So what does this mean for Detroit? Well, if Trump wins the White House – and all credible signs show that this is highly unlikely – he might just nuke the city for giving him zero percent in this poll. After all, he is “a small-minded, little man who holds grudges,” according to what I’ve heard.
Poll data shows Clinton holds a significant advantage over Trump among African-American voters, and among Detroit voters. Trump leads Clinton in Macomb County and in northern Michigan, including the UP.
Trump’s 0 percent support in Detroit isn’t unprecedented. The Republican candidate polled 0 percent among African-American voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio over the summer, according to an NBC poll.
In the Detroit poll, there are important caveats to the data. While the poll surveyed 600 likely voters across Michigan — a large enough sample size to get meaningful data — just 39 people were surveyed in the city of Detroit. The smaller sample size in the city increases the margin of error, and there’s almost certainly people living in Detroit who will vote for Trump in November. The survey found 7.7 percent of voters were “undecided”
The current data, however, suggests Clinton has an overwhelming advantage in the city. She polled at 89.7 percent support in Detroit.
Along with undecideds, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson’s 2.6 percent support made up the rest of the support in the city. Like Trump, Green Party candidate Jill Stein received 0 percent support in Detroit.
When James Robertson’s 1988 Honda Accord broke down a decade ago, the Detroit man didn’t just go out and buy a new one.
Instead, Robertson, who makes $10.55 an hour – not enough to buy, maintain and insure a car – decided he was going to walk to and from work, a journey that stretches a marathon-length 21 miles.
He also takes a bus partway to his job destination: Schain Mold & Engineering.
Last Sunday, the Detroit Free Press reported that the 56-year-old has been making this long trek for years, no matter the weather.
“I don’t think what I do is big deal,” Robertson tells PEOPLE. “I do what I have to do to get to work in the morning. It’s just a part of my life.”
What it takes, he says, is determination and faith.
“My parents taught me hard work ethic growing up in Detroit,” he says. “It’s all about keeping your schedule on track and focusing your mind on what matters.”
After the newspaper article on Robertson was published, Evan Leedy, 19, a student at Wayne State University, became inspired.
“I was blown away,” Leedy tells PEOPLE. “He has been doing this for so long and doesn’t complain. I thought of myself and how most people could never do what he does every single day.”
As Leedy was looking through the readers’ comments on the story, he saw people asking how they could donate money to help Robertson get a car.
“I then decided to create a GoFundMe page where people could donate,” says Leedy. “I set the goal for $5,000, but I really didn’t think many people would see it or donate.”
Before he knew it, thousands of dollars were coming in. One day later, more 5,300 people donated a total in excess of $149,000.
“We now have car dealerships and car companies saying they will donate a car,” Leedy says. “We can now use this money to truly change James’ life.”
Robertson currently doesn’t live in a great neighborhood, and even with a car, he lives far from work.
“We can get him a nice place to live,” Leedy says. “A place he deserves.”
On Monday night, Leedy and Robertson met for the first time.
“It was so amazing to finally meet James,” Leedy said. “I am really just so happy people trusted that the money was going to him so we can help turn his life around. He deserves it.”
The first word that comes to Robertson’s mind when he thinks of Leedy and the thousands that have donated: Shocked.
“I am just so stunned,” he says. “Who would have thought that just a simple walk would have turned into this? I would have told you that you were crazy a few days ago.”
Robertson is looking forward to putting his walking days behind him.
“I am taking this as a sign that it’s time I start driving again,” he said. “And getting more than two hours of sleep a night.”
Robertson leaves for work at 8 a.m. to get to work in time for his 2 p.m. shift as an injection molder.
When he finishes work at 10 p.m, he starts his trek home.
His colleagues notice that although he never complains about having to walk, they can see it’s taking a toll on his body.
“He comes in here looking real tired – his legs, his knees,” his coworker Janet Vallardo, 59, of Auburn Hills, told the Free Press.
Robertson doesn’t just make this walk for his paycheck. He also cares about the people he has worked with for so many years.
“We’re like a family,” Robertson, who also gets fed dinner every weeknight by the plant manager’s wife, tells the newspaper. “I look at her food, I always say, ‘Excellent. No, not excellent. Phenomenal.'”
Despite his long and strenuous commute, Robertson is never late for work.
“I set our attendance standard by this man,” Todd Wilson, plant manager at Schain Mold & Engineering, told the newspaper. “I say, ‘If this man can get here, walking all those miles through snow and rain ….’ Well, I’ll tell you, I have people in Pontiac, 10 minutes away, and they say they can’t get here – Bull!”
A Detroit police homicide sergeant has been suspended after department officials found him wearing a murder victim’s expensive watch.
