Wednesday, May 12, 2010

THE FORGOTTEN 99ERS WITHOUT A LIFELINE

There is a refrain which goes something like this:

“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

There is another one like it which goes:

“You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

I warned in 2008 what this man was all about when he won his party’s nomination for the presidency. Few listened to me. Some even kept making excuses for him, and others even asked that I’d not comment any more about the man to them because they did not want to “get political,” but they had no problem getting “political” when it came to promoting his candidacy, and voting for him on Election Night.

Though I was disappointed, I kept and have continued to warn my readers of this man’s agenda, and how this agenda would impact their liberties, and their wallets, but especially what these policies would do to our country. Yes, I detailed what he would attempt to do if elected president that November, but what I did not expect to see was how his party, literally to a person, allowed this radical to have his way on every issue, every measure, every policy by closing ranks in support of his agenda. I had known for some years how far the Democratic Party had gone, but I was not aware just how far it had been co-opted by militant radicals and outright Communists. You think that the word Communist is a bit extreme? Then you have not known that for some time, several members of the Democratic Party have been active supporters and promoters of the most radical regimes on the planet; some like several members of the Congressional Black Caucus flying to Cuba to celebrate the Communist Revolution during its annual celebrations, which included holding meetings with the dictator himself; Fidel Castro. You want to talk about extreme? That’s extreme.

The American people, white, black, yellow, brown, and everything in between have had it, and they are not fooled by the rhetoric from Washington and the media spin on the news. They realize that the alphabet soup media is now part and parcel a public relations arm of the Obama White House, conducting damage control for the president and his supporters in congress. They know that the hundreds of billions of bail out tax dollars that have gone to the banks, the brokerage houses, the large insurance interests and the big labor unions have done nothing for this economy, but exacerbate the Great Recession/Depression. Wall Street has been bailed out by Main Street, but Main Street has been left out to dry.

They know that the real unemployment numbers are at 22 per cent, not 9.9 per cent, because the long term unemployed are no longer counted by the government as a statistic. For all intents and purposes, they have ceased to exist as far as Obama and congress are concerned. The unemployment figures have been doctored to appear more than half its true numbers, and the long term unemployed – the 99ers – have been forgotten and abandoned by this White House and by both houses of congress and both political parties. Their excuse, they claim that the American people do not support the federal government allowing unemployed people who have paid into the system for over thirty years to be able to collect as they continue to look for work in this depression. They claim that the mood of the nation is to stop spending. They’re partially correct, but they are grossly wrong if they believe that the vast majority of voting Americans do not support getting federal help to the disadvantaged among US. It is not just any spending that Americans oppose, it’s the federal bailout of the rich and powerful and foreign nations being bailed out at America’s expense. This is what they’re opposed to. They’re tired of being lied to, of being forced to accept laws and policies which will impoverish them, mortgage their future, and destroy what little they have left. And the people are making their voices heard. Recently someone whom the media choose to ignore wrote this letter to the president and congress:
Senators and Representatives:
You should be ashamed of yourself, and here's why:
You have decided to ignore the people you reduced to poverty. The longest unemployed workers did not create this depression, you did. You did this with your failure to regulate the banks, health industry, and corporations. People who were fully employed, paying taxes, and raising families are now paying the price for your negligence. They trusted you to keep something like this from happening. You failed them.
Now you are deliberately failing them again. This may be a recession for you, but it's a depression for them. You know this depression will last longer than until March, yet you have no plans to add additional unemployment tiers to keep these people from becoming increasingly destitute. Tens of thousands will begin to lose all financial support on March 14. You know with full clarity that these benefits are the only money keeping food on their tables. You know that their benefits run out in March, and that these American families will be on the path to shelters and soup kitchens.
...and this is not of their making. They're not to blame. You are.
...and you're about to discount them again by allowing their benefits to end with Tier IV.
By the way, don't pride yourself on extending the current benefits for the more recently unemployed, as included in the Job Bill. Of course you should do this, but as you know, the bill as it is written will not help any of those who have been the longest and hardest hit by this depression. The Job Bill only half addresses the unemployed, and 50% is an F.
Please make sure that the only choice for Americans who want to work is either a job or unemployment benefits. Don't end benefits until there are jobs for them. As of now, there is only 1 job for every 6 unemployed workers. Take care of these victims.
ADD A TIER V
http://www.change.org/petitions/view/the_99ers_need_a_tier_v_added_to_unemployment_benefits
Someone else who is facing the end of his unemployment benefits which he paid into for years writes:

Very soon, there will be millions of us that will be suffering without benefits. This will not only affect us as individuals, but our families and our close friends. because those of us in the mid-forties to retirement age are not finding stable work. A lot of us were looking forward to a comfortable retirement after years of productive work. All of that money that we saved for years is gone. Many of us will be on welfare now and in retirement. Think of it, a large proportion of the post war generation will end up being cared for by the government or will end up on the streets.

Now we're moving in with our children, our aged parents and old friends after years of independence. We've lost our homes and jobs. There will be no legacy for our children to inherit. We're filing bankruptcy in record numbers. All of this through no fault of our own. Age discrimination laws are weak and difficult to prove in the hiring process.

