Anyone Remember The Year 2010 And How It Seemed So Crazy Then

I am suddenly nostalgic and in the mood to look back ten years to 2010 and try to remember what the hell the world looked like back then.

Back then this was under a completely different name - Amendments We Need - and the blog's focus was supposed to be on political reforms and high-minded philosophizing. But even then the postings were sliding into weekly (and then daily) words of outrage over the partisan nightmare the Republicans were creating during the Obama years, so I changed it (and busted a lot of links to earlier articles in the process, sigh).

I realize looking back the amount of writing (85) was minimal compared to recent years where I break 100 easily, although the years 2015 (205) and 2016 (307) are outside the norms. Back then I was still finding a voice, and coping with a lot of bad stuff in the Real World.

2010 was the middle of my lost years, between late 2008 when I lost my full-time job as a librarian before regaining a new librarian post in early 2013. Roughly four-plus years of career searching, thanks to the Great Recession that killed off the civil service job market: A lot of city, county, and state revenues relied on property taxes, and the collapsed housing market cut into those revenues well up to now.

Best I could find were part-time jobs, inventory checking here, temp Census taking there, unable to hold either for long while I kept hunting anything in editing (Journalism), research (Libraries), or tech (Computer skills, and studying for A+ certification on a job-hunting grant).

In terms of what I was writing on the blog, it bounced between the serious endeavors - lamenting the failures of mainstream media and such - and the quick posts - thus and so - in order to keep myself engaged with writing while the real world was bumming me out.

Man I was pretty depressed back then (and sadly that depression is chronic and not far from my mind)

I notice I was linking a lot to Glenn Greenwald back then... and that faded away in favor of Ta-Nehisi Coates at the Atlantic as well as the general team of misfits at Balloon Juice, upon which a lot of my current blogging is based. I also started linking to David Frum and Conor Friedersdorf as kinds of counter-balance of conservative viewpoints, because I try to accept the larger scope of things (even as I got to find conservative viewpoints skewing further to a vicious extreme).

I was also taunting Erik Erickson often because the SOB threatened to shoot census workers at a time I was enumerating. Grrr.

If there were any personal bright spots, my brother Phil took me to a Rays game that ended up the team's first No-Hitter. WOOHOO!

Looking back, I'm finding something that had me looking forward: I wrote an article "Daddy What Did YOU Do During the Republican War on America" projecting all the way up to the far-flung year of 2020 (oh, hi). Oh good God, re-reading this article is breaking my heart. Not just the fanciful idea that I'd actually be married with kids by now (looks forlornly across an empty house as a Florida thunderstorm rages outside), but that ten years ago some form of sanity would prevail. That somehow, the crazed Tea Party efforts by the Far Right - the media, the GOP Congresscritters, the Birthers that would metastasize into QAnon nuts six years later - would implode on itself, that enough Americans would rise up against the tax-cut obsessions and racist/sexist bullshit.

Now I know why I was looking back now. Why I'm in such a mood. Part of me remembered this, remembered the hope I had for brighter happier days in the 2010 decade. All to see it come crashing down thanks to Mitch and trump and 62 million insane neighbors.

That was 2010, ten years gone.

Are we going to let 2020 ruin everything between now and 2030?

Are we even going to see 2030?

Florida Messed-Up By Republicans, Part MMDCXCVIII: Screwing the Unemployed (Again!)

The headline to Politico's article from Gary Fineout and Marc Caputo about the impending employment crisis in Florida pretty much sums it up:

On this blog, I stopped caring about censoring the Shit word after trump stole the election.
So there.

This is something I could have told you ten years ago - hold up, maybe I did - but let's get on with the current troubles shall we:

Already anxious about Trump’s chances in the nation’s biggest swing state, Republicans now are dealing with thousands of unemployed workers unable to navigate the Florida system to apply for help. And the blowback is directed straight at Trump’s top allies in the state, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Rick Scott.

Privately, Republicans admit that the $77.9 million system that is now failing Florida workers is doing exactly what Scott designed it to do — lower the state’s reported number of jobless claims after the great recession...

Let's just pause here for a minute, okay? The Florida Republicans are admitting that the benefits system they set up - they screwed up - back in 2014 was MEANT to be screwed up, it was meant to force enough of the unemployed to not even bother registering for benefits and job-hunting help. They were fudging the numbers: Keep the unemployed from even getting tallied, keep them hidden, keep them away from any assistance at all...

