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REALLY? THINK AGAIN!

“It’s coming from the silence on the dock of the bay, from the brave, the bold, the battered heart of Chevrolet.  Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.” These lyrics from Leonard Cohen now passed on, are from one of his more overlooked songs.  This particular song is prophetic, however, and descriptive about what’s really coming for the U.S.A.  There have been two Social Security offices in Milwaukee that have serviced about six hundred people a day, day in and day out.  The Trumper Musk combination pair has cut the funding to one of them.  So many people have been able to take their troubles to those offices, as the people who have worked there have been so elegantly and courteously helpful, no matter what problem the public has had with one part of the government or other, in solving problems.  The wait at these offices to see a real human who most likely would help has been about an hour and a half.  With only one office now, that wait is calculated to become one that most people cannot bear (three to four hours), and the personnel may not be equipped to handle so much more volume and so many more people.  This is happening in Milwaukee.  The FAA, with the Trumper Musk attack all over it, has cut a thousand employees, forty-four of whom were working at O’Hare Airport, the place where most of Southern Wisconsin flies in and out of.

The Veteran’s Services Office in Elkhorn has been cut back with the most wonderful guy named Nathan Bond among those leaving. The terminations and cuts that the new administration is imposing on governmental agencies are not going to have distant effects. No, these cuts are going to cause rolling turmoil, lack of assistance, and injustice in one place after another right here in Wisconsin, Southern Wisconsin, and eventually Walworth County. Money is supposedly being saved by cutting benefits and positions across the nation and the state but the effect of the cuts to stop spending the money is not going to be either comfortable or pretty. It may be argued that these cuts in spending and personnel at the national level are just and proper, as the country has been spending too much but the effect has nothing much to do with any of that argument or others. The arguments are words.

The cuts are actions, and those actions are going to affect you if you live in Southern Wisconsin and pretty much affect everyone living elsewhere within the bounds of American states and territories. Cuts are coming on farm subsidies. Legal and illegal immigrants are being rounded up or frightened into hiding or having to flee the area.  Education and childcare are going to change with money being trimmed from those expensive pursuits (the cost of educating one child from kindergarten through eighth grade in the USA is approximately $17,000 per year, and yes this does include childcare, one of the biggest and most valuable benefits the public school system provides to all students and parents). The radical changes coming are coming to and for you and me…right here in Lake Geneva, although the real effect of these changes will not become evident for a few months. This is not the time to buy a new house, invest in a car, or some other expensive outlay. Until there is a certainty of results that makes itself evident the ‘business as usual.’

The understanding and implementation of financial spending at the family level needs to go into a holding pattern. Nobody, and that very much includes the leadership of the country, has much of any idea about what the true effect of these radical changes is going to mean when it comes to regular citizens, families, and child comfort if not their very survival.  Winter is ending on the 19^th of March but the cold draft coming down from Washington D.C. is going to remain well below freezing for some time to come.

The morning light across America, at the dawn of every day, will be red for some time to come.  “Red sky at morning…sailor take warning,” is a very old seaman’s comment and may be very applicable to all of our situations.  You and I cannot hide on the local scene.  As a waiter once said to the writer in Hawaii: “You no local.”