Showing posts with label unemployment extension. Show all posts
Showing posts with label unemployment extension. Show all posts

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Rich Repuke Senators Hand Thousands of Hungry Kids a Lump of Coal By Not Extending Unemployment Benefits


















DO the well-heeled Reepos care if the children of the unemployed starve? Hell NO!


How can it be that millionaire Repub Senators could be so callous and mean-spirited as to essentially tell tens of thousands of hungry kids to ‘Go Starve!’ And yet, that’s what has transpired as they’ve voted against extending unemployment benefits to the current 1.3 million who need them, which will become 4.8 million in a matter of months because the nature of the odious ‘deal’ signed last month allows for a rolling cut-off. As soon as the unemployed person hits the set limit based on maximal  months, wham! He is cut off from benefits – as is his family. That means the kids will go hungry – unless mom and pop can manage to get enough supplies at a food pantry.

 
Incredibly, foul, heartless pigs – sitting comfortably on their own gov’t benefits – have little or no sympathy. They could care less if the kids of the unemployed go hungry – so long as they get theirs.  No, they insist the long –term unemployed are merely lazy, good for nuthin’ parasites trying to eke largesse from the system. They have no conception that to the long term unemployed it fairly kills them to be taking what they know others (like Mr. Pig) regard as “handouts”. And these hard working people – who are only searching for a scintilla of dignity via work – would do without if not for the kids. It is the faces of their hungry kids who cry themselves to sleep each night that propels them to seek assistance, via unemployment benefits – or, if it comes down to it- welfare.

 
Why do the heartless lizard brains find this so hard to grasp? What has malfunctioned in their brains or brain stems, to make them believe these people wouldn’t take work – ANY work – if they could find it? Well, because it’s much easier for them to believe – after the Reagan era myths circulated of “welfare queens” - that the unemployed are no different from this odious caricature. This despite the fact the unemployed as workers had to pay into the system to accrue those benefits. (Which is why, if you haven’t been working a certain length of time, you receive none).

 
But this is what we’ve come to as a society. Because these same lizard brained trolls have no problem with the real corporate parasites snagging millions a year off the backs of average tax payers. They have no problem with the sleaze bag Wall Streeters, Oil company CEOs and banksters snatching all they can get out of the system – and with their money.

By one measure, as reported by Barbara Ehrenreich ('This Land is THEIR Land', p. 23): "the share of pre-tax income going to the top 1 percent of American households has risen to 16 percent. At the same time, the share of income going to the bottom 80 percent has fallen by 7 percentage points."

But it's worse than that! Those top 1 percent of people and indeed the top 5 %, have made out like bandits since the Bush tax cuts were passed in 2001. As a result, there has been an average transference of $7,000 every year from lower and middle income earners to the top.

According to a New York Times piece cited by Ehrenreich: "It's as if every household in the bottom 80% is writing a check for $7,000 every year and sending it to the top 1 percent".

Incredibly, the lizard brains lack even basic reasoning power, or basic knowledge of economics (understandable if they attend Smokehouse Online Bible College).  One actually had the unmitigated chutzpah to scribble ignorant refuse on his blog that everyone needed to be unemployed - in response to the finding by Harvard economist Lawrence Katz, i.e.  that the US economy is losing up to one billion dollars a week because of the “fiscally irresponsible” decision to end long-term unemployment benefits.

This bozo actually wrote: “Well, uh… if’ it’s so great to have UI for 1.3 million people to perk up the economy, why not have everyone unemployed?”


No, I kid you not! This turkey actually wrote that.  He has no conception of a balance sheet recession, or that the very concept of paying unemployment insurance (like paying out Social Security benefits) is contingent on a certain proportion of workers. In the case of S.S. current recipients (like HE is) are dependent on the earnings of current workers. If there were zero current workers there’d be zero S.S. benefits. In like manner, if there were zero current workers, there’d be zero dollars in the unemployment insurance cache to pay benefits.


What this bozo seemingly doesn’t’ grasp, is that a significant fraction of long term unemployed is disastrous for an economy whose GDP is seventy percent supported by consumer spending! Thus, the absence of those dollars (howsoever they arrive) means the GDP is hit, and a recession may be imminent. Losing one billion a week because of the removal of UI benefits is therefore not anything to sneeze at.
 
But why should Mr Xtian BigMouth get it? He obviously dismisses the recent quote I put up pertaining to one unemployed worker (posting on the UK Guardian site) who wrote:
 
“As one who lost his benefits I can tell you one thing, I will be homeless and spiraling downward without an extension. Place as much blame on me as you feel but remember the end result. Just because somebody gets themselves stuck in the mud, it does not mean somebody can't help them out! I've never in 38 years been on unemployment and I am shocked by the hard time I'm having getting a job. NO one will even hire me to dig ditches, collect garbage or clean sewers! What am I to do, starve?"
 

 
 Oh, Mr, Mighty Mouth does have a "solution" - at least for any unemployed in his area (assuming he isn't bullshitting):  that the mgr. of his apt complex will pay $10/hr for any one to "collect dog poop" lying on the premises. Personally, I think his claim is more full of dog shit than bull shit.

As I already noted, the Dems are partly responsible for this travesty. Instead of giving away the store in last month's "bipartisan budget deal"  - see the finalization of the act here- and  note Paul Ryan's prominent smirk at Dem victim Patty Murrary:
US budget deal

They ought to have held firm, and held out for an extension of long term unemployment benefits - or said, NO DEAL! That was when they had the leverage. Now, all they have is dog poop, and no Repuke will come on board, least of all the Tea Pee assholes.