Grrr. Back to Politico:

“It’s a sh-- sandwich, and it was designed that way by Scott,” said one DeSantis advisor. “It wasn’t about saving money. It was about making it harder for people to get benefits or keep benefits so that the unemployment numbers were low to give the governor something to brag about.”

Republican Party of Florida chairman Joe Gruters was more succinct: “$77 million? Someone should go to jail over that.” (Note: If you click on my blog links above from 2014, you'll notice the complaints filed back THEN about the CONNECT system being buggy, more on that later...)

With hundreds of thousands of Floridians out of work, the state’s overwhelmed system is making it nearly impossible for many people to even get in line for benefits...

There are several problems with relying entirely on an online system, to wit:

• Not everyone owns a computer. Smartphones, mostly yes. Laptops or Desktops or Tablets, not always especially the low-income populations most likely to be job-hunting in the first place. So to begin with, not every unemployed person could/can file. And as you can figure out, the CONNECT website was NOT designed for mobile app use so smartphones weren't helping...
• The places where computer-less unemployed people go - libraries - are all closed right now because the Coronavirus crisis requires public places be closed to reduce the risks of spreading it. Even before this all happened, we at the libraries would get 4-5 people a week trying to login to the CONNECT system, and nearly every one would run into problems with their accounts getting locked, information improperly stored, problems we couldn't solve at the library. 
• The places they COULD go for that tech help back when we were all open - the county career offices - were often swamped already and they sent these job-seekers right back to the libraries anyway. A nasty Catch-22.
• There would be days, weeks even when the servers at the state's end of things were bugged, crashing, or overwhelmed. It's turning out now to be intentional on Rick "NO ETHICS" Scott and his Republican buddies' part, but it was frustrating as hell at OUR end of things for the last six years...

Sigh. Back to the article:

After a record number of claims were reported Thursday, DeSantis said the state would resort to paper applications, build a mobile app to handle the flood of traffic and deploy hundreds, even thousands, of state workers to provide stopgap help.

Why wasn't this all fixed back in 2019 when you got into office, DeSantis? Oh, right, you're Republican, you didn't see the problem and you didn't care when it mattered to others.

The new online system was part of a series of changes designed to limit benefits. The ultimate goal — which it delivered on — was to lower unemployment taxes paid by Florida businesses. A 2011 analysis done by the Florida Legislature estimated that the changes pushed by Scott would save businesses more than $2.3 billion between 2011 and 2020.

Now, as thousands of people try to get help, the system crashes or denies them access. Nearly 400,000 people have managed to file claims in the last two and half weeks. It’s not known how many have tried and failed.

Most of those who do submit applications won’t qualify for aid, and the benefits that are paid out are among the most meager in the country — a maximum of $275 a week...

Remember when Republicans were griping about the benefits of the stimulus package just voted on, where they complained the unemployment benefits would be too tempting to Americans who would turn into lazy bastards living off the unemployment dole? That's one reason why the Florida Republicans kept it so low... and they didn't fucking care that in this day and age - even back in 2012 - that $275 a week was nowhere near enough to pay for rent, food, utilities, gas, and everything else.

Trust me. Between January 2009 to January 2013, I was unemployed for much of that. I was hired by a few part-time jobs but was unable to keep most of them (one was the temp US Census job in 2010 that only last two months, one company only had me for two weeks before they kicked me out telling me my college degrees made me too overqualified). I spent week after week trying to find jobs and keep my unemployment benefits going - after a point I couldn't - and even WITH that $275 a week my parents still had to help every month with the mortgage payments for the condo I lived in (and because the housing market sucked after 2008, we couldn't sell it until we were forced to in 2013 at a loss). If the Florida Republicans thought keeping it low was an incentive to find work, it wasn't: it was punishment for being unhireable in a bad job market.

Like it never occurred to those Republicans that if the unemployment benefits were that tempting, then maybe companies and businesses should raise their wages to bring the workers back. Oh wait, they probably did and dreaded that too.

Anyhoo. I digress. Back to Politico:

“This is horrible for people. I don’t want to minimize that,” one DeSantis adviser told POLITICO. “But if we have to look past the crisis, it’s bad for the president and it’s bad for the governor.”

“Everyone we talk to in that office when we ask them what happened tells us, ‘the system was designed to fail,’” the adviser said. “That’s not a problem when unemployment is 2.8 percent, but it’s a problem now. And no system we have can handle 25,000 people a day.”

