For America's "99ers," jobs crisis is hard to escape

Found this article on Yahoo, about two ladies who are among the millions of AMERICAN's who have run out of unemployment benefits and are just hanging on by the skin of their teeth. These are women who worked, and earned, and supported their country, and now through no fault of their own, have been abandoned by the very system they supported for their whole lives, and but for help from relatives, friends, or drawing on savings or the declining value of their homes they would find themselves living in a box or a homeless shelter.
This is not right, yet now the government see's fit to take even these meager benefits away, putting more AMERICAN's out of their homes. It's bad enough that the government is responsible for these AMERICAN's being out of work, but to add insult to injury to all of us, "our leaders" president, congress, senate, and who knows who else, those that raise their own pay, have million dollar pensions and benefits, now say that the meager dollars we all get when our jobs are eliminated by circumstances created by them, or by the corporations and banks that they our "leaders" answer to, are "ENTITLEMENTS."
This is not only unemployment benefits but also social security and medicare. They are entititlements that our "leaders," and even regular people say, SHOULD BE REDUCED or even eliminated!!  I say bullSHIT!!  These are not entitlements and should not be reduced. I, and every person that's worked, unlike our "leaders", have paid for unemployment, social security, medicare, etc., through taxes, and paycheck withdrawals.  I say something we paid good money for is not an entitlement.
If the government needs money, they say they do, but you'd never know it, by all the gifts of multi trillion dollar subsidies and the pay raises they give themselves and their minions, they should cut spending. Stop the wars, bring the military back, reduce the military, etc, cut spending on all the millions of things nobody needs, that just put money in the pockets, or gain re-election of our "leaders."  Anyway on to the article.   Link to the Article


On Thursday July 7, 2011, 3:07 pm EDT



By Alexandra Alper

Unemployed operations manager Mary Kay Coyne
 unfurls a U.S. flag on the front porch of her residence
 in Sewell, New Jersey, July 7, 2011.
REUTERS/Tim Shaffer

SEWELL, New Jersey (Reuters) - Mary Kay Coyne has just filed what she says is her 1,862nd job application since being thrown out of work three years ago.  She is one of millions of Americans whose unemployment benefits have expired -- after 99 weeks in many states -- as the United States suffers its highest level of long-term unemployment since 1948.
Coyne had to move in with a friend after benefit payments ran out last year. Now she gets by on Medicaid -- U.S. health insurance for the poor -- and food stamps, contributing what little she can to her friend's household costs.
"You're 56-years old and you feel like you are sitting on a big pile of nothing," said Coyne, who spends about four hours a day sending out resumes.
"For the better part of a year, I have something sitting on my chest. It's not a medical condition. It is that pressure of 'Is this going to end, when is this going to end?'"
Unlike in much of Europe, the safety net of the U.S. welfare system times out for the long-term unemployed. The federal government and many states have provided extra help for those caught up in the worst labor market in decades but the U.S. debt crisis rules out further extension of the programs.
Coyne is typical of many middle-class Americans now struggling to get by.
She used to earn $70,000 a year as an administrative assistant until her firm began to downsize and left Coyne among the growing number of Americans struggling to live on unemployment benefits, and eventually on minimal food aid.
Now Washington is considering cuts to social welfare programs to shrink a swelling budget deficit.
It may not only be Americans like Coyne who feel the pain. Some economists say the cuts could make it even harder to shrink long-term unemployment that damages the wider economy by dampening consumer demand and lowering output.
In 2010, an estimated 3.9 million unemployed Americans exhausted unemployment benefits, according to the National Employment Law Project, an advocacy group that campaigns for lower-wage workers.
More than 14 percent of the U.S. unemployed have been out of a job for 99 weeks, or longer.
The Labor Department’s report on Friday showed that the unemployment rate climbed to a six-month high of 9.2 percent in June.
Many so-called "99ers" subsist on social services like food stamps and Medicaid, programs now in danger of deep cuts demanded by many Republicans in Congress in exchange for allowing the federal government to go deeper into debt.
"An increase in demand for social services is what you would expect in a downturn of this magnitude and so the fact that they are cutting the social safety net is quite perplexing," said Sylvia Allegretto, a labor economist at the University of California at Berkeley. "We've just never seen (long-term unemployment) at these levels, period."
Forty six percent of those looking for work have been jobless for six months or more and the average length of job searches that eventually result in a hiring has doubled to 10 weeks between 2007 and 2010.


