It is no secret to readers of this blog that I harbor an intense, burning hatred of Pete Buttigieg.
This whole administration is a fucking dumpster fire train wreck clown show of ineptitude, corruption, and virtue signaling.
This latest example is a travesty of Titanic proportion.
Biden administration announces first major step to fight America’s racist roads
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced a large grant that’ll be used to dismantle a highway built to destroy a Black community. And there’s more.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg confirmed to The Associated Press on Thursday that $104.6 million in federal funds coming from last year’s bipartisan infrastructure bill will go toward a plan to dismantle Interstate 375, a highway built to bisect Detroit’s Black Bottom neighborhood and its epicenter of Black business, Paradise Valley.
The funds are being allocated to Detroit as part of a $1.5 billion grant program called Infrastructure for Rebuilding America, or INFRA, for states to move critical projects forward.
“This stretch of I-375 cuts like a gash through the neighborhood, one of many examples I have seen in communities across the country where a piece of infrastructure has become a barrier,” Buttigieg told the AP about the Detroit highway.
“With these funds, we’re now partnering with the state and the community to transform it into a road that will connect rather than divide,” he added.
A Bloomberg report on neighborhoods destroyed by racist highway construction noted the impact I-375 had on once-bustling Black Bottom, noting that “few traces of the neighborhood remain aside from historical markers.”
A feature on the neighborhood published in Grist noted that “the destruction of the epicenters of Detroit’s Black life started with the condemnation of housing through the National Housing Act of 1949,” which trapped Black people in cramped, low-quality housing. And Grist said the problem continued “when the city received even more funds through the National Highway Act in 1956.”
The very first expenditure of the much touted Biden infrastructure bill is to spend $104 million to eliminate a one-mile long spur of interstate in a dead section of a dying city.
A city in which one of the major employers, Ford, just cut 3,000 jobs making gas powered cars, because the Biden Administration is going balls deep into electric cars with batteries from China.
Yeah.
I bet the working class people of Detroit could find better ways to spend $104 million, but that wouldn’t allow Buttigieg to be a White Knight and fight racist roads.
It’s legitimately hard to figure out a more useless way of spending that money.
The one thing I do know is that at some point we will find out that the contractor that gets the job or the investors that own the surrounding land, or both, are big Hunter Biden art dealers or donors to Buttigieg’s husband’s charity, or some other corrupt as fuck shit. I guarantee that.
People can be so free with other people’s money. Sigh.
I’ll only point out that th INFRA program requires the LOCAL AGENCY (whether it be MiDOT or the City of Detroit themselves) to plan for and request the INFRA grant from the Federal government. Buttiplugg only selects the projects from a list of applicants – and it’s not even him… he has a team of people do it, then he signs off and takes pictures.
Sure; but somebody still had to decide it was among the best of the received proposals, and recommend it for funding.
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Sometimes, if you don’t get any good proposals, it’s okay to not make an award. But I’d guess that wasn’t seen as an option in this case.
Yes, there was a time in this country when the Federal/State/Local government routed roads, railroads, pipelines, etc… directly through the poorest neighborhoods. It was not racist, it was a way to avoid lawfare, and obtain the property at the lowest cost. it kept the project on schedule.
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Then the laws changed, and things like Section 4(f) of the Transportation act (which required proof that a project could not be built anywhere except in a park, recreation area, or public use area) and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act required federal agencies to consider and avoid adverse impacting one group more than another.
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This entire fiasco is just another face to presentism. It is the belief that actions today can somehow make up for injustices of the past. It is the belief that somehow forcing people who were not born when the decision was made to spend money to undue that decision will somehow make it OK.
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The difference between this and tearing down statues evades me.
Let me tell you about Mayor Pete and roads. I live 30 mins from the south gateway region of South Bend. I used to work on the south side on Main Street near Ewing and later down by Chippewa. Growing up and into my post college years(up to 08) while I was working up there, Michigan street was one way north and Main(one block west) was one way south. It was this way for decades. It worked great, 3 lanes each direction with parking either side, and if you timed it just right you could drive almost 3 miles and not hit a red light. Then the golden boy arrived and started his smart streets program. Main and Michigan both became bidirectional. The lights were retimed, now I can’t figure out how to not hit every red. Bike lanes were added. Crime is up, homelessness is up, jobs are down. This is what they want to do to the whole country.