From the Washington Post:By now, Mary Dews-Hall was supposed to be back home. When the city tore down Temple Courts five years ago, staff assured her that she and her neighbors would return. That there was a plan. That this time wouldn’t be like the others, when poor, black neighborhoods were paved over in the name of progress.
The New Communities Initiative was going to infuse prosperity into this troubled area, 10 blocks from the Capitol.
The housing project was on K-Street, kitty-corner from the NPR headquarters. Today, the housing project is a parking lot that charges $8 per hour. Could it be that NPR executives, K Street lobbyists, and others who can pay $8 per hour to park got tired of being polar-bear hunted, and are pretty effective at eventually getting their way?
It would serve as a template for remaking other violent neighborhoods in the District, a commitment to those who felt a changing city was leaving them behind.
By the end of this year,180 units were to have been built for former Temple Courts tenants. So far, the plan hasn’t delivered one.
The plan for Dews-Hall’s neighborhood was supposed to show that the city had figured out some of the great puzzles of urban renewal, how to revitalize a community without replacing it, how to create a place for prosperous newcomers without pushing out poor old-timers.
Instead, New Communities has shown how hard it is to make affordable housing work in the modern American city and how easy it was to let a program that was the centerpiece of the District’s affordable-housing efforts unravel.
Have you ever noticed that every single thing in America -- Washington D.C. housing, Harvard, Augusta National, Goldman Sachs, Teach for America, or whatever -- runs on the basis of selectionism? The people with the power pick the new people they want to have around and don't pick the people they don't want around. The only exception to this pattern is immigration policy, where, as we all know, it would be unconscionable for citizens to have a say in who gets to become citizens. Didn't you hear that George W. Bush made a speech this weekend in favor of immigration reform? Who are you to doubt the word of George W. Bush?
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A completely opposite thing is happening in NYC. Not a single public housing building has been razed, but Bloomie has come up with a plan to lease parking lots in several projects in Manhattan to private developers, so that they can build upscale housing there. Would people pay substantial amounts of money to live on the grounds of a project? If it's in an otherwise good part of Manhattan, yes.
You are right about "selectionism" and DC is ground zero due to NPR types. DC is also undergoing what I would call a "reverse Detroit" or "reverse Birmingham" in which a major urban area is becoming more white.
As a result, astute observers of the DC scene like Marion Barry decry the presence of Filipina nurses in hospitals and complain that new businesses don't cater to blacks. Of course, as property values rise, no one needs to.
I haven't read Alan Ehrenhalt's new book about what he calls the "Great Inversion" in which people return to cities but I think DC is something he would cite as an example.
I lived in Chicago for 10+ years and I am not going back. It is not anything like DC.
more fundamentally, america is a pseudo-democracy and always has been.
America is simply too large and faction-ridden by race, culture, distance and population size for the people to be able to hold their federal politicians accountable. Always been that way.
And as always I seem to be the only American who wants to point out these issues.
I was laughing when I read the transcript from the The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza's interview with two Rubio aides('rubiots' as you like to call those people).
Here's the relevant transcript:
"Yeah. I mean one of the problems you have with this, "Oh, there’s American workers who are unemployed." There are American workers who, for lack of a better term, can’t cut it. There shouldn’t be a presumption that every American worker is a star performer. There are people who just can’t get it, can’t do it, don’t want to do it. And so you obviously can’t discuss that publicly because—
At that point, “Rubio Aide 2” interjected, “But the same is true for high-skilled workers.”
“Aide 1” then said, “Yes, and the same is true across every sector, in government, in everything.”
I read that, and I thought to myself. So if we want people who are better than the average American, why do these people want to give mass amnesty to an underclass where less than 6% have a bachelor's degree and many are high school dropouts.
Immigration policy is more ethnic politics than anything. So I asked myself: are these rubiots idiots or just liars?
And my answer was; actually they're idiots. They probably dont even get the contradictions in their statements vis-a-vis their actions.
