Top Ten Poorest Cities - Request for some assistance...

[liberal N proud]

Received this email from a republican idiot and I want to send some zinger information back.
Not that I couldn't tear this fool apart on my own but I want to really hit him with full force.
The last sentence is directed directly at me, so we have to be really cleaver on this.

Thanks in advance!



Just a little history to start you off today:
TOP 10 POOREST CITIES
What do the top ten cities with the highest poverty rate all have in common?
Detroit, MI (1st on the poverty rate list) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1961;
Buffalo, NY (2nd) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1954;
Cincinnati, OH (3rd) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1984;
Cleveland, OH (4th) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1989;
Miami, FL. (5th) has never had a Republican mayor;
St. Louis, MO (6th) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1949;
El Paso, TX (7th) has never had a Republican mayor;
Milwaukee, WI (8th) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1908;
Philadelphia, PA (9th) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1952;
Newark, NJ (10th) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1907.

Einstein once said, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."

It is the disadvantaged (define that however you will ) who habitually elect Democrats --- yet they are still disadvantaged after all these years!
Imagine that.


note:any adverse reply from anywhere in Ohio will be automatically directed to my bullshit filter

[SoCalDem]

1. response to him/her

STOP SENDING ME SHIT IN MY EMAIL

[glowing]

2. Hmm. the entire country.. mostly pukes in the last 30yrs.

[stray cat]

3. So how have the poor and middle class faired the last 8 years under repubs?

has he checked the economy and stock market lately?

[HopeFor2006]

4. Top 10 poorest cities?

How was this list developed? What was the criteria? I don't see one city from MS, AL, or GA on that list.

It appears they googled to discover which cities have had only democratic mayors in the past 15 years and then assigned those same cities to the "top ten poorest cities" list.

[yardwork]

6. Nor does the list take account of time. Have these always been the top ten poorest cities?

Some of those cities enjoyed very good economies back in the 1970s and 1960s - despite having Democratic mayors. What changed? Hint: job exodus due to outsourcing and closing of manufacturing plants. What can mayors do about that, when it's national policies that caused those changes?

[LynneSin]

25. Philadelphia was doing great under the Ed Rendell years....

and it's been getting hit hard lately because of the economy, WHICH was created by a republican president.

[yardwork]

5. Ask him what mayors have to do with poverty.

But you know that this is a racist email, right? By "the disadvantaged" your emailer means "African Americans." Which makes this an even more insidious, nasty thing.

[patrice]

9. Exactly! Mayors aren't kings. They can only react to the macro-economics. nt

[TomInTib]

7. You could lead with this...

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

And then remind the shit-head that the two states with the most accrued debt are California and Texas.

Just in case the dumbass doesn't get it, Texas was run into the ground under the clueless, property-tax-cutting "Leadership" of one George Walker Bush. California, ("duh money iss dere, und Ah vill vined it") Arnie-poo.

Those two states also vomited forth St Ronnie and Pencil-Dick Georgie.

Then tell him to go fuck himself, as you are pretty much sure that is the only way he's gonna get laid.

[DBoon]

11. Arnold shouldn't get all the blame here

the 1978 taxt cutting proposition 13 has made it impossible to fund government consistently.

Blame republicans like Jarvis/Gann, believers in "drowning government in a bathtub"

[MzYvonne]

20. hahahahahahhaha

very good

[patrice]

8. When talent goes to employers who are big enough to provide Health Insurance,

local entrepreneurs can't recruit what they need to compete.

When the risks of doing business are mitigated by enough people buying into Franchises, instead of operating as independents, not only do the lowel level risks increase for independents and franchises become vulnerable to higher level derivative threats that are beyond their ken, but the pool of businesses, from which locals may benefit, is also limited to what franchises are offered, rather than what the local market would support.

[DBoon]

10. A lot of affluent cities have Democrat mayors too

And guess what? They are still affluent.

San Francisco comes to mind.

I'm sure you can find others.

It's just a fact that big city mayors tend to be Democrats. You can't govern a real entity that has to provide public services and still believe in Republican fantasies.

City governments cannot change regional economies, much as many of us wish.

Also, it would be very easy to come up with a list of poor rural counties that consistently vote republican. Throw that back it him/her.

[patrice]

13. Yeah, he should look for the mayors of the top 10 wealthiest cities.

It's all about the economic inertia of a given set of macro-economic factors in a given situation at a given point (or points) in time/history.

[Lithos]

12. How stupid

First, these are METROPOLITAN regions, not the individual cities. So the Detroit area includes cities such as Troy and I believe Flint. Many of these have had Republican governments.

