Midwest

Midwest is region of USA.

Overview
The Midwestern Region's states are near the bottom of the list of livable places in America, being edged out only by those in the Northeast. It's here, in the Midwest, that acid rain has really earned its reputation as an environmental catastrophe. There is no Department of Ecology in any of the Midwestern st a t es, as there is no ecology left for someone to be the department of.

Certainly the Midwest is most famous for Detroit and Cleveland, which are consistently rated first and third of the Most Dangerous Places to Live, according to Net 54's You Decide! poll. It is only the presence of these two hell-holes that overshadows the difficulties of cities like Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Cincinnati.

These situations are of course underplayed by the state governments. Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio are dominated by business concerns. Wisconsin and Illinois are similarly dominated, although to a lesser extent. These states incorporate a new advisory board made up of the PR people from various corporations. This board controls the dominant portion of the constituency, and therefore can put the governor out of a job on short notice.

The other major feature of the Midwest is the Great Lakes system. Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, while the lifeblood of Midwest industry, are no longer the lifeblood of anything else. The lakes are uniformly polluted beyond belief. There are no fish in them. They are so acidic that vessels plying their trade in these waters must get their hulls treated once a year to avoid being eaten away. In fact, the only life supported in the lakes are a few noxious strains of algae which cover the surface with a sickly brown color and phosphoresce in the freighters' wakes.

The lakes are so bad that Canada, at its own expense, installed a major lock and water recycling system on the Saint Lawrence waterway to keep the U.S. pollution from contaminating Montreal and the Maritime waters.

The freighters which cruise the lakes transport the Midwest's raw materials and industrial goods out and their food and other necessities in. The vast majority of shipping for the Midwest is done by freighter; trucks are used to ship elsewhere. In fact, 95% of the trucks which run on Midwest highways are heading across the region to other parts of the country. The Midwest, of course, taxes these shipments and uses most of the proceeds to maintain the highway system to the best of their corrupt ability.

Politically speaking, the Midwestern senators are generally considered the 'bad boys' of politics. With its industry, the Midwest has its fair share of power, yet the Midwestern states have, over the last fifteen years, earned reputations as being shortsightedly selfish and dogmatic. Thanks to their influence, any environmental bill put before the national government is sure to acquire at least one firm rejection from among the regions. Likewise, the Midwestern states will not pass any bill that cannot be demonstrated to have an immediate and positive benefit for their region.

It's not that they don't need the help. The Midwest used to be covered with thick pine forests, wide verdant fields of grain, and picturesque rolling hills. Of these, the hills remain, although they are not picturesque any more. The pine forests of Michigan and Wisconsin stand as vast acres of dry, black wooden spires, washed by acid rain and painted by the corrosive smoke from the cities. The ground is covered, at best, by a scrubby brown crabgrass which, against all odds, continues to survive and spread. Many of the smaller interior lakes are covered with a scum of unknown origin, an agglutination of non-volatile airborne waste accumulated over the years.

Of course, hardly anyone ever sees all this any more, because few people actually leave the cities. The cities are where the jobs are, where money pumps in the heart of the average beaver. With no environment left to worry about, let alone earn a living from, the Midwest has turned to industry to keep itself alive. And since the acid-washed metropolises are the only future for the inhabitants, tempers tend to run a little short.