NO MORE SHOPPING TRIPS


Cindy Paoletti had no idea she would still be unemployed more than three years after being laid off by JPMorgan Chase.
The 59-year-old accountant -- who volunteered to be laid off to care for her dying father --- now survives on loans borrowed against the falling value of her home, Medicaid and food stamps.
"By the end of the month we are down to practically nothing in the house," she says.
The $200 in food aid she now receives each month goes furthest when spent on frozen vegetables and potatoes.
That's a far cry from Paoletti's lifestyle as a 23-year veteran at JPMorgan.
Although on a modest annual salary of $34,000, Paoletti went shopping, dined out with friends, smoked cigarettes and traveled each year to visit friends around the country.
That all changed after her severance package ran out.
"I stay home all the time," says Paoletti, who has given up smoking to save money and has found new ways of spending her spare time. "I work in the yard or play with the dog."
Paoletti says she has all but given up finding a job.
"I just got so discouraged," she said. "You apply for jobs online and you get an email the same day saying this job is no longer available."
The long-term unemployed have a tougher time than others landing a job. In 2010, someone unemployed for less than five weeks was three times more likely to get a job than someone unemployed for 27 weeks or more, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.


DEMAND SURGES FOR FOOD STAMPS

Just as the United States prepares to tighten its belt and deal with its fiscal crisis, demand for key aid programs has never been higher.
The number of Americans signed up for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) -- which provides food stamps -- has reached its highest level since it began in 1939. One in seven Americans now receive aid from the program.
Medicaid enrollment as of 2010 surpassed 68.2 million, its highest level in the program's history.
Cuts to these programs now seem inevitable as states struggle to plug budget gaps and lawmakers on Capital Hill turn their attention to the budget deficit.
The White House has reportedly agreed to $100 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next 10 years. Some House Republicans want cuts of more than seven times that amount.
Last week, federal stimulus programs providing billions of dollars for state Medicaid programs ran out.
The cuts are piling on the pressure for the long-term unemployed.
Coyne -- who has a chronic thyroid condition -- received notice last month that her New Jersey Medicaid benefits would be cut by $25. That means she will have to skip some doctor visits because she cannot afford to cut down on her medication.
But Coyne worries most about losing her food stamps.
"That would be the kick in the mouth I could not take," she said. "To have to depend on someone completely who is not related to me, that would make me feel awful."
Cuts to the program are being negotiated in Washington. A Republican version of the U.S. budget for 2012 would cut $127 billion -- about 20 percent -- from food stamps over 10 years.
Unemployment benefits are under pressure too. Two federal programs are set to expire in January though unemployed workers receiving emergency benefits may be eligible to draw checks through May.
There are some signs the number of people stuck in long-term unemployment may be easing from its historic highs.
The total number of people on the last available phase of jobless benefits and those exhausting them each month is falling. Economists say seasonal factors may be causing some of the decline.
Stories like Coyne's and Paoletti's make some economists question whether now is the time to cut benefits. Persistently high unemployment should spur more spending to aid the jobless and prop up consumer demand, they say.
Other economists argue the existing benefit system is overly generous and makes Americans too dependent on social services that are untenable at a time of skyrocketing debt.
"The government is not here to ensure whatever standard of living you're at, that you're not going to go below that," said James Sherk, a labor economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "That is just not the purpose of the safety net."
He says the benefit system is flawed because it provides support to the wealthy unemployed who could support themselves for a while without a job. Sherk says the labor market is still too weak to eliminate the federal unemployment extensions. He recommends cutting them to around 70 weeks total.
Coyne hopes government support is only a temporary fix. She keeps applying for jobs despite the hundreds of rejections and tries to keep alive her hopes that she can one day return to work and pay her friend a fair share of their living costs.
"I can curl up on the sofa and cry and pretend that it is going to get better but it is not going to go better unless I make it better."

Let's Talk About A New Illegal Obama War

Let's talk about Libia, Mr. Hussein Obama's very own attempt to become a war president. For this one he doesn't have to admit that George 2nd actually started it, and that he's simply carrying it forward. This one is his alone. Following is part of an article   Link to the Activist Post  on the Activist Post. I've only shown the paragraphs that caught my eye, click on the link to read the whole article.
Tripoli, Libya At ten a.m. Tripoli time on 6/28/11 the Libyan Ministry of Health made available to this observer its compilation entitled “Current Statistics Of Civilian Victims Of Nato Bombardments On Libya, (3/19/11-6/27/11).

