The Groans of the Rusties

Wall Street Deserted the Rust Belt States: and now what's left are the groans of the jobless as they contemplate their fate and fear for their withered families.

But one of the loudest sounds of all is the Mayor of Lansing, Michigan when he speaks to the issue of jobs with near perfect pitch, his voice strident and quaking with anger and honesty. American workers are being screwed quite handily by greedsters and power monkeys - living far from the values and realities shared by the vast majority of Americans, and it is quite clear that this guy, Virg Bernero, is reluctant to shut up and ride the Titanic.

Bernero hears Wall Street say that manufacturing is the way of the past and that we must now become a service industry nation, and asks, "What are we supposed to do, sell each other hamburgers?" And, he knows that Wall Street's answer is "yes."


Virg Bernero is the real deal for his constituents. He is demanding that everyone know that some of their fellow Americans have been written-off and abandoned in agreements made by their own leaders. He is insisting that the powers-that-be deal with the fact that the country is flooded with cars from countries where auto manufacturers don't even have to provide health-care to their workers - their government pays for it.

He demands that we all bear witness that "between these two means of death we are either killed or drowned."

If the groans of rust-belt workers are not answered with solutions, the rusties will be as abandoned as were those old Roman Britons who sent their "Groans of the Britons" to a beleaguered Emperor - and then disappeared from history as their pleas went unanswered.

I'm for an America that doesn't suck, how 'bout you?