Showing all posts tagged: kansas
Not long ago, Kansas would have responded to the current situation by making the bastards pay. This would have been a political certainty, as predictable as what happens when you touch a match to a puddle of gasoline. When business screwed the farmers and the workers – when it implemented monopoly strategies invasive beyond the Populists’ furthest imaginings – when it ripped off shareholders and casually tossed thousands out of work – you could be damned sure about what would follow.
Not these days. Out here the gravity of discontent pulls in only one direction: to the right, to the right, further to the right. Strip today’s Kansans of their job security, and they head out to become registered Republicans. Push them off their land, and next thing you know they’re protesting in front of abortion clinics. Squander their life savings on manicures for the CEO, and there’s a good chance they’ll join the John Birch Society. But ask them about the remedies their ancestors proposed (unions, antitrust, public ownership), and you might as well be referring to the days when knighthood was in flower.
Thomas Frank, What’s the Matter with Kansas?
Frank uses the history of Kansas, which was a hotbed of the left-wing Populist movement in the late 19th century, as a parable about the country as a whole, and why working class American continue to act against their own self-interests, politically.
The drought of 2012 is worsening:
Kansas Town Stuggles to Deal With 115 Degrees - Jack Healy via NYTimes.com
The grinding drought that transformed much of the West into a tinderbox has all but choked off the growing season here. Farmers say rainfall totals are five to seven inches below normal — a withering deficit — and many have not plowed under their old crops to plant new rows of wheat, corn and milo.
On Saturday, Mr. Trexler loaded three heifers into a maroon trailer and trundled them 70 miles to Oakley to sell them.
“We’re just going to have to sell,” said his son Brad, 58. “There’s no way out. Every time they take a bite of that grass, it’s gone. It doesn’t come back. There’s nothing to farm right now. Nothing will grow.”
As temperatures soared over the past week, farmers woke at dawn to haul tank after tank of water to their overheated livestock. With the grasses scorched by heat and no rain in sight, many are debating whether to sell their cows quickly, rather than buy expensive feed to sustain them all summer.
“I don’t know what do to,” Gail Hofstetter, 59, said as he ate lunch with a friend. Across the table, Rod Belleau, another farmer, offered a grim forecast.
“We’ve still got two more months of this crap,” he said.
The long-term forecast for the region seems to agree.
Here’s the 10 day forecast for Hill City, Kansas:
