The odds do seem to be stacked against us as a working class people. Unemployment rates approaching The Republican Great Depression levels, hard working Americans losing their homes at appalling levels with no end in sight, a wayward Supreme Court handing corporations the equivalent of person hood with all of a citizens constitutional rights to use unlimited dollars to actually abrogate citizens rights, a government in partnership with a mega oil corporation to conceal and evade the financial responsibilities associated with what is most likely the most devastating ecological disaster of our time....do I go on?....I can but the point has been made. Lets add one more, the Republican meme that "you cut taxes and the tax revenues increase"; George Bush Sr. called this one "Voodoo policy" but it is being rammed down our throats by conservatives and the Democrats have become too timid to challenge this meme with any sense of force that strikes the ears of the American people. Democrats keep the hot potato in the air! The American people , even having not taken Economics 101, are smart enough to know that the government needs a reliable funding source. The pie in the sky Republican bullshit cannot be defended by anyone with a half a brain, oh but the morons try. You the American people are supposed to be stupid, you are called "sheeple" by most of the right wing bloggers; you are not stupid, you just have an affinity to not think in depth on political matters, it is complicated yes but despair now will have you twiddling your thumbs and telling the guy next to you twiddling his thumbs about the things you had, the life you had the plans you made...the past.
The future is about giving up or reversing this mess that we find ourselves surrounded in. "Surrounded in" is the accurate expression, as reality hits us in the face it will build with an intensity, a frequency that will familiarize one with the new meaning of daily life after thirty years of a hoax that led us to believe that there were underling fundamentals supporting our economy while a bubble grew and damn it, it has burst. Fundamental supports, what fundamental supports? I picture George Bush always saying "the fundamentals are strong", God I wish I could have been standing next to him once when he said that, with a Croquet ball. I have always envied Muntadhar al-Zaidi, A hero to me, Iraqis and I would hope most Americans, too bad he missed.
The following is an aptly titled article conveying just one of the new realities as we forge onward through the twenty first century.
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PUTTING IT IN REVERSE
By Bruce K. Gagnon
Part of the street I live on here in Bath, Maine has been torn up for several weeks. When a road is not resurfaced properly it has to eventually be rebuilt. That is what is happening across the nation as local and state governments, currently in fiscal crisis, don't have the funds for proper road maintenance.
All across the country the road repair bills are mounting up to the point many communities are returning them to gravel. In Spiritwood, North Dakota residents report seeing ducks floating in big potholes in the road.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
In Michigan, at least 38 of the 83 counties have converted some asphalt roads to gravel in recent years. Last year, South Dakota turned at least 100 miles of asphalt road surfaces to gravel. Counties in Alabama and Pennsylvania have begun downgrading asphalt roads to cheaper chip-and-seal road, also known as "poor man's pavement." Some counties in Ohio are simply letting roads erode to gravel.
Rebuilding an asphalt road today is particularly expensive because the price of asphalt cement, a petroleum-based material mixed with rocks to make asphalt, has more than doubled over the past 10 years. Gravel becomes a cheaper option once an asphalt road has been neglected for so long that major rehabilitation is necessary.
Some experts caution that gravel roads can be costlier in the long run than consistently maintained asphalt because gravel needs to be graded and smoothed. A gravel road "is not a free road," says Purdue University's John Habermann, who organized a recent seminar about the resurgence of gravel roads titled "Back to the Stone Age."
Until the public begins to make these links and demands that the politicians cut war spending then we will continue to see a decline and reversal of life here in America.
The U.S. is no longer #1 in most indicators of the good life. But we just might be #1 as the country in quickest decline - we are witnessing the Third Worldization of America.
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