The forgotten ones

The nearly 14 million unemployed people in this country are a constant reproach to the Republican economic doctrine of shoveling as much money as you can into the pockets of a few already ridiculously wealthy people. For all that the GOP is trying mightily to restrict voting so that those without automobiles or a stable address, or those whose skin pigmentation or age indicates a possible vote against their party, cannot vote; there's still this stubborn reality that there's only so much you can steal an election when a majority of Americans have had enough of waiting until corporate CEOs think they are finally rich enough to trickle some largesse down to the peons by deigning to hire them to do something at their companies. What that something would be when no one other than the 1% can afford to buy anything remains to be seen, but that's the Republican doctrine and they're sticking with it.

I keep thinking of that notion put forth on Up With Chris Hayes last weekend, that this is now a nation of wasted resources -- 13.3 million of them, in fact. But rather than blame the GOP (and to a lesser degres, the Democrats, who are willing to be bought more cheaply), and the people who finance them and turn Congressmen from rural backwaters into multimillionaires simply by demanding legislation in exchange for campaign contributions, it's so much easier to demonize those who are unemployed due to outsourcing, appeasing Wall Street through massive job cuts, changes in technology, or simple obsolescence. After all, if they can just keep those of us who still have jobs separate from those who don't, perhaps enough votes can be squeezed out of the middle class to elect enough Republicans to completely demolish our way of life more quickly than the piecemeal efforts we've seen over the last thirty years.

The easiest way to do this is to paint the unemployed as somehow different from those of us lucky enough to still have jobs. So what the GOP is trying to do is turn all of the unemployed, no matter what their age or race or work history, into "the new n----rs" -- lazy, shiftless, drug-addicted leeches on society. Newt Gingrich advocates that anyone receiving any kind of federal aid (such as extended unemployment benefits) be drug tested. So does Congressman Jack Kingston.

All this brings us to word this morning of a "compromise" that may be reached today in the budget stalemate that threatens to shut down the government on the 16th of this month. When I hear "compromise" in the context of negotiations on Capitol Hill, what that means is "Democratic Capitulation", because the Democrats have shown again and again that there is no Republican plan to which they won't eventually capitulate, because if they don't, Chuck Todd and Bob Shieffer will paint them as obstructionist. Of course history has shown that capitulation doesn't change the media spin one iota, but that doesn't stop them from doing it. And of course there might be some trickle-down largesse from lobbyists as a consolation prize as well.

Today an editorial from the New York Times breaks down the Republican plan, just so you know what's coming when the Democrats blink, as we all know they will:

At last count, 13.3 million people were officially unemployed and 5.7 million of them had been out of work for more than six months. At no time in the last 60 years has long-term unemployment been so high for so long.

But Republican lawmakers would have you believe that the nation cannot afford jobless benefits and that many recipients are not so much needy, as lazy, disinclined to work as long as benefits are available. When was the last time any Republican lawmaker tried to live on $289 a week, the amount of the average benefit?

Under current policy, federal benefits kick in when state-provided benefits run out, typically after 26 weeks. The duration of the federal payouts depends on the level of unemployment in a given state. Currently, workers in 22 of the hardest-hit states — including California, New Jersey and Connecticut — qualify for up to 73 more weeks of aid. In five other states — including New York — up to 67 more weeks are available. In the remaining 23 states, maximum federal benefits range from 34 weeks to 60 weeks. The cost to continue the program for another year would be about $45 billion.

The Republican plan would cut $11 billion of that in 2012 by slashing up to 40 weeks from the program, reducing by more than half the maximum 73 weeks now available. Because of the way the program is structured, the biggest cuts would come in the states with the highest unemployment. Millions of jobless workers would be quickly left without subsistence, and the weak economy would be weakened further by the drop in consumer spending.

The bill would also impose onerous — and gratuitous — requirements on people who apply for jobless benefits. It would allow states to drug test applicants and would require recipients to be high-school graduates or working toward an equivalency degree

Don't look at your neighbor who does construction and hasn't worked in a year. Don't look at your spouse who can only get contract work for half the pay he used to get and no benefits, paid holidays, or vacation time. Don't look at the sixty-year-old down the street who's spent his own money on courses to keep his skills up to date and can't find a tech job because the industry is "too fast-paced" for him. Don't look at the machinist on the next block who would be happy to retrain for something if he only knew what kind of training would net him a job where he could supplement his wife's pay as a waitress at iHOP and maybe get their home out of foreclosure. Just convince people that all of those people are lazy, shiftless drug addicts -- just like those black people the GOP used to demonize when it was OK to do so (and if you're Newt Gingrich, you think it still is) and that unemployment can't happen to them.

This tactic of pointing people's attention down the economic ladder to the boogeyman of choice while the people up the ladder take the last few bucks out of our back pockets has worked for thirty years, convincing Americans that THEY are somehow different, that poverty will NEVER affect THEM, because THEY aren't LIKE those OTHER PEOPLE.

Except that in the Great Recession of the Oughts, yes, they are. The only question is how many of them know it, and how long it will be before they join them.

At least he's honest

I'm not in favor of those laws that well-meaning legislators are trying to pass that would make it illegal for employers to say "Must be currently employed" in their ads. Just making it illegal to say they won't hire the unemployed doesn't do anything to make them actually consider the unemployed; it just wastes the candidate's time (and transportation costs).

Similarly, I can't get all that outraged about this:

A west Georgia business owner has been deluged with calls and emails after posting signs on his company's trucks that say he's not hiring anyone until President Barack Obama leaves office.

Waco-based U.S. Cranes LLC owner Bill Looman tells WXIA-TV (http://on.11alive.com/u8jDri) that reaction has been so intense he's had to disconnect his phones and temporarily shut down the company's website.

He posted the signs on his company's trucks for other motorists to see on roads and interstates across the South. The signs proclaim "New Company Policy: We are not hiring until Obama is gone."

Looman says he's not refusing to hire employees to make a political point. He told WXIA he can't afford to hire anyone because of the economy, and he blames the people in power.

It seems that every major corporation and every small company run by people who listen to Rush Limbaugh feel the same way, except that they call it "uncertainty". So let's know where they stand. And where they stand is that these people would rather see the economy tank than see Barack Obama re-elected.

Just don't let them call themselves "patriots."

