Stuff you know already that is news today anyway:

• Government doesn't create jobs, except when it does.
• The failed war on drugs and prison-industrial complex are just awful.
• Manufacturing jobs brought back to the US may not pay much.
• "Mr. McCrory has not discussed a conservative social agenda or, really, any political agenda at all."

Comments

[justcorbly]

I visited my relatives in rustbucket Ohio over Thanksgiving. With the exception of myself and one cousin, pretty much the entire clan was immersed in the auto industry and its peripherals. Now, they've seen pensions evaporate, watched their homes sink underwater, etc. Most of their kids have left the state. Those who stayed are working dead-end non-union low-pay low-benefits jobs in the strip malls that pass for "growth".

What's interesting is that everyone talks about the future in terms of the old factories "coming back". Things, they say, will be better when GM or Ford or Delta come back and open up again. That those businesses are not coming back seems to be outside their frame of reference. Sometimes it's really hard to see change when you're stuck in the middle of it.

[steve]

“Ain't never gonna be what it was.”
~Little Big Roy in The Wire~