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Business
Insider reports that Nearly Half Of Detroiters
Can’t Read.
Nearly Half Of Detroiters
Can’t Read
John Ellis | May 5, 2011, 3:07 PM
Image: Wikimedia Commons
Detroit was
once the symbol
of American wealth and industrial capacity. It is now everybody’s
emblem of decline.
The
data about Detroit grow more depressing by the month. This
report may be the most depressing thing you’ll read all year.
In a nutshell, it says that ROUGHLY HALF OF ALL THE PEOPLE WHO
LIVE IN DETROIT ARE ILLITERATE. They can’t read the back of a cereal
box. They can’t read a weather report. They can’t read at all.
As Andrew Coulson notes
in his blog at Cato: "Virtually the entire illiterate population has completed
elementary school, the level at which reading is theoretically
taught.
That’s seven years of schooling (k-6), at a cost of roughly $100,000,
for… nothing."
By way of epitaph, last month every teacher in the Detroit public school
system was
laid off.
UPI reports that Detroit to eliminate half of
public schools.
Detroit to eliminate
half of public schools
Published: Feb. 22, 2011 at 1:05 AM
LANSING, Mich., Feb. 22 (UPI) — Michigan state education officials
Monday ordered Detroit Public Schools to close half its schools and
consolidate operations to close the budget deficit.
State officials told Robert Bobb, emergency financial manager for the Detroit
Public School District, to immediately implement a restructuring plan that
would INCREASE CLASS SIZES TO 60 STUDENTS at whichever high schools remain
after the closures, The Detroit News reported Monday.
…
MURDER
RATE WORSE THAN BAGHDAD
New York Times reports
about Murdertown, U.S.A..
April 15, 2011
Riding Along With the Cops in Murdertown, U.S.A.
By CHARLIE LeDUFF
A sign taped to the entrance of police headquarters says it all: “CLOSED
WEEKENDS AND HOLIDAYS.” Every weekday, the doors are
locked at dusk.
It’s not that the cops here are scared; it’s just that
THEY’RE OUTMANNED, OUTGUNNED AND FLAT BROKE.
Flint is the birthplace of General Motors and the home of the
U.A.W.’s first big strike. In case you didn’t know
this, the words“Vehicle City” are spelled out on the archway
spanning the Flint River.
But the name is a lie. Flint isn’t Vehicle City anymore. The Buick City
complex is gone. The spark-plug plant is gone. Fisher Body is gone.
What
Flint is now is one of America’s murder capitals. Last year in Flint,
population 102,000, there were 66 documented murders. The murder rate here
is worse than those in Newark and St. Louis and New Orleans. IT’S EVEN
WORSE THAN BAGHDAD’S.
After the door is unlocked and I enter police headquarters, it is easy to see
why. There are only six patrolmen on duty for a Saturday night. So broke is Flint
that the city laid off two-thirds of its police force in the last three
years. The front desk looks like a dusty museum piece.
I am assigned to ride along with Officer Steve Howe, a 20-year-veteran of the
department. Caucasian. Late 50s. Medium build. Mustache. Clump of very
well-kempt salt-and-pepper hair.
I
sign a release form and am given a bulletproof vest.
“Isn’t that a little bit much?” I ask the sergeant on duty.
“You have to sign your life away,” he tells me.
Cops can be a suspicious, insular lot when it comes to reporters. But Howe
and the others are blunt and self-effacing. “We ain’t
cops anymore,” Howe says. “We’re librarians.
We take reports. We don’t fight crime.”
He guides me through the yellowing jail cells upstairs that had to be closed
down recently because of lack of manpower. “IF YOU BREAK
INTO SOMEONE’S HOUSE, WE CAN’T HOLD YOU,” he says with a
straight face. “If you’ve got a weapon or you’ve
murdered somebody, then county will take you. I don’t see
any light at the end of this tunnel. Only darkness.”
We leave headquarters and head out into the night. Howe turns up the heat in
his Chevy cruiser and switches on the computer.
“That’s something,” I say hopefully. “Some squad
cars in Detroit don’t even have computers.”
