Detroit Police Chief: Legal Gun Ownership Can Help Stop Crime

 In a city plagued by crime and guarded by a dwindling police force, residents of Detroit are increasingly taking protection of themselves, their families and property into their own hands. Those who do so responsibly have the support of Detroit Police Chief James Craig, reports Fox News.

Chief Craig gave his public blessing to private gun ownership back in December, 2013, and in 2014 some 1,169 handgun permits were issued, while 8,102 guns were registered with city police - many to prior permit holders who bought new firearms. So for in 2015, nearly 500 permits have issued by the department and more than 5,000 guns have been registered.

“When you look at the city of Detroit, we’re kind of leading the way in terms of urban areas with law-abiding citizens carrying guns,” Craig said recently.

Firearms instructor Rick Ector said, "There’s definitely been a 'Chief Craig' effect.” Ector and other instructors have seen a steady rise in locals looking to get a permit, to protect themselves either on the street or in their homes.

“Home invasions have gone down,” he said. “A huge reason was that there was a huge spate of homeowners using their guns against intruders. More people have guns and it’s making burglars cautious.”

with a population of about 680,000, some 83 percent of which is African-American, Detroit's growing embrace of Second Amendment rights has a racial component that is not unique to the city. According to a recent survey from Pew Research Center, 54 percent of African-American residents nationwide now see legal gun ownership as more likely to protect people than to put their safety at risk. That figure was up from 29 percent two years ago.

“If anyone should have the right or need to carry a gun, it should be the African-American community,” says Philip Smith, founder of the National African American Gun Association.​

Detroit resident Darrell Standberry, who in 2011 used a handgun to kill a career criminal who tried to steal his car and kill him, says,

“I never leave home without my weapon,” he said. “You never know when or what you’ll encounter.”

 Via Truth Revolt

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Detroit teachers livid as they go unpaid, shortchanged

DETROIT – While some teachers might complain about the size of their paycheck, Detroit Public School teachers are hardly surprised when they don’t get a check at all.

“We need something that will effectively, regularly pay the teachers what they’re owed. They do the work. They need the pay. They need it on-time, with bills to pay. All they get now is a runaround,” Detroit Federation of Teachers President Steve Conn told Click on Detroit.

Conn raised a ruckus in the media this week after some of his members were shorted hundreds of dollars in their paychecks, while others didn’t receive a pay check at all. And it’s not the first time.

The socialist union boss blames Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, of course, because Snyder has sent in emergency financial managers to divert DPS from its crash course with total financial and academic failure, though the first EFM was sent in by former Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

“There’s been nothing but a steady degrading and dismantling of any kind of structures within the system, including just regularly and accurately paying our teachers,” Conn told Michigan Radio. “There’s no fairness for the teachers in the DPS payroll system, and it’s continuing to drive teachers out of the district.”

Conn said that when district officials do resolve payment issues, teachers are paid on debt cards, which “are even harder to deal with” because of withdrawal limits and fees, according to the radio station.

“When I went online to look at my pay stub, I saw it was short by a whole week,” Regina Dixon, a teacher at Coleman A. Young Elementary, told The Detroit News.

“I was upset because I have obligations I need to meet. So I went down there today and was told they had to put the money on a debit card, so I have to go back on Friday after 3 p.m. But it’s inconvenient to have to go back, and there may be a long line,” she said.

“It’s a shame we have to go through this, especially with the so-called transformation of the schools.”

“It’s disheartening because I worked for my money and I want it,” Charles Wright Academy teacher Marcie Taylor said. “I’m calculating how much to pay for bills, and I help my mother, who is sick, but now my check is short.”

Taylor said it’s at least the second time the district has paid her on a debit card because of payroll problems.

“A lot of us are working paycheck to paycheck because our pay has decreased,” she said. “We’re getting paid less because our health insurance went up. I’m paying $200 per paycheck for insurance. Now I have to call about my bills and ask if I can pay them on Friday because I wasn’t paid all my money on time.”

DPS spokeswoman Michelle Zdrodowski told the News “a variety of technical issues arose that affected a cross-section of DPS employees” but did not elaborate on the problems.

Zdrodowski contends the pay issues are not tied the district’s massive money problems.

DPS “has run a deficit in nine of the past 11 fiscal years, with a net accumulated deficit of $1.28 billion during that period. Four state-appointed emergency managers have been named in the past six years, with Darnell Earley being appointed in January,” the News reports.

