The Capital Strike

The coast of Maine is serene and gorgeous this summer, but tourists are staying away. Hotels stand empty, workers have been laid off, parking lots are abandoned, and faces look grim. New Englanders aren’t complainers, but you can tell that times are hard.

The longest recession in modern history is biting deep. Telltale signs can be seen all over. Wifi channels are shaky, cell phone calls get dropped, cheap computer parts ruin your laptop, and phony “eco” bulbs die long before their time.

Long-term investment is down in the United States, Europe, and Japan. In Virginia and Maryland, trees are falling on power lines for lack of preventive maintenance, and the newsies babble about global warming causing those weird thunderstorms that nobody’s ever seen before. But the real explanation is simple: things are falling apart for lack of long-term maintenance. Preventive maintenance that should have been done three or four years ago never happened. Fixing breakdowns costs more than prevention, so costs are actually going up. This is Jimmy Carter’s Misery Index come back to life.

When the Governor of Maryland was interviewed on radio right after summer storms knocked out the power for millions of people in his state, he sounded drowsy, confused, and possibly hung over. He didn’t know what was happening at the governor’s mansion, no. He didn’t know where the outages actually were in his state, and where people commuting to work could get gas for their cars — because gas stations closed wherever the power was out. No, he didn’t know where elderly and fragile people could get out of the heat. He told the WBAL radio chick that the most important thing was for neighbors to help one another.

Yup. Waddaguy.

Your guvmint — not at work.