“Hold on a sec,” he says. “Let it warm up.”
When it does, I see that there are more than 12 runs stacked up, including a
kidnapping call that is more than six hours old. A home-invader call
is two hours old. A “man with a gun”
call is 90-minutes old.
“Sometimes, we don’t get to a call for two days,” he says. Last fall, an
elderly couple called after being held up at gunpoint in their
driveway. The police arrived on the scene FIVE HOURS LATER.
Traffic tickets?
“Don’t make me laugh,” he says.
We drive 50 miles through the evening, and the city flashes by us in all its
monotony. Liquor store. Gas station. Liquor store. Hi-C, 25 cents. Catfish
steaks, $1.25. Regular unleaded, $3.65.
The action isn’t heavy tonight, either. Domestic disputes, mostly. A woman will not let
her brother into the house, having already destroyed his furniture with a
pipe and thrown his clothing into the snow. Another man has beaten his
girlfriend and locked himself inside a neighbor’s house. Howe takes
reports. The kidnapping call gathers dust.
We pass by an abandoned Victorian with a sign neatly spray-painted on the
peeling door: “Please don’t burn.”
“Sorry,
slow night,” Howe apologizes. “Last weekend
we had four murders.”
Nature calls. Howe pulls into the 7-Eleven for a toilet break and a Big Gulp.
As we get out of the car, I see a blue flash of light near the side of the
store and the sound of gunfire. A shadow runs toward the apartment complex.
“Back in the car!” Howe barks at me.
Someone might have just become the 14th homicide victim of 2011, and winter
hasn’t even broken yet.
Howe calls in: “Shots fired.” He gives the following description:
A shadow wearing a hood. And in less than two minutes, the entire Flint
police force on patrol swarms the area. ALL SIX OF THEM. They find no gun and
no victim. They do, however, round up a fidgety kid in a hood, but since he doesn’t
have a gun, they kick him loose.
Frustrated, Howe heads back to the car and watches the kid walk away. Two more people are
killed in Flint the following week.
THIS
IS HAPPENING ALL AROUND AMERICA
The Economic Collapse
Blog reports about American Hellholes.
American Hellholes
The
U.S. economy is dying and we are heading for the next Great Depression. The talking heads in
the mainstream media love to spin the economic numbers around and around and
they love to make it sound like the economy is improving, but the truth is that it
doesn’t take a genius to see what is happening to the U.S. economic
system. ALL OVER THE NATION MANY OF OUR GREATEST CITIES ARE BEING SLOWLY BUT
SURELY TRANSFORMED INTO POST-APOCALYPTIC WASTELANDS. All over the
mid-Atlantic, all along the Gulf coast, all throughout the "rust
belt" and all over the entire state of California cities that once had
incredibly vibrant economies are being turned into rotting, post-industrial
hellholes. In many U.S. cities, the "real" rate of
unemployment is over 30 percent. There are some communities that
will start depressing you almost the moment that you drive into them. It is almost as if
all of the hope has been sucked right out of those communities. If you live
in one of those American hellholes you know what I am talking about. Sadly, it is not just
a few cities that are becoming hellholes. This is happening in the east, in
the west, in the north and in the south. America is literally
being transformed right in front of our eyes.
If
you still live in an area of the United States that is prosperous, do not
mock the cities that you are about to read about. The cold, hard reality
of the matter is that economic decline and economic despair are spreading
rapidly AND THEY WILL COME TO YOUR AREA SOON ENOUGH. Right now we are still
talking about "American hellholes", but if the long-term economic
trends that are destroying this nation are not turned around eventually we
will just be talking about one gigantic "American hellhole". In the end, no
area of the country will completely escape the economic hell that is coming.
Let’s take a closer look at what is currently happening in some of the
worst areas of the country….
Detroit, Michigan
In the city of Detroit today, there are over 33,000 abandoned
houses, 70 schools are being permanently closed down, the mayor wants to
bulldoze one-fourth of the city and you can literally buy a house for one dollar in the worst areas.
