Doug Henwood wrote:
Check out the stuff in Bartels about how the white working class
supports Republican economic policies. This may surprise people who say
that their electoral problem has been a lack of economic populism.
But that is probably no longer true. In fact Frank's analysis is fairly
dated as well. With the devastation being visited on places like
lily-white Elkhart, Indiana, blue collars worker will increasingly look
for New Deal type solutions even though they will not be coming from Obama.
Tough Times in Troubled Towns
America's Municipal Meltdowns
By Nick Turse
When Barack Obama traveled to Elkhart, Indiana, to push his $800 billion
economic recovery package two weeks ago, he made the former "RV capital
of the world" a poster-child for the current economic crisis. Over the
last year, as the British paper The Independent reported, "Practically
the entire [recreational vehicle] industry has disappeared," leaving
thousands of RV workers in Elkhart and the surrounding area out of work.
As Daily Show host Jon Stewart summed the situation up: "Imagine your
main industry combines the slowdown of the auto market with the plunging
values in the housing sector." Unfortunately, the pain in Elkhart is no
joke, and it only grew worse recently when local manufacturers Keystone
RV Co. and Jayco Inc. announced more than 500 additional job cuts.
In a speech at Elkhart's town hall, Obama caught the town's plight
dramatically: "[This] area has lost jobs faster than anywhere else in
the United States of America, with an unemployment rate of over 15
percent when it was 4.7 percent just last year… We're talking about
people who have lost their livelihood and don't know what will take its
place… That's what those numbers and statistics mean. That is the true
measure of this economic crisis."
Elkhart, as it happens, is but one of countless towns and small cities
across the U.S. that have proven particularly vulnerable to tough times
simply because their economies relied on just a few major employers, or
a single industry, or even a single company that has gone under or cut
back drastically. Places like Elkhart are feeling the pain in ways most
of the country isn't -- yet; and even worse, from the out-of-work to
local officials, no one knows how to stop the bleeding.
Take Dalton, Georgia, and its 33,000 residents. As the self-proclaimed
"Carpet Capital of the World," it wasn't exactly well positioned when
the foreclosure crisis hit and the construction industry ran off the
rails. In fact, with its carpets piling up underfoot rather than heading
out the factory doors, the housing crisis has all but wrecked Dalton
which, from the 1980s to last year, had never been at a loss for jobs.
Now, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, U.S. Bureau of Labor
statistics show the Dalton metro area ranking "second among 369 American
cities in its rate of job loss, jumping from 6.2 percent to 11.2 percent
last year."
Across the country, individuals, foreclosed or suddenly jobless, have
been melting down like the economy and so bubbling up into the news in
the form of extreme acts ranging from suicide and murder to arson and
robbery. The same might now be said for news about whole troubled
communities.
A few months ago, stories of economically-troubled towns were strictly
local fare. Now, more and more of them are rising to regional or
national attention. Take Lehigh Acres, Florida, a community that's home
to large numbers of carpenters and pest exterminators who rode the
housing boom until it went bust in a county that, between June 2007 and
June 2008, lost a higher percentage of jobs (8.8%) than any other in the
nation. A New York Times article on the "once-middle-class exurb"
detailed the devastation:
"[H]omes are selling at 80 percent off their peak prices. Only two
years after there were more jobs than people to work them, fast-food
restaurants are laying people off or closing. Crime is up, school
enrollment is down, and one in four residents received food stamps in
December, nearly a fourfold increase since 2006."
Similarly, the Wall Street Journal profiled the plight of Rockford,
Illinois, an industrial city about 90 miles northwest of Chicago with
12.5% unemployment, the highest in the state, a shortfall of $7.6
million in the city's budget, streets filled with "gaping potholes" and
a "city center… rife with vacant storefronts."
Most of America's desperate towns and small cities, however, still
remain relatively anonymous. Even with their pain quotient on the rise,
they lack New York Times profiles or presidential photo ops to draw
attention to their woes. But it's important to note that Elkhart,
Dalton, and Lehigh Acres aren't American oddities. Other towns and
cities in surprising numbers are following fast down the path they have
already cleared. Such places are now hurt or possibly, in some cases,
even dying -- with little in the way of hope or help in sight. Under the
circumstances, they should no longer be treated as individual stories,
locally or nationally. They represent a pattern, and putting even a
small number of their stories together casts a light on a disturbing
countrywide trend that may determine the tomorrows of a remarkable
number of Americans.
full:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175037/nick_turse_closing_down_main_street
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