Sour and Petulant Romney Decries Liberals

For those who know Detroit, the house is between 8 and 7 Mile Roads with Livernois on the West and Woodward Avenue to the East.

There wasn't enought interest to "save" Madonna's childhood home either.
And that was in Rochester, MI.
Michigan residents are trying to save their own homes, much less some politician's!

Too bad we can only get rid of the home he grew up in and not the actual douche bag who grew up there.

I don't despise Romney, though we differ greatly. I feel for Detroit, which I've only read about in a few in depth type articles. I've opinions on mass sweeping away re urban renewal, having watched it as I grew up in Los Angeles. I think Romney should buy the house and fix it f.ing up.

Liberal hate speak at its best... please continue.

Willard Romney and I are the same age. In fact, his father spoke at my HS graduation because he was a close personal friend of the Monsignor who was pastor of the parish.

In no way can I identify with him.

As kids, we lived on opposite sides of the city of Detroit: he in the northern suburbs in Oakland County and I in blue collar Dearborn. I went to college in Detroit, within walking distance of his family's former home. We ended up living close to each other as adults.

That does not mean that we are in any way similar.

His gubernatorial campaign featured two ads that were widely criticized. One was known as the "prom king" ad, it featured Romney talking about how he took his future wife to his prom. He made fun of the car he drove, an American Motors product. His father had been president of that company which made his ridicule sound like he was attacking his own father.

The other ad told how while he was a freshman in college in California, he took a job as a night watchman so that he could fly home every weekend to be with that same girlfriend. All that is okay but what Willard seemed to find amusing was that neither set of parents knew about the ruse. Really? His parents never called once on a Saturday night and her parents never wondered where their 15 y/o daughter was? What sort of candidate for public office brags about lying to his parents when he was 18?

Really?
You look much older.

Being a proud rich conservative, I wonder why he expects the city to save his boyhood home. I don't see why he can't buy it and restore it if he feels it should be saved. Maybe he realizes it has no value and it would only be throwing money down a hole if he were to try to save it. But damn that liberal government that forced homeowners to not take care of their property.

Your inference, that Romney wants the city to restore or try to save the home that his parents sold 57 years ago, is entirely based on your own fantasy. The only news report was that it was among a very large number of abandoned homes that the city (Detroit) plans to seize (presumably for property tax default) and take down for public safety.

He doesn't. Being sad that something has happened isn't the same as asking for a government handout to stop it. Indeed, Romney is quick to minimize the impact on himself to score a point against Detroit politics. You may disagree with the point---but that, too, doesn't amount to him expecting the city to save his boyhood home.

The home and whole neighborhoods could disappear from metropolitan Detroit in the planned shrink job.

The situation with Detroit saddens me. Detroit tried, both from the grassroots up and from the top down, to improve itself. My father, who only went to school through the 8th grade, always said that Detroit and Michigan would pay a price for supporting a one industry economy and for not giving the consumer what the consumer wanted.

It proved to be so hard to not make Detroit into a world class city, no matter how much people wanted it to be.

I really should not type when I am tired . . . meant to say something along the lines of how hard it was to make Detroit into the world class city it had the potential to be.

What the hell is "sour and petulant" about this statement ? Are you suggesting that Detroit has not been affected by "fleeing jobs" ? Do you believe the governments of Detroit for the past 40 years have been even competent and honest?

The fact is that Detroit hasn't been able to compete economically for a very long time. Compared to other cities its (former) size the population is relatively uneducated, (in part a result of the prosperity available to union laborers during the industrial boom times). The high crime rates and punative tax policies of the city effectively drove businesses to other areas.

I grew up on Boston Blvd, not too far from Palmer Woods and attended the University of Detroit High School on Seven Mile Road. The city was visibly dying then and we were glad to leave.

Willard is never anything but sour and petulant . . . even when he smiles. The man is a misanthrope.

As a matter of fact, there was the very competent leadership of Dennis Archer, who was a two-term mayor of the city. Unfortunately, he was not popular with supporters of the former mayor Coleman Young. Young was the product of Detroit's own kingmaker.

As my father -- who is in his late 80s and who had to leave school in the 8th grade in order to support his mother, who was divorced and suffering from the early stages of a multiple sclerosis -- always said the problem with Detroit and with Michigan is that they are one industry economies.

See, you were glad to leave . . . another nail in the coffin of the right wing brag that American conservatives have, at the core of their philosophy, personal responsibility. After graduating from Marygrove College (where I witnessed the neighborhood change from the center of the Irish Catholic political power to Greek and Jewish to Black within four short years), I went to graduate school at WSU for one year, before switching to the night program for my master's degree in English. During that time, I was a welfare case worker in Detroit, then an English and American history teacher in Center Line. When I realized that staying in one room all day was inappropriate for my 24 year old self, I became a journalist. I lived and worked in Detroit, just one of many young professionals, both white and black, who were dedicated to making the city better.

Like most righties, you are a hypocrite.

I've never been to detroit, probable never will but still I'm thinking detroit could be another Phoenix rising from the ashes, raze abandoned buildings/homes, develop community gardens, re-create neighborhoods. establish communities, small businesses such as bakeries, butcher shops, cafe's. May doctors open store-front clinics, plumbers and electricians open one man shops next door to auto-mechanics; etc. re-invent america. saloons with workman's lunches and public transportation.

A remarkably compact collection of factual misstatements and unfounded accusations. I'm persuaded that you do know the meaning of misanthope, but not that you are aware of your own apparent tendencies in this direction.

Detroit and southern Michigan were once the center of the pharmaceutical, automobile, tool & dye industries in the country as well as important centers of steel and glass manufacture. It was also a part of what was once called the "corn belt" a strip of very fertile land that stretched across Ohio, Michigan Indiana and Illinois. Hardly a one industry town as you say. It was instead brought down by a near simultaneous combination of economic and social factors; ranging from the exaustion of metal ore deposits in upper Michigan, to the complacency and excesses of the auto industry and the UAW, the development of efficient agriculture in less fertile but more temperate climactic areas, relatively low levels of university education among its residents, social tensions among and surrounding the large black and Appalachian populations that migrated there en masse during WWII, and corrupt, inept government that continued with very few exceptions for the past 50 years.

In facr many elements of Detroit still live and prosper. They have simply moved west and southwest to Ann Arbor and vicinity to escape the social and political contagion of a corrupt and failing city.

Why did you leave Detroit? How did you uniquely escape hypocrisy in doing so?

Public transportation was the big bugaboo in Detroit. There were countless studies on the matter. I remember once my mother talked back to the radio along the lines of enough studies, do something!

Also, your suggestion here is a liberal's suggestion: small businesses developed by entrepreneurs.

My son just had an idea for a gym in this area . . . which has yoga studios and chiropractors but no gyms.

I did not leave out of hypocrisy but I refuse to deal with your rudeness . . . and your talking down to me . . . and you misanthropy.