During the boom days of the 1950s, Detroit was a teeming
metropolis of approximately 2 million people, but today the current
population is less than half that. The city of Detroit, once a
shining example of middle class America, is now a rotting cesspool of economic
decline and it actually saw its population decline by 25 percent during the decade
that recently ended. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Detroit lost a
resident every 22 minutes between the years of
2000 and 2010.
So why are people leaving Detroit so rapidly?
There
simply are no jobs.
At the height of the economic downturn, the mayor of Detroit admitted
that while the "official" unemployment rate in Detroit was about 27
percent, the "real" unemployment rate in his city WAS ACTUALLY SOMEWHERE AROUND 50
PERCENT.
Since there are not enough jobs, that also means that not enough tax money is
coming in. Detroit is essentially insolvent at this point.
Detroit officials are trying to implement some austerity measures in a
desperate attempt to get city finances under control.
For example, the state of Michigan recently granted approval to a plan that would
shut down nearly half of the public schools in Detroit. Under the plan, 70 schools will be closed and 72 will continue
operating.
It has been estimated that the remaining public schools
will have class sizes of up to 60 students.
Detroit Mayor Dave Bing also wants to cut off 20 percent of the entire city
from police and trash services in order to save money.
Essentially that would mean abandoning 20 percent of the
city of Detroit to the gangs and to the homeless.
The mayor of Detroit has also discussed a plan in which authorities would bulldoze
one-fourth of the city in order to save money on
services.
So with all of this going on, is Detroit a pleasant place to
live at this point?
No way.
Today, Detroit is considered to be the third most violent city in the United States.
In fact, crime has gotten so bad and the citizens are so
frustrated by the lack of police assistance that they have resorted to
forming their own organizations to fight back. One group, known as
"Detroit 300", was formed after a 90-year-old woman on
Detroit’s northwest side was brutally raped in August.
If
you want to see what the future of America looks like, just take a few hours
and go driving through Detroit some time. But please only do this during
the day. Do not do this at night. Detroit is not a safe place anymore, and
you cannot count on the police to help you in a timely manner.
Detroit
was once one of the greatest cities in the world.
But today it is an absolute hellhole.
Camden, New Jersey
So is there any place in America that is worse than Detroit?
Well, many would nominate Camden, New Jersey.
Many years ago, Camden was actually thriving and prosperous. But today the
city of Camden is known as "the second most dangerous city in
America".
In a recent article entitled "City of Ruins", Chris Hedges did an
amazing job of documenting the horrific decline of Camden. Hedges estimates that
the real rate of unemployment in Camden is somewhere around 30 to 40
percent, and he makes it sound like nobody in their right mind
would want to live there now….
Camden is where those discarded as human refuse are dumped, along with the
physical refuse of postindustrial America. A sprawling sewage treatment plant
on forty acres of riverfront land processes 58 million gallons of wastewater
a day for Camden County. The stench of sewage lingers in the streets. There
is a huge trash-burning plant that releases noxious clouds, a prison, a
massive cement plant and mountains of scrap metal feeding into a giant
shredder. The city is scarred with several thousand decaying abandoned row
houses; the skeletal remains of windowless brick factories and gutted gas
stations; overgrown vacant lots filled with garbage and old tires; neglected,
weed-filled cemeteries; and boarded-up store fronts.
Gangs have stepped into the gaping void left by industry. In Camden today,
drugs and prostitution are two of the only viable businesses left -
especially for those who cannot find employment anywhere else. The following
is how Hedges describes the current state of affairs….
There are perhaps a hundred open-air drug markets, most run by gangs like
the Bloods, the Latin Kings, Los Nietos and MS-13. Knots of young men in
black leather jackets and baggy sweatshirts sell weed and crack to clients,
many of whom drive in from the suburbs. The drug trade is
one of the city’s few thriving businesses. A weapon, police say, is never more than a
few feet away, usually stashed behind a trash can, in the grass or
on a porch.
But before we all start judging Camden for being such a horrible place to
live, it is important to realize that this is happening in communities from
coast to coast. All over the United States industries are leaving and deep social
decay is setting in.