Zdrodowski also disputed Conn’s claim that some teachers did not receive any pay check, and said district officials are addressing pay problems on a case-by-case basis. DPS employs about 3,000 teachers.

“I don’t know the exact number (affected); we’re still calculating,” Zdrodowski told CBS Detroit Tuesday. “But we’ve been, you know, working with the coalition of unions and with our employees to resolve the payroll issues as quickly as we can.”

“We’re confident that we’ll have them all addressed between today and Friday,” she said.

In a DFT press release on “more payroll foul-ups,” Conn contends that there’s a lot more pending payroll issues than the most recent snafu.

“This is at least the second major payroll problem in that many weeks. And on top of those problems, DPS still owes hundreds of teachers numerous special payments for workshops and earned bonuses,” he wrote, according to the News.

Via: EAG News

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[OPINION[ Finley: Democrats’ handout strategy is failing

Democrats hope to prevail in the 2016 elections by pounding the income gap. But at least one major group on the short end of that equation isn’t buying that the handout party has the right answers.

Blue collar white voters believe the Republican Party is better equipped to make the economic system more fair by an overwhelming margin, according to a new Washington Post poll.

In the survey of non-college educated whites, 50 percent had more faith in GOP policies, while 29 percent favored the Democratic strategy.

These are among the workers hit hardest by the economic shifts of the past quarter century, and in particular by the failed polices of the Obama administration.

They’ve seen good paying jobs in Appalachian coal mines become casualties of the president’s war on coal. They’ve lost solid, middle class work on the oil rigs of the Gulf to a president more obsessed with tomorrow’s temperatures than today’s families. And they’ve bid goodbye to Midwestern factory jobs while the president saddles employers with oppressive taxes and regulations.

They’re the autoworkers whose fathers punched in at $30 an hour, and they’re trying to get by on a $15 hourly wage. They’re the legion of middle class workers who once had employer-provided health insurance, but now have to pay for most of their medical costs themselves.

They should be ripe for the Democrats’ anti-corporate, people vs. the powerful message. But they aren’t buying. And that’s good news, not just for Republicans in the upcoming election cycle, but for the country in the long-term.

Mitt Romney, the failed GOP standard bearer in 2012, bemoaned the prospects for selling a message of smaller government when 47 percent of the population is receiving some form of government assistance.

But many of these blue collar whites are among the 47 percenters. They may be getting Obamacare subsidies, or unemployment benefits, or even food stamps.

And that’s not what they want. They’re looking for the opportunity to take care of themselves and their families. They want jobs, not another Big Government giveaway designed to replace the paychecks Democratic policies have killed.

They’ve lost faith — if they ever had any — in the government’s ability to solve their problems. And who can blame them?

Blue collar workers have lost ground under Obama’s wealth transfer schemes. His policies haven’t helped the poor and working class, and haven’t much hurt the rich. During the president’s tenure, the gaps between rich and poor have widened. All he’s done is explode the size of government and enrich the political class.

Democrats won’t win these working white voters with campaigns built on class resentment and Robin Hood promises, and they may not be able to convince other blue collar workers to buy into more of the same failed strategies.

Because this rather large and often neglected group of voters doesn’t want more government. They want more and better jobs. And so far, Democrats haven’t proved they can deliver.

nfinley@detroitnews.com

Via: Detroit News

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How Democratic-Leaning Detroit Helped Shape Ben Carson's Conservative Views

Long before Benjamin Carson was a Republican presidential candidate, he was a hero and a role model.

For a generation of black parents, the retired neurosurgeon's life's story was used to inspire their children. He grew up poor in Detroit. His mother had a third-grade education and could not read. Carson initially didn't do especially well in school. His poor grades led some of his classmates to refer to him as "dummy."

Detroit's Benjamin Carson High School of Science and Medicine is named after presidential candidate Ben Carson.

Brakkton Booker/NPR

Carson would eventually overcome those obstacles. He became a stellar student and went on to Yale and then to the University of Michigan's medical school before becoming the head of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore at just 33 years old. He would later receive international recognition for leading a surgical team in what was the first operation to separate twins conjoined at the back of the head.

Despite his success, the scars of growing up in poverty left their mark on Carson.

"One of the things that really bothered me when I was a kid was poverty. I didn't like being poor," Carson said to a room full of mostly black high school students at Detroit's Benjamin Carson High School of Science and Medicine (named for him) on the day of his presidential announcement in May. "I remember we used to have popcorn balls at school. And they looked so good, but they cost a nickel. And I never had a popcorn ball, the whole time."