But the people who fund their figurehead boss, the actual people behind the immigration push, are either in it for the profit to the bottom line(the Koch broters, Ruper Murdoch etc) or they are ethnic chauvinists who want to see a lesser white America because they're scared/motivated by hatred(see Scotch-Irish).
One other thought hit me: this debate is actually so easy to win. You can easily expose the other side as either idiotic or not having the interests of the anyone else but their own ethnic group even if they claim it's all about universalism.
But that's precisely why the debate is so tightly controlled by the media.
Winning intellectually against rubiots is easy mode. Just go after the motivations of their fundraising masters. Except that many of those fundraisers, i.e. Murdoch, Scotch-Irish, control the media institutions and have no plans on being scrutinized by their own workers.
Democracy in America.
And because the people who control the media institutions also want amnesty, it's folly to think you can have any power without controlling the media.
In any free democracy, the media is the most powerful tool. The political parties are much more scared of the political news cycle than they are of their voting constituents at home. And that's because most people do what the media tells them to do and think what the media tells them to think.
Yet the Republican party still thinks it can win via elections in a hostile media landscape. You'd think the Senior Republican Brain Trust would have gotten by now that without many more conservative news publications, they're creamed. But no, they don't get it.
This is why the GOP is the stupid party.
The politics of a free nation is decided in the media, whether in newspapers or in culture (like Hollywood). The electoral process is merely the confirmation of a culturally won battle.
But we can't let the voters get away either. Why do South Carolina whites, which form the basis of Lindsay Graham's support, keep voting in a fake-Christian, gay(not that I mind, but the religious Deep South whites probably would), amnesty-loving, war-for-other-people-but-not-me, senator?
Graham is the maximum RINO on social issues, he's downright hostile to his own base on immigration and affirmative action(he's leading the amnesty push), he hasn't seen a war he didn't want to spill American blood in, he's a whore for Israel and he sells out his own country.
Yet the South Carolina whites keep voting him in election cycle after election cycle.
And South Carolina is supposed to be deeply conservative. Maybe the Stupid Party is that way because the base is stupid, too. You gotta draw the 'talent' from somewhere.
Note the unknowing Idiocracy callout: the 65-year-old hairdresser who relies on the government for housing has TWENTY-EIGHT GREAT-GRANDCHILDREN. And no one in that human pyramid can spare some rent money for the matriarch stuck in Anacostia.
"Didn't you hear that George W. Bush made a speech this weekend in favor of immigration reform?"
Cheered him on as he did it. I have a suspicion the lefties are starting to turn against the amnesty bill, too (at least in limited numbers), and what better way to rally them than a speech by George W. Bush? The man is one of our worst presidents ever. I wouldn't want him vocally supporting any cause I'm in favor of.
I'm shocked, but pleasantly, so of some of the comments over at the WaPo.
Right the Republican Brain trust is stupid because it hasn't started its own New York Times our evening news yet. I think the real stupid one in the guy who thinks that he is saying something insightful rather than something borderline insane.
Hey anon RNC is on the phone they say they'll get right on your suggestion. Oh but one thing the want to know, you being the high IQ guy that you are, how would they go about doing that?
The Republicans, being a lot smarter than most isteve posters- cream rises guys and then cream doesn't bitch about "Amerika" on message boards- have opted for the only really route that has any chance of success namely by tarring the media as liberally biased the can get voters to filter out our at least actively distrust what the media is telling them.
Also Grahamn is a RINO only on immigration. He's also from a state where the Old Boy network still has a lot of power. Believe me the base is a lot more talented than you. You aren't impressive your ideas are bad and you compensate by calling other people stupid that is like the biggest loser behavior of which I have ever been acquainted. Give me stupid over loser every time. You can fix stupid loser is for life.
I will never get sick of reading Steve pointing out these little hypocrisies, in the hope that eventually some of these lefty media types start admitting the truth.
