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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
FWOOP, FWOOP, RANT WARNING, RANT WARNING, STAND BACK FOLKS, IT'S A GUSHER!
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(There, I warned you, continue at thy own risk of sanity disturbation)
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Welcome to my world - y'all think I am kidding when I use the word wasteland ?

Part of it is that the place is so abandoned that by the time someone NOTICES a fire, it's pretty big, and then getting the police to do ANY GODDAMN THING but rough people up, write tickets, or perform forfeitures (which for homes, lead to abandonments, thus feeding the cycle), well, good fuckin luck...

And outta the "public safety" budget, them damn cops live high on the hog in their new MGM Grand Casino HQ, paid for on the taxpayers dime, of course, and any attempt to get those rooting hogs (hoo lordy is the term SWINE ever appropriate for em!) to tighten their goddamn belts results in threats, extortion and abuse, shit like this, for example...
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/27/billboard-protest-police-la
yoffs-michigan-city-fuels-public-safety-debate/
Or full page ads full of vague threats, paid for by the shills of the Police Union or the Fraternal Order of Police.

And what, you ask, do the EMTs and Firefighters get ?
Jack shit, budget cuts, wage cuts, benefits removed, half of the townships are almost wholly reliant on the *volunteer* fire units, heroic little bucket brigades which often have to hold the line for an hour and more till they can get the official boys on it, since they're also overworked and up to their goddamn neck.

Oh, and since they mentioned it, our power grid is all but totally wrecked, it's hanging by a thread, seriously!
We've had a couple tornados and severe as hell thunderstorms this summer which kicked living shit out of the townships, and in every fuckin one about 50,000-100,000 homes lose power since the infrastructure is so outdated, rotten and fragile, but all the money is being sucked up by the feds for war-war-war, and not a goddamn penny for problems at home, yeah verily tribute and plunder, all hail the great and mighty military-industrial combine, right ?

Send em here to run new power lines, instead of multibillion dollar boondoggles like the Joint Strike Fighter or those floating deathtraps - come ON people, when was the last foe we even fought that HAD an actual navy or airforce worth the mention, ehe ?

The roads aren't any better, the city of Ann Arbor is down on it's knees begging and pleading AGAIN trying to get some of that federal tax money so brutally robbed from us to feed the war machine kicked back to fix seriously, desperately needed problems like the bridge on Stadium.
http://www.annarbor.com/news/temporary-fix-on-east-stadium-bridge-rece
ives-ann-arbor-city-council-approval/
http://www.annarbor.com/news/ann-arbors-stadium-bridges-fail-to-make-l
ist-of-federal-tiger-grant-recipients/
Lookit that, CHUNKS OF CONCRETE fallin off the bottom, and it's not a goddamn priority ?

Ann Arbor City Council is no help, wanting to invest $50,000.00 in a freakin skate park to help out their contractor relatives, but can't be bothered to shove that cash and concrete at the bridge, saying it's out of their area of responsibility - fuck that, you got the money to blow on pork, you got it to do some shit like this, it ain't like it's not a fuckin emergency, hell-O ?

Oh, yeah, and they also want a special police force for the hoity-toity business area to keep the residents out, kinda like Baltimore does with the Inner Harbor, yeahhh, good luck with that, especially since while built with tax money taken from the city residents, NONE of the proceeds ever seem to find their way back and Baltimore is the only city I know of in WORSE shape than Detroit - my buddy Rev was there for a security conference, and they had to use a hotel in the inner harbor cause nowhere else in that godforsaken place was safe, and the Blackwater guys were not only scared of the locals, they had one of their Humvees stolen and stripped - funny, in a dark sorta way, that is.

Also, yes, there *has* been some arson of abandoned ruins which are havens for rats, ravagers (detroit reavers, basically) and other vermin, but it doesn't seem to be the case in this instance - and I already mentioned the political problems in the thread about Jesse Jacksons SUV gettin stripped, so there's that on top of it all.

When it comes right down to it, alla this is the reason someone as obviously batshit as me gets political traction in the townships, proven track record of putting them badge bearing bitches back in their place, and getting shit DONE - the former township *did* get the water main fixed and the main drag repaved for that bid, and they even for once had enough salt to handle the roads all winter instead of having to buy it somewhere else at the last minute for outrageous prices despite their stupidity in failing to secure it properly, which got some of it stolen, probably by some other township which didn't stockpile.

