Sunday, December 29, 2013

actual: cutting edge police technology in post-collapse camden...,


rollingstone | Camden is just across the Delaware River from the brick and polished cobblestone streets of downtown Philadelphia, where oblivious tourists pour in every year, gobbling cheese steaks and gazing at the Liberty Bell, having no idea that they're a short walk over the Ben Franklin Bridge from a full-blown sovereignty crisis – an un-Fantasy Island of extreme poverty and violence where the police just a few years ago essentially surrendered a city of 77,000.

All over America, communities are failing. Once-mighty Rust Belt capitals that made steel or cars are now wastelands. Elsewhere, struggling white rural America is stocking up on canned goods and embracing the politics of chaos, sending pols to Washington ready to hit the default button and start the whole national experiment all over again.

But in Camden, chaos is already here. In September, its last supermarket closed, and the city has been declared a "food desert" by the USDA. The place is literally dying, its population having plummeted from above 120,000 in the Fifties to less than 80,000 today. Thirty percent of the remaining population is under 18, an astonishing number that's 10 to 15 percent higher than any other "very challenged" city, to use the police euphemism. Their home is a city with thousands of abandoned houses but no money to demolish them, leaving whole blocks full of Ninth Ward-style wreckage to gather waste and rats.

It's a major metropolitan area run by armed teenagers with no access to jobs or healthy food, and not long ago, while the rest of America was ranting about debt ceilings and Obamacares, Camden quietly got pushed off the map. That was three years ago, when new governor and presumptive future presidential candidate Chris Christie abruptly cut back on the state subsidies that kept Camden on life support. The move left the city almost completely ungoverned – a graphic preview of what might lie ahead for communities that don't generate enough of their own tax revenue to keep their lights on. Over three years, fires raged, violent crime spiked and the murder rate soared so high that on a per-capita basis, it "put us somewhere between Honduras and Somalia," says Police Chief J. Scott Thomson.

"They let us run amok," says a tat-covered ex-con and addict named Gigi. "It was like fires, and rain, and babies crying, and dogs barking. It was like Armageddon."

The interesting video would be Matt Taibbi on Imus in the Morning but it's behind the Fox Business pay wall. 

28 comments:

Burke said...

Let's see.

This Hickman quote is taken out of context, made when Ayn Rand was 23 years old, almost 3 decades before Atlas Shrugged was published, coupled with a number of complete misrepresentations of her ideas, and presented as representative of her complete philosophy.

As such, this article is a complete lie, which anyone who has ever read Atlas Shrugged or much of her other works can easily see.

Misrepresentation is the only way her enemies have ever been able to attack her.

JohnDonohue said...

Everytime the Objectivist community sees this old, tired attempt to smear, it is remarkable the extent to which we do not counter with the admiration of collectivists with murderers who have slain millions.

Video response:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1KGfnn3cbc

woodensplinter said...

lol@"Objectivist community". These Rand bronies are easily excitable and terribly amusing.

CNu said...

tsk, tsk..., Codification of malfunctioning mirror neurons and autistic spectrum tendencies is indeed very amusing, probably no more or less than what we strongly suspect to be true of those with malfunctioning dopamine subsystems http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2013/12/god-dopamine-3-dimensional-space.html

Ed Dunn said...

Camden is not a silo by any means...this is impacting inner city Chicago as we speak...

December 28, 2013 (PARK RIDGE, Ill.) (WLS) -- Dominick's has been clearing shelves and discounting food in preparation for today's scheduled closings for the Chicago grocery chain that's also leaving thousands of people jobless.

Mariano's has purchased 11 Dominick's stores and four other current Dominick's locations will become Jewel stores. The remaining 57 stores in the Chicago area will close doors and more than 6,000 employees will lose their jobs

"You're throwing 6,500 people into the unemployment pot," said Bruno Belmonte. "It's already saturated to begin with, now you're throwing all of these people on top of it."

Dale Asberry said...

Lol, I'm with woodensplinter on this one... objectivist bronies, lol

CNu said...

I'm glad you focused on the feature attraction of economic contraction/collapse and sidestepped the distraction of the Baghdad-style, lean "law enforcement" (there will always be some $$ set aside for the make-work class of enforcers that serve as a buffer between the 1% and the proles a la "burn it to the ground") http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2013/12/it-boils-down-to-connected-and-not.html

The money shots in this bad boy are:The city for decades hadn't been able to pay even for its own cops, so
it funded most of its operating budget from state subsidies. But once
Christie assumed office, he announced that "the taxpayers of New Jersey
aren't going to pay any more for Camden's excesses." In a sweeping,
statewide budget massacre, he cut municipal state aid by $445 million.
The new line was, people who paid the taxes were cutting off the people
who didn't.
In other words: your crime, your problem.