Don't forget kids: the real victims in all this are the Republicans who designed this system to fail and didn't care about it until their electoral chances were on the line.

Remember: "That's not a problem when unemployment is 2.8 percent." YES, YES IT IS A PROBLEM, especially for the 2.8 percent - THAT WE KNEW OF - you were screwing over with a bad website.

State auditors have routinely chronicled shortcomings with the CONNECT system, most recently in a report issued in March 2019, two months after DeSantis took office.

Like I asked earlier, WHY didn't DeSantis do anything when he took office? Oh, right. It was poor people he didn't have to care about.

Republicans in the Legislature share the blame, said Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez, a Miami Democrat.

“Rick Scott is the most culpable human being when we look at who’s responsible for the failed system,” Rodriguez said. “But I don’t know of any Republican who resisted these efforts to make Florida the most Scrooge-like state in the nation.”

Something you might not know about Florida: It's been a Far Right Conservative state for a very long time. Back when the Conservatism was with the Democrats - the Civil Rights era of the Sixties and Seventies - the political shifts between Republicans and Democrats didn't matter as much, and through it all some genuine reformers and moderate leadership from both parties would hold sway. But when Reagan showed up and the party shifts began, the Democrats slowly lost a lot of authority - and responsibility - across the Sunshine State. I can't remember the last time either house of the State lege was controlled by the Dems. I do know the last Governor: Lawton Chiles, who died in office back in 1998 (technically it was Buddy McKay who filled the seat for a month until the 1999 inauguration, but Chiles is the one who served most of that two-term tenure) and was replaced by a dead dog Jeb Bush and it's been Republicans ever since.

Ever since 1998, Republicans had been, are doing, continue to threaten to fulfill every Far Right agenda that wouldn't kill them at the polls. Underpay teachers and overfill classrooms? Sure. Let developers bulldoze across every sensitive ecosystem to build shopping malls and gated communities? Mo' money. Ignore the poor elderly who could use Obamacare's Medicaid expansion to provide better conditions in their assisted living facilities? Screw the elderly.

But now they're running into a big problem out of their control. The COVID-19 crisis has essentially shut down the state. Our major industry - tourism - had to close its theme parks and hotels for the current situation with no guarantee they'll re-open by Summer. That is hitting a ton of low-wage service workers, with few other places and industries hiring (and few ought to, it's not SAFE dammit). It's hitting a lot of small business owners - the gift shops and restaurants and most other service-oriented businesses - that can't risk viral exposure and had to send their workers and themselves home.

The number of unemployed is going to jump from 2-point-8 to 28 percent within this month (I am not sure if I am exaggerating the 28 percent, or being to cautious).

There's a lot that has to get fixed, and not just the CONNECT benefits website. The benefits themselves are minuscule and insulting. The Governor and State Lege had gotten away with it being low for so long because quite honestly not enough people were paying attention. Well, they'll be noticing it now. The push to boost the weekly payments to something more tolerable and supportive is going to be on everyone's agenda now.

Except... all of this goes against the hard-core philosophy of the Republican Party itself, not just nationally but in the Sunshine State. To get a majority of "Fuck the Public Trust" party members to switch mindsets would be like getting a majority of Dolphins fans to start cheering for the Patriots.

And they have only themselves to blame (and judging by the Politico article, they know it). Having controlled two of three state branches (and now likely controlling the judiciary too) since 1998, they can't blame the Democrats for any of the problems today. It's all been Republican Governors and all been Republican Legislatures that did NOTHING to provide better social safety nets for the 22 million residents. Any attempt to accuse the opposition - the way trump's been blaming everything on his failures handling this crisis on Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders and Blue State Governors - isn't going to fly in a Florida that's only known Red for 22 years.

And they can't blame the voters for electing such foolish critters as themselves because 1) that's suicidal in an election year and 2) there's been a slim majority of Democratic voters every year but thanks to GOP-led gerrymandering the Republicans hold a skewed percentage (around 60 percent) of the elective seats to control the Lege. (And for the statewide offices like Governor, there's a good argument that Republican-led suppression efforts stymied Dem voter turnout anyway)

And I doubt the Florida Republicans are going to do anything to relieve the stress and nightmares that a solid majority of residents are going to feel over the next two-three months (maybe well into September), because doing so violates their core tenets, and if any of it proves helpful would cripple any campaigning they do against those changes down the road.

