze the structures, and allow the land to lay foul. Find any number of uses for the empty land as, in some sense, green space. Parks, prairies, urban farming co-ops, whatever you can find, ideally at least some of it private. You build a patchwork of green belts around the city. Then you can significantly reduce city services costs in those areas, to almost zero. Reduce the size of fire and police forces, schools, everything, re-use infrastructure parts from areas no longer used, condense transit, all of it - which will realize significant cost savings over time. Police force reduction should NOT be as large as actual reduction in tasks though, so that you can actually somewhat increase police presence in the populated areas. That open land, doesn't have to be open either - casinos, etc., open ALL the doors, let them all buy the property for next to nothing, to get them on the tax rolls. But in exchange, they have to be flexible as to location of their facilities - allow for good zoning plans in place. This plan would, inevitably, cause a lot of havoc in the short term. Long term, it would essentially allow the city to reset and restart, and be able to economically maintain itself and maybe even grow. Interesting plan, I have talked in vague outlines about similar things. For the really empty areas they can probably get away with some form of eminent domain to claim the abandoned ones, then green them up and remove the city services like you mentioned. Condense the are they need to supervise and lower costs dramatically.

Gordon

Gordon

He stunk before we got him, he finally put it together here, after a bit. Well, for at least that half season. I just went back and checked his stats and I am remembering something waaaay different. Must be the beer. Just ignore most of what is in this post.

Rios

Rios

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 5, 2013 -> 06:55 AM) wow, seriously, go read some late-19th and 20th century history about the US-LA relationships. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-zune...i_b_127528.html Intervention and colonization are different things. But lets get back to playing 'Where's Snowden'.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 4, 2013 -> 04:53 PM) A group of states that are aligned with each other politically and militarily with a long history of colonial issues with the United States? I think it was Portugal and Spain that were the colonizing forces in SOuth America, not the US, so not sure why they would have a problem with US for what THEY did.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jul 4, 2013 -> 06:45 PM) uh, what? If Bolivia held up a plane with the head of Canada on it, would the US be all crazy because he was a fellow cracker? Sure, there would be the cursory accusations or condemnations in the media or the UN, but really, do we go around defending people just because they are white? Or black?

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Jul 4, 2013 -> 09:12 AM) We have the entire Latin American world pissed at us because we screwed with one of their leaders for absolutely no reason. So its OK for the entire Latin American world to stand by each other simply because of the color of their skin? WHy would, or should, Argentina or Chili give a rats ass about Bolivia? Just because they share the same skin color?

I read that there was a pro-American hacker called The jester who was screwing with Ecuador until the decided not to have Snowden. Didn't know there WERE pro-American hackers. Thought they were all self-important anarchist assholes to begin with.

Keppinger

DeAza

Tank

I couldn't even read all the way thru that first one. Did anyone point out to them that many of the vendors work OTHER jobs, and probably couldn't be there early on such short notice? Probably not, they seemed to relish wallowing in their mutual loathing.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Jun 30, 2013 -> 08:49 PM) But I have a black friend on facebook! Isn't that the defense that Alec Baldwin's wife tried to use? "He can't be homophobic, he has gay friends and works for gay causes! Just because he said he wanted to kill that Queen meant nothing!"

QUOTE (iamshack @ Jul 1, 2013 -> 10:30 AM) My problem with that is that in this day and age, at least in my opinion, Zimmerman's behavior is threatening enough to frighten Martin just as much as if he walks up to him and begins punching him. When someone is following you in a vehicle for a sustained period of time, and then steps out of the vehicle and starts tracking you on foot, in this day and age of guns and other weaponry, that really seems to me just as frightening, if not more frightening, than someone starting a fistfight with you. Except that what we know at the moment is he wasn't frightened of the 'cray ass cracker', he was pissed. Frightened he might have gone up to the first house he saw and knocked on the door for help. or called the police or even the people he was staying with instead of his girlfriend to brag about it.

Gordo

Tank

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Jun 28, 2013 -> 04:24 PM) I don't claim that Zimmerman called the cops on every single person he saw in his neighborhood that he didn't know, but he did do it on multiple occasions as was noted in the various reports/records and these people just happened to be black. I claim that the idea that Martin's being black played no role in Zimmerman's suspicion, that it was based entirely on him walking down the sidewalk at 8PM and looking around, is laughable. I never claimed it had no role either. It certainly did. Along with the other factors here. but you seem to think that since race was involved in any way that it just makes all the rest not matter, he is guilty. Have fun in your circular logic, I have work to do. You have repeated your accusations and assumptions here on almost every page, nothign more you can say will add any new information for me.