I haven't been watching much TV (save for the CSPAN goings ons)...

I have been out gigging over the past few weeks.
First to Lynchburg, Virgina and then on to the Carolinas and then back up to Kentucky where I've worked Cincinnati, Louisville and Lexington. I'm out there every winter - it's different now.

Once I got south of the mtns. I started noticing the unusually high number of trailerless vehicles loaded down with what looks like everthing the occupants can carry. It's not the usual NY, NJ, New England crowd that hugs that eastern corridor each winter --- now there's loads of Michigan, Indiana, and Wisconsin folks... out of jobs - out of options - trying to get warm. The lightness of truck traffic --- even out of the Port of Charleston, SC --- is a telling sign.

Florida is down and out and prolly not a good spot to get work. So these Americans-of-the-edge seem to be wandering in the middle - but where the weather suits their circumstances. There were multiple folks inquiring for jobs at every stop that I made over a two week period.

I saw a man from Michigan (stone sober) asking for gas station work at 2AM last Saturday night in Erlanger, KY. His family was in the car. I saw this as I was rolling home from a gig where the owner had paid me with a check (despite the good turnout), and, it being these times, I accepted the risk. We ought not be tough on one another, if we can.

At a modest Valentine's lunch (we are fortunate) that my wife and I enjoyed today. We met a factory kid from Traverse City, MI who was our server. (If he's a waitress I'm a ballerina.) He says Northern Mich. is all closed up --- all done. His wife's expecting in a few month. Big, strong, clumsy kid laying down soup and salad.

We're trying to do what we can in these encounters.

The Reagan/Bush Revolution is now in full flower. Remember the days when Dan Quayle headed up the "Council for Competitiveness"? The Council's mission was to get the government off the backs of the wealth-building, highly-productive, job-creating American entrepreneur. (So we got a l'il fast and loose with the money supply every time we took a bump?   We had it goin' on babay!!). We were told the root of any problem could be found in evil government regulation. (BOO!! HISS!! The preachers coached the chorus!!)

Reagan, Bush, Phil Gramm, Newt Gingrich, Quayle, etc. all proclaimed the unimpeachable efficiency of the self-regulating free market.   Under this model, every one of us serves as a commodity - so we can go and purchase other commodities (aka the things that are now littering the houses-of-broken-dreams). The reactionaries' lies were leavened with a big dose of old time religion.   FOOLS!! We bought the story.   But it is now clear:

The reckless Reagan/Bush experiment has failed completely... Lay the coming misery of the people at their door.