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Rock County descends into economic hell - Libs and Cons gleefully play house
This entry was posted on 3/23/2010 2:16 AM and is filed under Crappy Economy Redux, Jobless Recovery, Under employed, Second World Wisconsin, Unemployment Hell, The Play House, Economic Hell, Gasoline Hell, Boiled frog economy.
An article posted in the Janesville Gazette on Thursday, March 18, 2010 points out the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development's latest bleak news. The Janesville-Beloit-Rock County "Metropolitan Statistical Area" unemployment rate leaped (my word) up to 12.8 percent. Beloit proper has the dubious honor of the State's highest unemployment at 18.3 percent. Good readers, these are "Great Depression" era numbers. Let's throw in the beleaguered under-employed, shall we? Wounder what that brings the numbers up to? Any one even want to go there?
I did not think so.
As national leaders and pundits pat themselves on the back, or carp about, the passage of a national health care scheme, we of course still sit in Rock County unemployment hell. Nothing has changed or probably will change in the foreseeable future just because a piece of paper regarding health care has been validated in Washington D.C. It is such a burden off our shoulders, as we live in our cars and some relative's basement, to now know that in four years from now we might be able to get in and see a physician's assistant, a nurse practitioner, or god forbid perhaps even a real doc. Liberals are "sort" of happy about heath care reform; conservatives are livid. Screw them both.
Back to reality.
And now the jackals that manipulate gas prices are back chomping at our heals. Automotive gas is looming in the three Buck per gallon range. How George Bush 43 esque. No wait, it is not akin to a mutt nipping at our heals; hell, they are gouging us in the face with a screwdriver. We could of course, use that gas money wasted, to buy "stuff" so vital to a consumer economy. Liberals will be happy the high prices discourage us rabble from wasting money on that gas causing us to drive less and not destroy the environment. We will also probably buy less useless pop culture products that end up in landfills - yippee for the old hippies. Besides ol' Gov Jim Doyle will have Spanish trains for us to ride in no time. Conservatives will no-doubt submit evidence we do not work hard enough to pay for the "modest" gas price increases. They have no problem with gas at 10 Bucks per gallon as it will cull out the economic weak amongst us.
Screw the current crop of neo-Luddite liberals. Screw the current crop of neo-fascist conservatives.
There is another bill out there somewhere to extend unemployment benefits yet again. What are we up to now, two years out for some people? Also, the U.S. Senate just passed H.R. 2847 which among other things gives perks to companies that hire the unemployed. Great...down here in Rock County, the few companies that are still left are using every trick in the book to scrape up cash and lately some seem to be favoring the perks they get for bringing in felons on parole and laid off GM workers. Health care reform, The Senate's Jobs Bill, any pending unemployment extensions, and current work-place schemes, on first blush as praised by "the media" at large, gives a guy like me pause to reflect; and, I bring up knee-jerk thoughts like, "Oh great, all this nanny-state crap favors scofflaws over surviving, beleaguered underemployed guys like me.
You see good readers, there is a cadre of suckers out here like me who have struggled on any job they can get. We work way underemployed. We drive 20 year old cars, live in gaggles, ride our bicycles to our non-benefit, part-time, meritless, seven-day-per-week, lousy jobs. Those few of us that still have one. Some of us even bought into the reeducation canard long before it was a "Great Recession" mantra. Before it was cool to go back to college as a seasoned unemployed worker (and use the loan for income), I retooled. What a canard! Conservatives are gleeful there is still a sucker like me that will work at shit jobs rather than give up. They are also most likely pleased I was shown where my station in this cast system really is, by my failure to glean advantage from a new graduate education and a technical education. And not to be out done by the cons, my liberal elected officials have long ago sent me discrimination forms to fill out to sue employers for not hiring or promoting me. "Some body needs to be sued, thank you for writing Mr. Bob, and have a nice day," said libs say in concert.
Screw the current crop of neo-fascist conservatives. Screw the current crop of neo-Luddite liberals.
