i have my colleague kevin owen is here in half an hour's time but for now next it's motor city leaving a ghost town in its dust a special report now on the death of america's heartland. but. what. this person will be the chairman of the genesee county land bank and will have to be responsible for its operations as well so not just understanding the finance side of the work but also understanding communities and how neighborhoods are stable. i basically had three choices one was to continue what i'm doing now to stay in the political world. be a local policymaker and then maybe you know move on to some other office the other choice was to go work for the new obama administration and i was very interested in

that and spent a lot of time talking to the to the people in the white house in you know was almost ready to make that move but i really felt like this third option of running my own policy center was a better fit for me. i flush it down your under your my clothes and don't name me you know i don't you're arming your new year to do anything not to scare you i am but there is a reality that foreclosure could occur and i would expect to share because we're pretty certain we've got things nailed out but with a new incoming treasurer the treasurer sets the power right in my new work starting at the beginning of next year i'll be the president of a think tank of a policy center. to be a national organization to support the same kind of policies that i've developed here in michigan and particularly in flint with mr kildee they and i always being

so such a humanitarian very very socially conscious i would hope the person in the crowd in his footsteps would have similar views sometimes it comes right down to there we always save money for property taxes and you know it's i just have to. hang on to my faith but you know i'm a christian so i hang on to my faith of the world and for that i we're going to got through. december january. february and. then we most of those forty. transitions transformations.

in this. we have seen the rise in just the decline. of what is known as the big three. general motors ford and chrysler. we have celebrated great days and endured dark hours over approximately one hundred years of all the mobility history. however we have never seen as midnight and now. as we faced see this coming. as our national lawmakers on capitol hill contemplate whether or not they will extend much needed financial assistance to these crucial american automobile manufacturers. but those of you who think that this is not a spiritualist. as you to ponder the history. of our

manufacturing. first let's understand that it is god this is of a man doesn't want. then he should not eat. it is gone who ordain men to work by the sweat. and it is gone he demands that a man should be the head of his home. in leadership and example and improve these. acts like. all these oh yes police found the police about that. very well take a i'm going to take you are out. but ma'am i i i'm a big bear you were. our eyes went out for out we don't have any call for god let me go we can't let it go because combat like me. and

my mom and your family have been with you nothing they are going to get out of here . i've never seen these times before detroit. and southeast michigan of michigan as a whole which was once viewed probably in the top five. of making a person financially independent now it's almost gone full circle and now it is you know ranking in the top five of the us in the union.

we're fortunate because they built two new plants in lansing but they're still going. you know like when i hired in the one nine hundred seventy eight we had fourteen thousand members at local six fifty two right now we've got under a thousand in g.m. right now that are permanent people. thirteen thousand people that's how many may have actually jobs been lost. we're nor there were two able to go a week on the schedule too many cars. and they don't really need cars so it's a have a layoff weeks or years ago your plant known were. on . that flight or bailout body am i don't think the government should put any more

money there until general motors shows that they can be a viable company for the long term and that there is a reasonable chance that any loans that the government would make would be paid back to the taxpayers and a few years ago we would all look at it is a bailout you know you're looking at well why should the taxpayers pay that while here here's a perspective we're all taxpayers you guys are paying taxes right now now they're saying while you guys make good money you know what happens when you make good money you pay more taxes it's better to pay more taxes but if you're making good money these are middle class people attach rate to main street. they're spending the money to make the world go round and there's a lot of things attached to you know just in the trickle effect that for every person automotive anymore right because you know these people come into town every day so they're frequent stores gas stations you pick things up. here attached manufacturing i think it was ninety nine people but united somewhere else belltown

and right people want to slam the g.m. in their hourly wages what they what people are work right that the town suffer because when there is trickle effect if you don't have the money on her on the tops business right they they offer so it affects their everybody friends or carkner termers electrician the nurse they're the one that suffer and because you're not well we're not we're not building today we're not people are not spending money today because they honestly it's why it suffer. as it emerges from bankruptcy the once mighty general motors corporation could become the smaller general motors company half its brands are being sold off or phased out leaving only chevy buick g.m.c. and cadillac and the new g.m. reportedly is considering changing its logo background from blue to green to emphasize its commitment to smaller more fuel efficient cars. i've seen them before

they went bankrupt and i've seen them after and honestly i don't see any change. i see a lot of marketing. and i see a lot of hype but i don't really see a whole lot of effort. in the twenty first century making a car that gets twenty mpg just isn't acceptable i've worked on projects with g.m. and they might say one thing to you in the beginning you know they'll say ok do your research up with an idea the bottom line is there i'm going to listen to it they don't consider ideas unless there's some hot sketch on the wall and i think that's just completely backwards of how a car company should operate they were so focused on just making one type of pickup truck changing the headlights you know for them changing the grille was a major evolution. for decades

while the americans had their head in the sand the rest of the world was being alert i guess what what's kept toyota honda and you know all these japanese companies. so far ahead of the u.s. is just their incredible quality became so far ahead of the american competition that when these vehicles came into the u.s. it was like wow look at this car it's reliable it's durable and you know it uses half the gas of the truck that i'm using now. and if you look at the american truck. you know for decades they're using the same basic chassis that was developed you know back in the sixty's or seventy's.

