America Not so Beautiful; Just Gone & Lost Forever! Census: 1 in 4 U.S. Counties are dying-off at Alarming Rate & Financially Distressed Cities Have Fallen into State’s Oversight Controls:

America Not so Beautiful; Just Gone & Lost Forever! Census: 1 in 4 U.S. Counties are dying-off at Alarming Rate & Financially Distressed Cities Have Fallen into State’s Oversight Controls:

By Marc Chamot

American counties are dying at alarming rate says new Census. It’s happening now, just like third rate world countries, American rural areas are dying-off, while younger folks are flocking to big cities looking for work.

"In all, roughly 760 of the nation's 3,142 counties are fading away, stretching from industrial areas near Pittsburgh and Cleveland to the vineyards outside San Francisco to the rural areas of east Texas and the Great Plains. Once-booming housing areas, such as retirement communities in Florida, have not been immune.

Hit by an aging population and a poor economy, a near-record number of U.S. counties are experiencing more deaths than births in their communities, a phenomenon demographers call "natural decrease."

Years in the making, the problem is spreading amid a prolonged job slump and a push by Republicans in Congress to downsize government and federal spending.

“Johnson said common threads among the dying counties are older whites who are no longer having children and an exodus of young adults who find little promise in the region and seek jobs elsewhere.

There's no reason for you to come to Welch," says Shepard, wearing a Union 76 cap at a makeshift auto shop he still runs after six decades. "This is nothing but a damn ghost town in a welfare county."

No folks, unfortunately it's not that change we were looking for after all. This is systematic destructions of our nation, piece by piece, by those inept and incompetent politicians we've elected throughout the years, and they have left this beautiful country pretty destitute.

I thought we were going to see some action from both parties of U.S. congress and along with this president, on creating JOBS for unemployed Americans, mainly for unemployed rural Americans, whose counties are disappearing, becoming non-existent; apparently those politicians, are all sitting on their FAT duffs doing nothing about it. But, Viva Mejico! And long live China! Do you get my drift?

Globalization and outsourcing of jobs abroad has become such a disaster for this country, while we've been outsourcing JOBS abroad, we've become one BIG welfare state. After all, why then isn’t this president declaring this whole nation as big disaster zone? If we KEEP allowing Wall Street to dictate our LIVES and futures over their profit margins, we’re totally doomed as a nation.

U.S. politicians are being bought and sold daily, and we the people are the BIGGEST losers. 

More from source: Census estimates show 1 in 4 US counties are dying “Local businesses in Welch began to shutter after U.S. Steel departed McDowell County, which sits near Interstate 77, once referred to as the "Hillbilly Highway" because it promised a way to jobs in the South. Young adults who manage to attend college — the high-school dropout rate is 28 percent, compared with about 8 percent nationwide — can't wait to leave. For some reason, the fish in nearby Elkhorn Creek left too.

West Virginia was the first to experience natural decrease statewide over the last decade, with Maine, Pennsylvania and Vermont close to following suit, according to the latest census figures. As a nation, the U.S. population grew by just 9.7 percent since 2000, the lowest decennial rate since the Great Depression.

"Natural decrease is an important but not widely appreciated demographic phenomenon that is reshaping our communities in both rural and urban cores of large metro areas," said Kenneth Johnson, a sociology professor and demographer at the University of New Hampshire's Carsey Institute who analyzed the census numbers.”

And “across the nation, cities and states are trying myriad ways of righting their fiscal ships as the recession plods on. But locking the mayor out of City Hall is generally not one of them.

A number of local governments are so financially distressed that states have assumed an oversight role.

Several cities in Michigan have emergency financial managers appointed by the state, for example, and in New York, a state board seized control of Nassau County’s finances last month. But in those cases and others, local elected officials have retained some role.

“The circumstances that have led to the difficulties in Central Falls may actually be widespread,” said Christopher W. Hoene, director of research for the National League of Cities. “But not very many cities are in those dire straits.”

Read more; One More Job Lost in the Recession: The Mayor’s “These are trying times for the people of Central Falls, a city so close to fiscal collapse that the state seized control of City Hall last summer. 

Taxes have risen nearly 20 percent to help solve the immediate crisis, unions have agreed to givebacks and the city of 19,000 — all 1.29 square miles of it — seem tinged with defeat.

But to hear Mayor Charles D. Moreau tell it, his suffering may be worst of all.

Mr. Moreau, a Democrat serving his fourth term, has not set foot in City Hall since July 19, the day that a state-appointed receiver took control. The state police knocked on his door that morning, he said, demanded his city-owned car and cell phone and keys to City Hall and handed him a letter announcing that his salary of $71,736 was being cut to $26,000. His role was now advisory, he was informed.

“I was told they’d call if they needed me,” Mr. Moreau said recently in a rare interview. “They haven’t called since.”

On the Madison Wisconsin public employees and their unions’ frays, I saw photos with protestors carrying large signs. On those signs, they had “stop attacking American workers” and “stop attacking the middleclass.” I stopped to think a little bit about it, and just wait a minute! It all suddenly dawned on me, where were they when we were losing 15 million JOBS in the private sectors?

And Oh yeah, where were those posters and signs when we were losing our jobs left and right? Nowhere to be seen, that’s where, they didn’t give one IOTA for our jobs, nor for us. After reading the above stories, do they really think that we can keep up that free cash cow flowing forever in this economy? Me, don’t think so.