Before releasing their data, which will be made public this afternoon, it was confirmed by the findings of the Libyan Red Crescent Society and also by civil defense workers in the neighborhoods bombed, and then vetted by researchers at Tripoli’s Nassar University.
As of July 1, 2011, military casualties have not been officially released by the Libyan armed forces.
In summary, the MOH compilation documents that during the first 100 days of NATO targeting of civilians, 6121 were killed or injured. The statistical breakdown is as follows: 3093 Men were injured and 668 were killed. Women killed number 260 and 1318 injured. Children killed number 141 and 641 injured.
Of those seriously injured 655 are still under medical care in hospitals while 4,397 have been released to their families for outpatient care.
NATO's claims that private apartments and homes, schools, shops, factories, crops, and warehouses storing sacks of flour were legitimate military targets are not believed by anyone here in Libya. To date NATO has failed to provide a scintilla of evidence that the 15 civilians, mainly children and their aunts and mothers, who were torn to pieces by 8 NATO rockets in the Salman neighborhood last week were legitimate military targets.

What we either never knew or have forgotten is like many leaders in the mideast, Gadhafi was once the darling of the USA, and the west. A quote from Wikipedia explains:

"On 1 September 1969, a small group of junior military officers led by Gaddafi staged a bloodless coup d'état against King Idris while he was in Turkey for medical treatment. His nephew, the Crown Prince Sayyid Hasan ar-Rida al-Mahdi as-Sanussi, was formally deposed by the revolutionary army officers and put under house arrest; they abolished the monarchy and proclaimed the new Libyan Arab Republic.[30]
A plan to use mercenaries to restore the monarchy was organised by David Stirling, founder of the British Special Air Service, who had been approached by a member of the royal family. The plan — dubbed "Hilton Assignment" in an ironic reference to Libyan jails — was to spring 150 political prisoners from Tripoli jail as a catalyst for a general uprising; the mercenaries were to slip away quietly as the locals took over. Despite Stirling's confidence, the plan was called off at a late stage by the British Secret Intelligence Service, allegedly because the United States government judged that Gaddafi was sufficiently anti-Marxist and thus acceptable"

Like the Shah, Hussein, and countless others, our presidents (they could lay it on their minions, like others of their cowardly ilk, but as Truman said, "the buck stops here," use, and use, and use, until there is no use left, and then they call these same men a danger to Homeland (read Fatherland or Motherland depending on which president) security, and send (one part of the US version of the Gestapo) the CIA to create a revolution, or possibly just to assasinate him.


Here's another article I found today on NewsMax.  Link to Article   I'm not posting it because it's too long, but I suggest you read it.  In brief it says, that Gadhafi broadcast that if Nato doesn't backoff he'll take their war to Europe. Could we be headed to WWIII, thanks to Obama?  It also says that the world court has issued arrest warrents for Gadhafi, his son, and another man. Stating crimes against humanity. If this relatively little guy is guilty of war crimes or crimes against humanity, then why hasn't this same court issued warrants for Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama at the very least? All are guilty of far greater crimes against humanity, just the crime of murder numbers in the millions. But the world court, the same as Nato, is controlled by the US, so that's unlikely, not impossible, but highly unlikely.
Something to think about, is this the USA that you were born in?

Lee Murray

PS  
A U.S. drone aircraft fired on two leaders of a militant Somali organization tied to al-Qaeda, apparently wounding them, a senior U.S. military official familiar with the operation said Wednesday.

The strike last week against senior members of al-Shabab comes amid growing concern within the U.S. government that some leaders of the Islamist group are collaborating more closely with al-Qaeda to strike targets beyond Somalia, the military official said. U.S. drones target two leaders of Somali group allied with al-Qaeda  The airstrike makes Somalia at least the sixth country where the United States is using drone aircraft to conduct lethal attacks, joining Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Iraq and Yemen. And it comes as the CIA is expected to begin flying armed drones over Yemen in its hunt for al-Qaeda operatives.
Link to Article in Washington Post

In tears at the inhumanity to man that still goes on

A $100 Million ATM Receipt



Main Street East Hampton Village

 Found this article on Yahoo Finance today. I'm having mixed feelings of admiration for the amount and revulsion for the stupidity of keeping nearly 100 MILLION in a savings account. Unless of course this is just a household account or pocket money?????       Link to the Article   Just shows even in this economy not everyone's broke.

