What a Country!
I’m taking a few minutes out from my frantic year-long job search to comment on a few things.
Wall Street’s crooked gambling casino that we in America call “the market” was pleased that new unemployment claims dropped this past week to “only” 429,000. Meanwhile, the millionaires’ club a.k.a. the Senate failed to help the long-term unemployed. And by the end of July we will have 3,000,000 jobless who have lost their unemployment payments. Well… that is 3,000,000 minus the half-dozen or so who will manage to find jobs by then.
As many of you know, under America’s system of measurement one can be jobless & not be counted as “unemployed.” “Unemployed” is a term that only applies to those who are eligible for unemployment benefits. Our government is seeking to solve the “unemployment” problem by simply making millions of jobless ineligible for unemployment. To borrow a punchline from Russian comedian Yakov Smirnoff, “What a country!”
No, I do not believe government is inherently evil. But government run by the bunch we have as “leaders” sure is.
Here is a “report” (and I use the term loosely) from an Ohio newspaper that could have been ghost-written by one of those millionaire Senators who hate the unemployed. It is a perfect example of why thinking people have abandoned the mainstream media. In case you cannot find my comment below the article, here is what I wrote in reply to this atrocious pablum:
” Wow! Was this article written by someone in the employ of a right-wing think-tank? The only way this article could be more one-sided & damaging to the unemployed is if the following sentences were removed:
“Still, Durant supports extending unemployment benefits. “It’s still the right thing to do, because it’s bad out there,” she said.
and
“Even critics of the unemployment extensions agree that nobody’s getting rich off of unemployment benefits.”
Otherwise it is filled with ridiculous & unfounded charges against the jobless that the hack reporter never questions nor counter-balances in any way. For instance when the assertion is made that the people are turning-down jobs that pay up to $15 dollars per hour because they make more off unemployment, even after taxes, said reporter never questions that it would mean the unemployed make about $700 + per week. Here in Ohio, the maximum unemployment is about $350 if you have dependent children, so this stuff about turning-down $15 dollar an hour jobs is highly suspect of being pure b.s.
I could go on but I won’t. This article is pure drivel. “
Next up. I am not a bit surprised that joblessness is causing a surge in calls to suicide prevention hotlines. Maybe if enough of we jobless kill ourselves it will bring down the unemployment figures. Come on you lazy jobless, do it for your country!
My bankruptcy was final last week. In case you wonder where I got money to file bankruptcy ($1500), I borrowed it from my 90 year old mommy. My attorney is a very nice fellow. After the hearing, he asked me how I’m holding-up. I confessed that two weeks ago I’d checked myself into the psych ward of a local hospital because I’d gone suicidal over my various financial problems (I’m not alone, see the above paragraph). He cautioned me against such a rash act and admitted he had tried to kill himself when he was 21 and despondent over a broken romance (he is now 60). His advice to someone as “young and sharp” (that’s why I like hanging around older people) as me is that I should move to another, better country with more opportunity. As those of you who have read some of my other blog postings know, I am considering that very action.
I hope all of you are doing well at weathering the economic storms. Remember “Non-Corborundum Illigitimi !” (don’t let the bastards grind you down).
Hate the Unemployed
It’s become obvious in the past few months that the latest group Americans are being manipulated into hating is the unemployed. They are fast being set-up to join the ranks of dangers to “The American Way of Life” that have included (but have been far from limited to) the British, Amer-Indians, Japanese, Communists, Muslims, trade unionists, welfare queens, Cubans, uppity negroes, Filipinos, various immigrant groups, women suffragettes, gays, hippies, intellectuals, French, draft dodgers, Russians, atheists, liberals, and conspiracy theorists.
Former workers are being slandered as too lazy to take a job, drug users, a burden that increases the nation’s budget deficit, and actually the cause of more unemployment because (get this!) their refusal to jump at the rock-bottom-jobs keeps wages too high. But the millionaires’ club known as the U.S. Senate came up with one of their typically well-thought-out solutions: They cut-off all extended unemployment.
This means that, while the U.S. is still gripped in the most catastrophic downturn since the Great Depression (catastrophic that is, for the bottom 95% of Americans) our “leaders” have decided, on the basis of no concrete evidence, that the economy is recovered and the unemployed need no extra help. So now the unemployed will be FORCED to stop living in the luxury of living off about 40% of their former wages & take one one of those plentiful jobs.
