Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Comes' The Revolution

In the Huffington Post Robert Reich asks "Why is there no outcry?"
He is wondering why there isn't an uprising of the people. A new Progressive Movement or New Deal.
If you want his reasons you can find them here.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/why-theres-no-outcry_b_4666330.html

In the 60's on college campus's through out the US there was a battle cry. Comes The Revolution.
Chicago had a Democratic Convention and the SDS went wild. Bill Ayres bombed government buildings. Detroit burned. Watt's rioted. The kids of the middle class had a revolution. Mom and Dad were trying to make the payments and send the kids to college. In 1968 parents lived in fear that their kids would leave college and drop in/out to the counter culture.
I was one of those kids. Fortunately I lived through the experience. I was lucky. I didn't like being drunk or high because it wasn't something you could stop doing in the middle. Riding a motorcycle was cool. If you got tired or wanted to stop you hit the brakes and pulled over. Watching your friend light up something called a nose bomb that sent flames up his nose so you could see the glow in his sinuses wasn't cool. He couldn't stop and think "Bad Idea." I never got started down that road.
We ran the world. Everyone was sure that we would burn the whole place down and they ran scared. I graduated high school in 1969. There was a break in tradition. The school decided that the practice of having the senior class walk through town in mass would be to dangerous. For the town. So Senior Swingout ended.
As a group the children of the 60's became the adults of the 70's. Now we are the old farts of the 2010 decade. Our children and their children have gone through the same crap we did. The rules had changed though. Outrageous behavior was no longer isolated incidents. There was a thread of insanity that crept through society that said be nicer to the kids and they won't be bad. Don't tell them "No" you will stifle their free expression of their personality. When you don't correct bad behavior it is no longer bad, just different.
Why revolt when everything is handed to you?

As a superuser of the Huffington Post, Dennis Umphrey sums up the party line.

"Dennis Umphrey (den1953)  Super User·8,713 Fans
The only thing you can blame on the inequality of the middle class can be accounted for the decline of labor board and unions, from the time Republican Ronald Reagan attacked the air traffic controllers to the lack of restricting those middle class jobs from going overseas to the lowest bidders. Between the pollution deregulations to relaxed labor rules and regulations that started the decent of the American worker, and those plutocrats in Washington can take all the credit! This nation cannot produce it's own steel or clothing like it used to those jobs are told outsourced and will never come back, but the real question should be why did they ever have to leave the country in the first place?




Dennis what makes you think that pollution deregulation caused the decline of US industry?
I started working in the 60's. The EPA was just starting to gain momentum in the workplace. With the growth of their power in the 70's it became increasingly clear that they were at best inept. In 1981 I became the Environmental Coordinator for the United Technologies plant on Industrial Avenue in Coldwater, MI. I held the position for 9 years. During that time industry was fleeing offshore. Arbitrary rule changes and a distinctly antagonistic relationship between the EPA and business in the US made it far easier to build new plants in foreign countries than in the US.
Now the EPA's labors have borne fruit. The US is living the life of HG Well's Lotus Eaters and we are waiting for the Morlocks to drag us away.

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