I think I will skip it like I did my own:
"Illinois county fairs wither as state lessens financial aid" by Elizabeth Campbell | Bloomberg News September 21, 2014
DECATUR, Ill. — The 158-year-old Macon County Fair’s demise in the county about 180 miles south of Chicago shows the vulnerability of a pastoral institution, and with state budgets under pressure and industrial agriculture helping to drain the countryside’s population, urban legislators face tough choices.
In this golden age of 1% recovery?
Related: Found My Guy For Governor
Where is the preaching tent anyway?
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Paul Lasley, an Iowa State University sociologist who has studied rural communities for 33 years, said declining rural populations have created more urbanized states, taking a toll on the tradition....
State fairs have traditionally had more support, said Lasley. They can afford to draw in big entertainment such as Aretha Franklin at the Wisconsin State Fair and rapper Pitbull at the New York State Fair this year.
At the county level, however, Illinois’s struggles are replicated across the nation, said Dominic Vivona Jr., a controller at Amusements of America, a carnival operator based in Florence, S.C., that serves 30 to 40 fairs a year....
Illinois fairs have been dealt a double blow because of deteriorating state finances. Lawmakers passed a budget May 31 with a $2 billion hole. Illinois has $100 billion of unpaid benefit obligations, and its credit rating is A3 from Moody’s Investors Service, four levels above junk. It is the lowest- rated state....
Where did all the money go, and where is it still going?
Why should anyone believe Moody's when they rated garbaged bundles of mortgage securities AAA? That's why the pensions are broke. Wall Street stole it all and made in vanish in the greatest $windle in world history.
The fair’s main income source is bingo, four nights a week on the grounds. Borrowing to make repairs on the 50-acre facility and ‘‘overspending in other areas’’ led to its debt, said Teresa Wilson, 41, who now is board treasurer.
Now, the fair’s ceiling is caving in — literally. A massive water leak in the office the day before the June 10 start of the festival collapsed it, Wilson said.
The fest started this year in a shrunken version with $1-a-ride carnival. Rain and storms didn’t help. Barns usually full of animal entries were vacant.
Because the fair still owed 2013 exhibitors about $36,680 in prizes, the state did not provide funds, Wilson said. There were no livestock competitions or harness races, and the marquee tractor pull, which awards more than $20,000 in prizes, was replaced by go-kart racing.
Taken as a whole, fairs and expositions are doing well, said Marla Calico, chief operating officer of the Springfield, Mo.-based International Association of Fairs and Expositions.
About two-thirds or more of the IAFE’s member fairs reported steady or higher attendance the last couple of years, she said.
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If I were an elite member of Bo$ton and were sitting down on a Sunday morning to read the Globe, this is the kind of story I would most enjoy and one that would give me a good laugh.