Even
the criminals in Camden are struggling. Things have gotten so bad in
Camden, New Jersey that not even the drug dealers are spending their
money anymore.
So where are the police?
Unfortunately, there is very little money for police. Authorities in
Camden recently decided to lay off half of the city police force.
So now the gangs and the drug dealers have more room to operate.
Sadly, this is not just happening in Camden. It is happening all over New
Jersey.
Of 315 municipalities the New Jersey State Police union recently surveyed, more than half indicated that they were planning to lay off police
officers.
So why doesn’t the state government step in and help out?
Well, the state of New Jersey is in such bad shape that they still are facing
a $10 billion budget deficit for this year even
after cutting a billion dollars from the education budget and laying off thousands of teachers.
New Jersey also has $46 billion in unfunded pension liabilities and $65
billion in unfunded health care liabilities. Nobody is quite sure how New
Jersey is even going to come close to meeting those obligations.
Meanwhile,
cities like Camden are rotting a little bit more every single day.
New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans had a struggling economy even before Hurricane Katrina struck
back in 2005. But that event changed everything. It is now almost 6
years later and virtually the entire region is still a disaster zone.
New Orleans permanently lost 29% of its population
after Hurricane Katrina. There are many areas of New Orleans that still look
as if they have just been bombed.
21.5 percent of all houses in New
Orleans, Louisiana are currently standing vacant. Many of those homes will
never be inhabited again.
What
made things even worse for New Orleans (and for residents all along the
Gulf coast) was the horrific BP oil spill last year. The mainstream news
does not talk about the oil spill much anymore, but those living in the
area have to deal with the effects every single day.
Some of the industries in the Gulf region were really starting to recover
from Hurricane Katrina but the BP oil spill put a stop to that.
Before
the oil spill, Louisiana produced more fish and seafood than anywhere in the
United States except for Alaska. But now the seafood industry
has been absolutely devastated. It has been estimated that the
cost of the BP oil spill to the fishing industry in Louisiana alone could top 3 billion dollars.
Some
local shrimpers in the region are projecting that it will be about seven years before they can set to sea
again.
New Orleans keeps trying to bounce back from all of these disasters, but
times are tough down there.
Today, New Orleans is the 13th most violent city in
America. That is actually an improvement. Before Katrina New Orleans had even
more violent crime.
The truth is that other areas along the Gulf coast are doing a lot
worse than New Orleans is doing. A ton of big corporate money has
flowed into New Orleans. Officials are trying to clean up the city and make
it a huge tourist destination once again.
But in the surrounding areas things are not looking so bright. There are areas
along the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the panhandle of Florida
that are some of the most depressing places in the nation.
It is almost as if there are hundreds of thousands of people that time
forgot. In some rural areas along the Gulf coast the poverty is absolutely
mind blowing. There are very few jobs and there is very little hope. Meanwhile, LARGE NUMBERS OF
PEOPLE IN THE REGION CONTINUE TO GET SICK FROM THE TOXIC DISPERSANTS USED TO
CLEAN UP THE OIL SPILL.
Let us hope that we don’t see another major disaster in the Gulf of
Mexico any time soon. As it is, it is going to take decades for
that region to fully recover. There are a lot of really good
people that live down there, and they deserve our prayers.
Vallejo, California (And Virtually The Rest Of The State Of California)
Almost
the entire state of California is an economic disaster zone. Austerity measures
are being implemented in city after city as tax revenues have nosedived.
The following is an excerpt from a recent New York Times
article that describes the brutal austerity that has been
implemented in Vallejo, California….
Vallejo is still in bankruptcy. The police force has shrunk
from 153 officers to 92. Calls for any but
the most serious crimes go unanswered. Residents who complain
about prostitutes or vandals are told to fill out a form. Three of the
city’s firehouses were closed. Last summer, a fire ravaged a
house in one of the city’s better neighborhoods; one of the firetrucks
came from another town, 15 miles away. Is this America’s future?
Sadly, that is what the future of America is going to look like. Public services are
being slashed all over the nation due to budget crunches.
