Anyone else feel like we are living with PTSD? I feel like it.

[Lifelong Protester]

It was a tough late winter and spring, with all the hooliganism in Madison, courtesy of Walker, and now we are living under the cloud of the 'debt ceiling' not being raised, a terrible drought in half the country.

Oh, and for most public employees in WI, this will be the week we start getting our diminished pay checks.
I feel lucky to get a check, but damned cheesed that a bunch of money local taxpayers have paid in so I can get paid, will now go to tax cuts for the 'job creators." What a hoax that is.

I don't want to sound like a whiner, but this has been such a bad stretch, I predict some serious mental health issues once the dark of winter sets in.

[sybylla]

1. Definitely been a tough year.

Tougher on some than others. I'm definitely on the luckier end of the scale, but I feel exactly as you do.

I'm beginning to think we're not far from seeing someone snap and going postal.

[Yon_Yonson]

2. Some incident will bust the political seam

To much division and anger in Wisconsin to keep it together.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

5. Hear Hear ,Yon--I have a strong feeling you are right - nt

[Kashka-Kat]

3. If you haven't already done so - read the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein

This whole thing taking place in the US now is classic Shock Doctrine: create and/or exploit a crisis & take advantage of people's shock and disorientation to ram through radical right legislation and privatization of public assets that ordinarily people would object to.

My book group read it a few years back, with some of the group thinking it was kind of far fetched... even though it so well documents how this has played out in other countries around the world the past 30-40 years... and I wondered would they ever attempt that same strategy here in the US. Now we know!

Anyway, it helps me to understand why I feel the way I do (shocked and disoriented) and how to counteract it ... which is to keep active and to keep informed. It helps to just do a little bit each day, make phone calls or whatever... Which reminds me I've been meaning to call or write to RON JOHNSON ... since he supposedly represents me.... about social security and sunset Bush tax cuts.

[tinwi]

4. There is a difference between having a legit complaint and whining

What will be great for everyone is if the courts intervene in the redistricting, Prossner gets found guilty, Nickolaus goes to jail, and of course enough Republican senators are recalled to put a stop to the damage.
What scares me is the loosening of gun controls. Take away people's money, jobs, rights, (I hear in MI it is illegal to garden) and leave them with nothing but culture wars and guns. It is as if they WANT violence. We really have to resist that

[undeterred]

6. The only thing that will make the world seem right again is having Feingold back in office.

That was the day everything started to go horribly wrong. I don't care which office it is, as long as he comes back, it will be right again.

[mojowork_n]

7. RE: 'job creators' hoax

There was a great LTE yesterday, on that very topic.

They don't sell the sports section all by itself --
I'm embarrassed to admit that I also read some of the
bird cage liner editorial section -- there was this well
and plainly spoken treasure:

UNEMPLOYMENT
Sending jobs overseas damages this country

Our nation's unemployment rate is approaching 10%. Is it not in large part
due to the fact that every time a United States manufacturer has a product
manufactured overseas, it causes a ripple effect that eventually eliminates
one or more jobs here in America?

I have been a small-business owner for almost 20 years. Our company has made
products for larger corporations in the past. We always delivered on time
and maintained high quality at affordable prices. Unfortunately, those
ingredients were not enough to satisfy these larger corporations. These
companies sent the work overseas, as they could save a few more dollars by doing so.

So what is wrong with that? Isn't it better to be competitive by getting the
job done less expensively so you can offer better pricing to your customers?
The products we were producing had little or no other competing products. Once
the product was sent overseas, based strictly on having the product made cheaper,
the prices to the end user remained the same. Thus the only reason to send the
product out of the country was to put a few more dollars in the pocket of a company.

As a result of losing these products, we laid off employees. Plus, there was a ripple
effect as the many Wisconsin vendors we used also lost the work that we would send
to them in the manufacturing of these products.

If we wish to create jobs and local revenue, shouldn't we as a nation, as a state
and as employers concentrate on manufacturing products here in our country?

I snipped the writer's name and place of residence, but they're here:

http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/125778433.html

July 18, 2011