Race is another page in the poverty playbook.
In 2008 the redevelopment of old mill space was moving ahead well in spite of the down economy. The developer had solid financing and the presales of both commercial and residential space in the project was ahead of goals.
Then the race politics hit. Here was a project bringing jobs and tax paying residents to the city at the start of a global recession and the people who stood to lose funding if people in the city started getting real jobs viciously attacked the developer with outright lies.
They sent a letter to his investors informing them of his racial marketing plan to bring only white people into the city to sway future elections and other outlandish accusations. The investors pulled out leaving the project dead.
Sadly the investors never looked at the facts in the case before pulling out. Over 75 percent of the committed businesses were minority owned. A majority of them had started in the city and fled in the 1990s because of the high crime rates. With a new police chief in 2001 the crime rate has dropped since and they wanted to come back to the city where it all started for them. They wanted to pay back the city with jobs.
Over 90 percent of the residential commitments were the actual minority owners of those companies coming back into the city they had fled.
These were honest, hard working people who had their business plans trashed by the politics of poverty.
Sweet. Negative votes for calling out the parasites.