All in all, losing power around here is more a when than an if, a lotta folks have solar backups now, and/or generators, guarded quite jealously from the ravagers - and I will say this for the local Meijers, when the grid goes down, they not only fire up their generators and keep right on doing business, they stuff all the supplies folks NEED out on the shelves and hold more or less a blackout sale, which profits them, but it also props up the illusion of normalcy enough to forestall panic and disorder, which was a damn handy stabilizing influence during "the big one", that huge blackout which wiped a quarter of the country out for a while - cause it's a given you can ALWAYS go shop at Meijers, even during the end of the world, heh heh.

And despite that, we learned NOTHING from that blackout, still, all the money for war-war-war, and fuck the infrastructure, right ?
And it'll hold... till it don't.

Ever seen what HAPPENS when a major city loses power, water and sewage for like.. a MONTH ?
Bad things man, BAD things.

Which is all why folks around here have that "fuckin attitude", okay ?
All of the big "Authorities", the Feds, State Gov, Mayors, Police... have failed them, failed them so utterly that any trust, respect, or belief in them is long gone, and so is even their legitimacy, it's all a joke, they talk and they talk, but jack shit gets done, gimme gimme gimme, mo-money, mo-money, and those millages get raided for pork, the work doesn't get done, and then they howl for more, more, more - no one wants it, no one expects it, just like that huge tax bump on tobacco, I TOLD YOU not a penny of it would ever find it's way into the promised programs.

So they pay only what they have to, the extortion required to keep men with guns out of their faces, and creep around trying to live their lives without ever getting noticed by the jackbooted enforcers in blue, like children living in a house with an abusive parent, just trying to get by, live their lives, and fuck "Authority", what good does it do em, what do they GET for that money but more abuse ?

And so, when you wanna get something DONE around here, you go local - you don't ask people in "Authority" any more than the Greeks would ask Zeus for shit, cause they knew he was crazy and as like to smack your ass with a lightning bolt for shits and giggles as to help you, and so it is with the "Authorities" around here, fuck em.

Of course, now we got the local orgs butting heads too...
http://detnews.com/article/20100904/METRO/9040326/Guardian-Angels-offe
rs-Detroit-300-aid
But that ain't likely to come to blows, just a matter of that the Angels need to learn some shit about de-escalating a situation instead of provoking it into a fight if they wanna be taken seriously.

And you got MAN, Jackrabbit, The Detroit 300, some of us Contract Security people, even the Michigan Militia, despite the endless demonization from the mainstream, who are DAMNED useful in Search and Rescue cause they can field a lot of people who are at least minimally trained in that kind of thing even if a lot of em are out of shape - those guys are my first stop in a civil-disaster situation.

Some stuff about MAN and Jackrabbit, here.
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/22381781/detail.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/apr/26/nation/la-na-jackrabbit-201004
26
(ETA: Second link is four parts, but worth the time, cause it's a good description of how things go around here - even if it does edge around the uselessness of the boys in blue, and the reasons for it.)

And where are the police ?
Busy writin tickets, and harrassing the medical marijuana people, trying to seize peoples assets, their homes, cars... you know, stuff that makes them MONEY, gets them pretty toys for next to nothin - protect the neighborhoods, HAH!
Where's the loot and plunder in that ?
They're as bad as the fuckin ravagers, especially now that Evans got run out of town by Worthy and her little setup, that was an ugly business, and in case no one noticed, the chick makin those accusations at Evans is also the girlfriend of the dude who replaced him, oh gee, no ulterior motive THERE, ehe ?

So yeah, it's uglier than the media makes it, but what it comes right down to is that "Government" has failed Detroit, in every way possible, and they no longer respect it for that reason, and as such, have begun to take matters into their own hands.

There's good and bad in that, of course, but if the Gov wants any kind of respectability around here, they're gonna have to step up their game, significantly - and if they won't step up, well, there's people around here who will, and damn the fine print.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
Same reason people stayed in New Orleans after Katrina. Their homes are there, their families are there, they were probably raised there, lot of the people most affected don't have the money to leave.

Besides, the urban blight is bad, but I hear there's still places people take pride in, like the university and such.

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Yep. Those reasons also sound a lot like why some people stay in abusive relationships.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:

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Yep. Those reasons also sound a lot like why some people stay in abusive relationships.

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Not sure what you want me to say. I guess you're not wrong...

Decry the abuse, maybe argue choices made when someone stays, but don't you have to root for things to get better? Hoping for anything else seems wrong, somehow.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
In the absence of hope, most people just try to survive.

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Originally posted by pizmobeach:
Frem - I don't see much hope in either of your posts to be honest, except in the satisfaction of pursuing a philosophy - imho kind of hard to sustain hope with just that, at least for most mortals.

I think you should start a blog - Detroit on Fire - 500-ish words a day. I'd sure read it.

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