Welcome To The Third World, Suckers

...as Texas Guinan would have said as she smiled into our alcohol starved faces. From Jim Kunstler's Archives http://www.kunstler.com/Grunt%20Archive.html March 17, 2008 A correspondent working for the US Dept of Agriculture brings strange tidings about government solvency. "I'm writing you this email to tell you something which I find pretty disturbing. USDA is the second largest federal office building in D.C. It is massive, with hallways that stretch for three city blocks on seven floors, and one block the other way on each floor. For the last few months, every other overhead light in the halls has had their bulbs removed. Sometimes, two lights in a row are dark. It's bright enough to walk down, no doubt, but still noticeably darker. Moreoever, each floor has two banks of elevators at each end, with three elevators per bank. For the last few months, one elevator at each bank has been put out of commission. Further, employees are now forbidden from putting space heaters in their offices, which many have done because the heating in the building has been turned down to a level where even I, a descendant of hardy Russian peasants, feel cold. "What does this tell me? It tells me that the government of the United States of America is having difficulty paying its utility bills. Think about that. Federal offices cannot keep all the lights on, or keep the heat sufficiently high. (We'll see what the air conditioning is like in a few months, when D.C. turns into a humid swamp). This is what one expects of Third World governments, not the USA."