Wednesday, January 16, 2008

"Repeatedly Bitch-Slapped by the Invisible Hand"

Not New Orleans

Jeff St. Clair's concluding paragraphs on Michigan and the presidential "primary" reminded me of something I came across while channel surfing a while back. A sports show about a traveling "street ball" basketball team made a stop in Detroit, home town of one of the players, and a feature segement focused on his old neighborhood. Damn--it looked A LOT like the Crescent City post-flood:

In the end, this pathetic primary speaks most loudly about the tragic decline of Michigan and the industrial Midwest, laid low by the bipartisan free-trade policies of the Reagan, Bush/Bush and Clinton era. Michigan has been hit by an economic Katrina, playing out in slow-motion over the past decade and not a politician in the country seems to give a damn about it. Perhaps because their fingerprints are on the wreckage. There's a real conspiracy for you with savage consequences.

Even a century-long flow of defense contracts won't resurrect Flint now.


Sadly, so.

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