Unless there is a major jobs recovery, the situation in California is going
to continue to degenerate. The truth is that the state of California needs millions
and millions of new jobs just to get back to "normal". For example, near the
end of last year it was reported that 24.3 percent of the residents of
El Centro, California were unemployed. Not only that, as of the end of last
year the number of people unemployed in the state of California was
approximately equivalent to the entire populations of Nevada, New Hampshire
and Vermont combined.
Businesses are closing in California at an astounding pace. At one point last
year it was reported that in the area around Sacramento, California there was
one closed business for every six
that were still open.
As a result of all of this, home prices in many areas of California
have completely fallen off a cliff. For example, the average home in
Merced, California has declined in value by 63 percent over the past four years.
California
also had more foreclosure filings that any other U.S. state in 2010. The 546,669 total foreclosure filings during the year means
that over 4 percent of all the housing units in the state of California
received a foreclosure filing at some point during 2010.
Sadly, things don’t look like they are going to turn around in
California any time soon. Forbes recently compiled a list entitled "Cities Where The Economy May Get
Worse".
Six of the top seven spots were held by cities in California.
California is becoming a very frightening place. When you combine high
unemployment with unchecked illegal immigration what you get is rampant
poverty.
20 percent of the residents of Los Angeles County are now
receiving public aid of one form or another.
In particular, the number of children that are considered to be in
need of public assistance is truly scary.
Incredibly, 60 percent of all the students attending
California public schools now qualify for free or reduced-price school
lunches.
Poverty and illegal immigration have also caused a tremendous health care
crisis in the state. The hordes of illegal aliens taking advantage of
"free" medical care at hospital emergency rooms have caused dozens
of hospitals across the state of California to completely shut down. As a result, the
state of California now ranks dead last out of all 50 states in the number of emergency
rooms per million people.
The bozos in Sacramento keep passing hundreds of new laws in an attempt to
"fix" the state, but the truth is that for the poorest residents of
the state all of those new laws don’t make a shred of difference.
The following is how Victor Davis Hansen describes what he saw
during his recent tour of the "forgotten areas of central California"….
Many of the rural trailer-house compounds I saw appear to the naked
eye no different from what I have seen in the Third World. There is a Caribbean
look to the junked cars, electric wires crisscrossing between various
outbuildings, plastic tarps substituting for replacement shingles, lean-tos
cobbled together as auxiliary housing, pit bulls unleashed, and geese, goats,
and chickens roaming around the yards. The public hears about all
sorts of tough California regulations that stymie business - rigid zoning laws,
strict building codes, constant inspections – but apparently none
of that applies out here.
Hansen also says that he observed that people in these areas are doing
whatever they can to get by….
At crossroads, peddlers in a counter-California economy sell almost
anything. Here is what I noticed at an intersection on the west side last
week: shovels, rakes, hoes, gas pumps, lawnmowers, edgers, blowers, jackets,
gloves, and caps. The merchandise was all new. I doubt whether in high-tax California
sales taxes or income taxes were paid on any of these stop-and-go
transactions.
In two supermarkets 50 miles apart, I WAS THE ONLY ONE IN LINE WHO
DID NOT PAY WITH A SOCIAL-SERVICE PLASTIC CARD (gone are the days
when "food stamps" were embarrassing bulky coupons).
Are you frightened yet?
You know what they say – "as goes California, so goes the
nation".
What is happening in California now is eventually going to come to
your area.
Right now California is also having a huge problem with gangs. Gang violence in
America is getting totally out of control. According to authorities, there
are now over 1 million members of criminal gangs operating inside the
country, and those gangs are responsible for up to 80% of
the violent crimes committed in the U.S. each year.
But instead of ramping up to fight crime and fight illegal immigration, police forces all
over California are being cut back.
