Now I know just a smidgen of what Moshe the Beadle felt like. No one believed him after he escaped the death trains and came back to warn his village of the Nazi concentration camps. To my knowledge, none of us here in Wisconsin have been marched off to economic gas chambers as yet, but the "Great Recession" is still young. Stand by.
I was reflecting about when I graduated from undergraduate in 2003 at almost 50 years old with 35 years of work experience. A Madison grocery story offered me a job cutting lettuce while I stood in inch-deep water in the deli. I was sniffing around in Madison because in 2003, the Janesville job market was already falling apart. And, if your over 50, you ain't getting past the Human Resource Nazis. No job for you old sucker. Canary in the coal mine back in 2003? I don't care much nowadays. It's all lettuce under the bridge now.
I am tiring of continually firing off warnings to the banal at large. Each time the state drops to another layer of economic agony, the faithful re-adapt and move on. Soon we will all be living in cardboard boxes. I am here people. I am not a statistic. I live this economic hell...and I can connect a sentence or two. Most people just move away. None, and I mean none, go before the County Boards or City Councils and say, "See you later you fools, you ruined my life, I am moving away."
Down the road from us, Brodhead School District voters turned down a three and a half million dollar referendum. Both state Republicans and Democrats are mad at the beleaguered voting peeps for not coughing up cash for the schools and being willing to live in poverty while the "Great Recession" works itself out.
Spanish trains are a'com'n. 'Cause the good Gov says so. Wonder why we can't build our own trains? We were once a great Wisconsin industrial nation-state. Ain't it on our damn state flag? And, why is Southern Wisconsin so inviting to the nation of Spain with its near 20-percent unemployment? Moving jobs to America must have gone over real well over there. Perhaps their tough labor laws have driven said train company to a Southern Wisconsin worker population now conditioned to accept non-benefit, part-time, meritless, seven-day-per-week, lousy jobs. Naa. It is just my imagination going a muck. Anyway, Rock County probably lost out on the train factory bid because most of its hapless working schleps have moved away in desperation to escape Janesville and Beloit's double digit unemployment reality.
Democrats are mad because the union matrix is destroyed down here on the great prairie on the threshold of glaciated Wisconsin. Republicans are mad because the "new norm" Globalism is not flying well with the aforementioned besieged Neo-Second World Wisconsin workers. Oh my.
In moments of budgetary angst, I think of those who have nurtured this economic-hell-culture for the better part of 35 years with decisions that have manifested into the misery we languish in now. I would like to see any perennial economic bureaucrats, and their Republican and Democrat handlers, die of pancreatic cancer. Just kidding. Wait...no I am not. I hear it is a horrible death. Actually, probably too good a death for the perps of this wrecked economy. But I digress into vindictiveness. Well then, come visit my 21-year-old Chevy car I live in with my cat and convince me of my wrong-headedness. Me thinks that ain't a'go'n't'happ'n.
What keeps Rock County afloat? Oh, could it be: soon-to-end unemployment benefits; Aid-to-Families-with-Dependent-Children; floundering factory pensions; bulging college campuses with unemployed workers using student loans for income; and, IOUs from Social Security. It's got to be something, 'cause sure as heck, no one is working down here. And where will all those excess students work when they graduate? Never mind.
And then there is the "Perpetual Optimists." Quoted in the Janesville Gazette, City of Janesville economic development director Vic Grassman says, "We're going to be OK...It's not 'if', it's 'when.' We will be successful."
In a Gazette sister article to the above, Rock County economic development manager James Otterstein (one of the most Orwellian double-speak obfuscating bureaucrats in the region) says, "What was demand-driven two years ago might not be demand-driven as we move forward."
Alleged business man-slash writer, and for sure idiot, John Torinus occasionally apologizes for the current Great Recession, carping in innuendo that it is our fault we can't adjust to Third World wages as workers. He seems to imply if we can just hold on a few more years, all will be fine. I'll grab some more plastic sheeting and duct tape for my lean-to.
In Torinus' latest masterpiece in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he says, "Seven percent of the world's public stock value was in emerging markets a decade ago, and now it is 24%...reports show that massive infusion of capital [is] lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty [in Third World markets]. That means rapidly growing market demand there. Long term, it will be good for American businesses if they are in those markets as players."
What the fuck? Let's celebrate - pass the MD 20/20 and the crackers. They are in my back seat somewhere. What fuck'n Wisconsin products are people going to put in their huts in Iraq, Viet Nam, and Laos? I have fuck'n been there recently. They don't even have electricity in most villages. In the mean time I will keep living in my Chevy with my three-legged cat until Omar and Nguyen can effort carpet for their huts made in Wisconsin.
"Duuh!" I respond to them all. Great. I hope the cardboard box houses down here in Rock County do not get rained on in the mean time until the fantasy world they live in somehow becomes reality. Perhaps these economic-hell apologists will just keep on a'click'n those ol' economic Ruby polyester slippers 'til the bitter end. They will no doubt still be mumbling obfuscated economic crap from their death beds as old fools in the economic pundit nursing home.
As for me, I ain't a'doing anymore pieces like this here one. Each time I do, talking insect-head pundits like Torinus come out of the woodwork to explain it is all in my imagination. And, any notion of being economically boiled like a frog is just actually the kerosene furnace in my Chevy house acting up again.
The spiral of economic reality silence is stunning.
Good luck Southern Wisconsin. You are damn sure going to need it now. As for me, well...the Dadio train (no pun intended - oh, yeah it was intended) has left the literary train station.
Wisconsin Military Service Person Special Mention of the Week
(each week Cooldadiomedia mentions a Wisconsin service person killed in Iraq or Afghanistan)
Army Specialist John O. Tollefson, 22, was killed by a bomb while on patrol in Ashraf, Iraq, on July 27, 2005. He was from the Fox Valley city of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. John was a 2001 graduate of Goodrich High School in Fond du Lac. Specialist Tollefson was with the 411th Military Police Company, 720th Military Police Battalion, 89th Military Police Brigade out of Fort Hood, Texas. At the time of his death, John was survived by his parents Walter Tollefson of Fond du Lac and Mary Steinman of Rosendale, and two sisters, Katie and Jessica. Specialist John Tollefson was the 42nd Wisconsin service member killed in Iraq since the spring of 2003.
As of this blog entry's posting date:
95,593 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
9,411 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,383 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
1008 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
317 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
656 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
31,706 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
5,131 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
101 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
17 Wisconsin soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
140 journalists (several nationalities) have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
21 journalists (various nationalities) have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
Wisconsin military service person special mention of the week, military casualty, and journalist casualty information sources: Committee to Protect Journalists; cnn.com; Milwaukee Journal Sentinel; washingtonpost.com; thehighground.org; Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs; iraqbodycount.org; and, icasualties.org.