We didn't ask for this. We were robbed "with a fountain pen". It almost seems like it was planned all along. First, they took our retirement savings, then they took away our jobs and homes. That money went somewhere. Now, they've cut unemployment benefits.

About 3.4 million Americans have been out of work for more than a year, according to a study by the Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative. You can read about it at this link: More Than a Million May Lose Jobless Aid Due to Deficit Concern on the San Francisco Chronicle Web site. This government is quick to send tens of billions of tax payer money to foreign governments of questionable character, yet they cannot find it within themselves to extend help to impoverished Americans who worked all their lives, and paid into the system, and now find themselves foreclosed and forgotten, while Wall Street revels at 11,000! While Rome burns, Nero and his supporters play the harp and sing the praise of their own work. In another article about the current state of high unemployment in the nation we read:
With a projected $1.5 trillion federal deficit looming this year, though, lawmakers from both parties are resisting costly and politically unpopular appeals to extend benefits.
While that could change quickly in an election year, Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., who supported previous extensions, told Bloomberg News Service last week that 99 weeks is enough.
That didn't sit well with Mignon Veasley-Fields, a 61-year-old former charter school administrator from Los Angeles.
"Ninety-nine weeks is sufficient? I paid into unemployment for almost 40 years of my life. How dare he (Baucus) say that. This is what hurts," Veasley-Fields said, fighting back tears. "He has no clue what it's like to have to spend money on groceries and then pray that the utility company will give you an extension so that you'll have lights."
When she hits her 99-week limit at the end of the month, Veasley-Fields will join more than 100,000 "99ers" in California who've also maxed out their benefits....
While the economy created 290,000 new jobs in April, unemployment jumped to 9.9 percent as 805,000 people rejoined the labor force to renew their job search. Sadly though, 6.7 million Americans, nearly 46 percent of the nation's unemployed, have been jobless for 27 weeks or more. Another 1.2 million are still discouraged and no longer looking....
Harvard University economist Lawrence Katz said the nation is 11 million jobs short of where it should be population-wise. To catch up, 15 million new jobs are needed during the next four years.
Fifteen million new jobs in four years is a tall order, made taller by every passing month in which the administration and Congress don't make job creation a higher priority. In the meantime, unemployment extensions are the only thing allowing millions of Americans to hang on. Congress needs to pass Tier 5.

In another article on the same topic, someone else has made the following observation:

Tier 5 Benefits Extension a Desire After Unemployment Benefits Extension. Millions of Americans have exhausted their unemployment benefits and don’t know what they are going to do next. It’s not that they don’t want to work or aren’t able to work – it’s that employers just aren’t hiring.

The hardest hit are those that are in the middle or towards the end of their careers. These individuals are either typically overqualified for available positions or unable to compete with younger jobhunters.

Still yet, these people persevere, sending out hundreds of resumes and sitting through hours of interviews. Those lucky enough to snag a job typically find themselves in a position that pays less than they used to get at their old jobs.

The reality is that just just one in five people looking for work since last year at this time have been able to find work – that’s one in five! More than a thousand unemployed workers were polled in a Rutgers University Study last year. The study discovered that 21 per cent found jobs, but more than two thirds remained unemployed, and the rest just gave up looking for work in this “jobless recovery.” Of those who found work, only thirteen per cent found full time work, and of those sixty-one per cent said that the jobs they were in were just temporary, as they continued to look for something better. In March of this year more than four hundred fourteen thousand were added to the roll of the unemployed for that month alone. Of the long term unemployed, it has hit those over 50 hardest. Only twelve per cent have found work since last August. To cope with this situation, 70 percent of the unemployed have dipped into their retirement funds, while 56 percent have borrowed money from their relatives and friends. As many as 45 percent taken out cash advances on their credit cards. Forty-two percent are uninsured, 20 percent have moved in with their family; some even with their friends, and 18 percent visited a soup kitchen.

They have been insulted, they have been called all sorts of epithets, they have been investigated as threats to national security, they have been accused of racism by racial hucksters in congress and the media, they have been misrepresented, and maligned by politicians and the mass media. They have been lied to by politicians, used by them for their reelection, but they will not take it any longer. There is going to be such a groundswell of opposition to Washington Insider Politics and Insider Politicians this year and the years to come, that it will dwarf every political movement of this country’s past. You do not smack somebody down, spit on them, treat them like dung, and expect them to ask for a repeat performance. Just how much does this man and his party, and his supporters in the media believe they can get away with?

Obama and others like him may have gotten over seventy-five per cent of the Jewish vote in 2008, and 95 per cent of the Black vote, including 78 per cent of the Hispanic vote, but there is one thing that will not recur in 2012; a repeat of the mistake that was 2008. Why? Because the change that Obama wants is not the change the people voted for in 2008. Plain and simple. America went to sleep and dreamed but the dream they dreamed became a nightmare of which they have awakened. They will not be lulled back to sleep again.

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