Carson, the only black candidate in the 2016 presidential race, grew up in Detroit during the 1960s. It was not — and is not — exactly known as a haven of conservatism, especially in the black community. Back then, the civil rights movement was gaining momentum, the "Motown Sound" became synonymous with the Motor City and the Vietnam War had no end in sight. Going to where Carson grew up and talking to former classmates and friends revealed a young man determined not to allow the grip of poverty to keep him bound to southwest Detroit.

Via: NPR

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Castro: In America, geography has consequences

Where you live matters. A child born today in the Jeff-Vander-Lou neighborhood in St. Louis can expect to live 18 fewer years than a child born just 10 miles away in Clayton. Why? Because poverty presents obstacles that, too often, prevent families from getting ahead no matter how hard they try.

Imagine you are a child growing up in a struggling community. Your parents might not be able to find good jobs because local businesses are hurting and there aren’t any public transit options that can connect them to the other side of town. Your family can’t afford quality housing so your apartment is full of hazards that are making you sick, resulting in more time in the emergency room and less time in the classroom. You aren’t allowed to play outside because the local playground isn’t safe from crime, impacting your health and well-being.

A ZIP code should never prevent people from reaching their aspirations. That’s why the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has taken an important step to promote greater access to quality, affordable housing for all Americans. We published a final rule updating the process by which local communities use HUD funding to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing — a key provision of the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

When this landmark law was passed 47 years ago, it boldly declared that all Americans deserve an equal chance to access safe, affordable housing near quality schools, transportation and jobs — no matter who they are, what they look like, how they worship or where they are from. As part of this effort, the Fair Housing Act required local governments and states that receive HUD funding to use it to promote fair housing and expand access to opportunities. That’s why we’ve published this rule, to simplify that process and provide better partnership to local leaders working to put opportunity within reach of every resident they serve.

In this age of limited resources, communities are often operating without the data and tools they need to chart the landscape of opportunity in their area and craft locally tailored plans to achieve their goals.

HUD’s new effort will provide these resources. It will empower mayors, county officials, and community members with publicly-open data and tools to eliminate the barriers that block many Americans from getting ahead in life. As a former mayor, I know how valuable these resources are for communities.

During the pilot phase of this effort, local leaders in the Twin Cities region used the information to plan investments in housing and infrastructure where they are needed most. In Chicago, transit agencies are expanding service between high-poverty neighborhoods and job centers. In upcoming years, cities across the nation will be able to use these tools to ensure that every family’s destiny is determined by their effort and talent, not by where they were born.

Via: Detroit News

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The War against Black Children

There is a statistic out there that almost half the adults in Detroit are functionally illiterate.  They can't fill out job applications.  They can't read the instructions on a pill bottle.

So when we talk about a war against black children, let's not think first about guns.  Think about the weapon that is doing the most damage.  That would be our public schools.

You cannot have functionality illiterate children at the high school level unless the school system systematically evades teaching those children to read at the elementary school level.  That's exactly what is happening in cities across America.  This is hardly a natural phenomenon.  It's caused by the perennial incompetence (some would say malevolence) of our Education Establishment.

A famous book precisely explained in 1955 "Why Johnny Can't Read."  You need phonics to teach reading.  Without phonics, you will get illiterate kids.  But our Education Establishment pretends not to hear the news.  Nobody can be that clueless.  They are best understood as a cult that pretends to be oblivious if that will help their agenda.

This is an easy matter for everyone to check.  Just ask any black parents you know who have (or had) children in elementary school.  Go ahead, ask them.  That's the only way we are going to confront and cure this thing.  Here's the key question: Did your children bring home lists of sight-words to be memorized?  If that was the method of instruction, then those kids were doomed from the start never to become good readers.  Sight-word lists are the smoking gun, the DNA evidence, the bloody fingerprints proving that the people in charge are not serious about literacy.

Via: American Thinker

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Jailhouse Crock: Unfinished prison costs Detroit area taxpayers $1.2M per month

Four years after breaking ground and with construction costs totaling $151 million, the Wayne County Jail sits empty in downtown Detroit. The empty structure is costing taxpayers upwards of $1.2 million in upkeep per month. (AP)

A prison in downtown Detroit that was deemed too expensive to complete is now a construction site frozen in time that still costs cash-strapped local taxpayers more than $1 million a month.