For example, because of extreme budget cuts and police layoffs, Oakland,
California Police Chief Anthony Batts has announced that there are a number
of crimes that his department simply will no longer respond to due to a lack
of resources. The following is a partial list OF THE CRIMES THAT
POLICE OFFICERS IN OAKLAND WILL NO LONGER BE RESPONDING TO.…
• burglary
• theft
• embezzlement
• grand theft
• grand theft: dog
• identity theft
• false information to peace officer
• required to register as sex or arson
offender
• dump waste or offensive matter
• loud music
• possess forged notes
• pass fictitious check
• obtain money by false voucher
• fraudulent use of access cards
• stolen license plate
• embezzlement by an employee
• extortion
• attempted extortion
• false personification of other
• injure telephone/power line
• interfere with power line
• unauthorized cable tv connection
• vandalism
Not that Oakland wasn’t already a mess before all this, but now HOW LONG DO YOU THINK IT WILL BE BEFORE TOTAL
CHAOS AND ANARCHY REIGNS ON THE STREETS OF OAKLAND?
Today, Oakland is considered the 5th most violent city in the United States.
Will it soon become the most violent?
But Oakland is not the only major California city that is facing these
kinds of issues.
Things have gotten so bad in Stockton, California that the police union
put up a billboard with the following message: "Welcome to the
2nd most dangerous city in California. Stop laying
off cops."
Already the police force in Stockton has been stripped down to almost
nothing.
A while back, the Stockton Police Department dropped this bombshell….
"We absolutely do not have any narcotics officers, narcotics sergeants
working any kind of investigative narcotics type cases at this point in
time."
Do you think drug dealers will be flocking to Stockton after they hear that?
California
was once the envy of the world.
Now it is becoming one gigantic hellhole.
During one recent 23 year period, the state of California built 23 prisons but just one university.
So
is there any hope for California?
No, unfortunately there is not.
In another article, I wrote about some of the reasons why
millions of people have been leaving California for
good….
Meanwhile, the standard of living in California is going right
into the toilet. Housing values are plummeting. Unemployment has
risen above 20 percent in many areas of the state. Crime and gang
activity is on the rise even as police budgets are being hacked to the bone. The health care system
is an absolute disaster. At this point California has the fewest emergency
rooms per million people out of all 50 states. While all of this has been
going on, the state legislature in Sacramento has been very busy passing
hundreds of new laws that are mostly about promoting one radical agenda or
another. The state government has become so radically anti-business that it
is a wonder that any businesses have remained in the state. It seems like the
moving vans never stop as an endless parade of businesses and families leave
California as quickly as they can.
But this is not just a "California thing". The truth is that what
is happening in California, in Detroit, in Camden and in hundreds of other
communities is also going to happen where you live.
THE U.S. ECONOMY IS SLOWLY DYING. Only 66.8% of American men had a
job last year. That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in U.S.
history.
People are getting desperate. There are ten percent fewer
middle class jobs than there were a decade ago and the competition for good
jobs has become insane. More than 44 million Americans are now on food
stamps and that number grows every single month. Millions more
American families fall into poverty every single year.
It
is time to face the truth about what is happening to America. Our economy is not
growing and becoming stronger. Rather, the cold, hard reality of the
matter is that OUR ECONOMY IS VERY SICK AND IT IS DYING. The seemingly
boundless prosperity that we have enjoyed for decade after decade is coming
to an end. Our communities are being transformed into absolute hellholes.
THOSE THAT ARE TELLING YOU THAT THE U.S. ECONOMY WILL SOON BE BETTER
THAN EVER ARE LYING TO YOU. The U.S. economy is
going to go down and it is going to go down hard.
You better get ready.
Signs
that the economy is worsening
CNN reports that Wal-Mart shoppers are
‘running out of money’.
Wal-Mart: Our shoppers are
‘running out of money’
By
Parija Kavilanz, senior writer
April 28, 2011: 2:41 PM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Wal-Mart’s core shoppers
are running out of money much faster than a year ago due to rising
gasoline prices, and the retail giant is worried, CEO Mike Duke said
Wednesday.
"We’re seeing core consumers under a lot of pressure," Duke said at an event
in New York. …
…
Wal-Mart
(WMT), which averages 140 million shoppers weekly to its stores in the
United States, is considered a barometer of the health of the
consumer and the economy.
To that end, Duke said he’s not seeing signs of a recovery
yet.