Sgt. Alex Vinson was the officer in charge of a case several months ago involving an unknown murder victim who was found wearing an expensive, German-made watch, Detroit Police Chief James Craig confirmed.
The watch was photographed and put into storage in the Homicide Section’s property room. The victim has not been identified, and the homicide case has gone cold.
This week, while Vinson was in Idaho for advanced police training, fellow homicide detectives decided to reopen the case.
The detectives wanted to take another look at the watch — but when they removed the victim’s belongings from the property room, the watch wasn’t the same one that was photographed at the start of the case. Instead, it was a cheaper model, Craig confirmed.
The detectives quickly informed police officials about the discrepancy, Craig said.
“We were made aware of this a few nights ago and immediately initiated an internal investigation,” Craig said. “We directed (Vinson) to return home.”
Craig added the FBI helped police recover the watch, which Vinson was wearing during the training session. Vinson returned to Michigan Wednesday, and was read his Miranda rights by Internal Affairs officers.
“The case in ongoing, and the sergeant has been suspended while we prepare a warrant for review by prosecutors,” Craig said.
One of the ideas from Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan during his campaign was to sell empty lots in the city for a small price to be used for the owner’s (legal) discretion. Looks like Duggan is keeping his promise, as such a program is coming to fruition.
Duggan tweeted last night that a pilot program to sell lots in the city for $100 is under way in Southwest Detroit. The lots are ones that likely are owned by the city, whether naturally empty or vacant by means of home demolition. They’re probably not huge lots; likely just enough for a home that used to be there.
A Detroit police officer who responded to a 911 call regarding domestic violence has been arrested and charged with sexual assault against the woman who made the call, according to MyFoxDetroit.
Officer Deon Nunlee, 40, was arraigned Friday on three counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct, one count of assault with intent to penetrate, and one count of misconduct while on duty.
On October 30, 2013, Nunlee and his partner were dispatched to the home of a woman who called 911 saying her boyfriend had assaulted her.
While Nunlee’s partner stayed with the boyfriend, the officer took the woman upstairs where the woman claims he sexually assaulted her, The woman later told investigators that Nunlee told her that he would be returning the next morning at 7 a.m.
After the officers left the house the woman told two friends about the incident. She then reported it to the police the next day at which time a rape exam was conducted.
Detroit Receiving Hospital, which examined the woman, forwarded the rape kit to the Michigan State Police Crime Lab.
According to police sources, Nunlee denied the woman’s claim, but he was arrested this week when a positive DNA test came back.
Nunlee, a Detroit police officer since 2008, has been on desk duty since Oct. 30, said Detroit Police Commander Johnny Thomas.
A Republican county official in Michigan is in hot water after making racial comments about Detroit, including the idea that the city should be turned into a detention center for “all the Indians.”
In a recent interview for a profile by The New Yorker titled “Drop Dead, Detroit!” Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson admitted, “Anytime I talk about Detroit, it will not be positive. Therefore, I’m called a Detroit basher. The truth hurts, you know? Tough sh*t.”
Patterson recalled telling his children to “get in and get out” if they needed to go to Detroit.
“And, before you go to Detroit, you get your gas out here. You do not, do not, under any circumstances, stop in Detroit at a gas station! That’s just a call for a carjacking,” he said.
Patterson also proposed a fix to Detroit’s financial problems: Turn the city into a reservation for Native Americans.
“I made a prediction a long time ago, and it’s come to pass. I said, ‘What we’re gonna do is turn Detroit into an Indian reservation, where we herd all the Indians into the city, build a fence around it, and then throw in the blankets and the corn.’”
After Detroit officials and activists reacted with outrage, Patterson’s office released a statement accusing The New Yorker of having an “agenda.”
“It is clear Paige Williams had an agenda when she interviewed County Executive Patterson,” the statement said. “She cast him in a false light in order to fit her preconceived and outdated notions about the region.”
Activists with Reverend Al Sharpton’s National Action Network had planned a news conference on Tuesday to call for Patterson to apologize.
National Action Network’s Michigan chapter president Rev. Charles Williams II said that the comments were “repulsive” because they were an insult to the city’s African-American population and “a direct slight to the American Indians who occupied the land before Detroit was Detroit, and Oakland County.”
In recent years, Patterson has also come under fire for comparing Michigan House Speaker Jase Bolger to Hitler and for suggesting that Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano kill himself.
About 24,000 retired Detroit public servants will soon receive letters notifying them that they are losing their health insurance on March 1, even as the city claims to be negotiating with retirees’ groups to strike a better deal on health care.
