Boom and Bust

Last night the Kadizzles , and Cliff took the stage coach into Globe.  Globe is the copper capital of the United States and what has kept Arizona on the map since inception.  In Globe all the goblins came to town for Halloween in the evening.  Maybe in Globe the should be called Globlins.  Like every mining town the population is a mix of whatever you can muster.  All the Indians came in from the reservation, and the locals were every ethnicity with a strong dose of Mexican. 

Mining has gone on for hundreds of years in the area. Before copper gold was the mineral of choice.  The Mexicans came up to Arizona long ago for the gold.  Kadizzle was a coal miner most of his life. Mining usually works the same way everywhere.  Someone from far away ends up with the money and the locals end up with a hole in the ground.  Globe is a case in point.  The whole town looks shot up and disorganized.  As one woman said it looks like someone followed a snake to lay out the streets.  Like a lot of mining towns Globe has a train track running right down the middle of one street.  Get the gold, get the copper, and run.  When copper prices are high spend like a drunk, and when they are low run to the pay day lender and get your pockets cleaned. 

Now a disclaimer, Kadizzle is fat and eats too much.  Sitting on the court house steps watching the people dressed in their costumes it is clear just about everyone in Globe has a weight problem.  The Indians have been hit hardest by a weight gain.  If the Indians had to be subdued in modern times there would be no blood shed.  B52 Bombers would fly over the Indian encampments and drop potato chips, Coke, and fried food.  In no time the Indians would swell up and become immobile.  What happens to a people that lived forever on the verge of starvation and then you bomb them with American junk food?

Spend it while you can seems to be the Globe mentality, and so it goes for many mining communities.  Now we turn to politics.  Our grand wizard Mr. Trump wants to spend 21 billion on a wall.  Back in Globe the houses are falling off the hill, the sidewalks are crumbling, the drug addicts are stumbling, and the pickup trucks are rumbling.  A whole population of people are headed toward old age without a penny saved.  How is this going to work out?  Our country is just like a mining town with the boom and bust.  In the mining town the money leaves and goes to some rich guy in New York or another prosperous community of the wealthy.  West Virginia is a classic example, laced with poverty where billions in coal were extracted.  Copper took it's toll in Butt Montana.  They were left with a giant lake of toxic waste a run down town and nothing to show for it.

Part of mining is concentrating the ore.  It is a process similar to what Republican do when they concentrate the wealth.  The gold, cooper, or silver ends up in the hands of a tiny few, and heaps of waste are left behind.  That is about to happen once more with the Republican tax plan.  The people in Globe went up one side of main street and down the other.  The businesses all handed them candy.  Exactly what is going on in Washington.  The business hand the working class candy and take the gold.  We never learn, but we have fun acting silly in our costumes and believing in the ghost the Republicans tell us are trying to come across the border and sell us drugs. 

Now to the drugs.  The Sackler family has made 14 billion dollars selling opioids to the working class. The real winners in the drug game are perfectly legal pharmaceutical companies.  Of course they have the congressmen they bought to help.  Building a wall to keep Mexican drugs out only in reality keeps the competition out.  Nothing changes, the rich dupe the poor, and the poor love it.  Give the poor candy and drugs, let them watch football and NASCAR, they will show up at the mine and crawl in a hole to get some more copper for the guy in New York.