Springfield is basically on a fixed income rolling toward assisted living. Personally, I can't account for a community that is in such a state, voting Republican. There may be one exception, a very short horizon.
People who think that if they support and emulate characters like Gordon Gekko, they will become like Gordon Gekko,
Gordon Gekko: The richest one percent of this country owns half our country's wealth, five trillion dollars. One third of that comes from hard work, two thirds comes from inheritance, interest on interest accumulating to widows and idiot sons and what I do, stock and real estate speculation. It's bullshit. You got ninety percent of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price per paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you're not naive enough to think we're living in a democracy, are you buddy? It's the free market. And you're a part of it. You've got that killer instinct. Stick around pal, I've still got a lot to teach you. (Wallstreet, 1987)
The problem is Sangamon County is not Wall Street. They are all big fans of the so-called "free market" but it takes money to make money, and most of your money is being gradually siphoned away by national franchises that have institutional investors based on Wall Street for real.
The point is that they are supporting a philosophy that belongs to their masters, not themselves. The other people they see reaping the rewards they themselves desire don't live in our neighborhoods, they only see them on television.
So the local political structure remains the same and so follows the economic structure. The Gordon Gekkos of the world would scoff at our community because according to the U.S. Census, there are only a tiny few people who barely come close to being excluded from the tax break promised by President-Elect Obama.
