(9 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)
There is no stopping it this time.
Last month Senator Jim Bunning created a stir with his stand against extending unemployment benefits to the long-term unemployed through borrowing. After a lot of political grandstanding, it ended after a couple days when both sides agreed to a temporary 30-day extension.
The 30-days are almost over and nothing has been accomplished. D-Day is approaching for the unlucky millions of long-term unemployed.
As many as 130,000 Californians are expected to exhaust their unemployment benefits within the next three weeks, based on estimates from the state Employment Development Department. About 3,300 already have fallen off the unemployment rolls.
That’s 130,000 in just one state. The effects over the entire country will be catastrophic.
Of course this didn’t happen without yet another confrontation in Congress.
“We’re going to be like the Athenian Empire,” warned the Oklahoma Republican, standing alone on the Republican side of the room.
Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) slumped in his chair, rubbing his temples in apparent agony.
After about 20 minutes, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) interrupted Coburn to ask: “How long are you going to talk?”
Coburn said he planned to talk for another 45 minutes. Reid turned around and left the room. He eventually returned with a motion to table Coburn’s bill, which succeeded easily.
A reporter asked Bunning how he felt that Coburn had taken up his cause. “I think it’s wonderful,” he said.
Congress will adjourn for a two-week break starting tomorrow. On April 5 a huge wave of long-term unemployed will lose their benefits. Congress will not be back in session until April 12.
Newly unemployed will also lose eligibility for subsidized COBRA benefits.
“This will be our first item of business when we come back.”
– Reid spokesman Jim Manley
Here’s the breakdown on the weeks of basic unemployment and the extensions available:
* Basic unemployment: 26 weeks
* First tier extension: 20 weeks
* Second tier extension: 14 weeks
* Third tier extension: 13 weeks
* Fourth tier extension: 6 weeks
* FedEd: 20 weeks
For every cloud there is a silver-lining, and it took JP Morgan Chase to find it.
A recent report by JPMorgan Chase claims that the enhanced unemployment benefits which were enacted to fight the recession have actually increased the unemployment rate by 1.5 percent.
So you see, giving unemployed people a small amount of money so they can pay their rent is actually a bad thing. Therefore lots of poor people getting evicted should shrink the unemployment rate.
You can trust JP Morgan Chase on this. They know more than a few things about getting money from the government.
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The Rs named Coburn to the Debt Commission. Handwriting meet wall. Bipartisanship – it’s a grand thing.
Really – what is there to say. This guy wins elections in his state so….
I think Coburn was the guy who talked about charity from neighbors when someone in his audience spoke about their problems without health care.
yeah, yeah, USA.
In that report you site the logic isn’t really that bad. In fact, I think extended benefits do increase unemployment. As the economist said who wrote the report.
So, what the policy seems to be is to dramatically decrease wages. If wages can be cut in half, in some sectors, then employers could hire more workers and unemployment would go down by quite a lot. The MSM would ignore it and would report that the “economy” is improving. Just like they regularly reported that incomes are going up around the country for all the years of economic “boom” since 1980. In fact, a close analysis (or even a not so close analysis) shows that living standards for non-rich people has gone gradually down during the past 30 years if you take Elizabeth Warren’s figures seriously.
Fortunately for us the oligarchs have figures out how to finesse the situation (what brilliance!) they have organized their own network (Fox) to push and organize a neo-fascist rebellion and have lined up a number of scapegoats to utterly cut-off any trend that would move us to the left. Also, fortunately for the new system (post-Constitutional Republic) the “progressive” left has been asleep at the whell and/or infiltrated by the security services so that there will be little trouble there. John Stewart and Rachel Maddow are clever and witty and entertaining but they are political infants who are completely out of their league. BTW, I used to know some well-known right-wing operatives and I can assure you they are very good warriors.
What then do we do? I will diary about this soon.
should be able buy that mandated insurance with all that unemployment now…..
oh yea i am so excited……
my rent is 1400 amonth….
my unemplyment is 1650 a month….
yea right those dems took care of me again….
What to do with superfluous population? As usual Noam Chomsky sees the flow chart….from 1998.
http://www.chomsky.info/interv…
…. and I am not making this up, is that they get the Federales to deport all the “furriners” and “ee lee gal ail lee ins,” and the rest of the unemployed then march back out into the fields to pick lettuce and tomatoes.
Do you all have any concept of how hard ag work is ? We all starve at that point.
I’m not advocating using undocumented labor. I’m saying the Republicans have this odd habit of really despising the only people who are physically capable of creating something real out of nothing, that they in turn use, from food to cloth to cars. As if Heaven is a place food spontaneously generates, shrink wrapped, in the grocery aisles and clothes recombine themselves from self spun cotton bolls in Walmarts, and cars drop as hail into dealers lots from thunder in the skies.
Democratic Phantasy
If we just make sure these fine people know we are all friends here they will stop this filibustering on these bills. Then we can run to another smashing victory in 2010 because the Republicans are big bad meanies who won’t let us do anything with our majorities and we showed everybody that.
The Republicans say that the government can’t create jobs. I wonder how we could prove them wrong on that. Let’s do a jobs bill and put the unemployment benefits in it… oh, wait.
Vichy Pandercrat Dems
Quick ! NEED BIG DISTRACTION TALK ABOUT TEA PARTY ENDLESSLY.
I expect DC to tune into JPM and kind of run with this idea.
fade to dreamland and smoke filled room
Whoa … that was scary … glad it was only a dream
Or does anything he says have any actual cognitive significance? In what sense does he think “we’re going to be like the Athenian Empire”? Does he think ancient Athens paid out too much in unemployment benefits? Or what?
(I’m just full of questions today!) : )