A Washington Post staff writer discovers in book-length fashion Janesville, WI, where General Motors closed its historic assembly plant and The Great Recession upended thousands of middle-class people in a traditional union town.
Janesville is the very sort of place which would benefit if Donald Trump and hometown House Speaker and local one-percenter Paul Ryan made good on their promise to make America great again.
Ditto if GOP Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's famously-broken 250,000 new jobs pledge had ever any depth beyond campaign propaganda - - but along with Walker's approval of 'right-to-work' legislation and other wage-depressing moves - - Wisconsin is entrenched in the slow-growth, low-wage bottom third of US state economies and Republicans serving big business agendas are fine with that.
The Ryan/Trump Obamacare demolition bill which was really a tax break bill for the wealthy would have further pushed Janesville's working class further down the ladder.
And the rest of the Ryan/Trump reward-the-rich-tax reform plans coming soon to the Congress, so about Janesville being the Wisconsin Capitol of a Newly Great America, my eight-ball says, 'don't bet on It.'
Janesville is the very sort of place which would benefit if Donald Trump and hometown House Speaker and local one-percenter Paul Ryan made good on their promise to make America great again.
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Ditto if GOP Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's famously-broken 250,000 new jobs pledge had ever any depth beyond campaign propaganda - - but along with Walker's approval of 'right-to-work' legislation and other wage-depressing moves - - Wisconsin is entrenched in the slow-growth, low-wage bottom third of US state economies and Republicans serving big business agendas are fine with that.
The Ryan/Trump Obamacare demolition bill which was really a tax break bill for the wealthy would have further pushed Janesville's working class further down the ladder.
And the rest of the Ryan/Trump reward-the-rich-tax reform plans coming soon to the Congress, so about Janesville being the Wisconsin Capitol of a Newly Great America, my eight-ball says, 'don't bet on It.'
Several things about Ryan and his district are seldom reported. First of all the vast majority of folks in Janesville hate him. He doesn't carry the vote there. The district skews heavily Republican in areas like rural Rock County, all of Walworth County and western Racine County and Kenosha County due to high property taxation and long standing racism that has been carefully fostered by the Republicans over many years. More than 50 years ago I first heard people there universally speak about their views on the "welfare queens" in Milwaukee soaking up all of that tax money from rural areas. It never changed. Elkhorn was one of the last cities in Wisconsin to repeal its' "Sundown Ordinance". There were folks in the late '60's who bragged about still having that ordinance. Additionally nobody talks about how Ryan got a "sweetheart" deal on the mansion in which he lives.
ReplyDeleteDon't leave out "special places" in Waukesha and Milwaukee County like Franklin, Oak Creek, New Berlin and Mukwonago that Ryan told the Legislature to draw into his district.
DeleteYet another reason to vote out Walker in 2018- it breaks the GOP gerrymander on the state.