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2008-04-06 Home Front: Politix
Change Makes a Call on Levittown
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Posted by Fred 2008-04-06 00:00|| || Front Page|| [2 views ]  Top

#1 "When I turned 18, my mother instructed me on everything she believed I needed to know about voting. “Just pull the big lever,” she said, by which she meant the Democratic lever that automatically cast votes for the party’s entire ticket."

This was the entire point of the article. Everything else was cover for pushing this concept.

Remember, conservatives are all evil.

/sarcasm off
Posted by no mo uro 2008-04-06 07:39||   2008-04-06 07:39|| Front Page Top

#2 "Just pull the big lever,” Mom said

"Pull my finger" the Democrats said
Posted by Frank G">Frank G  2008-04-06 07:59||   2008-04-06 07:59|| Front Page Top

#3 ...and, if I am elected, I will require that all buggy whips, horseshoes, corsets and shoe button hooks used in America are made in America...
Posted by M. Murcek">M. Murcek  2008-04-06 08:12||   2008-04-06 08:12|| Front Page Top

#4 What Mucek said.

Income security, uber alles.
Posted by no mo uro 2008-04-06 09:28||   2008-04-06 09:28|| Front Page Top

#5 But . . but . . . but . . . I thought suburbs like Leavittown were soul-destroying monuments to corporate AmeriKKKa's bland, bourgeoise, Fifties-vintage conformity.
Posted by Mike 2008-04-06 11:54||   2008-04-06 11:54|| Front Page Top

#6 “Just pull the big lever”

Which has been the mantra for most of the Northeast states for over a century.
Posted by Pappy 2008-04-06 12:29||   2008-04-06 12:29|| Front Page Top

#7 Which has been the mantra for most of the Northeast states for over a century.

And just look at all they have to show for doing it...
Posted by M. Murcek">M. Murcek  2008-04-06 12:31||   2008-04-06 12:31|| Front Page Top

#8 Another steaming pile of crap from the NYT.

My credentials: I have lived in the immediate vicinity of Levittown, PA for the last 27 years.

This article takes the slant of a grumpy old unemployed steel plant worker. Everything is negative and in need of change. But it is largely so slanted that doesn't even approximate the truth. Here are some examples:

"The mill" and numerous other unionized smokestack industries cited have been essentially gone for decades. They're old news. Most of the people who worked there in the 50's and 60's are way past retirement age now. Most younger people have moved on from "muscular, good-paying work" to more-cerebral good-paying work. Levittown is neither a ghost town or a poverty zone.

The "Levittown Shop-a-Rama, with its department stores and soda fountains" is also old news. It was eclipsed three decades ago by the very-modern and much larger Oxford Valley Mall which is better located to draw customers from both Levittown and many surrounding areas. I was just there. It's thriving.

"The dream is vanishing" -- because the majority of Levittown homes have been remodeled from Bill Levitt's little boxes into full-sized less-affordable homes. If "the dream" is a nasty hot job at the steel mill and a little box home then they're right -- those days are gone. And good riddance. The next generation is aspiring to better jobs and homes in adjacent upscale communities like Yardley and Lower Makefield that were mostly farm land when "the mill" had its day.

"The town’s main intersection, Five Points, is dotted with check-cashing agencies and pawnshops."
The "town" is a sprawling set of communities including over ten square miles. It does not have a "main intersection" any more that the U.S. has a main intersection. Cherry-picking the Five Points intersection is like judging the U.S. by only observing a crack house in Chicago.

This article is so slanted I surprised I didn't have to turn my monitor on end to read it.
Posted by Darrell 2008-04-06 15:25||   2008-04-06 15:25|| Front Page Top

#9 Levittown was American mass production brought to the housing industry, what Ford was to making the automobile affordable for the unwashed masses. Together they, with the help of the post WWII GI Bill homeownership, brought suburbanization and the ability of the common man to establishment his family and himself beyond a four room apartment ghetto in the post-agricultural urban society. The self appointed betters critics come off like landed aristocracy who've seen their bound peasants depart for the new world and free land out from under their subservience to dictate their daily lives.
Posted by Procopius2k 2008-04-06 15:29||   2008-04-06 15:29|| Front Page Top

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