11.03.11
Inequality USA: Abrams tanks, yes! Street lights, no!
General Dynamics Land Systems, makers of the M1 Abrams tank, in purple.
Highland Park, where they’re being forced to hock street lights, in red.
Two big parts of the American economy flourished during the last decade: financialization on Wall Street. And national security/arms manufacturing.
General Dynamics Land Systems, corporate HQ in Sterling Heights, Michigan, was one of the manufacturing companies that suffered not at all during the economic collapse. Armored fighting vehicle sales went through the roof due to the war on terror and the desire of toady nations in the Middle East to own American-made weapons.
As for the rest of Michigan, things haven’t been so good. We do recall the automotive industry needed saving.
And this blog covered it here in the Economic Treason series.
Today, from the wire, on repossession of the street lights in Highland Park:
As the sun dips below the rooftops each evening, parts of this Detroit enclave turn to pitch black, the only illumination coming from a few streetlights at the end of the block or from glowing yellow yard globes.
It wasn’t always this way. But when the debt-ridden community could no longer afford its monthly electric bill, elected officials not only turned off 1,000 streetlights. They had them ripped out — bulbs, poles and all. Now nightfall cloaks most neighborhoods in inky darkness.
“How can you darken any city?” asked Victoria Dowdell, standing in the halo of a light in her front yard. “I think that was a disgrace. She said the decision endangers everyone, especially people who have to walk around at night or catch the bus …
Highland Park’s decision is one of the nation’s most extreme austerity measures, even among the scores of communities that can no longer afford to provide basic services.
Other towns have postponed roadwork, cut back on trash collection and closed libraries, for example. But to people left in the dark night after night, removing streetlights seems more drastic. And unlike many other cutbacks that can easily be reversed, this one appears to be permanent.
The decline, states the story, has been relentless, slow and long.
Once a hub of auto-manufacturing, the city took a severe hit when Chrysler moved its headquarters north to Oakland County in the Nineties.
After that, small businesses and the tax base began to collapse, a disaster that was never reversed.