Liberals are already singing that I am exactly the guy the new health care scheme will help. Great idiot liberals, so soon I can drive my 21 year old Chevy house I live in with my cat to go get a colonoscopy. Conservatives warn me the new health care scheme leaves me on the precipice of a socialist nanny-state. Excuse me idiot conservatives, but America has been a socialist nanny-state for decades, and much of the legislation enabling it has been with your blessings.
Rock County. This place I grew up, left to serve in the Army, moved away to work, came back to care for family, now have chosen for my final home. The place my parents and grand parents are burred. This Rock County will not recover for a decade, if ever. It takes years of boiled frog policies to ship jobs to China and destroy a job market; it takes a decade to build a new business to replace the destroyed. Those that say otherwise have never started a business. Canaries in the economic coal mine wander around down here in an economic daze. No one goes before the hallowed governmental bodies to say, "I am ruined, I am out of here, you morons." The leaders down here are in the land of Oz anyway. While their economy crumbles, they argue about building sidewalks, and chickens in people's back yards.
Take heed Madison, the reality of this hell is at your doorstep. Just peak over the county line into Rock County; the neo-fascist conservatives and the neo-Luddite liberals are basking in the shimmer of the economic flames and still playing house as election season nears. While at the same time, women and guys like me are burned to death in that same economic carnage.
I fear I am just the tip of the economic iceberg with my own angst. I have learned in my long life, that by the time I have noticed something, millions of others have long since passed the same Rubicon. Here is the caveat. The system lost me politically during Viet Nam; then again during the misery recession of the late 70s and early 80s. Now you've lost me for good. There is no amount of verbally obfuscated animal excrement that will ever bring me back into believing in the enormous ponzi scheme we all know and love as..."the American Dream." Let's not even talk about the current young generation living in this economic hell that will be jaded now for life.
Take heed law makers and leaders. While you gleefully fondle each other in your Madison and Washington play houses, and play two-party paradigm politics with besieged citizens' lives, we in Rock County are all on an economic death march to a "new norm" that is very...very disturbing - if not outright dangerous.
"Can't see it," you say as you drive through Rock County on the Interstate. Try stopping in and pealing back the economic onion skin a bit.
Rock County is your template of what is to come. Ignore it at your own peril.
Wisconsin Military Service Person Special Mention of the Week
(each week Cooldadiomedia mentions a Wisconsin service person killed in Iraq or Afghanistan)
This week's Wisconsin military service person to remember is Marine Staff Sergeant Chad J. Simon, 32 of Monona. He died on August 4, 2005 while under hospice care in Madison, Wisconsin. His death was caused from wounds he received nine months earlier in an explosion during combat in Babil Province, Iraq, on November 8, 2004. Staff Sergeant Simon was with the Madison-based Company G, 2nd Battalion, 24th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, Marine Forces Reserve. Three other Marines from the Madison-based unit - Lance Corporal Shane K. O'Donnell, 24, of De Forest; Lance Corporal Branden Ramey, 22, of Belvidere, Ill.; and, Corporal Robert Warns II, of Waukesha - died in the same attack. While in Iraq, the unit was stationed in Babil province, 30 miles south of Baghdad. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel mentioned Chad enlisted in the reserves a few months before he graduated from Madison's La Follette High School in 1990. Staff Sergeant Simon had earned the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal three times; the Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal; and, for his November, 2004 wounds, the Purple Heart Medal. Simon's unit was called to duty in June 2004 and sent to Iraq in September 2004. The Journal Sentinel went on to say in civilian life, Simon had a painting business and was known to be a perfectionist at his trade. At the time of his death, Simon was survived by his wife, Regina; 6-year-old son, Dylan; parents, Jerry Simon of Cuba City and Carol Parham of Bradenton, Florida.; and, a sister, Stacy Simon of Bradenton, Florida. Staff Sergeant Chad Simon was the 44th Wisconsin soldier to die in Iraq since the spring of 2003.
As of this blog entry's posting date:
95,724 Iraqi civilians have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
9,415 Iraqi Security Forces have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
4,390 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
1016 Americans have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
317 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
657 Coalition soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
31,732 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Iraq since Spring, 2003.
5,264 U.S. troops have been wounded in action in Afghanistan since October, 2001.
102 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.
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