The bankrupt city’s emergency manager Kevyn Orr is sticking to the same proposal for drastic retiree health care cuts that he initially intended to implement this month, prompting a group that represents retired Detroit workers to threaten they will sue the city.
For the two-thirds of the retiree group who are old enough to be eligible for Medicare, the plan means shifting onto the government-run insurance program for seniors. But 8,000 younger retirees will have their insurance plans replaced with a monthly stipend check of just $125 to subsidize the cost of insurance plans they will have to find on their own.
When that plan was initially floated last fall, a pair of retired firefighters young enough to be stuck with stipend checks told ThinkProgress that the change would doom their recoveries from the serious injuries they sustained protecting the city. Retired librarian Gwendolyn Beasley, 67, said the shift to Medicare’s less-generous coverage would mean choosing between groceries and prescriptions
Renisha McBride, 19, was shot to death in a Dearborn Heights, Michigan neighborhood after seeking help following a car crash, reports The Detroit News.
At approximately 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning, McBride knocked on the door of a home, hoping for assistance. Instead, she got a gunshot wound to the head.
“He shot her in the head … for what? For knocking on his door,” said McBride’s maternal aunt, Bernita Spinks. “If he felt scared or threatened, he should have called 911.”
“You see a young black lady on your porch and you shoot?” asked Spinks. “He killed my niece and he needs to pay for it. He needs to be in jail.
“There was no windows broken. My niece didn’t bother anyone,” said Spinks. “She went looking for help and now she’s dead.”
The Dearborn Police Department have confirmed the shooting, but have not released the name of the suspect. They initially told McBride’s family that her body was “dumped,” but have now admitted that she died on the man’s porch, reports FOX 32.
The investigation is ongoing and findings will be forwarded to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office for review.
Read more here: http://hellobeautiful.com/2013/11/05/renisha-mcbride-shot-after-car-accident/
Let’s take a moment to remind the wonderful people of Michigan what Mitt Romney thinks of them and their auto industry. If it was left up to him, hundreds of thousands of jobs would have been eliminated, as Romney took the position that Detroit should “go bankrupt.”
Failing to acknowledge that his position on the auto bailout was wrong, Mittens is now spending heavily in the motor city, expressing how much he loves the height of the trees to anyone who will listen. And it seems his efforts are paying off as Michigan voters are taking another look at the tree hugger before Tuesday’s vote.
Enter AFSCME, one of the biggest unions in the nation. They created this video as a friendly reminder to the people of where Mittens stood when he was given a chance to weigh in on how to fix the auto problem.
Mitt Romney bet against America and American ingenuity when he suggested that Detroit and the auto industry should go bankrupt. Today, two years after President Obama believed in the auto industry and did what was necessary to keep the industry alive, General Motors posted their biggest profit in the company’s history of $7.6 billion.
Armed with this information, the DNC produced this video to remind all that if Romney had his way, GM would now be a faint memory.
America prides itself in the quality of automobiles it produces and Detroit – known as the motor city – is where that pride originates. But under the strain of the present recession, Detroit and America saw the automobile industry crumble, laying off thousands of people to stay in business and creating inferior products in the process.
The choice was simple – let Detroit go bankrupt, thus eliminating millions of jobs throughout the industry and watching other countries continue to pass us by in the quality and quantity of cars they produce, which by the way, was what Mitt Romney said should have happened when he wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times; or do whatever was reasonably necessary to save millions of jobs and save the industry, and bringing that pride back to America as first in the world for quality car production.
President Obama chose the second option and Detroit, the auto industry and America are seeing the rewards of his action. America once again produces the best automobiles in the world.
Everyone shares in this pride, except Republicans… and Mitt Romney. Today, Romney wrote another piece, reiterating his feeling that Detroit should have went bankrupt.
My view at the time — and I set it out plainly in an op-ed in the New York Times — was that “the American auto industry is vital to our national interest as an employer and as a hub for manufacturing.” Instead of a bailout, I favored “managed bankruptcy” as the way forward.
Managed bankruptcy may sound like a death knell. But in fact, it is a way for a troubled company to restructure itself rapidly, entering and leaving the courtroom sometimes in weeks or months instead of years, and then returning to profitable operation.
In the case of Chrysler and GM, that was precisely what the companies needed.
Paying respects to Detroit, and the comeback of the American Auto Industry.
It’s halftime in America. The teams – Democrats and Republicans – are in their respective locker rooms and like the Superbowl, one team will win, the other team will lose. And it’s all based on their decisions and the things they do to help or hurt America.
We use cookies to improve your experience on our site. By agreeing to this, we can analyze browsing behavior and unique IDs on this site. Declining or revoking consent may affect certain features.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
