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| It will end in Atlanta |
But the cost of this is increasing. Already metro Atlanta has the worst traffic in America, with your average suburban white commuter spending 60 hours a year stuck in traffic. Because white people must travel great distances to live in peaceful suburbs free from the pernicious influence of the Black Undertow, only 29 percent of metro Atlanta residents get to and from work in less than 20 minutes.
Wasted productivity and time spent away from family and friends, all because your stuck in a car as it's not safe to raise a family in a city with too many Black people. Plus, your property value will be embarrassingly low if you do.
As OD points out, the time is coming where a real conversation about race is near. It can start in Atlanta, where the greatest ecological threat to America (Black people) has forced white people - merely trying to raise a family in a decent suburb - to spend an average of $5,280 annually on gas:
Metro Atlanta commuters might have a new reason to consider carpooling or alternative forms of transportation.
A new survey from AAA finds that the average cost of driving climbed 1.9 percent in the past year, to nearly 60 cents a mile.
In metro Atlanta, where the Clean Air Campaign estimates an average daily commute of 35 miles, that's $21 a day and $5,250 annually if you work 250 days in the year.
"The average driving cost for 2012 is up due to relatively large increases in fuel and tire costs, and more moderate increases in other areas," said John Nielsen, AAA director of automotive engineering and repair. "Those increases were offset by a decrease in depreciation resulting in an overall increase of 1.9 percent."
The cost of fuel rose 14.8 percent for the year, to 14.2 cents a mile for sedan drivers, AAA found. Tire costs, meanwhile, rose 4.2 percent to 1 cent per mile. Maintenance costs rose 0.7 percent while insurance costs rose 3.4 percent. The cost of depreciation fell 4.9 percent.
The news is worse for minivan and SUV drivers, who pay 63 cents and 75.7 cents a mile, respectively. Small sedan drivers pay only 45 cents a mile, AAA found.When these white people return to their homes well Outside the Perimeter (OTP) - after battling horrific traffic from similar white drones who are merely punching a timecard to pay for greater benefits and entitlements for America's growing non-white population - they should be warned the value is dropping to levels not seen since the Olympics were held in the city:
Home prices fell much more sharply in metro Atlanta than in other U.S. cities in February, dragging the region’s average to 1996 levels, according to a widely watched survey.
Metro Atlanta prices dropped for the seventh straight month in the Case-Shiller Home Price Indices report, which tracks 20 metro areas. The average annual decline for all cities in February was 3.5 percent. For metro Atlanta it was 17.3 percent -- double the decline in Las Vegas, the next worst city.
“Atlanta continued its downward spiral, posting its (steepest) annual rate of decline in the 20-year history of the index . . .,” said David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Indices.
The survey gives a big picture view, while real estate experts note that price trends depend heavily on specific location. They also say dropping inventory and the state’s falling unemployment rate are positive signs.
“I know in the first quarter we established a new bottom, but the numbers toward the end were more stable,” said Steve Palm of SmartNumbers, a Marietta real estate data firm. “New construction is up 20 percent. I think April is going to be the truth-telling month in our market.”
The Case-Shiller report uses repeat sales to arrive at an index figure based on a value of 100 for January 2000. Metro Atlanta’s index peaked at just over 136 in mid-2007, dropped when the housing bubble burst and then stabilized just above 100. But Atlanta’s index dropped below 100 last September and has slid further each month since.
In February it reached the lowest level since October 1996.
Only one city in the Case-Shiller report -- Detroit -- had a lower index than Atlanta in February, although nine of the 20 posted new post-housing bubble lows, Blitzer said.
Experts say the biggest culprit in Atlanta’s recent slide is the effect of foreclosures and other low-priced distress sales. Georgia has been a top-five state for foreclosures and about half of all home sales in 2011 were foreclosed properties.
Georgia’s higher than average state unemployment rate left consumers feeling less confident about buying, and lending has been tightened. Some homeowners who want to move are not putting homes on the market to avoid taking a low price.
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| Brittany Watts was targeted by a Black man because of her race; reason number one why white flight happens |
One needs to only look at Clayton County to understand America in 2012. When plans were being made for MARTA (Atlanta's incredibly inept and poorly run light-rail system, which is basically a jobs program for otherwise unemployable Black people) to expand into Clayton County nearly two scores ago, the county was almost 95 percent white. The city leaders didn't want MARTA coming into their county, for the understandable fear that it would allow low-income Black residents to move into the city:
Fifty-six-year-old Carolyn McMillan considers herself lucky. To get to work, she can drive to the Home Depot parking lot on Jonesboro road in Clayton County Georgia, then take a bus to her clerical job in downtown Atlanta.