Proof that the Republicans think they'll be taken along when their corporate masters leave this country a rotting, smoking ruin

These Republicans (and the Democrats who similarly do the bidding of banks and corporate CEOs) are a funny lot. There are still the Bush dead-enders who still think that if they Just Work Hard Enough™, they'll be in the Rich Guys Club too someday, but an increasing number of us -- you know, those who watch that George Carlin video over and over again, know that the game was rigged thirty years ago when Ronald Reagan said that if you just give the rich enough money, the stuff that overflows from their stuffed pockets will "trickle down" to us. The saddest cases aren't the long-term unemployed who know they'll never work again and after Working Hard Enough their whole lives, now find themselves going to the church food pantry for some boxed macaroni and cheese. The saddest cases are people like the Peter Griffin soundalike who recently called Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren a "socialist whore":



This is someone who's a victim of The Big Club, but he's so invested in the Just Work Hard Enough meme that to realize that everything he believed in is a lie would probably destroy him. It's easy to forget that when these people send around e-mails of Obama with a bone in his nose, or take guns to Democratic candidate appearances, and vote again and again against their own self interest, choosing candidates who point their attention elsewhere so that the latter's corporate masters can steal the last few bucks out of the former's back pockets, they're operating out of fear -- a fear that the Big Club has spent thirty years tapping, and will continue to tap until we're all scrambling for scraps.

The politicians who do the bidding of the Big Club think they're part of it. They get invited to conclaves given by the Koch brothers and they receive the largesse that the Big Club gives them and they think that when the middle class has been successfully destroyed, they'll be on that Big Boat with the Big Club, swilling Dom Perignon from the cleavage of hookers. They don't realize that they'll be left behind too. And it doesn't matter that

And that explains why, now that they seem to have successfully stymied any attempt to rebuild the job base in this country, they're going after the unemployed (NYT editorial):

Tragically, the more entrenched the jobs shortage becomes, the more paralyzed Congress becomes, with Republicans committed to doing nothing in the hopes that the faltering economy will cost President Obama his job in 2012. Last week, for instance, Senate Republicans filibustered a $60 billion proposal by Mr. Obama to create jobs by repairing and upgrading the nation’s deteriorating infrastructure. They were outraged that the bill would have been paid for by a 0.7 percent surtax on people making more than $1 million.

Things may be about to get worse.

Federal unemployment benefits, which generally kick in after 26 weeks of state-provided benefits, are scheduled to expire at the end of the year. That would be a disaster for many of the estimated 3.5 million Americans who get by on extended benefits — an average of $295 a week. It would also be a blow to the economy, because it would reduce consumer spending by about $50 billion in 2012 — which would mean slower economic growth and 275,000 lost jobs. Unfortunately, given Republicans’ demonstrated willingness to ignore human needs and economic logic, it is more likely than not that jobless benefits will be a major battle in the months ahead.

There are no plausible arguments against an extension — in fact, Congress has never let federal benefits expire when the unemployment rate was higher than 7.2 percent. But there are many specious arguments, chief among them that providing benefits reduces the incentive to get a new job. The evidence says otherwise.

A recent paper by Jesse Rothstein, an economist at the National Bureau of Economic Research, shows that benefit extensions in early 2011 raised the jobless rate by about 0.1 to 0.5 percentage points, but most of that was due to benefit recipients staying in the labor force and actively looking for work during the time they are collecting benefits, rather than, say, dropping out in despair.

Unemployment benefits are the first line of defense against ruin from job loss that is beyond an individual’s control. In a time of historically elevated long-term unemployment, they are an important way to keep workers connected to the job-search market. They are also crucial to ensuring that the weak economy doesn’t weaken further.

The Republicans blocking an extension of unemployment benefits seem to WANT there to be mass despair and a complete elimination of the middle class. They seem to think that when everyone is poor except the Big Club and themselves, that somehow they'll benefit. But there's no way the Big Club can buy enough STUFF to keep an economy this size healthy, and that's really the point. The Big Club already has its sights set elsewhere. It could be China, it could be India, it could be the Philippines, it could be Indonesia. It could be the entire Middle East, for all we know. But if you finish a Big Bulp from 7-Eleven and you're still thirsty, you buy another Big Gulp. And as long as there's another Big Gulp to be had for the Big Club, they don't care about the giant, non-bio-degradable plastic cup they leave behind.

These politicians will find this out after it's too late.

Best. Idea. Ever.

This sounds like a great way to get karmic brownie points (from Digby):

I have a business idea. Who wants to incorporate and and sell themselves to jobless people as their "current job" for resume purposes? You could just charge a little fee if the person gets the job. Why not? It's no more immoral than saying people shouldn't be allowed to work if they aren't already working.

This business about not being willing to hire the unemployed is reprehensible. I was laid off from a job three years ago not through any fault of my own, but because the grant money ran out and I had less seniority than my peer who stayed (there were two of us and they could only afford to pay one). I managed to get my current job during a very small window when anyone with even passing familiarity with the job function could get hired, but then I set my mind to essentially starting from scratch. Yes, it required a lot of effort, but if a person can learn, that person can get up to speed quickly.

Mr. Brilliant is currently working at a contract job that pays significantly less than he was making before he was one of at least six people over the age of fifty let go from his last job, and has nothing to do with what his skills are, but at least he can tell people who might have "permanent" jobs available that he's working.

If you had any doubt that there is a systematic attempt underfoot to completely eliminate the middle class, here it is. Those who have lost their jobs have a head start on the road down to grinding poverty, and those in a position to hire (you know, those "job creators" that John Boehner always talks about) want to make damn sure they stay that way. Meanwhile, those of us who DO still have good-paying jobs burn out, then try to take some much-needed vacation time and spend it with gnawing anxiety about whether they'll still be seen as valuable after taking a few days off.

The Republicans, particularly the Tea Party wing, has been masterful at taking jobs as an issue out of the public consciousness entirely because of this debt issue. Remember when the Republicans ran on job creation? Where are the jobs? And what does John Boehner expect the "99ers" to do now? Die in the street?

Blogrolling In Our Time

Say hello to a blog/resource/online community whose time has come: Help the 99ers.

Around the blogroll and elsewhere: I Am Just Too Friggin Tired to Talk About It Edition

I'm on short sleep rations these days because of a timetable that must be met, and I can't afford to expend any energy talking about fecklessness, dicklessness, betrayal, the growing plutocracy, and the handing of America over to the corporatists today. So I'll let others do it.

Draftglass: "America is currently too fucking stupid, spoiled and hateful to make good, long-term decisions." (You MUST read this one.)


Ezra Klein, who used to be a cute progressive kid blogging at Pandagon, has joined the Borg.

Digby, as usual, says what I lack the time or discipline to say.

Skippy notes that for people like our own jurassicpork, the 13 month extension doesn't include any benefits for those who have already exhausted all tiers of unemployment. If you are about to become a casualty of the Stuff the Rich Nation, you will have a year and a half to find another job for when these rich people who have had eight years of these tax cuts and have not created jobs, decide to create some (despite the fact that no one can afford anything they make). If you are already one, not one person in our government other than the outgoing Congressman from Florida's eighth district and Sen. Bernie Sanders gives a shit about you.

