Posts Tagged ‘unemployment’

since it will mean 17 weeks grace and at least 2 months more of bills being paid before the hole begins why am I worried about this?

Democrats have stripped the unemployment insurance measure down to the bare essentials for Tuesday’s vote, which is a do-over of a tally taken late last month.

With West Virginia Democrat Carte Goodwin poised to claim the seat of the late Robert Byrd, two Republicans will be needed to vault the measure over the filibuster hurdle. Maine GOP moderates Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are expected to provide the key votes to create a filibuster-breaking tally on a key procedural test.

Sweetness and light points out the GOP position:

As we have repeatedly said, the Republican opposition was on two points. One, that the benefits should be paid for, as is required by Mr. Obama’s imposed ‘PAYGO’ rules. Such as using some of the unspent ‘stimulus’ money in Mr. Obama’s ‘stash,’ which was indeed supposed to go for such things as unemployment benefits.

I won’t deny the money will be very helpful but there is nothing wrong with paying for this, after all every one of you who is working or running a business is paying for those benefits I will receive.

At the Huffington Post the very idea shocks them as evidenced by the headline:

Unemployment Extension: The GOP’s Unprecedented Deficit Demands

They are right about the history, but the scandal here is that the demands are unprecedented. Perhaps if they had been made decades before there would be more money available for relief.

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!

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.

looks like she didn’t read the Globe Yesterday either.