It was supposed to be a state-of-art lockup in the heart of the Motor City, but four years after breaking ground, with construction costs totaling $150 million and no end in sight, the city pulled the plug on the project four years ago.

Now, the Wayne County Jail sits empty among the ruins of a bankrupt city, costing taxpayers upwards of $1.2 million in debt service and monthly upkeep costs for electricity, security, sump pumps - and even off-site storage for pre-fabricated jail cells that will never be used.

“The Wayne County Jail was a mess since it was created,” Rose Bogaert, head of the Wayne County Taxpayers Association and chair of the Michigan Taxpayer Alliance, told FoxNews.com. “At this point, the only thing we should do is cut our losses. If someone is willing to purchase it, we should sell it.

“Everyone knows that these projects never stay within budget, and this one was in a bad location to begin with," she added. "It never made sense. There needs to be more thought put into these projects before they start building.”

County officials have yet to make a decision as to what to do with the facility. But while they dither, the monthly meter is running. According to figures compiled by the Detroit Free Press some of the monthly costs include:

• Security: $10,849
• Sump pump maintenance: $12,852-
• Warehouse space to store pre-cast jail cells: $15,000
• Electricity: $4,000
• Debt service: $1.1 million

Despite the hefty costs of the jail, and the county teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans does not appear to be any closer to making a decision on the building site.

Via: Fox News

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Sports Taking a Hit in Tax-Heavy Baltimore?

The anti-capitalist environment in Baltimore has left city sports in an uncertain state. Thanks to Charm City's high property taxes, Pimlico race track owners, the site where the Preakness is held, are considering moving their horses elsewhere. 

Herein lies the problem:

In Maryland, regulators are like co-owners: Not only did you not build that, but you’re not free to run it, either. Of course, there are tracks elsewhere that would surely like to host a Triple Crown race and that are not subject to Maryland’s regulatory dictates.

In the past, when city governments have exercised extreme regulations over businesses, it has often had fatal results. Detroit's economy suffered under the highest property taxes on homes in the nation, in addition to the top commercial property tax, and the second-highest industrial property tax, before filing for bankruptcy in 2013.

The poor business environment in Baltimore is coupled with the attraction of other more business-friendly regions.

At the city’s current property-tax rate, for example, a $100 million investment at Pimlico — probably less than required to make the crumbling facility world-class again — would cost its owners almost $2.25 million in added annual property taxes.

Via: Townhall

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Let Syrians Settle Detroit

Detroit, a once great city, has become an urban vacuum. Its population has fallen to around 700,000 from nearly 1.9 million in 1950. The city is estimated to have more than 70,000 abandoned buildings and 90,000 vacant lots. Meanwhile, desperate Syrians, victims of an unfathomable civil war, are fleeing to neighboring countries, with some 1.8 million in Turkey and 600,000 in Jordan.

Suppose these two social and humanitarian disasters were conjoined to produce something positive.

Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan, a Republican, has already laid the groundwork. In January 2014 he called for an infusion of 50,000 immigrants as part of a program to revitalize Detroit, and signed an executive order creating the Michigan Office for New Americans.

Syrian refugees would be an ideal community to realize this goal, as Arab-Americans are already a vibrant and successful presence in the Detroit metropolitan area. A 2003 survey by the University of Michigan of 1,016 members of this community (58 percent of whom were Christian, and 42 percent Muslim) found that 19 percent were entrepreneurs and that the median household income was $50,000 to $75,000 per year.

What confidence can we have that traumatized war refugees can be transformed into budding American entrepreneurs? We cannot know for sure. But recent evidence of recaptured children from the clutches of the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda and victims of violent crime across five continents reveals that they become more active citizens than similar compatriots who have not suffered from these traumatic events. In the Zaatari Refugee Camp in Jordan, Syrians, despite psychological scars and limited resources, have set up 3,500 shops, stores and other businesses.

Via: Weasel Zippers

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Detroit Homeowner shoots and kills armed robbery suspect

DETROIT, Mich. (WJBK) -
A Detroit woman surprises an armed robbery suspect in her home. He pointed a gun at her head, but the woman was armed. Bullets started flying and the suspected ended up dead.

Click on the video player to watch Robin Murdoch's report.