Michael Stickings wonders whether "something is better than nothing" is our new standard of achievement.

Greg Sargent explains why we're angry.

E.D. Kain, the resident conservative over at Balloon Juice, thinks it was a pretty good deal on a page which features an ad by the Progressive Change Committee, about which Angry Black Lady has some interesting and cogent observations.

And finally:

Yesterday the sad news came across that it seems Elizabeth Edwards is reaching the end of her cancer journey.

Every day, for 8, 10, 12, and sometimes more hours, I'm steeped in the conduct of cancer trials. For me it's about how to collect data, and once the data collection mechanism is done, I'm pretty much done until they either need a system change or there's a problem. In the latter case, I may have to take a cursory look at actual data. When I see what we call "The death form" completed, it means that an actual person that someone cared about has succumbed. When I see someone with liver cancer who's still alive after six, eight, twelve cycles of treatment, it's a sign of hope. That's what drives home for me that what I do, as removed from actual patients as it is, is about hope -- not the hope that's based on blind faith, but hope for small victories like time measured in days and months, if not years.

Yes, it's appalling that a half-century into serious cancer research we are still all about cut, irradiate, and poison. But for now that's what we've got. And if it gets someone through to his daughter's wedding, his son's graduation, just one more summer of watching the sun set over a Caribbean beach, it's a victory, however small. And for those who get that time, it FEELS like a victory, in the way getting relief for the hundreds of thousands of new unemployed in return for stuffing the pockets of the wealthy doesn't.

In 2007 and 2008, John and Elizabeth Edwards were the only ones on the campaign trail talking about the America in which people now find themselves -- people who thought it would never happen to them. Back then the rumblings of economic collapse were only starting. And those who had succumbed to trickle-down economics over the last thirty years were still forgotten.

In 2008 August 2007 I offered to hold a fundraiser for the campaign at my house. You have to realize that my house is a money pit -- a 1950's POS cape in which nothing had been updated since 1975. We've been updating very slowly, mostly on the outside where it shows. My living room has the same ugly red carpet it did when we moved in. My kitchen is still a work in progress three years after I started refacing the cabinets. Our basement family room still had ugly dark paneling and ugly rust-colored carpet.

Over fifty people showed up to schmooze with Elizabeth Edwards for a couple of hours. She was as kind and gracious in person as she seemed on television and that my house was not ready for prime time didn't seem to matter. When she left to go to a book signing, I said "This is the coolest thing I have ever done."

Of course we all know what happened next, and as more came out about exactly what Elizabeth knew even as she was taking donations for a campaign that we knew even then would go nowhere, and that would have been an utter disaster had it succeeded in making it through the primaries, I found myself utterly disgusted with her. She KNEW, and yet she carried on as if she and John were the couple we all thought they were. She continued to take the donations even as she must have known in her heart it was for naught. She took advantage of me, my friends, my neighbors, and the others who came and paid over a hundred dollars to schmooze with Elizabeth Edwards.

Later on, we read in the book written by those loathsome hacks John Heilemann and Mark Halperin that she was a harridan to John Edwards' staff, that she would get hysterical, that she was impossible.

Wouldn't you be? And if you were faced with a recurrence of breast cancer in the middle of a presidential campaign and found out that your husband had thrown away not just your marriage, but a cause you both had supposedly believed in -- for a fling with an aging New York party girl who was the inspiration for a character in a 1980's Jay McInerney novel? Wouldn't you try to Act As If everything was normal?

In the Showtime series The Big C, the protagonist played by Laura Linney explains her unwillingness to tell her family about her Stage IV cancer diagnosis, "I just wanted a little more time where it's not about me being sick." I think that's what motivated Elizabeth Edwards too -- that and kicking the can of deciding what to do down the road -- putting it off because it's just too painful to deal with now.

I still feel angry at how we were sold a bill of goods about John Edwards, but I do understand why she did it. I understand why she thought that the bigass North Carolina house that he built her would somehow compensate for SOMETHING. I understand why she felt the need, after probably hundreds of house fundraisers like mine, to get out into the media and punishing her no-good dog of a husband for what he squandered.

But at this point, all that is behind us. What we need to keep in mind about Elizabeth Edwards is how she stayed out there, looking marvelous for a long time, trying mightily to sound the alarm about health care in this country. While she was out in public, she was a living rebuke to the "I Got Mine and Fuck You" doctrine -- someone with pots of money who still remembered that there are people out there dying because their insurance will not cover the cancer treatments that allowed her to stay out there fighting long after others with recurrent breast cancer have succumbed.

I wish Elizabeth Edwards a peaceful passing with no pain. I wish her children well. I thank her for what she tried to do to call attention to the inequities in our health care system.

And I hope that the image of this brave woman's last battle tortures John Edwards every single fucking day of the rest of his life.

UPDATE: Elizabeth Edwards died this morning at the age of 61.

Elizabeth Edwards at my house, 8/21/07.

These are real people, Mr. President

These are the people whom you are sacrificing on the altar of "bipartisanship":

Is your need to prove that you're the NICE black man so deep-seated that you will allow Republicans throw these people out on the street? If the answer to that is yes, than pack up and go home. Just go home. Led Biden run things for a while and let the chips fall where they may in 2012.

Go back to Chicago, or move to New York and call in all your markers to Wall Street for that eight-figure job you know you can ask for in exchange for continuing to hand the store over to the bankers. Orszag might even be in a position to hire you. Yes, you'll be known forever as a quitter -- right up there with Sarah Palin -- except YOUR job may in fact BE unmanageable. But at least what's left of the middle class in this country after thirty years of Reaganomics might have a fighting chance, at least for the next two years, until people's angry is so red-hot that they put someone in charge who will accelerate the path of middle class destruction. And I'm sorry, Mr. President, but the people in this video, and the hundreds of thousands more who don't appear in it, and the many, many others, some in my own industry, for whom the axe will fall in the next year, are more important than you are.

You know the saying, "Lead, follow, or get out of the way"? Following is what you've been doing. Following is doing nothing to prevent the pulling the rug out from under tens of thousands of people EVERY SINGLE DAY. Either lead or get the fuck out of the way and make room for someone who does.

(via)

Hey America...YOU voted for these guys.

HuffPo lists the 10 states that will be hammered the hardest by a lapse in unemployment benefits. With the exception of New York and California, the other states all elected teabaggers in last month's election. I'm only covering governorships and Senate seats, there are too many Congresscritters to cover individually:

10 - Indiana: The "throw out the insiders" bunch just elected Dan Coats, "the consummate insider, a six-figure-income lobbyist with "only second homes" in Maryland and North Carolina." to the Senate. He's on record from BEFORE the election as opposiing an extension to unemployment benefits. Coats replaces Evan Bayh, a loathsome corporate Blue Dog who would no doubt have voted with the Republicans anyway. It's a wash, but Coats' opponent, Brad Ellsworth, just voted FOR H R 6419 - the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Continuation Act.