look at g.m. and i see. kind of the past. and that's what's hard for me about. thinking about working for something like that it's like why would i want to go into the past and for me i would want to work for the next g.m. you know a company that's rising from this ashes of of bankruptcy and basically makes g.m. irrelevant. so it's g.m. like. what if this stuff i don't know. and thinks of. and you want to go over to the i would i be happy going anywhere. at this point yeah. there's really no jobs being offered in the automotive design world so it's really hard to say like ok general motors comes to today and offers you

a job and you take it but for me i wouldn't i don't think i could morally or ethically take that position. they did talk about general motors being behind the times that he talked about flex fuel they put all kinds of money in that research you're talking about clean energy talk about. battery people don't want to you know it's easy when gas goes a four fifty a gallon they say well you guys build the gas goes there's no we build what people

want people want trucks they want s.u.v.s for the different things you're doing i'm not going to go go out there and how kind of one of these small cars are that trailer because everything always the car. it's a big s.u.v. and the gas mileage is so much but you want to be able to put half the soccer team in it and put your wife in it and not have to worry about it you know because you know you've bought the best county the piebald or on the farm or. here i hope they come back they're back here on the hill. i think they're both goals or whatever but if that they come up here how much you want is they have one intends on the news media spends it in oh i'm all yours and while they make too much money or how do you know we how do you do you know we do i mean i could pick

out ten or fifteen different occupations that make twice as much money as we make an hour that are doing a lot of us that we're doing these people are physically working doing things well look here this is something you're never going to see it's a white year you know you don't want to see this they're called piebald. this is exciting. for. general motors is if it's not relations you it might be your neighbor or somebody you knew so it's kind of a family run business you know myself i'm third generation my father was working there and you have

a lot of two three and four generation families that are there my son's name was rollin green when he got out of high school he always wanted to follow in the footsteps of working at general motors and zero eight he actually got hired as a entry level. since. he was laid off when the crunch started hit he was one of the first ones to go. i'm already in the sense that he might have to leave the state to get work and that's something we've never had to face is a family. i mean it's tough all they gather they got under more for gas prices went up about building gas guzzlers so everybody switched to you know going green you know you got to go green something energy efficient fuel efficient and so then at that point when i got laid off i started to look into the windmill industry for alternative energy because that started to take

are tough but what i've noticed is gas prices have come down and that's pretty much fell right off. for these gifts which we see from. my lifestyle is going to be on the wage that i'm able to make the things that i'm able to do and you know of actually i'd like to have a family and be able to make is to college and things like that hard to tell where we're going to end up and what's going to be a decent career i would like to say that i'd be working for general motors and that's where i would like to work. and. it's whatever grew up my that's how i've grown up that's the majority of my families were together more. like it's been the blood it's in the family you know it's it's a living. place

i love. i think the detroit will rebound i think it will rise again ah detroit is who is a very zillion people haha people came here with great expectations i believe that many people can look back over their lives and and really honestly say you know detroit was very good to me and i feel abhi obligation to be committed to help detroit to get back to where it needs to be.

now but i'm a little bit enjoy. this. walk away. from this. her. hand. here. it's a city that has so much character and so much potential. that you know i really felt like ok you know this city it has to change you know in four years the city's going

to be great but you know the longer event here and as what was the auto industry has now collapsed it's really only gotten worse. and you have look. since we started the land bank since i started this whole approach i've had people who like it and people who don't like us or reaction that i felt that i've heard more recently is a reaction to this idea of shrinking the city of intentionally trying to redesign

the city to make it a smaller and i think better place this is where. a lot of criticism was because they think that barack obama and i somehow sort of hatched a plan to demolish american cities so this one says every day the obama administration gets scarier and scarier first they take over the financial institutions then private industries like g.m. now big brother is coming to bulldoze your home. what i think is not a valid criticism is that we have to rebuild every neighborhood and we have to somehow recreate the flint of the past it's not going to happen it's not going to happen no matter what we do in shouldn't happen and so i reject that criticism that somehow by

acknowledging that we should be smaller that that sounds like defeat. in the u.s. we've had this. you know antiquated notion of our manifest destiny that will simply go west and get bigger in this has allowed us i think to make the mistakes of forgetting what's left behind. the notion that bigger is better is a fallacy a false promise it's not true it comes from the american west word expansion it's primarily it's this american obsession with growth and expansion. in the u.s.

most american cities have barely one hundred years of history in the difficulty is that in many cases flint detroit both being prime examples we've had one period of growth followed by one period of decline in we can't see far enough to realize that that's not the birth life and death of a city but it's the cycle. i think for a long time this notion in america that bigger was better was simply an undisputed fact for most people there was no reason to assume otherwise people didn't have. the long term vision to think that we could ever run out of space because we had so much of it people didn't have the vision to see that the smoke coming out of our

tailpipes could possibly do us harm and today we're paying for that but at the time it was simply just this deep love affair that we had with space and this whole notion of the american dream of having your own house with your yard in your own garage and you each have a car that's all great but is unnecessary. the fact that g.m. was so out of touch with the rest of the world i think that's directly connected to the fact that the united states was so out of touch with the rest of the world as a people were always wanting to be the best and in the twentieth century what we thought was the best was bigger and we were definitely the best at it in the twenty first century smarter it's going to be better if we want to be considered the best

anything that's going to take a major shift in our mindset. susan sued to lead to suit. only a good day going to be of the week. they bring . to eat.

everything to the one. to. the end. to the.

the police. told the job intrigue endless president of an private is supposed to job saw from

the twenty twelve presidential election. that will continue to work for russia. emotions running high as palestinians prayed for statehood at the un with styling of asians in new york but clashes at the border in the west bank. a finnish priest speaking out against a chechen terrorist website finds himself defrocked and described with his plight ignored by the mainstream media. and the greek default is inevitable and top officials know it feel the recession could go even deeper than first feared. welcome aides say pm sunday night here in moscow i'm kevin owen in this is our review of the main stories of the.