Second, Economics is not so much at a city level, but more to a state or regional level. If you really want to look at eye-opening, look at the state level for the percentage of Poverty. The top 15 are:

Mississippi 20.6
Louisiana 18.6
New Mexico 18.1
Arkansas 17.9
Kentucky 17.3
West Virginia 16.9
Alabama 16.9
District of Columbia 16.4
Texas 16.3
Oklahoma 15.9
Tennessee 15.9
South Carolina 15
North Carolina 14.3
Georgia 14.3
Arizona 14.2

The vast majority of these are Republican dominated and have been dominated by Republicans for sometime. 13 of 15 entries voted Republican. I have seen numbers sometime back which point out that some of the Reddest States have long been supported economically (welfare at both an individual, regional, corporate and state level) by the Bluest states for sometime.

Third: This type of fallacious argument where many facts are overlooked also is of the type used to justify racist agendas in the past. (Read the Bell Curve).

Fourth: Many Democratic cities are also among the wealthiest in the nation.

[yardwork]

14. I can speak to North Carolina, which is one of the Democratic poor states.

North Carolina usually elects Democrats to state and local positions, but these are also usually right-wing Democrats. Old-time Democrats, not progressives.

[Lithos]

15. Thanks

That also can be used to explain much of what happened to Texas for many years as well - many of the Dems were really DINO's and bolted when Phil Gramm came along.

[patrice]

16. A very important and ESSENCE - tial difference to be sure. nt

[metapunditedgy]

17. If you want a one-line response, say

"And this is a great example of the profound, deep insights that have helped the GOP to govern the nation so well over the last 8 years."

That's how I usually respond to BS talking points. Make them retract it or defend the BS that they're peddling as political analysis, and make sure the entire party's reputation depends on their response.

Detroit has been governed terribly. But the factors that hurt Detroit are large and complex.

Basically, get the person to admit that their political talking points amount to washing over very complex issues for their personal benefit. If they won't admit it, keep pummeling them with details until it's obvious.

[Swamp Rat]

18. Multiple fallacies:

1. Appeal To Authority - "Just a little history to start you off today." No evidence of scientific consensus was supplied, such as a brief historiographical review of "a little history."

2. Misunderstanding the Nature of Statistics - (see: "How to Lie with Statistics" by Darrell Huff)

3. Burden of Proof - Where are the sources for the "TOP 10 POOREST CITIES" and "hasn't elected a Republican mayor?"

4. Appeal To False Authority - Einstein did not theorize that the disadvantaged are insane.

5. Straw Man - Democrats do not cause cities to be poor.

6. Confusing Correlation and Causation - Correlation does not equal causation.

[Retrograde]

19. Don't know about the others, but Buffalo

is surrounded by more affluent towns with Republican leanings. The city had a lot of "white flight" in the 70s and 80s, leaving the city with half the population it had in 1970. When I was last there in June it was possible to find houses for less than $20K - although you'd be living on a street of mostly abandoned buildings.

Buffalo was a blue-collar manufacturing town in its glory days. Now most of the industry is gone, and while it's nice that you can't see the air anymore it took a lot of jobs with it. What's left are largely lower-paying service jobs.

[yardwork]

26. Same thing happened to Cleveland.

[LBJDemocrat]

21. Miami has had Republican mayors

Joe Carollo, for one. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=950CE5D61039F934A35752C1A9679C8B63

There must be others as well.

If he's talking about the county, then I'm not sure; but the county is much better off than simply the city of Miami.

[ikojo]

22. The Democrats in st Louis City tend to be VERY

conservative, at least fiscally. Many are DINOs as they are smart enough to know a repugnican does not stand a chance of being elected. Slay, the current mayor, has always done the bidding of big money in the region. For instance knowing that public funding for a new ballpark for the st Louis Cardinals was going to go down in defeat at the polls; he rammed through an agreement saying the city would give the Cardinals what they wanted.

There is MUCH racial and class division in St Louis and much of that division is the fault of white Democrats.

St Louis is headed down the same road as Detroit: failing schools (the city schools are currently unaccredited and the school board has been taken over by the state), large concentration of poor people and too much violence.

[lurky]

23. Well, they are suggesting that the mayor determines the wealth of

a city's citizens (how, I am not sure :shrug: ). Furthermore, eight of these cities (all but Miami and El Paso) are former centers of heavy industry that have been decimated by Republican trade policy. The other two are havens for immigration from Latin America and the Caribbean, much of it illegal. This has been known to drive down wages.

They might also note that large cities don't generally elect Republicans. I'm sure San Francisco and Boston would be among the wealthiest large cities, and neither of them is known for electing Republican mayors.

Frankly, it's a specious, uninformed idea that falls apart at the slightest poking. Therefore, I expect it to sweep through the freeper world like wildfire.

[Dukkha]

24. the richest cities in US

http://dcjobsource.com/richest.html

all with a strong Dem voting history. imagine that.

1 San Jose, CA
2 Anchorage, AK
3 San Francisco, CA
4 Virginia Beach, VA
5 San Diego, CA
6 Anaheim, CA
7 Raleigh, NC
8 Seattle, WA
9 Washington, DC
10 Honolulu, HI