9 - Ohio just elected John Kasich (killer of a job-creating rail project) to be their governor over incumbent Ted Strickland, and kept incumbent Republican Rob Portman in the Senate. Portman buys into the Republican "Give Rich People Enough Tax Cuts and Let Them Do Whatever They Want And They'll Create Jobs Even If No One Has Money To Buy What They Make doctrine, but at least he favors allowing states with high unemployment rates to access additional funding without Congressional action -- an odd stance for the Teabaggers' choice.

8 - Georgia just elected as Governor Nathan Deal, a guy who had to resign his Congressional seat back in March 2010 after:

...the Office of Congressional Ethics released its report anyway, concluding that Mr. Deal appeared to have improperly used his office to pressure Georgia officials to continue a vehicle inspection program that generated hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for his family’s auto salvage business.

He got 53% of the vote. Perhaps Georgians without jobs believe that if they Just Work Hard Enough, they too can go to Congress and strongarm state officials into enacting programs that will allow them to stuff their pockets. The throw-the-bums-out sentiment didn't apply in the state's Senate Race either, where incumbent Republican Johnny Isakson won 53.8% of the vote. In June 2010, Senator Isakson had to apologize for referring to the unemployed as "unwashed." In July he voted again against an extension of unemployment benefits. He is, however, going full-bore now on an extension of tax cuts for the top 1%.

7) Michigan's new governor is Rick Snyder, who is going to Washington this week but refuses to say if he will ask for an extension of unemployment benefits for his long-beleaguered state. Over 180,000 Michigan residents will run out of benefits in the next five months. Neither of the state's Senators was up for election.

6) Florida took a turn to the Very Hard right, electing health care fraudster Rick Scott as governor and teabagger favorite Marco Rubio to the Senate. Without a previous record of votes, we can't tell for sure what Rubio will do, but in July he said he would stand with Republicans in opposing any extension to unemployment benefits -- but of course he favors tax cuts for the wealthy:

"At some point someone has to draw a line in the sand and say we are serious about not growing debt," Rubio said.

However, when it comes to offsetting the costs of an extension of the Bush Tax Cuts that Rubio wants made permanent, his campaign couldn't give an answer to CBS4.com's Tim Kephart.

Meanwhile, governor-elect Rick Scott is planning a lavish inaugural celebration for which he's seeking donations of up to $25,000. The more you pay, the more access to him you get. If you like trickle-down economics, you'll LOVE Florida under Rick Scott.

5) Illinois' new senator is Mark Kirk, who only seems moderate when compared to the extremists who now dominate the Republican Party. But on extending tax cuts for the top 1%, these don't have to be offset by spending cuts...whereas unemployment benefits extensions require offsets:

4) We usually think of Texas as having weathered the economic crisis relatively unscathed. with a comparatively "low" unemployment rate of 8.2%. But with 127,900 losing benefits before December 31, it remains to be seen whether relatively robust job creation will offset this. Texas didn't have a Senate election this year, but Texas is represented in the Senate by John Cornyn and Ron Paul. In July, Cornyn blamed Democrats for a failure to extend unemployment benefits. Like other Republicans who believe that the revenue reductions from tax cuts for the wealthy don't need to be offset with spending cuts but that unemployment benefits do, Cornyn wanted drastic spending cuts and tax cuts in return. We already know about Ron Paul's views on anything government does.

3) Pennsylvania: This is a state that could have elected Joe Sestak to the Senate, but instead chose to send über-wingnut Pat Toomey. In July, Toomey said that any unemployment benefits extension must be offset with spending cuts. Toomey favors ending ALL capital gains and corporate taxes. This means that even if "rich people" "created jobs", the wages of said jobs would pay the entire national tax burden, while those whose income comes from investments while they sip margaritas in the Caymans would pay none.

The top two spots are occupied by New York and California, which at least had the good sense to eschew the insane Carl Paladino and the greedy, too-cheap-to-hire-a-housekeeper-she-couldn't exploit Meg Whitman.

So there you have it. The states with the most people at risk of being cast out without a penny are states that voted in these lunatics. I'd be tempted to shrug my shoulders and say "You get what you pay for", except that 30-49% of the people in these states DIDN'T vote against their own interests. And they will be swept in the street right along with the idiots.

Merry Christmas to all the Lucky Duckies From Your Republican Party

Remember when the Wall Street Journal printed an editorial referring to all the "lucky duckies" who don't pay any income taxes because after their personal exemptions and standard deductions, they have no taxable income? We were supposed to think that people who don't make enough to pay taxes were somehow luckier than a billionaire who has $112 million in disposable income to spend on a political campaign after nearly running three separate companies into the ground.

I'm waiting for that editorial to appear again this December, after two million workers who have been outsourced and corporate-greeded out of the workforce lose their unemployment compensation just in time for Christmas (PDF):

• An estimated two million workers in December will be cut off of federal unemployment benefits, beginning in the holiday season, if Congress does not renew the program before it expires on November 30th.
  
• Nearly 400,000 workers were laid off just in the past six months and now face the end of their state benefits without qualifying for any federal extended benefits.
  
• 800,000 workers face an immediate “hard” cut-off of their benefits (starting December 4th in nearly half the states) after struggling to find work and pay their bills for over a year in most cases.
  
• Since the unemployment insurance program was created in response to the Great Depression, Congress has never cut federally-funded jobless benefits when unemployment was this high for this long (at over nine percent for 17 consecutive months). The earliest Congress ever started pulling back on benefits was when unemployment reached the level of 7.2 percent nationwide.
  
• Businesses and the struggling economy—especially the critical retail sector—will take a major blow if Congress fails to continue the federal jobless benefits during the holiday shopping season.
  
• In 2009 alone, the increase in the number of people in poverty would have doubled were it not for unemployment insurance benefits.
  
• With the average unemployment extension check of $290 a week replacing only half of the average family’s expenditures on transportation, food, and housing, jobless workers have a major incentive to look for work, notwithstanding the modest assistance their benefits checks provide.
  
• The 51-day lapse of the federal extension program this summer caused substantial hardship for 2.5 million unemployed workers, underscoring the urgency of renewing the current program for another year until there is strong job growth.
  

[snip]

The sheer magnitude of the number of workers affected by the dearth of jobs shows how inadequate recent economic recovery really is: currently, more than one in six working-age adults—or 26.8 million people—are either unemployed or underemployed. Of these, nearly 15 million are jobless through no fault of their own, and an additional 9.5 million are forced to work part time even though they want full-time work.

