Democratic Primaries
In reply to the discussion: Bernie Sanders uses gentrification in Greenville to make national political point again [View all]uawchild
(2,208 posts)Maybe he moved for similar reasons as Biden left Scranton, PA. It was nicer?
Let's see what the man whose going to win the Rust Belt back us for left behind in Scranton:
After World War II, coal lost favor to oil and natural gas as a heating fuel, largely because the latter types were more convenient to use. While some U.S. cities prospered in the post-war boom, the fortunes and population of Scranton (and the rest of Lackawanna and Luzerne counties) began to diminish. Coal production and rail traffic declined rapidly throughout the 1950s, causing a loss of jobs.
The Knox Mine Disaster of January 1959 virtually ended the mining industry in Northeastern Pennsylvania. The waters of the Susquehanna River flooded the mines.[14][15] The DL&W Railroad, nearly bankrupted by the drop in coal traffic and the effects of Hurricane Diane, merged in 1960 with the Erie Railroad. Demand for public transportation also declined as new highways were built by federal subsidies and people purchased automobiles. In 1952, the Laurel Line ceased passenger service. The Scranton Transit Company, whose trolleys had given the city its nickname, transferred all operations to buses as the 1954 holiday season approached; by 1968, it ceased all operations. The city was left without any public transportation system until the Lackawanna County government formed COLTS, which began operations in 1972 with 1940s-era GM busses from New Jersey.
Scranton had been the hub of its operations until the Erie Lackawanna merger, after which it no longer served in this capacity. This was another severe blow to the local labor market. The NYO&W Railroad, which depended heavily on its Scranton branch for freight traffic, was abandoned in 1957. Mine subsidence was a spreading problem in the city as pillar supports in abandoned mines began to fail; cave-ins sometimes consumed entire blocks of homes. The area was left scarred by abandoned coal mining structures, strip mines, and massive culm dumps, some of which caught fire and burned for many years until they were extinguished through government efforts. In 1970, the Secretary of Mines for Pennsylvania suggested that so many underground voids had been left by mining underneath Scranton that it would be "more economical" to abandon the city than make them safe.[16] In 1973, the last mine operations in Lackawanna County (which were in what is now McDade Park, and another on the Scranton/Dickson City line) were closed. During the 1960s and 1970s, the silk and other textile industries shrank as jobs were moved to the South or overseas.[citation needed]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scranton,_Pennsylvania#Post-World_War_II_(19461984)
Seriously, how can you complain about Sanders leaving a blighted Brooklyn when Biden left a blighted Scranton? Seems, well, inconsistent?
primary today, I would vote for: Undecided