Fact Check

Frosty Wooldridge -- Detroit

Did Frosty Wooldridge pen an opinion piece about the decline of Detroit?

Published July 30, 2013

Claim:

Claim:   Frosty Wooldridge penned an opinion piece about the decline of Detroit.


CORRECTLY ATTRIBUTED


Example:   [Collected via e-mail, March 2011]


For 15 years, from the mid 1970s to 1990, I worked in Detroit, Michigan. I watched it descend into the abyss of crime, debauchery, gun play, drugs, school truancy, car-jacking, gangs and human depravity. I watched entire city blocks burned out. I watched graffiti explode on buildings, cars, trucks, buses and school yards. Trash everywhere! Detroiters walked through it, tossed more into it and ignored it.

Tens of thousands and then, hundreds of thousands today exist on federal welfare, free housing and food stamps! With Aid to Dependent Children, minority women birthed eight to 10 and in once case, one woman birthed 24 kids as reported by the Detroit Free Press — all on American taxpayer dollars. A new child meant a new car payment, new TV and whatever mom wanted. I saw Lyndon Baines Johnson’s "Great Society" flourish in Detroit. If you give money for doing nothing, you will get more hands out taking money for doing nothing.

Mayor Coleman Young, perhaps the most corrupt mayor in America, outside of Richard Daley in Chicago, rode Detroit down to its knees. He set the benchmark for cronyism, incompetence and arrogance. As a black man, he said, "I am the MFIC." The IC meant 'in charge'. You can figure out the rest. Detroit became a majority black city with 67 percent African-Americans.

[Remainder of article here.]


 

Origins:   As described on his own web site, Frosty Woolridge:



... possesses a unique view of the world, cultures and families that he obtained bicycling 100,000 miles around the globe and across six continents in the past 25 years. He has written hundreds of articles on a regular basis for 16 national and 2 international magazines. He has had hundreds of editorials published in top national newspapers including the Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post, the Albany Herald and Christian Science Monitor.

The opinion piece referenced above, about the political and economic decline of Detroit, was written and published by Mr. Woolridge back in October 2009 under the title "How Immigration and Multiculturalism Destroyed Detroit." It gained renewed currency on the Internet in mid-July 2013 after the city of Detroit filed for bankruptcy, becoming the largest U.S. city ever to take that step.

Last updated:   30 July 2013

David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.

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