Taken together, these groups of unemployed and underemployed workers, as well as those
marginally attached to the labor force—people who are available for work, have looked for work in the past year, and still can’t find jobs—result in a “real” unemployment rate of at least 17.1 percent, a much more stark and worrisome measure than the already-staggering 9.6 percent unemployment rate that has persisted for the past two months. At the same time, the unemployed are experiencing record periods of joblessness: nearly 42 percent of the 15 million jobless workers are “long-term unemployed”—that is, out of work for six months or longer. Since the Labor Department began tracking this data, typical spells of unemployment have never lasted for so long, nor has long-term
unemployment affected so many millions of people.

Recent private-sector job growth has been grossly inadequate to bring down these dire rates of joblessness. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that job loss over 2009 and 2010 may have been even worse than initially reported, with 366,000 more jobs lost as of March 2010,3 resulting in 8.1 million total jobs lost over the course of the downturn. Given this, as well as weak jobs growth in 2010, the U.S. needs 11.5 million jobs to reach pre-recession levels of employment, a shocking number when considering that layoffs temporarily increased over the summer and are now
overwhelming the public sector as state and local government budgets are being slashed and federal hiring for the 2010 Census has come to an end.

Never in the history of the program have unemployment benefits been eliminated, or even reduced, when unemployment rates were so high. The only other time in the past 60 years that the unemployment rate has remained so high for so long was during the early 1980s. At that time, Congress did not cut federal unemployment benefits until the national unemployment rate had fallen to 7.2 percent—a far cry from our current rate of 9.6 percent.

Meanwhile, out in Nevada, where the official unemployment rate is 14% and the actual rate is probably far higher, a majority of American Idiots™ who live there are poised to elect to the United States Senate who thinks that the unemployed are "spoiled" people who should not collect benefits because they "won't accept the jobs that are available":

And out in Wisconsin, true maverick Russ Feingold, around whom if the Teabaggers were really serious about the Constitution, would be rallying, may very well be defeated by Ron Johnson, a millionaire businessman who also thinks that a few hundred dollars a week is disincentivizing out-of-work professionals from finding the jobs he believes are out there because he's never had to look for one:

And here in NJ-5, where Scott Garrett was a teabagger before there even was a Tea Party, Garrett, who voted against extending unemployment compensation in the face of this state's 9.4% official unemployment rate and its governor's jihad against teachers and other employee unions, is about to coast to yet another election victory, propelled by an inattentive electorate who vote like sheep along party lines because they can't be bothered paying attention. And the Republican line is first on the ballot anyway so why should they put out any effort to move their fingers three inches to the right to vote otherwise?

This is the future of the American worker

There are no jobs. American corporations are sending what jobs they create overseas. There is no tax cut deep enough to make them have any sense of responsibility towards American citizens other than those wealthy enough to be stockholders. And that -- the profit motive NOT above all else, but EXCLUSIVE OF all else, is where capitalism falls apart.

So what happens to the American worker in a society in which we're told to work hard but there are no jobs?

Ms. Jarrin is part of a hard-luck group of jobless Americans whose members have taken to calling themselves “99ers,” because they have exhausted the maximum 99 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits that they can claim.

For them, the resolution recently of the lengthy Senate impasse over extending jobless benefits was no balm. The measure renewed two federal programs that extended jobless benefits in this recession beyond the traditional 26 weeks to anywhere from 60 to 99 weeks, depending on the state’s unemployment rate. But many jobless have now exceeded those limits. They are adjusting to a new, harsh reality with no income.

In June, with long-term unemployment at record levels, about 1.4 million people were out of work for 99 weeks or more, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Not all of them received unemployment benefits, but for many of those who did, the modest payments were a lifeline that enabled them to maintain at least a veneer of normalcy, keeping a roof over their heads, putting gas in their cars, paying electric and phone bills.

Without the checks, many like Ms. Jarrin, who lost her job as director of client services at a small technology company in March 2008, are beginning to tumble over the economic cliff. The last vestiges of their former working-class or middle-class lives are gone; it is inescapable now that they are indigent.

Ms. Jarrin said she wept as she drove away from her old life last month, wondering if she would ever be able to reclaim it.

“At one point, I thought, you know, what if I turned the wheel in my car and wrecked my car?” she said.

If that is what the corporations want, if that is what Republicans want -- mass suicide of everyone not in the Rich Guys Club, then let them at least have the decency to come out and say it. Because it certainly seems that this is their goal. Most of the comments to this article are from people who get what's going on. But still, even at the "liberal" New York times, the haters come out, trying to find SOME way to blame this woman for her own predicament, to avoid realizing that what is happening to Alexandra Jarrin could just as easily happen to them:

1) The "Let her get rid of everything that costs her money and let's attack her for getting an education" people:

Some decisions by this person clearly were her own fault - a $90K debt for an undergraduate education is ridiculous in any economy; clearly she keeps feeding a cat (in the photo but not mentioned in the story) that has to cost her money she can ill afford.

1) The "let her take a minimum wage job" people, conveniently forgetting that those who have ever worked at anything OTHER than a minimum wage job are undesirable for those jobs because "they'll quit when something better comes along:"

When you are unemployed you have an obligation to yourself and your family to take ANY work you can find, rather than whining that the rest of us limit you to only 2 years on the dole. So you used to be a white collar worker and cant find a similar job?? Get real and do what you can. That is the type of work ethic that built this country

I wonder what this commenter does for a living and if she has ever tried to get a minimum-wage job with a background of white-collar employment. To his credit, the author replied to the many comments like this:

As Ms. Jarrin tells it, she has applied for plenty of minimum wage jobs, including McDonalds, Burger King and other fast food restaurants, in addition to positions that better fit her background. I've actually heard this a lot from many unemployed with college-degrees. They can't even get those jobs at Starbucks and the like because they're overqualified or perceived that they will leave as soon as the economy improves.

3) The "It's a liberal conspiracy" people:

Can this be what the Democrats in Congress have been hoping for, millions of people who are now dependent on government benefits for their existence? Can it be that the Democrats would like to see people dependent on extensions of unemployment benefits, welfare, Medicaid, etc. so that they remember the Democrats' largesse when it comes time to vote?

4) And then there are the just plain idiots:

Many of these high paying do-nothing cubical jobs are disappearing forever. She needs to fix here resume so she doesn't appear over-qualified and trade down for a lesser job.

Funny how the writer of this one doesn't have any problem with the executives who are making 500 times more than the "cubical" (sic) workers they're jettisoning.

