A little help with this right winged email saying porest cities have Dem Mayors

[Maraya1969]

(notice - you might throw up a little reading this)

I just checked out the wealthiest states. If anyone knows the Governor tell me please. I'd like to know what party leads the wealthiest states. I have to respond to this email. (the email is after the list of wealthiest states)

Rank State Median Income
1 New Hampshire $65,028
2 New Jersey $64,918
3 Connecticut $64,644
4 Maryland $63,828
5 Alaska $62,675
6 Virginia $61,126
7 Utah $60,396
8 Massachusetts $59,732
9 Hawaii $58,469
10 Washington $58,404



=========================================================

EMAIL

TEN POOREST CITIES

City, State, % of People Below the Poverty Level

1. Detroit , MI 32.5%

2. Buffalo , NY 29.9%

3. Cincinnati , OH 27.8%

4. Cleveland , OH 27.0%

5. Miami , FL 26.9%

5. St. Louis , MO 26.8%

7. El Paso , TX 26.4%

8. Milwaukee , WI 26.2%

9. Philadelphia , PA 25.1%

10. Newark , NJ 24.2%


What do the top ten cities

(over 250,000) with the highest

Poverty rate all have in common?

Detroit, MI (1st on the list) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1961.

Buffalo , NY (2nd) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1954.

Cincinnati , OH (3rd) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1984.

Cleveland , OH (4th) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1989.

Miami , FL (5th) has never had a Republican mayor.

St. Louis , MO (6th) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1949.

El Paso , TX (7th) has never had a Republican mayor.

Milwaukee , WI (8th) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1908.

Philadelphia , PA (9th) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1952.

Newark , NJ (10th) hasn't elected a Republican mayor since 1907.

It is the poor who habitually elect Democrats
Yet they are still POOR!

"You cannot help the poor
By destroying the rich.

You cannot strengthen the weak
By weakening the strong.

[RandomThoughts]

1. Some comments there

"You cannot help the poor
By destroying the rich.

Agreed by the time the help of hardship to the rich would help them, it would also remove their ability to send the beer and travel money, however destroying the rich would be for the help of the poor by helping the rich better understand, beer and travel money is not the first priority.


And strength can be used in many ways. So it requires a component of who should be strengthened and weakened. Some strong should have what makes them strong removed, and some weak should have strength added.

On a side note, I am due beer and travel money, not more strength, but it seems going to have to go through some people to correct that.



One more thing, when an unstoppable force hits an unmovable object, it passes through the object, mathematically speaking.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Los Angeles has a Dem mayor, and it's not a poor city.

I'm not sure what else to say, sorry.

:shrug:

[Maraya1969]

3. Got this

Nonsense.
http://forums.about.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?nav=messages&webtag=ab-urbanlegends&tid=10312

Most mayors have very little power, and if you look at this a little differently, taking note of poverty by counties, most of the worst are in the South and lean toward Republicans.

For what it's worth, here are the 10 "poorest (by unemployment rates)" states and the party of the Governor:

1. Nevada (14.2%) Sandoval is the current governor, the state has had a Republican since 1999.
2. Michigan (13.2%) Rick Snyder, Republican (currently being recalled )
3. California (12.3%) Jerry Brown, the once and future governor, a sort of Democrat. To be fair, Schwarzenegger was the Republican governor until very recently.
4. Rhode Island (12.0%) Lincoln Chaffee, newly minted Independent, but they've had a Republican governor since 1995
5. Florida (11.4%) Technically Republican
6. Mississippi (11.0%) Haley Barbour, Republican, governor since 2004
7. South Carolina (10.7) Mark Sanford, R, since 2003, Nikki Haley, R, current
8. Oregon (10.5%) John Kitzhaber, D. The last Republican governor was in 1987
9. Ohio (10.5%)Newly elected John Kasich. R. Following Ted Strickland, D, who served a single term and was preceded by R's going back to 1991
10. Illinois (10.4%) Pat Quinn, D. Follows corrupt governor Blagojevich, D, who was preceded by Republicans going back to 1977.

Now there are also many different questions that need to be asked in the field of statistics, such as "Is X voting Y because they are poor, or is X poor because they are voting Y, or is there any actual influence from either on either". But of course the meanings of statistics don't make nice little political talking points, they do require you to think after all instead of copy & pasting.

EDIT: Forgot to add my source, the unemployment numbers come from the US Department of Labor June 2010 with a quick dose of Wikipedia to check the political affiliation of each states Governor

[pnwmom]

4. Washington state has a Dem Governor and 2 Dem Senators.

There is a simple reason why those poorer cities don't have Republican mayors -- they know Republican mayors don't care about poorer people. So they don't vote for them.

