Life in "Progress" City

From the ten fastest dying cities where you can't find a conservative with a pack of cadaver dogs and a team of bounty hunters........

Here's an idea for saving Rust Belt cities: Tell bloggers and radio stations to stop calling your town a basket case.

That was one suggestion from representatives of eight of the 10 cities labeled last year as America's fastest dying. They met at the Dayton Convention Center last weekend to swap ideas about how to halt the long skid that's turned cities like Detroit, Cleveland and Buffalo, N.Y., into shorthand for dystopia.

The city representatives lunched on $6 sloppy Joes and commiserated through Power Point strategy sessions: Lure back former residents, entice entrepreneurs and artists, convert blighted pockets into parkland.

What emerged was a sense of desperation over the difficulty of rebounding from both real problems -- declining populations, dwindling tax bases -- and perceived woes.

Perceived woes?

The first part of fixing a problem is recognizing that you have a problem! The second part is to look at what successful cities are doing and emulate them. Successful cities? You know. The ones run by republicans.

You can call me Gordodamus when I say ten years from now these same people will be hanging around eating sloppy joes wondering why people perceive their cities as shitholes.

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