Aside from the severe structural unemployment that seems to be the future of this country, the biggest problem we have is that American simply refuse to wake up to the reality that's staring them in the face, and that is that every single one of us could be in this position tomorrow. If we have some money set aside, or retirement savings, that's only a cushion. But if you have 20-30 years of life expectancy ahead of you, who has THAT kind of money set aside?

As long as people insist that there are pat answers for the long-term unemployed -- go live with family (without knowing what any individual's family situation is), dumb down your resume (how do you do that with 30 years of ever-increasing knowledge level jobs?), work at McDonald's (as if every fast food restaurant has a "come on in, the money's fine" sign out front...

As long as Americans are content with the idea that if it weren't for those darned illegal immigrants, good red-blooed Amurricans could have those 40 to 50 cents per 32-lb bucket tomato picker jobs where you would have to pick 456 pounds (14 buckets) an hour to make even minimum wage, we are going to continue to be like the proverbial frog immersed in the water on the hot burner -- swimming around blithely until it is too late.

The Forgotten Men

I wonder if the over 20% of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who are unemployed are regarded by Sharron Angle as "spoiled". I wonder if Orrin Hatch thinks the men and women who put their lives on the line in wars Hatch supported thinks they should be drug-tested. I wonder if Nevada Rep. Dean Heller, who gives lip service to "honoring those who serve our country", thinks returning veterans who can't find work are hobos.

We like to think that we are a nation of progress. But then Andrew Breitbart doctors a video of Shirley Sherrod and it's 1956 all over again. We may have fancy toys that let us watch movies on a 60" TV at home and a 3" screen while driving, but for the veterans of the Bush-Obama wars, it's 1933:

(BIG h/t to Gaius Publius)

Giving voice to the unemployed

Last night Lawrence O'Donnell, subbing for Keith Olbermann, talked to Jim Chukulas, an automotive parts manager who has been out of work since September 2008. I felt a "There but for the grace of Goddess" chill watching this guy, because I was laid off as of August 31, 2008, and managed to slip into my current job in that tiny sliver of a window between that date and when the whole economy fell into the crapper. Does this guy look like a lazy bum to you? Does he seem like someone who'd rather collect unemployment? Does he look "spoiled" to you?

He sure as hell doesn't to me. And kudos to O'Donnell for offering to try to find something for him at NBC.

Who's the parasite here?

Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett, who is currently receiving a government paycheck as the state's Attorney General and seeks to continue to be the recipient of a taxpayer salary as governor:

Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett said last week that some workers who are between jobs will stay that way as long as they are receiving unemployment benefits.

Corbett made the comment on Pennsylvania Public Radio while campaigning for governor in Elizabethtown. His Democratic opponent in the election, Dan Onorato, said he doesn't know "what world (Corbett) is living on."

"People don't want to come back to work while they still have unemployment. They're literally telling - I'll come back to work when the unemployment runs out. That's becoming a problem," Corbett said.

"The jobs are there, but if we keep extending unemployment the people are going to sit there and... I've literally had construction companies tell me, I can't get people to come back to work, until... they say, 'I'll come back to work when unemployment runs out.'"

Reality:

I think Mr. Corbett has just demonstrated the Peter Principle by reaching his level of incompetence.

I missed this last week

Rachel Maddow on the demonization of the unemployed:

When you see it all in one place, it underscores just how horrific these people are. These are the people who are the architects of the policies that created this mess. The tragedy is that enough people are frightened and angry that they're going to put these heartless, greedy, evil people back in charge this November.

These are the people the Republicans want us to think can't ever possibly be us

A comment at the AFL-CIO Now Blog:

I am one of those long term unemployed. I have been out of work since I was laid off in November 2008. I have filled out hundreds of applications and sent hundreds of resumes everywhere. Still no job not even an interview since August of 2009. My husband was unemployed for a year from April 2009-April 2010. So we were both out of work and suffering. Luckily he found a job. But it pays less than his previous job of 27 years and it also has no benefits. So we have less.
I am 53 years old and worked at my last job for 11 years only to be laid off. I want to work, I need to work. Unemployment is a help but it is less than 1/2 of what I made working. These Republicans and some “Republicrats” who think that we want to sit on our butts are full of it. I have a mortgage, car payments, credit card debt, utility bills and I have to eat and wear clothes. You can not do this on UI benefits. But without them I will lose everything I have worked my whole life to EARN!
I urge everyone in the country to vote and vote out all those in office who vote to deny us laid off workers help in these trying times. Let them learn to live on UI benefits. It is time Americans learn that those people we put in office are living on government welfare paid to elected officials. It is our money that pays them to not help us. It is our money that we should take away from them. Let them feel the pain and anguish of being unemployed.
I cry everyday because I haven’t a meaningful job. I also have great fear for my future. This is not the USA I was taught about in school as a child that is for sure.
Republicans are cruel and heartless people. Shame on them. How can they go to church or synagogue with a clear conscience. I am appalled by their heartlessness.

So am I. Especially this guy, and the mean-spirited morons who support him:

Utah voters have reacted enthusiastically to Sen. Orrin Hatch's legislation to drug test the unemployed and those receiving other forms of government cash assistance, the Utah Republican told the Huffington Post after introducing his measure last week.

"A lot of people are saying, 'Hey, it's about time. Why do we keep giving money to people who are going to go use it on drugs instead of their families?'" Hatch said.

Another step in the systematic and deliberate elimination of the middle class

If the teabaggers would stop getting their views from Fox News and Glenn Beck and look at what's around them, they'd see that the very corporations they defend under the Rich People Create Jobs Doctrine are the ones actually screwing them over.

In August 2008 I walked out the door for the last time of a job I'd held for eight years; one I'd hoped to remain in until I retired. It's not that it was a dream job; my boss had issues with me for reasons I will never understand, particularly since on that last day he said "I wish we could have done right by you." But it was close to home, the pay was good, and the benefits were fantastic. I was 53 years old. It was the scariest day of my life.

For the rest of that day, I teetered between exhilaration at what would certainly come next and sheer terror. After all, I might be 53 and fat, but I write a mean resume, I have "soft skills" up the wazoo, a master's degree, drive, guts, and moxie. On the other hand, I was a 53-year-old web developer without ASP or C# or PHP.

When I interviewed for my current job, I didn't hide that I'd been laid off. When you work on grants, if the grants run out, heads get chopped. My references were impeccable, and I actually made money on the deal, since I started work 4 weeks after my last day at the old job and had been hoarding vacation time for three years so I'd been paid for six weeks of unused vacation.

