Flint, Michigan Native: Bulldoze It

RUSH: Here’s Alex, Flushing, Michigan. You’re up next on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. How you doing today?

RUSH: Great, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: Good. I’m glad you’re there. I enjoy listening to you.

RUSH: Thanks so much.

CALLER: Listen, I wanted to comment on that thing about Flint that you’ve been bringing up. And I’m a Republican, so don’t doubt that one bit. But I wanted to say that definitely there’s areas of Flint that really need to be torn down, and that city really needs to be cleaned up, and they need to do something in that city that’s going to help them generate tax dollars as far as… Get new businesses in there and just so they can even pay the public service people as far as the police department and the other services that they need to take care of, you know? But other than that, you know, I mean I lived —

RUSH: How far is Flushing, Michigan, from Flint?

CALLER: Flushing is probably about, oh, five miles, eight miles outside of the city. I’ve lived in that area all my life.

RUSH: So you are in Flint frequently?

CALLER: Oh, yes. Well, I’m an over-the-road truck driver so not as much as I once was. I mean, I’m gone for a month at a time but even when I’m home —

RUSH: See?

CALLER: — I don’t like going into the city.

RUSH: Look at what just happened. I said, ‘Oh, you’re in Flint frequently.’ ‘No, no, no, no, no, no!’ You didn’t want to be identified as being in Flint very often, even though you’re only eight miles away.

CALLER: Okay.

RUSH: Give the excuse you’re an over-the-road truck driver. So you live in a suburban of Flint?

CALLER: Right.

RUSH: Yeah. And you agree…? The story is that 40% of the place needs to be bulldozed.

CALLER: Well, for the areas that I’m thinking, Rush, that could be 40%. There’s part of the city — and not to be disrespectful to the people that live in that part of the city, but there’s areas that just, you know, make the city look in pretty bad disarray.

RUSH: Who’s the mayor? What political party is the mayor in Flint?

CALLER: Well, it’s a Democratic, and there was a guy named Don Williams (sic) and he recently just got out.

RUSH: And the city council is dominated by which political party?

CALLER: Democrat.

RUSH: Democrat. And is state government in Michigan dominated by which political party?

CALLER: Democrat.

RUSH: Yeah, and for a long, long, long, long, long, long time, right?

CALLER: Yes, except for the good years of Engler.

RUSH: Yeah, there was an interlude in there. You’re absolutely right. Well, you lived there and say 40% of it needs to be bulldozed so that people will move back.

CALLER: Well, I don’t think they’re going to move back. I think there are nice suburbs of Flint where people are much happier and they can be there with their families. Probably some of the schools are better than what’s in the city of Flint.

RUSH: Look, if you’re going to bulldoze 40% of Flint and bulldozing 40% of Flint will not cause people to return and have it grow, why bulldoze it all? If everybody prefers to live in cities close to it?

CALLER: Well, there’s people that probably enjoy living in the city. They’ve been there for years and I’m sure they would want to see the city improve. They probably wouldn’t be against this plan. I mean, no one wants to see a bunch of people be forced out of their homes because of this, you know. But if it can eventually improve things to where people want to move there then by all means. You know?

RUSH: Now, wait. This is a new twist because the story I read said that 40% of the town needs to be bulldozed because 40% of the homes and other structures are unoccupied. Now you’re talking about bulldozing homes that are occupied as well.

CALLER: Well, the areas that you’re speaking of… Okay, now, I mentioned the northern part of the city, okay? There’s areas where I grew up in when I was a child that now are much worse. Like I took my children into an area where I grew up when I was a baby just a couple months ago, and I want to tell you what, Rush. I was scared. I drove down that street…

RUSH: Okay, fine. Now, we can say, ‘Okay, it needs to be bulldozed,’ but nobody is going to go back there precisely because no changes will be made that led to the fact that 40% of the town is a ghost town or what have you. What bothers me about this is that this is a country that has always prided itself on growth, economic growth and economic opportunity. Now, I understand. We hear of hurricanes wiping out towns. There was a Kansas town wiped out by a tornado, and they rebuilt it. It’s amazing to listen to Democrats say, ‘We don’t have any interest in rebuilding Flint. We want to bulldoze it,’ and then the guy come up with the idea. Obama says, ‘Hey, apply your theory to 50 of our cities.’

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RUSH: All right, folks, I have thought about it, I’ve given this considerable thought. I’ve given this more thought in the last ten minutes than most people think about anything in their life. And I am ready to change my mind on bulldozing Flint. I say go for it. Let’s just bulldoze it. Well, what made me think of this was my answer to the guy’s question on bankruptcy. By the way, the first purpose of the TARP bailout was to buy up all the toxic assets, and then it was to get credit going. We haven’t done either with the money. But now I’m sort of looking at bulldozing these cities as bankruptcy. They should have been let go long ago. They were down the tubes long ago. We tried propping them up with urban renewal and it didn’t work. We were hoodwinked into being called names if we just let these cities go. So we kept pumping money in there, we kept pumping welfare, food stamps, all these things ’cause we loved ’em and we cared for them, but the proof that a government can’t revive anything is Flint, Michigan.

What really sent Flint south was when GM shut down there and moved or left. Well, I better check. I better check if there’s still GM operations in Flint. If there are, they’ve really been downsized. But whatever, if GM’s not involved in it, whatever is the problem in Flint, Michigan, what have we done to try to save it? Every government program under the sun, and what’s happened? We got boarded-up houses that now the leaders of the town say need to be bulldozed, forty percent of the town. Now, this is probably what needs to happen to a lot of California, folks, and other places where we’re going in debt propping up failure. It is what it is. We can’t keep pumping all this federal and state money in because we have proven that pumping federal and state money doesn’t spur growth in cities or anything else. GM, I mean, if $50 billion in bailout or 20 can’t save ’em, let it go. And then if Flint rises out of its own ashes, fine and dandy. There’s another added benefit. Every damn one of these cities is a blue city, I’ll guaran-damn-tee you, meaning mostly Democrats, so you bulldoze it and you disburse a bunch of Obama voters, it has great political future ramifications for the Republicans. Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee.

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RUSH: Dave in Pittsburgh, I’m glad you waited. You’re next on the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Good afternoon, Rush.

RUSH: Hi.

CALLER: Greetings from the City of Champions. I called regarding bulldozing 40% of Flint, Michigan, and I have a thought about it. Maybe this is what President Obama really meant by ‘shovel-ready jobs’ from the Porkulus package.

RUSH: (laughing) Shovel-ready jobs, bulldozing Flint and other American cities. (laughing) You think it’s a terrible idea to bulldoze these places?

CALLER: Oh, it’s an awful idea. I guess it would be the easiest way to tear our American cities down that have been being mishandled by liberals for years, and obviously they won’t have a chance to prosper under Obama.

RUSH: The point here (there is a point) is when you let liberals decide what’s going to be bulldozed, then anything is up for grabs. Now, right now what’s being talked about in Flint, according to the report that I saw — and I think it was the Los Angeles Times yesterday. What’s being talked about being bulldozed in Flint is unoccupied houses, boarded-up houses. And, you know, general neighborhoods where nobody is. Now, if there is talk about bulldozing neighborhoods where people live that’s a different thing. But this guy that’s in charge of this is a big lib and he’s in city council, and the Obama people have asked him, ‘You know, hey, apply your theory here to 50 of our cities.’ Once the libs start talking about bulldozing things, that’s a good point, excellent point.