Thursday, December 12, 2013

Latest Budget Deal Seeks to Preserve Military Bullshit Spending - Spare it from Sequester





"No one has recently said to me, 'You can only get so angry,' and escaped with their hide intact, probably because I tend to spend my time with people who know better, and the people who know me know better than to try and tell me I'm making too much of things in this diseased day and age, when "things" make plenty of themselves without my help."- William Rivers Pitt, in 'It Only Hurts When I Laugh' - on smirkingchimp.com


Well we now know, after Paul Ryan's conscious (or maybe unconscious) admission this morning on CBS Early Show, that this new budget deal is designed to spare the military -defense enclave about $23 billion in sequester cuts that otherwise would have gone into effect. Hence, any deficit savings are on the backs of the poor, hungry kids, the unemployed. 

Ryan openly admitted his "concern" about military spending cuts in the sequester so was "pleased" that $63 b of defense sequester cuts are "offset" by $85b in gov't "automatic spending". Unmentioned is that unemployment extension was off the table, as were any new tax increases - which would have helped limit the deficits by nearly $150b within two years. But oh no, none of the Reepos want higher taxes - so the Demos obliged them. The above offset - or rather spending cut imbalance between defense and "discretionary budget allocations" amounts to nearly $23b. That amount will now allow the defense industry-Pentagon to go ahead with the building of 2,335 F-35 bombers at a cost of 3/4 billion each. But oh no, can't cut this piece of waste! Too important to line the pockets of defense contractors! See also:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/2013/09/joint-strike-fighter-lockheed-martin

The fact is that in real terms, military spending has exploded the past 11 years, thanks to the American people being scared shitless into believing them there "terrorists" will get them if they don't have massive, sustained and insane  "defense" spending.  Back in 2011 it was noted that Pentagon spending had doubled since 2000, to $790 b a year. This number included both yearly "supplementals" to fund the Afghan conflict and occupation, along with $553b for the base Pentagon budget.

Over the past decade this translates into a pure growth factor of nearly $2 trillion. Thus, Repub Tom Coburn (OK) was correct (for once) when he admitted in a 2011 statement that Pentagon spending :

 "is higher in constant dollars than at any time in the last 60 years, including the Korean War, Vietnam and all the Defense Dept. spending during the Reagan years ($2.2 trillion)".

It is also more than the next 25 nations' military spending combined. The gist of all this? In fact there are no real cuts to military spending in any absolute terms, but only an estimated "trim down" of roughly 23% in the projected INCREASES in Pentagon spending over the next ten years! The point here? Contrary to the bloviators' bollocks of "jeopardizing national security", just the opposite is true: the Pentagon base budget will still be larger than it is today by 2021! This necessarily means, given the zero sum resources we have, everyone else will be much poorer. That means an even more shattered and useless infrastructure with crumbling roads, cracking sewer and water mains and collapsing bridges....and a much more likely intolerable domestic environment over all.

 Anyone who doesn't see this as the distinctive symptom of a nation in decline is a foursquare idiot.

Does the U.S. REALLY need 702 military 'installations' in 63 foreign countries (it has 4,471 bases altogether), according to the Defense Department's  2012 budget statement? ( Figures that don't include bases in Iraq and Afghanistan.) We're talking about our military presence in nations like Germany, South Korea, and Japan. ALL of these represent redundant costs since the wars that incepted the bases are now more than a half century over! While the total cost of these bases is kept secret, the best analysis I've seen estimates their ten-year cost at approximately $1 trillion. Cut that fat and waste, and unemployment insurance could easily be extended and a Farm Bill could be passed that doesn't kill food stamps to the tune of $40 billion over 10 years.

So why the fuck are we blowing so much on this military  bullshit when our own people need help - with 16 million kids going to bed hungry each night - and our infrastructure falling into massive disrepair?  The reason is simple: the defense contractors know if they can squirrel away some amount of jobs into every congressional district they essentially have all the politicos in those districts - now numbering in the thousands - by the brains and balls. They know that being seen to surrender jobs in this low aggregate demand environment would likely see a congress critter getting "primaried"  by some military spending whore, like our own Doug Lamborn here in Colo. Springs, e,g,


Lamborn in his most recent comments to The Denver Post ('Defense Cuts Put Lamborn in Tough Fight'. Nov. 8  p. 5A) on the importance of military spending,  is on record as saying he:

 "intends to find other places to chop, including entitlements like food stamps and Medicare, to shield the military."

The Post piece also went on to note:

"Lamborn receives his heftiest campaign contributions from military contractors. Just in this election cycle, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman- both with offices in Colorado Springs - gave him a combined $10,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. He has also received contributions from Honeywell International and Boeing."

Where will it end? Sadly, as the yen to further bloat the military curries more favor from political Jacobins, traitors and numbskulls, the target of  REEP austerity hawks will continue to be "entitlements".  That essentially is what Ryan implied this morning, as he professed so much "concern about our debt". Funny.....,these fuckers when in power don't worry about debt or deficits at all. Wasn't it Dick(-head) Cheney who actually said: "Deficits don't matter!"  No, I guess they don't when Reep-Turds are in power and blow up the budgets with unpaid for "wars" and tax cuts so the next Dem Prez gets the blame and has to clean up the mess - by cutting  domestic spending!  These Rat fuckers won't be satisfied until we're all homeless, sick, dead or maybe ....walking dead.

Am I angry"? Fuck YES! And if you're not then either you're not paying attention or you're already among the Walking Dead!