I was lucky. If I were in the same situation today, I probably wouldn't be so lucky, becauae now companies seem to be deciding that no matter why you are out of work, no matter if it wasn't your fault, no matter if your employer's management ran the company into the ground, or if the grants weren't renewed, or the company just couldn't weather the downturn, these companies don't care. To them, you are untouchable:

Still waiting for a response to the 300 resumés you sent out last month? Bad news: Some companies are ignoring all unemployed applicants.

In a current job posting on The People Place, a job recruiting website for the telecommunications, aerospace/defense and engineering industries, an anonymous electronics company in Angleton, Texas, advertises for a "Quality Engineer." Qualifications for the job are the usual: computer skills, oral and written communication skills, light to moderate lifting. But red print at the bottom of the ad says, "Client will not consider/review anyone NOT currently employed regardless of the reason."

In a nearly identical job posting for the same position on the Benchmark Electronics website, the red print is missing. But a human resources representative for the company confirmed to HuffPost that the The People Place ad accurately reflects the company's recruitment policies.

"It's our preference that they currently be employed," he said. "We typically go after people that are happy where they are and then tell them about the opportunities here. We do get a lot of applications blindly from people who are currently unemployed -- with the economy being what it is, we've had a lot of people contact us that don't have the skill sets we want, so we try to minimize the amount of time we spent on that and try to rifle-shoot the folks we're interested in."

There are about 5.5 people looking for work for every job available, according to the latest data from the Labor Department.

Sony Ericsson, a global phone manufacturer that recently announced that it would be bringing 180 new jobs to the Buckhead, Ga. area, also recently posted an ad for a marketing position on The People Place. The add specified: "NO UNEMPLOYED CANDIDATES WILL BE CONSIDERED AT ALL." When asked about the ad, a spokeswoman said, "This was a mistake, and once it was noticed it was removed."

Ads asking the unemployed not to apply are easy to find. A Craigslist ad for assistant restaurant managers in Edgewater, N.J. specifies, "Must be currently employed." Another job posting for a tax manager at an unnamed "top 25 CPA firm" in New York City contains the same line in all caps.

Most of the jobs created last month were census jobs -- temporary jobs. Businesses are just not hiring. It's not that their taxes are too high; George Bush cut taxes on businesses for eight years. It's greed, plain and simple. They are either working their existing employees to death or outsourcing the jobs to other countries. It's all part of the plan to restore this nation to what it was at the turn of the 20th centuries -- a small, preposterously wealthy "elite", and the rest of us all rabble, scrambling around for scraps.

It isn't even the tyranny of the minority anymore

The dysfunction of the Senate isn't even about the tyranny of the 42-seat Republican minority anymore. Now a single Republican Senator for whom ideology and the desire to topple Barack Obama trumps everything can send hundreds of thousands of the unemployed a step further down a road to ruin from which they may never be able to return:

Jim Bunning, a Republican from Kentucky, is single-handedly blocking Senate action needed to prevent an estimated 1.2 million American workers from prematurely losing their unemployment benefits next month.

As Democratic senators asked again and again for unanimous consent for a vote on a 30-day extension Thursday night, Bunning refused to go along.

And when Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) begged him to drop his objection, Politico reports, Bunning replied: "Tough shit."

Bunning says he doesn't oppose extending benefits -- he just doesn't want the money that's required added to the deficit. He proposes paying for the 30-day extension with stimulus funds. The Senate's GOP leadership did not support him in his objections.

And at one point during the debate, which dragged on till nearly midnight, Bunning complained of missing a basketball game.

"I have missed the Kentucky-South Carolina game that started at 9:00," he said,
"and it's the only redeeming chance we had to beat South Carolina since they're the only team that has beat Kentucky this year.

Poor Jim Bunning. He had to miss a college basketball game rather than debate whether hundreds of thousands of people who have lost their jobs can continue to pay their bills and put food on the table.

Funny how Jim Bunning didn't care about deficits when he introduced a bill authorizing George W. Bush to invade Iraq based on a bunch of trumped-up horseshit. He didn't care about deficits when voting for the Bush tax cuts. But when it comes to help for Americans who need it, he's on the wrong side every single time:

* 2005 -- Voted WITH the credit-card industry on the bankruptcy bill.

* 2005 -- Voted WITH oil companies by giving them more tax breaks.

* 2006 -- Voted FOR higher deficits by extending the Bush Tax Cuts.

* 2007 -- Voted AGAINST children by opposing S-CHIP.

* 2008 -- Voted AGAINST helping people facing foreclosure.

* 2009 -- Voted AGAINST women by opposing the Ledbetter Act.

* 2009 -- Voted AGAINST children again by opposing S-CHIP.

* 2010 -- Voted AGAINST reducing the debt by opposing the Debt Commission.

Kentucky, the state which for some bizarre reason sends this guy back to the Senate every six years, has the 4th lowest per capita income. Only Mississippi, West Virginia, and Arkansas are worse off. More than one in ten Kentucky workers is unemployed. And yet Jim Bunning opposes help for his own constituents (if you want to assume that the citizens of Kentucky are still his constituents, which is doubtful).

As the New York Times noted yesterday, Bunning didn't care about the impact of unemployment compensation on deficits while George W. Bush was in the White House. His "come to Jesus" moment on deficits seems to have miraculously coincided with the inauguration of a Democratic President:

Senator Bunning once cared about the unemployed. When the benefit was due to expire in November, he joined a unanimous vote to extend it until the end of February. “Kentucky has been hit hard by the current economic downturn,” he said at the time. It still is, but Mr. Bunning refused to consider the extension unless it was paid for with funds from the fiscal stimulus plan. For years, Mr. Bunning didn’t seem to have a problem with blowing up the deficit for the Iraq war and tax cuts. Now he’s a deficit hawk when it comes to average Americans.

This is the cancer that has infected the Republican Party. For them ideology trumps everything. If it takes destroying the country to regain power, they're perfectly willing to do so, even if what they end up presiding over is a hollowed-out, burnt-out shell of a nation. It's ALL about ideology. It's ALL about power.

I'd be tempted to say that if the citizens of Kentucky are stupid enough to bote for guys like Jim Bunning and Mitch McConnell, then they deserve to be put out of their homes and hungry. But I live in a district with a Congressman, Scott Garrett, who was an "Udeology Über Alles" adherent long before it was fashionable -- and this district keeps sending him back to Congress because they either still think Marge Roukema is their representative, they aren't paying attention and reading the truth behind his "I'm working for you" mailings sent every month at our expense, or they are registered Republicans and here in New Jersey, our ballots encourage party-line voting. This year it looks like the Democrats aren't even going to bother to field a candidate.