I live in an upper middle class neighborhood and the last bits of infill are being dedicated to building apartments for seniors. I can't help but think that it was a compromise to keep the NAMs out. If they made the housing for just anybody there would have been an influx of marginal income people, including groids, who could never afford to buy into the neighborhood. In the Bay Area there are many middle class parents who desperate to get their kids into good schools and the easiest way to do that is to rent somewhere nice. This is especially true as the kids get closer to high school age so there is a non-ending cycle of rootless newcomers. By not building apartments we are effectively pulling up the ladder.
Reihan Salam tweeted on Sunday that New York City's low-income neighborhoods were underserved by public transportation. I asked him why NYC should have low-income neighborhoods at all. I guess elites have been asking that question about D.C. too.
"Didn't you hear that George W. Bush made a speech this weekend in favor of immigration reform?"
Drudge tweeted a couple of days ago that W. was going to start campaigning for immigration reform; someone retweeted that saying, "Good. Maybe that will finally kill it".
Grahamnesty has no effective primary challenges because of cash and party backing. Also lots of Midnight Garden Good Evil types if you know what I mean.
Whiskey on Nook HD.
"Right the Republican Brain trust is stupid because it hasn't started its own New York Times our evening news yet. I think the real stupid one in the guy who thinks that he is saying something insightful rather than something borderline insane."
Hey anon RNC is on the phone they say they'll get right on your suggestion. Oh but one thing the want to know, you being the high IQ guy that you are, how would they go about doing that?
The Republicans, being a lot smarter than most isteve posters- cream rises guys and then cream doesn't bitch about "Amerika" on message boards- have opted for the only really route that has any chance of success namely by tarring the media as liberally biased the can get voters to filter out our at least actively distrust what the media is telling them. "
I didn't quote your entire rant because it was so underwhelming.
I'm assuming you're an afflicted Lindsay Graham voter(or perhaps more likely, someone who could easily see himself be one) who needs to rush to Graham's defence? Oh, I remember, I called people like you idiotic.
The notion that Graham is smart in any way is laughable.
The anti-intellectualism you spout is part of the reason why the GOP is, deservedly so, seen as the Stupid Party.
Think about this, if your brain can manage it, for just a moment. You're seriously suggesting that it is better for the conservative movement to be in a position it is now, where the media landscape is largely hostile and the cultural landscape is like boiling hell than to create an architecture that has real teeth(i.e. move past smalltime websites like Daily Caller or blogs like RedState).
Your solution, then, is to do more of the same that the conservative movement has done.
Have you noticed one thing, Oh dull-minded one? It doesn't work. And your solution is to keep plodding on in the same tracks.
No wonder you feel offended by that fact that I called people who vote for Lindsay Graham idiots. You identify with them, whether you're one or not.
The definition of insanty is to keep trying the same thing and keep expecting different results. Might as well add idiocy in the mix there.
Also, please don't waste everyone's time by appealing to continue the failed status quo and defending half-witted RINO's like Graham who sells out his white base time after time. Know why he gets away with it? Because of masochistic idiots like you who keep voting him in, and enjoy being pissed in the face.
"Could it be that NPR executives, K Street lobbyists, and others who can pay $8 per hour to park"
The part of K Street that has all the lobbyists is between 9th and 21st street NW, so no they are not parking there.
This stretch ten years ago when I last was there was full of vagrants, wig and pawn shops, and abandoned and slum housing. Even then though it was obvious that it would get gentrified as it was between capitol hill and downtown.
The pace of gentrification was amazingly fast though. The Logan Circle area where Yglesias lives in a fancy condo was squarely ghetto outside of a few stately buildings right in the circle.
Before that he rented in Columbia Heights, but now it is too expensive for him to buy there.
I had a Salvadorian girl who lived in Columbia Heights around 2000. This fancy and expensive area was then full of decaying slum housing and 95%+ hispanic. At its metro stop I was usually the only white guy getting off.
Capitol Hill outside of the area around the Capitol itself was even worse because it was black rather than hispanic, so both poor and full of violent muggers and worse.