BTW- one of the most egregious slanders is this constantly-repeated lie that the unemployed are getting 99 weeks of payments. The media has even taken to talking about the “99ers.” HOGWASH !!! Only a small number of unemployed got that much time; it all depended upon factors such as when one lost one’s job & in what state it happened. I am convinced this is another subtle way to rile the still-employed into jealousy.
The same corporate-owned professional politicians who masterfully steered the ship of state onto the rocks, then managed to save the wealthy without enacting any meaningful change of course, are now throwing those of us without jobs overboard to lighten the ship’s load.
Mouthpieces of the kooky right-wing watch us sink without so much as tossing us a life-preserver. Instead, goofballs such as president of the Libertarian (that means insane free-market zealot) Buckeye Institute, Matt Mayer spout drivel about it being an example of “tough love.” Gee whiz, Matt, to me it looks more like an example of “kicking people when they’re down.”
And the response from those who still, for the time being, have jobs is barely a whimper. In fact, my own experience is that many of the employed are falling for the hate campaign hook, line, & sinker. What is it within the American character that makes it so apt to parrot the most outrageously heartless & brainless propaganda? That willingness to believe the worst in people, that Puritan fear that somewhere, somehow someone is getting a free-ride, that deep-seated conviction that those who encounter misfortune deserve it. I suppose that is one of the reasons why, in the early days of Hitler’s regime he thought the U.S. was very likely to join forces with him.
But enough of that. Now on to happier news.
I’m pleased to see America’s neighbor to the north, the one with the big maple leaf on their flag, is doing just dandy. Not being run by a cadre of evil, greedy, short-sighted plutocrats has allowed Canada to side-step the banking crisis, replace 75% of jobs lost in the recent recession, and keep their housing market on the upswing. While Canada got hammered just like the rest of the world’s nations, their economy is now growing at over 6% per year and their budget is expected to be back in surplus by 2015. Their Finance Minister, the wonderful JIm Flaherty, refused to lead his nation off the cliff in spite of pressure from world leaders to relax banking regulations to make Canada’s financial system more hip & groovy.
But it wasn’t always thus. Back in the early 1990′s the Canadian economy was a shambles but its leaders took steps to build a better future and have succeeded. Prime Minister at that time, Paul Martin, reminisces that it had to be done so as to “…preserve our health care and our education system…” Get that? Canada’s economy has become “the envy of the world” while managing to take care of its people! Sadly, we in the U.S.A. can no longer even imagine what it would be like to have caring & courageous leaders such as those up north.
Nor can we imagine what it would be like to have a leader like Uruguay’s president, Jose Mujica, whose entire net worth consists of a 1987 VW Beetle. He refuses to move into the presidential palace & still lives on his wife’s small farm. He donates most of his salary to causes such as housing for the poor.
We in the U.S.A. know that people like the Canadians & Jose Mujica are socialists. And socialists are bad! We know that because we have been inundated with that message for about 100 years. This was driven home to me when I came across a book I hadn’t read in my extensive collection, “Great Reading from Life” Life was once the most popular general interest magazine in America, once having a circulation of 13.5 million readers each week. This book from 1959 contains excerpts from the magazine by such luminaries as John Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Richard Nixon, Aldous Huxley, & Sir Edmund Hillary and among its 70 articles are 9 that are directly anti-Communist/Socialist. There are also numerous writings that simply monger fear of Communism/Socialism in passing. Is it any wonder that most Americans have a knee-jerk reaction to fear Socialism, while most of the rest of the developed world practices it with mostly good results?
I confess that Myrtle & I have been talking for some time about immigrating to a more civilized nation. This urge has become stronger in the past 6 weeks in light of the monstrous stupidity of the BP oil disaster & the heartless evil of vilifying the unemployed. On top of all the other monumental cruel dumbness of post-Reagan America, life here has become pretty much unbearable for those who believe in kindness & rationality. If you feel that way too, here is a link to the Canadian government’s immigration website.
Edwin Girdle
Doctor Hair
reverendhothoneywater
LieutenantPippilottaMackrelmint