Police were called to the 67-hundred block of Abington Ave. after a the suspect was shot to death. We're told it happened around 12:30 Saturday morning when the homeowner parked the car in her garage. She was walking to the front of the house when out of nowhere the suspect appeared and held a gun to her head. Sources say the woman, who is licensed to carry a concealed weapon, shot the suspect seven times. He fired one shot before he died.

The woman's husband did not want to talk on camera but he tells Fox 2 his wife made it out alive "by the grace of God." He says she bought a gun to protect herself and that's exactly what she did in this case.

This is the second story this week that we have done of people using the Second Amendment to protect themselves in Detroit. Thankfully, the Detroit Police Chief is very supportive of concealed carry, and recognizes, particularly given Detroit’s limited resources, how important it is to be able to protect oneself.

Craig said he started believing that legal gun owners can deter crime when he became police chief in Portland, Maine, in 2009.

“Coming from California (Craig was on the Los Angeles police force for 28 years), where it takes an act of Congress to get a concealed weapon permit, I got to Maine, where they give out lots of CCWs (carrying concealed weapon permits), and I had a stack of CCW permits I was denying; that was my orientation.

“I changed my orientation real quick. Maine is one of the safest places in America. Clearly, suspects knew that good Americans were armed.”

Via: Weasel Zippers

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Detroit: Riding the Motor City Struggle Bus

DETROIT — I came to Detroit expecting a wasteland. Instead, I met a bunch of nice people and ate hot dogs.

Detroit declared bankruptcy this month, taking the dubious honor of becoming the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. The city is $18 billion in the hole.

News stories described an empty town, teetering on the edge of anarchy. A place where most of the good things are gone, and what’s left is about to be auctioned off. A place where the last person out won’t have to worry about turning off the lights, because the lights haven’t worked in years.

Yet everywhere I went I encountered people with unflappable civic pride, people starting businesses and saying in the face of everything that Detroit was worth saving and will be saved.

“Detroit’s not dead,” a heavily tattooed 24-year-old woman told me over beers in a downtown bar. “It’s just riding the struggle bus.”

Tuesday

I went out for lunch Tuesday afternoon with a friend in Corktown. One of Detroit’s oldest neighborhoods, Corktown is also one of its recent success stories. The main drag along Michigan Avenue is lined with hip restaurants, bars, and coffee shops painted in bright colors.

The scene would not have looked out of place in Brooklyn. Behind us, though, loomed the abandoned, 18-story-tall hulk of Michigan Central Station. Estimates of the cost to restore the station run as high as $300 million. The Atlantic recently called it “the face of American ruin porn.” Whatever floats your boat.

Via: WFB

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The Pension Issue – Everywhere

Two stories yesterday thrust pension reform in the front of the political news. In Michigan, a judge declared that Detroit could consider bankruptcy to deal with its debt crisis and that public pension obligations can be treated like any other contract under bankruptcy law. In Illinois, the state legislature passed a public pension reform that supporters say will save $160 billion and fund the retirement system over 30 years by reducing benefits for workers and retirees.

Both actions await the inevitable lawsuits promised by the public employee unions that don’t want to see members’ benefits reduced. Both stories have meaning to California cities that are struggling with fiscal problems that are wrapped around pension and health care liabilities.

Let’s state here that no one wants to see pensioners lose income they expected. That goes for public workers as well as citizens on Social Security who could see benefits cut in the not-too-distant future if the current gap between available revenue and payments due is not altered.

Saying that, something has to be done to avert the city bankruptcies and everything is on the table.

The judge making the Detroit bankruptcy decision clearly stated that, “it has long been understood that bankruptcy law entails the impairment of contracts.” That argument is at issue in the San Bernardino bankruptcy debate and could arise again in Stockton. Other California cities facing difficult fiscal conditions due to heavy pension burdens will take note.

The pension decision in Detroit will now become front and center as city officials sit down with union leaders to discuss resolutions to budget problems. The decision also gives a boost to San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed’s effort to find resolution on the pension issues that are threatening the budget in his city and cities across the state.

Reed’s proposed ballot initiative would give local governments more power to negotiate reductions in pension benefits. He has reached out to unions in an effort to find a solution to the pension crisis and avoid a war over the initiative. The unions responded by rebuffing Reed’s overture unless he drops his initiative plan.

In light of the decision coming out of Detroit on bankruptcy and public pensions, perhaps public employee unions should reconsider and accept Reed’s invitation to at least attempt to find common ground.

Via: California Political Review

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