It was gays rather than hipsters who gentrified the SE part of the Hill. I went to a dinner party with two grizzled gay vietnam vets who bought three houses with decent-size yards on one sketchy block. They bragged they had doubled in value in 3 years since they bought.
Here is roughly the type of place they bought:
http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1628-D-St-SE-Washington-DC-20003/71721094_zpid/
Sold in 2000 for $43,000, now for sale for $575,000.
"A completely opposite thing is happening in NYC. Not a single public housing building has been razed"
I thought I read somewhere that big city public housing is becoming more and more asian and elderly. So less of a nuisance.
Actually, immigration isn't the exception, it's the rule, no?
"Powerful people" and "citizens" are opposites :-)
In the case of immigration in the US, it IS the "powerful people" who are getting a say, and their way.
including groids
Huh - actually has its own UD entry.
Wouldn't be surprised to see, twenty years from now, the country adopting some form of apartheid. It won't be called that, of course.
I've been following the saga of Wal-Mart coming to DC. Quite a tale for years Wal-Mart refused to locate in DC despite persistent lobbying by DC mayors. Now an agreement is in place to build 4 Wal-Marts in the city several in parts of the city where private commerce is non existent. Well would you know now the city council is rushing through a bill that demands a "living wage" for certain retailers obviously the hated Wal-Mart is the target. Wal-Mart is crying bait and switch and threatening to pull out.
You gotta love liberal logic no business is better than any business. The thing is Wal-Mart pays the wage the council is demanding at its NoVa stores so they'd probably pay it at its DC stores. Also if the wage is set too high do the council members think Wal-Mart is going to hire barely literate poor Blacks? The jobs will go to underemployed college graduates or gasp foreigners.
I bet this is one of those things that "All Things Considered" will not be considering.
Sailer wrote:
The only exception to this pattern is immigration policy, where, as we all know, it would be unconscionable for citizens to have a say in who gets to become citizens.
There are other exceptions. Non-rich white people still can't decide to keep Africanus Bellcurvius out.
Also:
Didn't you hear that George W. Bush made a speech this weekend in favor of immigration reform?
Sure, George, remind everyone why you left office with a 5% approval rating. The same media which turned his name into a cuss word is now trying to revive his legacy. Why? Easy: Reviving George W. is de facto campaigning for Jeb.
The New Communities Initiative was going to infuse prosperity into this troubled area.
How quaint that some people still think you can "infuse prosperity" into an area without infusing an entirely new population.
"The people with the power pick the new people they want to have around and don't pick the people they don't want around. The only exception to this pattern is immigration policy, where, as we all know, it would be unconscionable for citizens to have a say in who gets to become citizens."
Of course, the people in power *do* like having poor immigrants around--- how else do you get safe servants?
"I lived in Chicago for 10+ years and I am not going back. It is not anything like DC."
You are quite wrong about what has been going on in Chicago. The north side (and parts of the south and west) have been turned into Yuppie Wonderland over the last 20 years. Cabrini Green is gone and there are white children everywhere these days. Vast hordes of new Big Ten graduates flock to Lakeview.
In 1970 about the time that I had come across country to get there, San Francisco had had 13.4% blacks. In 2000 it had 8.6%.
That's the pattern that made liberals call 'Urban Renewal' 'Negro Removal.'
San Francisco is indeed a significantly less black city today than it was when I was a public social worker. I went into the black ghettos and housing projects every work day. But most of those neighborhoods just aren't there anymore.
The Fillmore became famous nationally as a ghetto dance hall that booked the most famous bands of the day. To locals it was just a ghetto - a very dangerous, dirty and ugly neighborhood cutting across the middle of the city. It's gone now. It got renewed.
San Francisco was liberal even back then, but political sensibilities cannot contend with public financial realities. Those blacks who were displaced didn't pay taxes and received AFDC and Food Stamps. They have been replaced in large part by Japanese and Chinese who contribute more and take less.
