"I like to say I gave up an eight-minute commute for an eight-hour commute," he says wearily, running a hand though salt-and-pepper hair as he watches his two sons play basketball for the first time this season.
After the aging General Motors plant where he worked for 23 years was idled about a year ago, Hanley faced a Hobson's choice: Stay with his family and search for an autoworker's salary ($28 an hour) in a county where more than 40 percent of its manufacturing jobs disappeared from 2006 to 2009. Or hang on to his GM paycheck and health insurance and follow the job, no matter where it leads.
In his case, it led to Fairfax, Kan., the same place his brother and two brothers-in-law — also GM workers, and now his roommates — landed. For others, it has been Indiana or Texas.
The long commute is not just a story of hard times, tough choices and a shrinking American auto industry. It's also a case study of what happens when an aging industrial town loses an anchor, when workers too old to start over and too young to retire are caught in a squeeze and when economic survival means one family, but two far-flung ZIP codes.
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Campaign Yard Sign Laws in Indiana - 0 views
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Campaigns that understand state yard sign regulations will avoid having their signs removed and political attacks from their opponents.
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COAL, RAILROAD, TRUCKING & ELECTRIC POWER GENERATING JOBS LOST. THE ECONOMYS OF WEST VIRGINIA, PENNSYLVANIA, ILLINOIS, INDIANA AND OHIO CRUSHED. 50% OF ELECTRICTY COMES FROM COAL FIRED POWER PLANTS. THESE ARE THE PLANTS THAT GENERATE ELECTRICYT TO CHARGE ELECTRIC CARS.
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ook at the outrage in Madison, Wisconsin. Look at the crowds in DesMoines, Iowa. Look at the demonstrations in Indiana and Ohio and elsewhere around America. Hear what they're saying: Stop attacking unions. Stop making scapegoats out of public employees. Stop protecting the super-rich from paying their fair share of the taxes needed to keep our schools running.
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In the early dawn, after another week building cars, Michael Hanley leaves his job in Kansas. He quickly zips into Missouri, then heads up a ribbon of highway past grain silos and grazing deer, across the frozen fields of Iowa, over the Mississippi River and into the rolling hills of Wisconsin. Finally, he pulls into his driveway - 530 miles later. It's one heck of a haul: more than 1,000 miles roundtrip, 16-plus hours of driving, every week.
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