Lee Murray

by Yahoo! writer
Thursday, June 30, 2011
 
Scrooge McDuck lives. An ATM receipt showing a balance of nearly $100 million dollars was discovered at an East Hampton Village bank.
A customer found the receipt hanging out of the ATM's slot. The customer who found the receipt showed it to financial blog Dealbreaker.com. The receipt, dated June 18, doesn't list the account holder's name but does indicate that the person has $99,864,731.94 in a personal savings account (that's after a $400 withdrawal and a $2.75 service charge). The East Hamptons is a well known playground for the very wealthy.
Is the receipt a mistake of some kind? Perhaps. Anyone with that amount of cash would know that keeping $100 million in a savings account isn't the wisest investment move. Savings accounts earn paltry interest rates and are only guaranteed by the federal government for amounts up to $250,000.
A buzzy article from The New York Post speculates that the holder of the account may be billionaire mogul David Tepper (Forbes lists him as the 208th richest person in the world). When contacted by The New York Post, Tepper denied ownership of the receipt and pointed out that he "would never do something as irresponsible as leaving $100 million in a savings account."
Maybe it really was Scrooge McDuck?

Different Looks Into The Past

Not the girl or her Mother

I've posted on this subject before. I'm a fan of old movies. I've said it's much the same as having a window into the past. I'm also told I live in the past, I prefer to think of it as being very aware of the past. I annoy one friend because I'm constantly saying I worked there, lived there, so and so lived there, and with him being a person of the present, I get on his nerves I guess. But in many ways it's how I relate to the present by being aware of my past, plus I can't help thinking other people are as interested as I am, which isn't always true I guess.
Also, as I get older, I see people that I knew when they were younger, my parents, relatives, friends and can't help remembering them as they were. This has led me to the awareness that every single old person I see was once a kid.  This is something that all kids should be aware of and few if any are. Every old person they see, their parents, grandparents, and great grandparents anybody 40, 50, 60 years old, or ninety, was, inconceivable as it is, once just like them, young, and vibrant with all the possibilities of youth. Too, they, much as they ignore or don't realize it, given enough time will get old, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, ninety, just like all people.
My aunt just passed away, she was 88, and I looking at her saw her as she was, frail and ancient, but looking deeper also saw her as she once was, when we moved to California in '63 when she was 40. Part of her obituary was a grouping of pictures when she was a kid, then a young woman and one as she was in her 80's.
It was amazing and strange to see how time changes us.
I never knew her when she was a kid, and vaguely remember her as a young woman, she was in her twenties when I was born, 26 or so, so my earliest real memory is when we moved and she was 40 or so. Same with my parents, I like most people always saw my parents as old. I think it's just the nature of age, we're born and our parents are old, to us. As we grow up, they grow older, always seeming old. But as old age arrives speaking from personal experience all of  a sudden they look really old, ancient. My father passed away at 71, but due to illness and age, he looked 80-85, until you looked, really looked, and saw the young man trapped inside. My mother is still here, at 84, and I see the frail 84 year old, but at the same time see her as she was my whole life, in addition I see pictures and see her as she was before I was born, as a teenager, as a child. This is an awareness and one way of looking into history.  Being aware of the past is important. But it only became important as I became old myself, don't ask me why. In my earlier years I ignored or was annoyed by old people too, now I wish I'd cared more and picked their brains. At the time I didn't realize what they knew or how important it really was.
As I said earlier, I see old movies as a window to the past. Whether from the 80's or nineties, or the 20's, 30's or whenever, it's true. The older they are the more it's true, you see things as they were and as they probably aren't anymore. Streets, buildings, stores, cars, people, how people dressed, it goes on and on.
How many people of today in their teens or twenties do you think know that through the 50's and into the 60's men actually put on suits just to go visit family on Sunday, or that women wore dresses and hats and gloves when they went out to lunch, or just to go shopping?  Not many I'll bet, it's true. True not of my parents or people their age, but I remember when older relatives came to visit, all dressed up. But even my father would change his shirt and pants and put on dress shoes when going out.