…
Wal-Mart has struggled with seven straight quarters of sales declines
in its stores.
…
Bloomberg reports that McDonald’s turns Away Over
938,000 Applicants For Minimum Wage, Part-Time Jobs.
McDonald’s Hires
62,000… [turning Away Over 938,000 Applicants For Minimum Wage, Part-Time
Jobs]
By
Leslie Patton – Thu Apr 28 20:19:49 GMT 2011
Job seekers reach for applications at a McDonald’s Corp. restaurant in
Chicago on
April 19, 2011. Photographer: Tim Boyle/Bloomberg
…
McDonald’s
and its franchisees hired 62,000 people in the U.S. AFTER RECEIVING
MORE THAN ONE MILLION APPLICATIONS, the Oak Brook, Illinois-based
company said today in an e-mailed statement. …
…
The
number of applications for unemployment benefits in the U.S. rose last week, a
sign that progress in the labor market may be fading. …
Reuters
reports that Most Americans say U.S. in
recession.
Most Americans say U.S. in
recession despite data: poll
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON | Thu Apr 28, 2011 9:47am EDT
(Reuters) – More than half of Americans say the U.S. economy is in
a recession or a depression despite official data that show a moderate
recovery, according to a poll released on Thursday.
The April 20-23 Gallup survey of 1,013 U.S. adults found that only 27 percent said
the economy is growing. Twenty-nine percent said the
economy is in a depression and 26 percent said it
is in a recession, with another 16 percent saying it is
"slowing down," Gallup said.
…
Americans
Gone Wild
The Economic Collapse
Blog reports about Americans Gone Wild.
Americans Gone Wild
Gerald Celente is known to love to make the following statement: "When people
lose everything and have nothing left to lose – they lose it." Sadly, Celente is
exactly right about this. As the U.S. economy continues
to collapse, Americans are going to becoming increasingly frustrated, and
this frustration will inevitably boil over into rioting and violence. Could we be starting
to see the start of this already? The number of Americans that
have "gone wild" seems to be escalating. Years ago, losing a
job was not that big of a deal. Now a job loss is enough to
cause some Americans to snap and go over the edge. We are seeing
restaurant brawls and open violence in the streets that would have been
unthinkable 50 years ago. All over the nation people are
losing it and are literally going crazy. The news stories and
the videos posted below of "Americans gone wild" are very graphic
and very shocking. There is a reason for this. These examples are meant to
show you that THE VERY FABRIC OF OUR CIVILIZED SOCIETY IS FALLING
APART. It won’t matter who ends up leading us politically if this is
the kind of people we become.
Sadly, it appears that we are not the same kind of people that we used to be.
Something has changed in America. Something is different. …
There
are examples of "Americans gone wild" all
over the nation. The things you are about to read about below are not just isolated
incidents. The truth is that I could have easily included dozens more
examples.
As
the economy continues to crumble this trend is going to get even worse. The following are just a few examples
of how Americans have been freaking out and losing it recently….
*One elementary school teacher in the town of Monroe, Georgia was arrested
recently for something very unusual. One day he made the decision to walk around the
halls of his school completely naked. So why was he naked?
Well, it turns out that he learned that he was going to be fired and so he
snapped.
*As I have written about previously, McDonald’s recently held
a
"National Hiring Day" and about a million
Americans showed up to apply for jobs at McDonald’s restaurants all
around the nation. Well, in Cleveland a horrible fight
broke out between some girls and it ended up with three
people being run over by a car. Do not watch this video if you
are sensitive to graphic violence….
[REPEAT:
DO NOT WATCH THIS VIDEO IF YOU ARE SENSITIVE TO GRAPHIC VIOLENCE.]
*In Sioux City, Iowa a 41 year old man recently walked into the office
where his boss worked and beat the living daylights out of him. The boss suffered
four chipped teeth and needed surgery to repair his nose. Apparently the boss
was planning to fire the man.
*At a McDonald’s restaurant in the Baltimore, Maryland area two young girls
recently beat and kicked another young girl so brutally that she started
having seizures. The following video is very graphic and has some very strong
language….
