Die alte Sau talks about limousine liberalism

[franksolich]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1402281

Oh my.

proud2BlibKansan  (1000+ posts)        Sat Jul-02-11 09:29 AM
Original message

Segregation in the land of limousine liberalism

LARCHMONT, N.Y. -- Westchester County is far from the streets of Birmingham and the lunch counters of Greensboro, but the super-affluent suburban swath just north of New York City may be the premier civil rights battleground of 2011. Westchester is defying a landmark federal court order to desegregate housing in its whitest and wealthiest towns, prompting civil rights activists to return to court. The federal government has allowed wealthy municipalities to keep the poor and black out for decades, and municipal leaders nationwide are watching closely to see if the Obama administration forces the county to comply.

Tony Westchester locales like Scarsdale and Bedford have long been bastions of limousine liberalism, home to Ralph Lauren, Glenn Close, Martha Stewart, Bill and Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and many others. Super-rich "entrepreneurs" like Donald Trump live here too, and it's a haven for Wall Street bankers -- from Jay Gould in the late 19th century to hedge fund pioneer Michael Steinhardt today.

Meanwhile, working-class black and Latino residents remain overwhelmingly concentrated in a handful of municipalities, most of which hug the Bronx border.

This is the case even though Westchester's leaders signed a landmark consent decree in 2009, settling a lawsuit that accused the county of lying to the federal government about fair housing in its applications for federal funds. Officials agreed to build 750 units of affordable housing in the county's whitest neighborhoods and to market the properties to potential black and Latino buyers. The court order also requires the county to analyze impediments to fair housing and to design an implementation plan to overcome them -- with a stipulation that the county use all of its housing programs to support integration.

Continue reading . . . http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/index.html?...

patrice  (1000+ posts)        Sat Jul-02-11 09:58 AM
Response to Original message
 
1. Too bad the law suppports only "use (of) all of its housing programs" and not also transportation.

izquierdista (1000+ posts)        Sat Jul-02-11 10:28 AM
Response to Original message
 
2. Poor and black?

I don't think the second part matters as much. As Chris Rock describes his mostly white neighborhood in New Jersey, his neighbors didn't fight to keep him and Eddie Murphy out of the neighborhood. Now if they had been poor, the question would never have come up in the first place, for the price would have kept them out.

Historic NY  (1000+ posts)      Sat Jul-02-11 11:54 AM
Response to Reply #2
 
3. I'm exactly poor but I couldn't afford to live in Westchester or NY City for .... that matter " the rents too damn high". My 3 br ranch house 30 miles upstate would be worth. I did some checking in some tony areas it would be worth 669k...  Its like Long Island, parts of Conn. & the Palisades - Edgewater NJ. Then again most of the people living there pay people to do stuff for them.

Yeah.

One wonders how diverse Pedro Picasso's neighborhood is.

[BlueStateSaint]

Hmmm . . .

Historic NY  (1000+ posts)      Sat Jul-02-11 11:54 AM
Response to Reply #2
 
3. I'm exactly poor but I couldn't afford to live in Westchester or NY City for .... that matter " the rents too damn high". My 3 br ranch house 30 miles upstate would be worth. I did some checking in some tony areas it would be worth 669k...  Its like Long Island, parts of Conn. & the Palisades - Edgewater NJ. Then again most of the people living there pay people to do stuff for them.

And what would the political persuasion of those areas be, O Pedro?

[GOBUCKS]

One wonders how diverse Pedro Picasso's neighborhood is.

You're talking about Mrs. Picasso's neighborhood, where the only diversity is among the people spreading mulch during daylight hours.

If the Picasso family were living on Pedro's income, as the third-rated cartoon boy on a staff of three, the neighborhood would be exceedingly diverse, 24/7. In fact, it would be so diverse, so cosmopolitan and progressive, Pedro himself would be a minority.

[FreeBorn]

Seems like the likely subject of conversation one might hear over cheesecake and plum wine on the fantail of Kerry's tax free yacht, spoken in French of course as he and his wife always do while dining.