Not the Mother or Daughter

How would these people people from previous generations react to how "modern" men in their 40's, 50's and 60's are now going everywhere in long shorts or baggy pants, some with the crotch at their knees like a 10 or 15 year old, (who shouldn't dress this way either), and sneakers, wearing a t-shirt and baseball cap turned backward or to the side? Or "modern" women, also in their 40's, 50's or 60's dressing like a teen, or speaking bluntly a whore, thinking it makes them look young and pretty? It doesn't. Others wear shorts, tube tops, belly shirts, sometimes so tight you wonder how. If they were 18 and 100 lbs they'd look great, but unfortunately they aren't. So our attitudes change, or do they? Hats for men I relate to the TV show Leave It To Beaver, in the show Beaver always wore a baseball hat, in the generations since, the baseball hat became the hat of choice. His parents were the previous generation, my parents generation, and dressed like adults, not like ignorant children, as many of my generation do and subsequent generations who dress even worse, if that's possible.
While on the subject, whats the deal with later generations and tattoos?  Lately you can't see a girl or guy under 50 or so who's body doesn't look like the painted whatever in a freak show in a cheap circus. I saw a girl, well a "girl" that was 30-40 years old, yesterday in line ahead of me with her teenage daughter, at the supermarket. The daughter probably 16-17-18 was wearing the bottom of a white thong bikini and a white t-shirt over it. Not bad looking, and a nice ass, the bikini bottom was pulled right up, exposing her... well take a guess, when she bent over to get the beer off the bottom of the cart. I was right behind them getting a great view, right under her shirt all the way to her neck. She was bare naked under the t-shirt, small cone shaped tits hanging down, small brown nipples looked half an inch long, as she bent over. When she was standing next to the cart you could see the dimples where her nipples pressed into the shirt. She looked back at me, looking at her, probably thought "old perv," then squatted down, pulling the last 24-pack out, and stood up putting it on the counter. She had tattoos on her arm and one leg up to the knee, but it was her mother, I assume her mother that I couldn't look away from. She was a blond, fatish, not fat, huge boobs with long nipples, fish belly white, clearly wearing no bra, under a much too tight white tank top and red shorts that exposed everything, with flip flops. In other words just normal dress for a middle aged woman in this day and age, (I'm being sarcastic, if you failed to recognize it). She had extensive tattoos on both arms up over her shoulders, and visible on her back, and on her belly through the semi transparent shirt and on both legs starting on her ankles going up, under her shorts, to I can only imagine where. Frankly, it was disgusting, but I couldn't look away, her breasts hung down the long nipples visible sticking out against her tank top, it was cold in the store. The thin knit fabric of her shorts pulled deep into her pussy, her ass cheeks half exposed, she might as well have been naked. I tried to look away but couldn't, every guy young and old in the store stared at her.  Guys are no better pertaining to the tattoos, but for some reason I find the tattooing itself less objectionable on men than on women. 
I remember reading somewhere, maybe Cayce, that Atantians were being reborn and they would indulge in body art as it was part of their culture in their previous lives. Interesting, and would account for the huge upsurge in tattoo's on men and women. Interesting if true.
I've been watching old movies for most of my life, since my teens anyway. I have a friend who basically thinks I'm an idiot, which would be the opinion of most people, when I go off on how they're like looking through a window in time. Most people are concerned with today and tomorrow. Few accurately remember, or care about what happened yesterday, or a year ago, or ten. Personally I'm cursed with a memory that goes back to a few years after birth. I don't remember a lot, but I do remember. The movies, and TV to a lesser degree, open the window wide. My friend and others I'm sure are tied to the drama, the fact that these are fiction, or at best fictionalized, stories, nothing more. Just entertainment. 
But forget the story, in this instance, it, whatever it is, isn't important or relevant. Look behind the story, look at how they act, how they dress, how they talk, the cars, horses, carriages, accessories, canes, dwellings, stores, streets, houses, apartments, furniture, decorations, landscaping, facial hair or lack of it, motorcycles, bicycles, dogs, cats, wild animals, well you get the idea.
You like many may think why do I care about old fashioned crap? Well the truth is first you get to see everything in context, two yes movies are fiction and all, but like today they had to be believable, all of what went on had to be consistent with what really happened, wearing a hat, driving a car, names of stores, etc. So if you look under the fiction, you get a good idea of what life was like in the teens, twenties, thirties, and on.
So you see there are different ways to see the past, what we remember accurately or not, and by watching the past on film or tape.

Lee Murray

Does What Go Around Come Around???

I've been thinking about my last couple posts and it brings to mind an idea. Probably not much of an idea, but since nobody knows the reality one theory or idea is as good as any other.  I'm actually talking about the post before the last, called Evolution Disproved....  Not the one about the giants, as that is something else entirely.  But anyway I was thinking, ordinary objects, nails, a vase, bodies like our own, other things have been found at depths, or inside rock that dates back to hundreds or millions of years ago. I wonder if it wasn't previous civilizations but instead was us. If we aren't, perhaps, souls doomed to constantly build the same civilization, live the same lives, bear the same children, spring from the same ancestors, build the same cities, and cultures, develop the same foods, and languages, and everything else, on and on. The purpose being that we evolve and eventually move from being tied to the physical to the spiritual and return to being what we really are, spirit.  But we are unable, or unwilling to leave the physical, so we just keep building the same lives over and over, with the destruction of us, and the world being the result every time, then the whole thing beginning again and once again we fail and are destroyed, over and over and over. So maybe those nails that are millions of years old are our nails, and in millions of years from now if we don't change someone will be mining, or digging a well or basement and find something that we have today. They'll think that superior men existed millions of years before, when it was really just themselves today. Make sense at all?

Lee Murray