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Time blogger
Hey, How They See Us -- please link to my blog posts if you want to give the whole picture. Or at least contact me if you want a full comment. Not nice to put out a statement in a vacuum.
Ford is winning
My tax dollars have already gone to bail out GM, GMAC, Chrysler several times over. Turn off the faucet from US Treasury.
mercantilist
The positive about Ford they recognized the problem much earlier and got a start on fixing it. To think of all of the Ford mistakes tied to globalism. Land Rover, Volvo, and Jaguar are among the prominent mistakes. If Ford had spent their money of Ford, Mercury and Lincoln they might have avoided the edge. Ford continues to stick it to American workers by producing the Fusion (and related products) and the new Fiesta in Mexico. And of course, Ford employs hoards of foreign workers in it's U.S. staffs. So before you buy a Ford make sure it is not a disguised import.
mercantilist
Ford seems to have had better decisions than Chrysler of G.M. - not a big accomplishment. Some of the Ford success is at the expense of American workers Fusion and the new Fiesta are among the products built in Mexico. It is too bad that Ford did not offer more employment to the UAW in exchange for concessions. The Ford family's way of doing business recently included a rapid move move from Pontiac after briefly talking about Silver Dome concessions. The speed of their response in that case suggests that the move was already well planned. Will Ford take cash from the Mexican government and again stick it to American workers and taxpayers.
Ford's #'s are bologna
The movement that Ford is seeing is completely a Government bubble paid for by your tax dollars a.k.a Cash4Clunkers.
When we're pushing more vehicles into a market already saturated with used and repossessed cars (see www.repofinder.com) it does nothing but decimate car values, and further the problem.
How the world sees detroit
Good article, in case you didn't read it:
http://www.tnr.com/blog/the-avenue/%E2%80%98culture-eats-strategy-breakfast%E2%80%99-detroit%E2%80%99s-bi-polar-thinking-auto-recovery#
The comments are actually better than the article, talking about the overall lack of education and skills among a populace that was told over and over down through the years that all they needed was a high school diploma.
What I think it may mean is Detroit has a lot further to fall. They have to admit there's a problem and they don't yet seem to be willing to do that.
Granholm
"The Journal notes that Granholm is trying to break his pledge not to raise taxes."
'break HIS pledge'
I knew it, I knew it
Lots of Shortsightedness About Detroit Going on
Your comments were very uplifting! There is always bad that is mixed with the good, but when you hear so much negativity, it is hard to get to the good things. Thank you for taking the time to write positive things about Detroit.
Wow that is so very 15 years ago
When you have a police force as unwilling to do anything as you do in Detroit (and much of the US), neighborhood watches do a lot better. Yet Detroit hasn't had devil's night fires for about 15 years.
Lots of Shortsightedness About Detroit Going on
It seems there is a lot of short sightedness going on regarding Detroit these days. However, Detroit is not unique. I've been all over the United States from New York, Chicago to LA and even lived in Honolulu and I haven't seen a single city that didn't have run down slums. The entire south shore of Oahu is built up - 45 miles of solid city. The area between the once beautiful Pearl Harbor and Honolulu is all light industrial slums and military waste. It seems that is America. Instead of repairing and renovating the wealth of what we have we tend to discard it and continue sprawling until we start wondering why our economy goes bad when the gas prices get so high.
Now Detroit unlike most cities in the US is a frontier. It is not overrun, locked down and over controlled by the wealthy and corporations. Friends tell me that their cities are like the Matrix, where everything is owned by a few rich who will only give up what they have for huge prices, and everyone is controlled and corraled like zombies. Detroit on the other hand is FREE.
Just like in the past Detroit is RIPE for entrepreneurs. Detroit is not a result of the dozens and dozens of car companies that started here. The car companies were a result of the free market mindset of Detroit. It used to be the entrepreneurial capital of America. There is so much INEXPENSIVE land and property here. That do it yourself spirit is alive and well. I doubt there are many places left in the US where people even change their own oil in their cars. I have done it since I was a teen and get a kick out of cleaning old things, built-to-last things up and selling them online. The American spirit is to build, invent and do ANYTHING. Detroit is the embodiment of that. They are the pioneers of that. For example, even today they call New Jersey the garden city, yet there are more urban gardens in Detroit. What is that about? What's more urban farming operations are beginning to pop up around Detroit. I've heard about it happening in California and elsewhere but it is also happening here too.
The global home of electronic music there is also a huge culture in Detroit. One that harks back to the Beat Generation that started here. A culture that loves art, (including crazy contemporary art) music, food and the cozyness of the Victorian mansions that dot the city in some of the neighborhoods. That means there are the health foodies like those that love organic and local foods. I mean there is such a vast array of ethnic foods the quality of which can be compared to London. (sorry but I think some of the Indian Restaurants in Detroit are better than the ones in London.) I've never been anywhere with so much selection of health food stores running from the neighborhood run Food Coop and Nutrifoods all the way up to the big ones like Whole Foods and Trader Joes dotting the suburbs. Eastern Market is booming these days and even had some filmmakers from LA observing the atmosphere the last time I went. My goodness did I even get to the History of the place? There's a cemetary in Detroit that a river still runs through. It is the site of where the British were actually defeated, stopped cold, by Chief Pontiac and his warriors. We hear about Custer all the time but if other tribes and the French had actually listened to Pontiac the British wouldn't have been able to take over like they did.
Detroit is still alive. There is also the health care industry which includes wholistic healing is strong in Detroit.
Sure some of the residents are obstructionists much like the complainers that shortsightedly think Detroit is "wishfully thinking". They are only looking at the surface. These aren't the people that make history. That should give you something to think about.
Daily Beast: Detroit is America's 40th smartest city
All of the ratings are for metro areas, so even inclusion of the richer and better-educated suburbs wasn't enough to get better than the poor, 40th place showing. Were the rankings limited to the Detroit city limits, the results would have been much, much worse. Sad.
How the world sees detroit
Living down here in Georgia I hear alot of people make fun of Detroit. And with the lastest mess at Cobo a while back it just intensifies it. I used to live north of Detroit and I get a little mad at how far down the tubes Detroit has gone thanks to all the bad press it has been getting:Kwayme,Cobo,Government Motors,etc. Whatever happened to the once shining city that Detroit was?
Detroit a dead city
What can I say about Detroit. With there high taxes and crime rate. You show me any town, city, state, country that is ran by a black man or woman and I will show you a place that is unsafe and failing. You can't show me one of these places that is a nice place to raise a family. To bad America has decided to go down this path. WAKE UP WHITE PEOPLE.
Daily Beast: Detroit is America's 40th smartest city
Detroit is definately getting what it deserves...all the dumping and bad press of late. I guess you could say the last generation didn't see the train wreck coming our way today.... We're the dumbest, the fattest, corrupt, poor, the most vacant lots in a U.S. metro area, our city has the highest unemployment rate, Motown moved, the Big 3's cars don't sell, and the Lions...uggh!!!...need I say more. Geez! You'd think someone cursed the whole town. And now whose left here is trying to pick up the pieces. What goes around comes around. God Bless you, Detroiter's.
Detroit or Detroit Metropolitan Area
Even when the whole Detroit "Metropolitan Area" of 4,250,000 is taken into account, we're only 40th. Geeez.
I find it interesting that the suburbs are either left out or included in whenever it best suits the purpose of some statistic or viewpoint.
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