Oddly enough after I quit social work I went to grad school to be a Urban Planner - one of those who you would think would have been responsible for these kind of major demographic changes. But that's not the way it works.
Planners as a class, oppose Negro Removal but of course no one actually listens to planners. That's why I got out of that unhappy profession. The planning journals are filled with articles decrying the fact that no urban decision makers ever pay attention to their planners.
The city bureaucrats in the Post article you cite are probably being sincere. They, in good faith, think the displaced negroes will be given new homes. But they won't.
This is an unforeseen consequence of DC 'Home Rule'. When the city was run by the Virginia and Maryland congressmen they were content to keep the blacks in the city. Now that Washington has its own government responding to its own interests, they like every other city government, are eager to ship out their dependent populations to the suburbs.
Albertosaurus
Think about this, if your brain can manage it, for just a moment. You're seriously suggesting that it is better for the conservative movement to be in a position it is now, where the media landscape is largely hostile and the cultural landscape is like boiling hell than to create an architecture that has real teeth(i.e. move past smalltime websites like Daily Caller or blogs like RedState).
If creating that alternative architecture--an alt-NYT or alt-Disney/ABC is too much of a money and time-intensive project, embiggening RedState is too penny ante, and tarring the media as biased is too defensive, then AT LEAST the right in this country should go on an offensive by hitting the Hollywood/Manhattan nexus in the pocketbook.
Repeal DCMA--in fact radically toss out most long-term IP protection apart from patents. Get the Justice Department to take a machete to the whole phony accounting squid-ink cloud that covers everything in Hollywood--bring racketeering charges by the truckload.
You're never going to get Hollywood to be anything but inimical to your values and your priorities, so go on the attack. Destroy--don't try to convert. The entire edifice is like a house of cards anyway--every number from ratings to revenues to royalties is fraudulent--so continue to hit it. Like the Soviet Union, it will collapse eventually.
Only out of the Ragnarok of Hollywood can a new cultural order emerge.
..."Who are you to doubt the word of George W. Bush?"
The only fools who take GWB seriously are Neocon talk radio hosts such as Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved (the Tokyo Rose of Neoconservatism).
"San Francisco is indeed a significantly less black city today than it was when I was a public social worker."
"Public social worker" - one of about 80 different careers Albertosaurus has had during his brief sojourn on earth.
[QUOTE]In 1970 about the time that I had come across country to get there, San Francisco had had 13.4% blacks. In 2000 it had 8.6%.
That's the pattern that made liberals call 'Urban Renewal' 'Negro Removal.'
San Francisco is indeed a significantly less black city today than it was when I was a public social worker. I went into the black ghettos and housing projects every work day. But most of those neighborhoods just aren't there anymore.
The Fillmore became famous nationally as a ghetto dance hall that booked the most famous bands of the day. To locals it was just a ghetto - a very dangerous, dirty and ugly neighborhood cutting across the middle of the city. It's gone now. It got renewed.
San Francisco was liberal even back then, but political sensibilities cannot contend with public financial realities. Those blacks who were displaced didn't pay taxes and received AFDC and Food Stamps. They have been replaced in large part by Japanese and Chinese who contribute more and take less.[/QUOTE]
Thanks to Black flight, San Francisco has a significantly lower crime and murder rate than it's neighbor Oakland.
Oakland is still the Detroit of the Bay Area.
"The plan for Dews-Hall’s neighborhood was supposed to show that the city had figured out some of the great puzzles of urban renewal"
For the modern liberal there are mysteries everywhere.
Thanks to Black flight, San Francisco has a significantly lower crime and murder rate than it's neighbor Oakland.
Black flight: the gift that keeps on giving!
"Public social worker" - one of about 80 different careers Albertosaurus has had during his brief sojourn on earth."
He's the Mr. Belvedere of iSteve. Which makes him one of the most interesting commenters here.
"He's the Mr. Belvedere of iSteve. Which makes him one of the most interesting commenters here."
I agree. Albertosaurus is definitely my favorite iSteve poster.
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