Stimulus is last chance for U.S. cities

[villager]

Stimulus is last chance for U.S. cities

By John Fetterman, Special to CNN

*For decades, Braddock, Pennsylvania, has been in decline as it lost jobs and people

*Mayor John Fetterman says the population shrank from 20,000 to fewer than 3,000

*He says stimulus plan has helped reverse the tide in the old steel town

*Fetterman: Government bails out Wall Street while allowing Main Street to suffer

Editor's note: John Fetterman, a Democrat, is mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania.

Braddock, Pennsylvania (CNN) -- In 2001, I came to Braddock, the poorest town in Western Pennsylvania, to serve the community's severely disenfranchised young people by starting an employment and GED program. Their lives were the embodiment of what happened to Braddock and this region: chaos through abandonment.

However, tough times and severe hardship are nothing new. It's been this way for decades.

Once one of the most important steel manufacturing centers in the world, Braddock -- what's left of it -- solemnly affirms one of the great economic maxims of our society: socialism for the rich, and capitalism for the poor.
Since the massive banking bailout of 2008, I have often wondered what Braddock would be today, if 35 years ago, the U.S. government also channeled hundreds of billions of dollars (and trillions in guarantees) to save the steel industry, the hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs it produced and the families it sustained.

Instead, places like Braddock were allowed to descend into decades of disorder, poverty and desertion. Braddock went from a prosperous community of 20,000 residents, to a shattered town of fewer than 3,000 today. Braddock looks every bit the deserted battlefield it truly is: 90 percent of our town's people, buildings, businesses, and homes are gone and what remains, bears witness to the torment.
In 2005, those same young people I was privileged to work for helped elect me mayor. Senseless homicides long lost their ability to shock, so I began to tattoo the dates of the killings on my arm as a living document of our collective loss.

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http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/26/fetterman.braddock.stimulus/index.html?hpt=C2