Den of the Cyphered Wolf

Tuesday, July 26, 2016

Meaningless Lines on A Map




Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson's stance on mass transit is bugging the hell out of me.

This has been a weird political season and I've had to look at a bunch of guys coming out of the woodwork with weird conspiracy theories that make no sense and force me to glower.

And with L. Brooks Patterson I've come up with my own and I don't want to be that guy. Maybe he believes everything he's saying but that's not what my gut is telling me.

So indulge me.

L. Brooks Patterson does not like Detroit. Based on what he's said and done in the past I believe that he views part of his job as insulating the suburbs from Detroit. 

My view, on the other hand, is that to outsiders Metro Detroit is Detroit. That the fates of everybody hinge on the state of the city.  And furthermore, on an individual level nobody in this part of the state stays in one city to do their daily business. People in the suburbs work, study, shop and play in Detroit and vice versa.

My experience has been that all of that stuff ain't but meaningless lines on a map.

So resistance to stuff that could benefit the burbs because it might also benefit the city makes me a special sort of pissed off.

Especially considering how segregated region is and it's racial history. All of this talk about not diverting resources from the suburbs to serve the core plays a lot like, "Hey we don't our tax money going to stuff that makes the lives of poor black people better."

After the shenanigans with DPS that sticks in my craw somethin' fierce. (I will NEVER forgive Kevin Cotter. )

I don't want to admit it. It pisses me off but I could kind of see a point there.

(After some thought no I don't. Education isn't just for the people in school. We all benefit from having an educated populus, especially in a democracy where everybody gets a say within the political system. And an economy woefully short of people with the technical skills to fill the jobs we have.)

But here, dear lord, mass transit is for everybody and the way we do it now is stupid.

I'm sorry if you work SMART or DDOT. It's not your fault. It's stupid because laws, not organizational policies. But actual laws on the books that were written in a time and place were keeping the darkies out of the neighborhood was a priority.

Why the hell can't SMART pick up in the city? Why are communities allowed to leave gigantic holes in the system that require workarounds?

And it stayed that way because an easy way to gain political points was to appeal I don't even know if I can call it xenophobic when we're talking groups of people living in the same state, but yeah latent xenophobic tendencies of constituencies.

________good ... Detroit Bad 

Look I'm not going to pretend like Detroit is the greatest place on earth. It's not. But let's get real we are long past the days where that bullshit was cool.

Both because of racism and more practical stuff.

Where do people come in if they are flying here from out of town? Oh, we're just going to give you a loan/grant, or open up that new franchise after spending 45 minutes traveling through a desolate hellscape created by ghettoization policy and a lack of public investment in social institutions.

KEVIN COTTER REALLY CAN KISS MY BLACK ASS!




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