Archive for the ‘employment’ Category

Joe Mika and Norah O’Donnell surprise me today

Posted: July 20, 2010 by datechguy in employment, opinion/news
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Ok make sure you are sitting down for this.

MSNBC’s Morning Joe was talking about an unemployment extension. It started with the regular meme about Republicans blocking unemployment but around the 13 minute mark Pat mentioned Republican offsets, then after the break, Norah O’Donnell (who has the look of someone who just had some personal good news) quoted what the republicans said today. Joe looks then mentions that the media hasn’t reported the republican offset stuff and then Mika talks about how the story they are quoting has a headline hitting republicans and then deep on the jump page mentions the plans they offered to pay for unemployment extension.

I have never heard, particularly on MSNBC anyone mentioning the “after the jump” stuff. Naturally we conservatives are used to it, but I never thought I’d hear Mika hit the media on MSNBC for doing it.

That is just so honorable and I hate to say it but when they did, Margaret Carlson looked like someone took the prize out of her breakfast cereal.

Well done folks well done!

What an interesting coincidence

Posted: July 8, 2010 by datechguy in employment, opinion/news
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Robert Stacy’s post happens to coincide with a subject that recently came up for me.

As you may or may not know my own unemployment benefits have run out and my wife recently lost her job so things have become incredibly tight around here with only two teenagers working, however I have a liberal friend who has been in much more dire straights for much longer. I’ve been hoping and praying that he would find employment and just got the news today that he has been offered a good job at good money. He will likely start next week.

I had been in a very bad mood to day so this brightened me up considerably. I congratulated him on his change of fortune and we talked about the position. I was arguing that his employment benefits others and talked about the multiplier of employment, he insisted otherwise saying that he learned to live bear bones and would likely keep doing so. Every time I mentioned an item he insisted he would still do without. Finally I brought up shopping suggesting he might purchase perhaps a name brand rather than a generic on some items. His answer blew me away.

He said it was not a fair example since he is still on Mass. Food Stamps the state gives them out 6 months at a time so he will have them for some time while employed. He maintained the example is bad because his food would be paid for with “free money” so of course he would buy better stuff now that he has some other income, but for his own money he would be not be spending a penny that he didn’t have to.

Listening to him describe how foolish Massachusetts is was really something. He talked about establishing residency in NH to avoid the Mass income tax and how he would buy the groceries in NH since stores across the border take them. Liberal views be damned, if Massachusetts was dumb enough to give him the money he was going to spend it and if he could avoid the taxes he would do so.

Liberalism you might want to vote it but you don’t want to live it.

Just had breakfast with an old friend

Posted: July 1, 2010 by datechguy in employment, opinion/news, personal
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He is between a rock and a hard place. His expected work output has risen by a large percentage since we last worked together while his pay has dropped, yet he is in a spot where if he decides that it is too much for him there are 20 guys waiting to take that job from him.

It is not only the unemployed who have it tough during tough times. Those who have jobs are working harder for less with the fear of unemployment and all it entails hanging over them, plus they are paying the taxes to support the help that we who are unemployed get.

I noted yesterday the complaints online about the delay in unemployment extension. When we forget who is paying for all of this we become a society unrecognizable to our ancestors who came here with nothing.

In Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s new book Nomad she writes about how she was granted 1200 Dutch Guilders (this was before the Dutch switched to the Euro) a month AND a loan of 4000, guilders more that was paid back by withholding 100 guilders a month from the 1200. Thus as a refugee she got 5200 guilders up front and a further 1100 a month (plus housing). She talks about how many people who were granted the same loan ended up sending it back to Africa or the middle east to pay smugglers to bring in more of the family to start the cycle again. All paid for by the Dutch taxpayer. As she puts it on page 177:

Practically everyone I knew had built up overwhelming debts. They applied for credit cards, magical pieces of plastic that meant you could just sign a tiny piece of paper and walk out of any shop with whatever you wanted. They received endless stipends from the social services–for unemployment, for child support, for various medical benefits–and yet in almost every conversation they would lament the miserly amount of money they had to live on , wholly oblivious to the sacrifice of the society that was paying for it all.

They had no idea, in other words, of the obligations of a citizen, let alone the complexities of the welfare state.

Many of the people who she is describing had be raised in tribal cultures. They neither knew of nor understood the basic financial concepts they were dealing with. She herself didn’t know what a savings account or a loan was. We however were born here and have not only education but access to a greater source of knowledge on demand than the kings and presidents of old did. We have no excuse.

Another blow to the conventional wisdom…

Posted: June 30, 2010 by datechguy in employment, opinion/news
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If you do a search of stories on the Unemployment extension or lack thereof you will see a lot of stuff like this:

Republicans are united against the extension

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander M. Levin (D-MI), a co-sponsor of the bill, said in a press release yesterday that

“Republicans in Congress are clearly more focused on their short-term political standing than the immediate economic security of millions of Americans who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own and are unable to find work.”

Evil Republicans yada yada yada, just like the tea party stuff we’ve heard so many times before. You would think it was part of journolist.

Interestingly enough if you look at the Globe today you find this:

Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts is planning to introduce legislation today aimed at extending unemployment assistance for the long-term jobless, funding summer jobs, and providing more Medicaid funding to states.

His plan would pay for the additional spending using unspent stimulus funding, along with cuts in other areas.

“There are some programs in that legislation that are important to Massachusetts during this economic crisis,’’ Brown, a Republican, says in a video message he is planning to release this morning. “But we need to find a way to pay for them.’’

Scott Brown? An Evil republican extending unemployment? That’s has to be as unlikely as democrats showing up for a Tea Party Forum.

How about that actually paying for that extension. As someone in tight shape who could use that extension I understand that the money is coming not from the Government but from my fellow taxpayers. Once people forget this we become a society of dependence.

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