The Albuquerque Journal today did a fairly good story on the deterioration of the state's highways. It made needed comparisons in the gasoline taxes collected by other states in the region, and we are pretty much at the bottom. For a wide open state that has so many miles of highways to maintain, this is incredibly bad and you can thank Governor Susana Martinez. Her whole reason for being right now is to be able to say she never raised taxes while Governor. That is what is required as she seeks the GOP national spotlight. And to hell with the well being of New Mexico and the people who live here. She really doesn't give a damn.
Yesterday she stood in front of the TV cameras to brag about 70 new jobs coming to the State, after she gave the company a small fortune to locate here. 70 jobs in six years. What a record! And the sap public just stands by and takes it.
But not for much longer I think. The first match was struck in a conflagration in Baltimore this week where the chronically unemployed and poor started rampaging. Some people think it was about police abuse, but mostly it was about the rich getting richer and the poor remaining without jobs. I think it might be a really tough summer in this country.
I want to give a quote from a book I just read, "The Affinities" by Robert Charles Wilson. In it he said, "In the early decades of this century we saw the world’s financial elites become increasingly divorced from national loyalties. The wealthy learned to think of themselves as essentially stateless—citizens of the Republic of Net Worth—while the rest of us clung to our old-fashioned patriotism."
That may be coming to an end soon. And of course the ever diminishing middle class should participate.
Yesterday she stood in front of the TV cameras to brag about 70 new jobs coming to the State, after she gave the company a small fortune to locate here. 70 jobs in six years. What a record! And the sap public just stands by and takes it.
But not for much longer I think. The first match was struck in a conflagration in Baltimore this week where the chronically unemployed and poor started rampaging. Some people think it was about police abuse, but mostly it was about the rich getting richer and the poor remaining without jobs. I think it might be a really tough summer in this country.
I want to give a quote from a book I just read, "The Affinities" by Robert Charles Wilson. In it he said, "In the early decades of this century we saw the world’s financial elites become increasingly divorced from national loyalties. The wealthy learned to think of themselves as essentially stateless—citizens of the Republic of Net Worth—while the rest of us clung to our old-fashioned patriotism."
That may be coming to an end soon. And of course the ever diminishing middle class should participate.
2 comments:
Jim that's 11jobs per year! What more do you want? 12
How can o Susanna bring more jobs here when she is doing her best to keep her worshipers ( you know Berry, Perry, Schulz and Darren) out of jail. After all she was a former prosecutor who just said " accusing and convicting are two different things". You go girl maybe next year you can bring 13 jobs to town. Ain't life just peachy for the Repulican Gang captaining this sinking ship!!!and We thought Sarah Palin was bofa
Thank you for making that distinction about the underlying cause of discontent. It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking about it only in terms of the police or only about race (I fall into both now and then), which though they are important are elements of the bigger picture.
Economic class unites more people than anything else. The 99 percent versus the 1 percent were the parameters laid down by Occupy in 2011, but economic disparity has increased so fast since then that 1 percent is becoming even too broad, as 1/10 of 1 percent is now sopping up all the income gains, and I mean all.
We're all working class now, and there's always a conscious effort to keep the working class divided by race and ethnicity and even gender now. Black folks themselves can sustain a movement as we saw with the civil rights movement but if there begins to be a rise in class consciousness among the general public, I agree that it's going to be a long hot summer, and none too soon.
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