Friday, January 13, 2012

Scott Pelley

I found another video about my hometown. It was a follow up to the '60 Minutes' feature by Scott Pelley back in 2010. It was right before the Iowa caucuses earlier this month. It said very little has changed since the feature over a year ago. Sad how a once-proud town is now a shell of its former self.
   Maybe this is evident by what the asking price is for the properties in the 'must see' Yahoo videos, which is what prompted me to see if there was any more. The office complex is for sale for a dollar, and the guesthouse is also for sale for a discount, just over a half million but likely valued at way more as well. This is no joke apparently, an ad in the Wall Street Journal listed the 6 buildings for this amount. But the current owner, a phone company who bought it from Maytag and Whirlpool, no longer uses it due to consolidation and claims it is costing them over a million to keep it. This likely means the taxes are still for a much higher assessed value. One commenter asked why the heir doesn't buy it, since he owns Anchor Brewing in San Francisco. But I checked and he sold the brewery in 2010. The one for the office complex has had way more views than the guesthouse, as it was on the front page next to a video about the band Van Halen. As of this morning, it had over 50,000 views, by the end of the day over 70,000. I think the other video had been viewed about a tenth as much.
   I also decided to find another '60 Minutes' feature Scott Pelley did about the economy, it was from Wilmington, Ohio, and the layoffs after DHL, the package delivery company, closed a facility in what was a former Air Force base. A colleague at work said he didn't see the Newton feature, but saw the Wilmington feature. Most notable was somebody who made hunting knives.

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