Thread Drift

[KnottedYet]

I blame Wal*Mart and Wall Street.
And the sheeple who handed them the power to f*ck us over.

"Oh, yes please beloved chain store, sell me that widget made in China for $2.93 rather than that one at the local independent hardware store made in Ohio for $3.50. I save and every one wins!" "Oh, yes please, give me that house loan for 1% down and adjustable interest! I can get that house immediately without being forced to have stable personal finances and everyone wins!" "I get what I want, and someone else will take care of it! Because everyone wins and Santa Claus is watching out for us!"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKv6RcXa2UI

Of course, I had to learn from a European media that the recently touted Martin Luther King Jr. monument was made in China, and assembled in the US by Chinese workers brought to Washington DC to do the work. Truly, I find this deeply shameful. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-in-China.html

[Trek420]

And .... it has shall we say an editorial error in it. Not spelling or even grammar but kind of like the oddly worded imported t'shirt something is wrong. One word makes a big difference. Carved in granite, oopsie :

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/...153930799.html

The effects of the recession are plain to see in my town.

They are plain all around and likely here for a long time. Thanks BSG for what you and your food pantry do.

[Crankin]

I truly was not trying to sound unfeeling. This is an article that was in the paper a day or so after I made my above post.

http://articles.boston.com/2011-09-0...-massachusetts

In the past, Massachusetts has lagged years behind the national economy in recovery, so I guess this is our turn.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Crankin, it's funny, but whenever we cross the border from NY and drive through Mass (which is very often, we are right near it and have family and friends in eastern MA), we see a huge difference immediately. The roads are repaired, bridges painted, houses and lawns well maintained, even the cars look newer. We can't help but notice this, it's always kind of obvious. Not that there aren't places in MA suffering from the recession, mind you.

[OakLeaf]

You see that when you cross county and even sometimes township lines in Ohio.

Total speculation, but I wonder if more things are funded on a state level in Massachusetts, so there's more of a cushion and everyone shares the pain a little more equally???

[Owlie]

Oak, check your post count. I wonder that too--MA probably has a larger tax base than does Ohio, too.

I'm pretty sure we're all screwed. I've been e-mailing back and forth with one of my former professors (who wrote a couple of recommendation letters) for me. He asked why I wasn't in a PhD program--it's because the grant situation is so bad that no one is willing to spend money on people who they don't know or who aren't science rock stars. It's going to get worse before it gets better. And people whine about the US "falling behind."

[NbyNW]

They don't call it Taxachusetts for nuthin'.

Maybe MA also had someone on the congressional transportation committee for a while? That could help, too.