About Sheboyganland

The corporation that outsources the most flies the biggest American Flag. I just visited Sheboygan and Kohler Wisconsin over the weekend. The Kohler Corporation makes bathroom and kitchen fixtures, and a variety of other ceramic and metal products. The company still employs several thousand people here in Wisconsin, but they used to employ thousands more than they do nowadays. So much cheaper to exploit vulnerable, low-wage workers in Mexico and elsewhere, don't you know! But Kohler, WI, is now largely a resort town with a world-famous golf course, as if that were a major asset to most of the displaced blue-collar workers who once manned the assembly lines. Sheboygan itself was formerly a formidable manufacturing city - these days many of those once-busy factories are gone, forever. And don't even get me started about the de-industrialization of Milwaukee, Racine, Kenosha, Beloit and Janesville. Even Madison has lost thousands of jobs at Oscar Mayer since circa 1977, to say nothing of the complete elimination of the jobs that used to employ hundreds, if not thousands, at Gisholt, Marquip, Rayovac and Mautz Paint. Nevertheless, Sheboygan County and just about the entire tier of counties along Lake Michigan reliably vote for Republicans every election. It's extremely distressing to see working-class Americans voting for candidates who work so tirelessly against the best interests of blue-collar voters. And unfortunately, most Democratic candidates are scarcely any better when it comes to outsourcing. Just look at the support in both parties for the "Trans-Pacific Partnership." Even as these "patriotic" companies take cynical advantage of the lack of workplace safeguards and environmental regulations in the Third World, those politicians who promote the business interests of the Super-Rich work indefatigably to lower workplace standards and expectations here, in Europe and Britain. I'm just not so confident as I used to be that those of us who oppose massive outsourcing of US jobs are capable of retaining our natural political allies in the American working class, be they Republican, Democratic or Independent; so many stubbornly refuse to see sense. The Mass Brainwashing Apparatus is a hell of a lot more powerful than we are. I know this is a bit of a digression, but the exporting of US manufacturing predates Walker and the present GOP crew by at least three, more like four decades. I'd love it if someone on this forum could PROVE me wrong, of course.