[WARNING:
GRAPHIC VIOLENCE!]
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ec0_1303444048&jwp_version=4
*Recently, one gold thief was so desperate to get into a jewelry store
that he rammed his truck backwards through a wall of the store at very high
speed. The thief got away with a bunch of gold and jewelry and the owner is
scared to death that he is going to come back and do it again.
*In the following video from a Denny’s restaurant, young women are
actually throwing plates and furniture at each other….
*In Brooklyn, New York a security camera recently captured chilling footage of a cold-blooded execution right in the middle
of the street. One resident has named that particular street
"body-a-week avenue".
*In Atlanta, two dozen teens violently assaulted two Delta flight attendants on a
train recently for no apparent reason. The following is how a local Atlanta newspaper described the
attacks….
Their "Clockwork Orange" style blitz was over soon after it
began. The teens boarded the train, headed to Hartsfield-Jackson International
Airport, at the Garnett station a little after midnight seemingly intent on
instilling fear. They succeeded.
“There was blood everywhere, people were hollering and
screaming,” a witness told Channel 2 Action News. “We
were intimidated. People were terrified. People were trying to run. But there
was nowhere to run.”
Sadly, there are hundreds more examples like these. THERE ARE SO MANY
RESTAURANT BRAWL VIDEOS UP ON YOUTUBE THAT IT WOULD TAKE AN ENTIRE WEEKEND TO
WATCH THEM ALL.
You don’t think America has changed?
What does it say about America when the murder rate in Flint,
Michigan is worse than the murder rate in Baghdad?
There are some areas of the country where people simply do not go out
of their homes at night.
We refused to discipline our young people and demand the best out of them so
now we are reaping a bitter harvest.
According to one recent report, approximately half of all the
people that live in the city of Detroit are illiterate.
Can you imagine that?
Half of the people that live in a major American city can’t even
read?
Can that possibly be true?
What does that say about the way that we are educating our children?
Sadly, due to harsh economic conditions up in Detroit, about half of the
schools in the city are being closed down for good.
That certainly isn’t going to make anything better.
But this is where we are at as a nation.
We borrowed and borrowed and borrowed and we never thought that we were going
to pay the price.
Now the "credit card bills" are coming due, and state and local
governments from coast to coast are completely broke.
There are signs of economic decline all over the United
States. More than 33 percent of our men do not have a job. Over 44 million of
our fellow citizens are on food stamps. OUR COUNTRY IS
LITERALLY FALLING APART.
…
Welcome
to the Recovery
New York Times give us THIS Op-Ed piece by Timothy F. Geithner.
Op-Ed Contributor
Welcome
to the Recovery
By TIMOTHY F. GEITHNER
Published: August 2, 2010
… a review of recent data on the American economy shows that WE ARE ON A
PATH BACK TO GROWTH.
…
While the economy has a long way to go before reaching its full potential, last week’s data on economic growth show that large parts of the private
sector continue to strengthen. Business investment
and consumption — the two keys to private demand — are getting
stronger, better than last year and better than last quarter. Uncertainty is
still inhibiting investment, but business capital spending
increased at a solid annual rate of about 17 percent.
…
The
economic rescue package that President Obama put in place was essential to
turning the economy around. The combined effect
of government actions taken over the past two years — the stimulus
package, the stress tests and recapitalization of the banks, the
restructuring of the American car industry and the many steps taken by the
Federal Reserve — were extremely effective in
stopping the freefall and restarting the economy.
… we are in a much stronger
position to face them today than when President Obama took office. By taking aggressive
action to fix the financial system, reduce growth in health care costs and
improve education, we have put the American economy on a firmer
foundation for future growth.
…
We suffered a terrible blow, but WE ARE COMING BACK.
Timothy F. Geithner is the secretary of the Treasury. [Isn’t he
doing a wonderful job? (heavy sarcasm)]
My
reaction: Anyone who believes Geithner has a serious mental disorder. America
isn’t recovering. America is becoming a third world country.
Eric de Carbonnel
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