Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Yes, but how are street-corner apple vendor numbers tracking?

Brian J. Noggle reports on an historic happening in St. Louis County, MO: The assessed value of property in the county has dropped for two years in a row for the first time since 1931-'32.

Meanwhile, SurvivalBlog linked to a story announcing that just across the river in East St. Louis, one of America's premier wretched hives of scum and villainy, they have just laid off 19 police officers, almost 31% of the department's total strength.

11 comments:

Brian J. said...

Two more stories, related more to the second than the first, to brighten your day:

On July 4, revelers in Alton, IL (just north of ESL), targeted fireworks at emergency responders:
http://www.wgntv.com/news/sns-ap-il--alton-fireworksattack,0,7504750.story

On July 18, street thugs robbed a uniformed police officer in Chicago:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/chicago-where-criminals-no-longer-fear-the-police/?singlepage=true

America is demoting itself to the third world as fast as possible.

Divemedic said...

Here in central Florida, my home was just assessed at 15% less than last year's assessed value. This is bad news for the tax collector in reduced revenue, bad news for me, in that I am watching my home lose value. Here is my home's assessed value:
2010 $102,000
2009 $120,000
2008 $155,000
2007 $239,000

The economy is bad, and continuing to get worse. The empire has fallen.

jimbob86 said...

Omaha is in the beginning stages of just such a death spiral:

Failing schools and a bloated, overpowerful city govenrnment cause conservative minded, responsible families to flee to suburbs, leaving a strong bloc of professional voters in the city. These voters, in an alliance with the public service unions (Teachers, Firefighters, Police) vote in people who will give them the most stuff out of the public treasury.... to make ends meet, the city raises property and sales taxes. More property owners leave, reducing property values and unemployment. Crime rises, as does the "Need" for public services (professional voters expect something for their votes!). The Dems in power throw more money at the problems, including fat contracts for police, fire, and education (the public service unions want something for their votes and contributions, too!) Now those fat pension plans are going bankrupt, and the Mayor's plan is to raise taxes ..... they already created a "Learning Community" super-school board to take money from the suburban schools and shovel it into the Omaha Public Shools dollar bill bonfire (they already spend roughly TWICE per student than the suburban schools and have abysmal graduation rates - a whopping 58% at South High!).... higher taxes, more regulation, more crime, crappy schools, spiraling debt, ...... no wonder anyone with 3 brain cells and/or two dimes of taxable income is fleeing .... and from what happened w/ the "Learning Community" crapola, the blight is spreading.

Don said...

It'll be interesting to see whether laying off a third of the police force has much effect in ESTL. My impression has been that it's been calming down a little there in recent years, but it's not a nice place, and I don't know that more or fewer police are having a great impact.

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

It's no more a death spiral than the Carter years were a death spiral. At least it doesn't HAVE to be a death spiral.

theirritablearchitect said...

Read that bit myself yesterday too.

The part that got me was that there was only going to be ONE cop running the midnight shift after the cuts.

If I were that officer, I'd grow some extra eyes.

Matt G said...

You think a community like that can field street-corner apple vendors? That's why you need some police-- to keep enough order for people to do business. You think anyone wants to put a start-up business in E. St. Louie now?

I know nothing of their situation there, but I note that, in the article, they said that "revenue from the Casino Queen was $900,000 below budget expectations last year." Why do I suspect that E. St. Louis leaned just a little too heavily on the income from that establishment, and ones like it? A town small enough to only have 62 officers will feel that kind of hit, and how.

Sure S.L. County has noticed property values go down; they're living next to a cesspool, and the drainage situation just got worse.

Stuart the Viking said...

HA! Good ole East St Louis. The place where I saw my first dead body (other than at a funeral) just laying there on the sidewalk like he was asleep. We were small town teenagers and thought it would be cool to "cruise" around the city like we did back home. We didn't realize he was dead until we stopped, rolled down the window, and asked for directions (we were lost). Needless to say, we were pretty freaked out by it so we just drove around until we found the river and followed it until we found the bridge by the arch and high-tailed it home. We considered stopping and calling the police along the way, but we wouldn't have any way of telling them where the body was. My guess is "it's somewhere over in that direction a few miles officer" wouldn't have been helpful.

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KA9VSZ said...

We went thru East St. Louie some years back by accident while looking for a gas station. The (nervous-looking) policeman we queried replied "In this neighborhood? There aren't any; they're all out of business after being robbed repeatedly". Fun times...

Bubblehead Les. said...

Back in the Winter of '80-81, when I was being transfered from the Pacific Fleet to my new post at a school in Va. Beach, I asked some knowledgeable people on what would be the best route to drive. Got several different suggestions, but every person I talked to said "What ever way you go, DO NOT drive through East St.Louis unless you stay on the Interstate. DO NOT stop for Gas, food or the night near that place." When I asked why, one buddy said "You can't carry enough guns to make it through there". That was almost 30 years ago.

Unknown said...

The best part about driving to East Saint Louis is stopping to unholster, unload and lock the guns in the trunk before crossing the bridge...

That there is some weapons-grade cognitive dissonance.