The Camden story was originally a controversial political effort to
isolate urban crime and slash municipal spending by moving political
power out of dying nonwhite cities. And they do it, this radical
restructuring backed by the best in Baghdad-style security technology,
and for a second or two it looks like it's working – only the whole
thing might be rendered moot in the end by the collapse of the rest of
America. All over the country, we've been so busy arguing over who's
productive and who isn't that we might not be noticing that the whole
ship is going down.

CNu said...

instigator..., I think you were well aware that these infrasexual jamokes were easily provoked.

Vic78 said...

Y'all ain't right. You know by some fucked up twist of fate you could've been a Rand brony. Personally, if I wanted to twist a knife I would bring up that nobody in her field takes her seriously. If you read her contemporaries, you'll look at Rand like "how did she make it?" I hope the bronies know she used Medicare in her dotage.

Vic78 said...

You don't choose it, it chooses you.

woodensplinter said...

Vic, are you referring to Pinkie Pie and Flutter Shy and Friendship is Magic, or are you referring to these pathetic objectivist weenies?

JohnDonohue said...

Hmm. I see. Post a smear, get indexed, Recieve refutations. Mock.


What a waste of pixels, all to jolt the giggle response of the infantile.


What is the profile, exactly, of the little boys who are the dribblers at this blog?

Dale Asberry said...

If you click on the name, you should be able to see the comments we make using the Disqus commenting system. As for me, feel free to Google...

Vic78 said...

The Rand groupies. How do you explain an adult going for that fuckery?

CNu said...

damn shame...., http://youtu.be/BMWsOyOHaaA

Dale Asberry said...

I'm lazy... I'll let him impale himself.

Ed Dunn said...

This guy made me spit out my melted butter pecan ice cream all over my keyboard and monitor -- dribblers...LOL!

JohnDonohue said...

The collective ooze of the responses so far does not even rise to the level of a rasied eyebrow. Don't any of you actually care to comment or defend the posting (by "unknown", since there is no mission statement or blog writer link here, just a lonely "cnu") of a crass smear?

Vic78 said...

I debate real philosophy. Ayn Rand is for the humor section.

Ed Dunn said...

It's neither a crass smear, not far from it. Plenty of authors admired serial killers from Jack the Ripper to Ed Gein to BTK and romanticized them in novels as fictional characters. So "a Hickman with a purpose" is pretty much validation that Ayn Rand was indeed romanticizing Hickman...is this a problem for you? I'm trying to figure so what if it is true?

Ed Dunn said...

I also accidentally looked at a screen shot of the speaker...damn, talk about the look of evil possessed!!!!!

Vic78 said...

The person that said this http://youtu.be/lv3VkSwhhkU used Medicare. She took advantage of that coercion.

JohnDonohue said...

It's a smear.


I am lazy: the refutation is in the video per Dr. Hsieh.

JohnDonohue said...

Rand had the best rejoinder: 'morality ends at the point of a gun.' Point the guns of the government away from her wallet first, then she will not have any reason to pursue the recovery of all funds extracted from her over her lifetime.

woodensplinter said...

Regardons comment bouleversé les juifs sont avec Dieudonné... Les Juifs ont le pouvoir, pas comme ces stupides bronies.

This mockery aspect has political and ideological legs....,

CNu said...

rotflmbao...., the psychic aether is on and popping John. The maestro was busy pushing a mockingjay gestalt in response to the NYTimes pathetic cathedral posturings around Dieudonné/Jay-Z/les juifs this morning.

Thank you for taking a few minutes out of your busy schedule this past few months to drive-by and shout out, much appreciated. Best to you and family in the new year!

woodensplinter said...

Bonne année à vous et frère de la famille!

makheru bradley said...

Chris Hedges: The Pathology of the Rich

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6unS2JF8TA

“The inability to grasp the pathology of our oligarchic rulers is one of our gravest faults.” --Hedges

Chris Hedges offers a Marxist analysis of the oligarchic pathocracy. There is no doubt that there is a lot of truth to what he says. I’m all for a 21st century Bacon’s Rebellion, but race is a more dominant issue in American society today. Given the philosophical depths of white supremacy in America can class solidarity overcome race? Particularly, given the fact that pathology extends across class lines.

What Is France To Do With The Thousands Of Soldiers Expelled From Africa?

SCF  |    Russian President Vladimir Putin was spot-on this week in his observation about why France’s Emmanuel Macron is strutting around ...