“I’m just barely making it,” McMillan says. “Because I have to put gas in the car. I’m just barely making it.” Not too long ago, McMillan could take a local bus before switching to the Atlanta system, or MARTA. But Clayton County isn’t part of MARTA, and last year, Clayton eliminated all bus service. Today it stretches south of Atlanta in an endless string of fried chicken joints, tattoo parlors, check-cashing stores and used car lots.
In the 1970s, when Clayton County voted not to become a part of MARTA, it was then a mostly white, rural place. Now, as more affluent whites flock to downtown Atlanta, Clayton County is mostly black.
“Transportation in Atlanta has always been mired in race and racism,” says Robert Bullard, director of the Environmental Justice Center at Clark Atlanta University. When Atlanta began building its commuter rail system in the 1970s, white communities like Clayton County wanted no part of it.
“Public Transit was equated with black people and poor people and crime and poverty. And when the Metropolitan Atlanta Transportation Authority was created MARTA, it was a running joke that MARTA” – he spells it out – M-A-R-T-A – “stood for moving Africans rapidly through Atlanta.”MARTA never came to Clayton County, though a steady trickle of Black people into the county eventually forced white people to make an important decision: stay put and watch your property value plummet, or leave for another suburb?
“It’s transportation apartheid,” he says.
Now? Clayton County is the foreclosure capital of the nation. Racially, it is has completely flipped:
The last quarter-century has seen significant change in the racial composition of the county's population. In 1980, Clayton county's population was 150,357 — 91% white and 9% minority, while in 2006 the population was approximately 271,240 — 20% white and 80% minority. Many of these minority groups lived in Clayton County's housing projects that were built around the time these minority groups moved to Clayton County; since then many of the housing projects have been redeveloped due to high crime.Whereas the almost exclusively white residents of Clayton County rejected MARTA in 1971, the almost exclusively Black residents of Clayton County in 2011 approved of a non-binding referendum to join MARTA. The problem? The primarily Black residents have property values that reflect the environment of Clayton County, one that Black people have a tendency to create regardless of the state. There's no tax base left in Clayton County, for Black people have no purchasing power that the federal government doesn't give them (25 percent of Black people were on food stamps in 2009 there). Because home prices are so low (a reflection of the horrendous quality of life Black people create in terms of schools, livability, and through the local economy via the business community), tax revenue collected for local government is dropping, which means cutting services:
Last year, they saw little relief in their tax bills and valuations even though property values were plunging. But this year, the numbers are dramatically different, leaving some wondering whether their valuations are too low, while others are sure theirs are still too high.
The county’s typical appraised value for 2010 was $90,589, according to the AJC’s analysis, a decline of 25 percent from last year. The typical sale price, meanwhile, was $80,656.
The reductions in 2010 tax bills cut one way for county taxpayers and the other way for county officials: Lower tax bills mean more money for property owners and less money for local government.
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| As Clayton County went from all-white to nearly all-Black, reliance on federal aid skyrocketed as a percentage of personal income |
Remember that Clayton County was almost 100 percent white in 1970; 90 percent white in 1980; 65 percent white in 1990; 40 percent white in 2000; less than 20 percent now. Let's see how the change from white to Black impacted the county went it came to reliance on the government as the overall share of the Clayton County residents income:
1969: 3.1 %
1979: 6.41%
1989: 7.2 %
1999: 10.83%
2009: 23.2%
America will no longer be a global power if we continue to see this type of change take place. Atlanta is not an aberration either; the same type of Climate Change is happening in the suburbs of Kansas City, Memphis, Birmingham, Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Houston, Dallas, Detroit... well, you get the picture.
Clayton County was almost 100 percent white in 1969; the reliance on government benefits as a percentage of the share of income for the counties citizens was incredible low. Now, with Clayton County an overwhelmingly Black county, the share of income derived from YOUR tax dollars is almost 1/4 of the citizens income.
Atlanta will be the city where white Americans finally stopped being so busy - probably because they were stuck in traffic on 400 - and remembered what type of country they had when "hate" simply meant the freedom to speak openly and honestly about Black people.
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