[Mojorabbit]

5. found this discussion

http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=36043
and it seems that they are wrong on Miami from the above link

[xmas74]

6. Milwaukee's mayor is one thing

but has everyone forgotten who the Milwaukee Co executive was that refused any kind of stimulus money? It's the same a-hole who is wrecking havoc in Madison as we speak.

Argue that point with them about Milwaukee and see how far they want to argue.

[demosincebirth]

7. San Francisco, is a very rich city and has a dem mayor. Has for a long time, too.

[hay rick]

8. A governor does not define a state.

New Jersey has 2 Democratic Senators. The House delegation consists of 7 Democrats and 6 Republicans. The governorship was held by Democrats from 2002 to 2010.

Of course cities with low median incomes and large minority populations elect Democrats. The Republicans are their enemies and they know it. There's a convenient little flip flop of cause and effect in the email.

[EFerrari]

9. The truth is that red states take federal welfare from blue states.

[JohnnyRingo]

10. I remember when those cities were all flush with cash under Republican leadership.

No I don't.

The email writer (it was from a 2008 Glenn Beck editorial) ignores that these cities were all equally poor when they were led by Republican mayors, even if it was a long time ago. Most people don't live within the city limits of Detroit or Cincinnati because they have too much civic pride to move to that $250k home in a trendy suburban neighborhood.

If it came from Beck, it's misleading. It's what he does for a living:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/20/beck.cities/index.html

This has been around for a while:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4604965

[jmowreader]

11. Okay, I'll play with this

Top 10 Poorest Cities in America:


1. Detroit, MI 32.5%; rust belt city whose economy was destroyed by Ronald Reagan's tax policies

2. Buffalo, NY 29.9%; rust belt city whose economy was destroyed by Ronald Reagan's tax policies

3. Cincinnati, OH 27.8%; rust belt city whose economy was destroyed by Ronald Reagan's tax policies

4. Cleveland, OH 27.0%; rust belt city whose economy was destroyed by Ronald Reagan's tax policies

5. Miami, FL 26.9%; there are two issues here: one is the very large number of people who live and work in Metro Dade County but who don't live in Miami itself--basically, "white flight" but a lot of the flyers weren't white. The other is, after Hurricane Andrew decimated Metro Dade County, many of the people who could afford to leave South Florida, did--leaving the poor people within the city limits. Besides, if you were going to live down there and you had a lot of money, wouldn't you rather live on Islamorada?

5. St. Louis, MO 26.8%; victim of "white flight" as the people with money moved to the suburbs

7. El Paso, TX 26.4%. Racial composition of El Paso: 75 percent Mexican, 5 percent non-Mexican Hispanic, 20 percent everything else. Median family income $35,432. Median household size is 3, and the federal poverty level for a family of 3 is $18,530. You figure it out.

8. Milwaukee, WI 26.2%; rust belt city whose economy was destroyed by Ronald Reagan's tax policies

9. Philadelphia, PA 25.1%. White flight; Philadelphia ALSO has the fourth-highest GDP of any city in America.

10. Newark, NJ 24.2%; white flight victim thanks to the 1967 riots. (That Newark mayors tend to end their terms of office in federal prison doesn't help either...)

[melm00se]

12. Buffalo's problem is not the mayor

it's a combination of things:

1) white flight from when Judge Sedita ordered the desegregation of just the Buffalo Public Schools instead of the entire county

2) a fiefdom mentality of politicians (regardless of political affiliation): they can't/won't take steps that will help if those actions diminish their power.

3) Balkanization of Erie County: there are tons of little towns, villages and cities within Erie County which creates an incredible amount inefficiencies and redundancies. For example: I lived in an apartment in an inner ring suburb and within 2 miles there were 5 police departments, 5 fire departments and 5 complete city/town/village government infrastructures. all of those COULD be consolidated down to 1 which would free up a ton of tax revenue to address the area's problems but that will never happen as the suburbs view Buffalo as a giant sinkhole/money pit that cannot be "saved".

(30 year resident until I got fed up with the situation and hit the door like so many of my age group did)

[blogslut]

13. Here's a very easy solution

Stop responding to forwarded/chain/lazy/why-are-you-sending-me-this-bullshit emails.

I don't care who they are, friend or relative - when someone I know begins to email this unimaginative crap instead of real communication I warn them quite plainly: "Send me one more of these copy/paste/forward things again and I will block your email address."

And I've done just just that. If someone I care about can't be bothered to send me their original thoughts then I won't be bothered by their spam.

[Warren Stupidity]

14. The only conclusion one can draw is that urban poor people tend to vote Democratic

Actually, I believe that urban voters strongly trend Democratic. You will find that most cities, rich or not so rich are run by Democratic administrations. What you have from the right is, as usual, a sack of lies, not even clever lies.