March always feels like such a long month, although I'm not complaining, after the eyeblink that was February. Historically, Chicago doesn't have much of a spring or fall -- just a long winter and a short summer, but as climate change continues, spring is a bit more apparent than it used to be. All the same, one can't rule out the crazy snowstorm in May, even if it's less common than it used to be. Usually, Chicago warms up in April, then gets cold again in May. I remember a number of years ago, a weeklong stretch in April when it reach 80 degrees, before the obligatory May chill kicked back in.
I saw something on the news the other day that Cincinnati had lost one-quarter of its manufacturing jobs in the past decade. That's pretty striking, although Ohio as a whole has been hemorrhaging jobs for the past 20 years. What never gets really discussed is that the state's fortunes declined precisely at the time that the Republicans assumed dominance of the statewide politics. Coingate was surely just representative of a larger trend, but it's odd to me that Republicans claim to offer solutions to Ohio's woes by ultimately doing more of the same, and expecting different results. The recent union-busting law is red meat for red staters, but isn't going to improve Ohio's economic situation; rather, it's just another case of kicking people in the teeth because they're able to. Aside from a policy of zero taxation of the wealthy, no social services or infrastructure spending, and giving corporations absolute free rein in the state, what "plan" does the Right have for Ohio? The race to the bottom is a race nobody wants to win. And even hacking the country's infrastructure to the bone will still not make us competitive with Third World nations. Even the most destitute of Ohio workers is going to look like a Rolls Royce to a Bangladeshi worker, and companies able to play Ohio workers against Third World workers are going to win at the expense of those Ohio workers. It's a losing strategy for the proverbial little guy, which is why Ohio's continued to bleed jobs. It's a problem because that same ideology is in play across the country, and the Democrats remain cowed by it. I'd like Obama to get fired up and push another infrastructure-building plan, something far more aggressive than his last effort, and have the Republicans strenuously argue against it. Far better than sitting on their hands and letting the loonies run the asylum. You know why the Republicans haven't been jumping at the chance to run against Obama? It's because they have no good ideas -- there's only so long you can say "No taxes on the wealthy, no estate taxes, no social services, no health care spending, no cuts in defense spending" before people start saying "Umm, WHAT do you offer me, exactly? How am I better off with you in charge?" Whoever runs against Obama next year is toast. Maybe Obama will (characteristically) just coast, knowing this. But he should be bold, rather than pandering to Republican delusions.
Oh, and this is an amusing corroboration of the above:
Republicans Stampeding Toward the Cliff
28,000 words.