Once a government official becomes entrenched, he controls his own message, because voters simply do not pay attention to what their so-called representatives in Washington are actually doing. We can shrug our shoulders at the Kentuckyans who seem to think that electing someone who votes against their interests every time won't be relevant once they get invited into the Club of the Rich that Ronnie Reagan told them they could get into if they Just Work Hard Enough (never noting that most of those in the Club of the Rich got there through inherited money or by being nothing but middlemen), or at the New Jerseyans who still think they're voting for Marge Roukema even though it says "Scott Garrett" on the ballot -- except that their delusion affects us all.

Dispatch from the "Figure that out all by yourself, Einstein?" file

Gee...who'd a thunk that when you have mass layoffs combined with a disappearing job base, it has public health consequences:

A growing body of research suggests that layoffs can have profound health consequences. One 2006 study by a group of epidemiologists at Yale found that layoffs more than doubled the risk of heart attack and stroke among older workers. Another paper, published last year by Kate W. Strully, a sociology professor at the State University of New York at Albany, found that a person who lost a job had an 83 percent greater chance of developing a stress-related health problem, like diabetes, arthritis or psychiatric issues.

In perhaps the most sobering finding, a study published last year found that layoffs can affect life expectancy. The paper, by Till von Wachter, a Columbia University economist, and Daniel G. Sullivan, director of research at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, examined death records and earnings data in Pennsylvania during the recession of the early 1980s and concluded that death rates among high-seniority male workers jumped by 50 percent to 100 percent in the year after a job loss, depending on the worker’s age. Even 20 years later, deaths were 10 percent to 15 percent higher. That meant a worker who lost his job at age 40 had his life expectancy cut by a year to a year and half.

Additional investigation is still needed to understand the exact connection between job loss and poor health, according to scientists. The focus is mostly on the direct and indirect effects of stress. Acute stress can cause biochemical changes that trigger heart attacks, for example. Job loss and chronic stress can also lead to lifestyle changes that damage health.

Studies have, for instance, tied job loss to increased smoking and greater chances of former smokers relapsing. Some laid-off workers might start drinking more or exercising less. Increased prevalence of depression has been tied to both job loss and the development of heart disease.

“We’re just at the very beginning of studying pathways,” said William T. Gallo, a professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at Hunter College in New York. “We want to find out how we can intervene so we can lessen the effects of job loss, or eliminate them.”

Dr. Gallo is assuming, of course, that lessening or eliminating the effects of job loss is what the people who run the government (particularly the Reublican Party) and corporations (is there really a difference?) want. I think that diminishing life expectancy is exactly the desired goal. It reduces retirement and health care expenses, so what's not to like, when the only thing that matters is the bottom line? If you're going to systematically destroy the middle class, you want to make damn sure they aren't around to pick up the torches and pitchforks.

An American Ending

SC man died hungry, solo in tent, baffling friends

ANDERSON, S.C. — Friends of a 39-year-old South Carolina man are trying to figure out why he never reached out for help before dying broke and alone in a zipped-up tent on the banks of a lake.

Bright but reclusive Civil War buff David Condon lost his job at a local museum and fell behind on his rent.

Sometime in early July he disappeared. On Labor Day weekend, a group of college kids vacationing at a condo complex a few hundred yards from his tent peeked inside and found his body. The local coroner says he died of pneumonia, made worse by malnutrition. He was dehydrated and had lost 50 pounds in a few months.

His best friend, Craig Drennon, saw no sign Condon was having money problems or spiraling into despair when the two got together nearly every week to drink beers and play backgammon.

The people calling themselves Condon's "friends," he probably - & more accurately - considered "acquaintances." His disappearance alarmed no one enough to go looking for him. They ought to ask themselves exactly what they could have & would have done for the man. Passed the hat? Treated him to lunch at Burger King? Stored his possessions for him when he was evicted? Suggested he work part-time at Walmart so he could make his car payments & sleep in the backseat? Urged him to seek more help from government & nonprofit agencies? Condon knew he was up shit creek without a paddle, putting up a false front for as long as he could, then withdrawing into his humiliation & sparing others his personal misery. They ought to thank him for not interrupting their backgammon to beg for spare change.

What happened to Condon is about as authentically American an ending in 2009 as one can have, dying homeless, hungry, & mentally & physically wasted at the edge of a wealthy society that extolls self-reliance over all other personal qualities, advertises "a dollar & a dream," begrudges providing basic health care to all its citizens & won't even crack down on a financial industry that rewards failure with multi-million dollar bonuses.

I wouldn't be surprised if Condon had a useless Blackberry with no wireless service & a dead battery in his pocket.

An article about unannounced layoffs reveals the larger truth

The WARN Act requires companies to give 60 days notice to employees that a layoff is coming. This isn't 60 days notice to those being laid off, but a blanket warning so that EVERYONE can live in utter, abject terror for the next 60 days. Still, that's better than being blindsided, which is what companies can do under circumstances not covered by the WARN Act.

In a New York Times article today, the deeper truth about American corporations is buried in an article focusing specifically on IBM, whose CEO, Samuel Polisano, announced strong January quarterly profits and told employees in a newsletter at the time, “Most importantly, we will invest in our people.” Of course he didn't say which people, because he then turned around and laid off 1400 of his company's employees. (For the record, Polisano made a cool $24.35 million in 2008. No, he's not running IBM into the ground the way other highly-paid executives are doing to the companies they run, but it's somewhat disingenuous for an executive to talk about investing in his employees and then axing over a thousand of them.)

But IBM IS hiring -- just not for well-paid jobs and not entirely in the US:

In January, for example, it said it would open a call center in Dubuque, Iowa, for corporate customers. It is to employ up to 1,300 people. And Mr. MacDonald, the human resources executive, said I.B.M. was hiring analysts and engineers to work on Internet software, health technology and smart electrical grids.

But I.B.M.’s American employment has declined steadily, down to 29 percent of its worldwide payroll of 398,445 at the end of 2008. The cuts have also come sooner and deeper in North America this year than in recent years.

As part of a government filing last week, I.B.M. said its work force in Brazil, Russia, India and China had climbed to 113,000. These are markets with faster growth than the United States, and less expensive skilled labor.

In interviews, I.B.M. workers whose jobs are being eliminated were mainly chagrined that the undisclosed cuts, and the timing, seemed to contradict the company’s public statements.

Rick Clark, 50, an engineer in East Fishkill, N.Y., had worked for I.B.M. for 11 years. He said he was disappointed in I.B.M. this time because the job cuts were deep and spread across so many businesses and came at a time when I.B.M. has been proclaiming its success. “I do think I.B.M., like other companies, has used this recession as an excuse to lay people off,” he said.

But the important fact to keep in mind is this, as Ross Eisenbrey of the Economic Policy Institute says at the end of the article:

“All our multinational companies are increasingly less American, except when they are asking for tax breaks and increased government spending in their industries,”