I do not trust our state's current leadership to do anything - establishing stronger Stay At Home policies, providing long-term unemployment benefits that can honestly pay everyone's bills, keeping our hospitals working as the pandemic hits our medical staffs the hardest - that would help my family, my neighbors, my coworkers, my peeps.

And I do not trust the Republicans to play fair this election cycle. I was expecting them to cheat with voter suppression before all this, and with the crisis now I guarantee they are thinking of ways to 1) use it as an excuse to stop most voters in Democratic areas to even try, or 2) shut down voting altogether.

Gods help us in the Sunshine State, America.

Gods help each and every one of you in all the other states and territories as well.

Some Thoughts This Monday Night March 2020

Images, by Tyrone Green Witty Librarian:

Look, I have a lot of schadenfreude watching the Dow Jones drop like a stone over the last month, but we're at the point - probably way past it - where a lot of middle-class 401k and mutual fund portfolios are getting nuked. Isn't there a way to close down the markets for two weeks, let things cool off, like the banking holiday FDR ordered back when he took office at the height of the Great Depression? Those trading floors will be one less place for people to pick up the COVID19.

My library closed to the public back on March 17, we spent the remainder of the week getting our holds into Books-by-Mail for those we could contact, the rest are stuck here until late April when we *hope* to re-open. We're still coming to work until further notice, depending on what the state does, and in the meantime we're using the closed time to re-arrange office space and catch up on paperwork. We DO have ebooks available through Overdrive...

Most libraries - public and college - have closed, almost all the schools have closed here in Florida... and yet our governor DeSantis, obsessing over the economic hit that would happen, isn't doing anything to get the state to block off the beaches and reduce public gatherings there. He's resisting calls for stronger "Shelter In Place" emergency orders to get more residents to stay at home and not spread contact by infectees. Even as we're getting a shitton of New Yorkers fleeing a locked-down New York City and bringing more infectees with them.

For all my science fiction/fantasy and horror readings, for growing up on Stephen King's The Stand, for all the zombie apocalypse movies I've seen, I still can't believe that when a global pandemic finally hit the first thing to go was all the toilet paper. (I kid. Hand sanitizer and eggs disappeared just as quick)

I just found out today that the TV show Supernatural predicted it back in 2009!

We're looking at a possibility of the number of people filing for unemployment - due to layoffs at a lot of tourism, travel, retail, education, restaurant/bar, luxury service jobs because we HAVE to avoid these places of business now - jumping into the 30 percent range during this month. We need to remember a few things: 1) unemployment figures relied a lot on people claiming that, which was lower than actual numbers that can no longer live off-the-books as it were 2) we're looking at a collapse of several industries that will take YEARS to recover meaning those numbers are going to stay up well into 2021 (and 2022 for that matter).
We are looking at both funding unemployment and other social aid services way more than we already are (which wasn't all that great to begin with), AND we are looking at the reality of a Universal Basic Income - a monthly payout by the federal government to help cover the basics like rent/mortgage and food - getting implemented for a long period of time (if not set up permanently). THIS means one thing: The Federal government has to pay for this, and our nation is going to HAVE to raise taxes on upper incomes to balance this out.

None of this would be happening if trump took his job seriously, recognized the warning signs from JANUARY, and prompted both Congress and the Executive branch into funding and manufacturing the medical supplies - not just masks and gloves but also ventilators and respirators - so that when we got to here in March we'd have the bare minimum of those supplies to keep our hospitals functioning. Instead for reasons of his own - either sheer laziness, ignorance of the severity, some twisted idea this crisis would work to his advantage this year of election - trump fiddled while Rome got burned.

Gods help us, this is where we're at tonight.

Penny For My Thoughts Because I'm Out of Pocket Change

Like I've written earlier, I can't understand why people think our economy's gotten better since the Great Recession. Far too many of us are living paycheck to paycheck and weighed under by too much debt.

Even FORBES Magazine is taking notice (via Peter Georgesceu):

Ostensibly, for the past ten years, our economy has been recovering from the 2008 collapse. During the past few years, our comeback seems to have gained momentum. All the official indicators say we’re back in boom times, with a bull market, low unemployment and steady job growth. But there is an alternative set of data that depicts a different America, where the overlooked majority struggles from month to month.

The Nation recently published a stunning overview of the working poor and underpaid. One of the most powerful data points in the piece described how empty the decline in unemployment actually is: having a job doesn’t exempt anyone from poverty anymore. About 12% of Americans (43 million) are considered poor, and yet they are employed. They earn an individual income below $12,140 per year, and slightly more than that for a family of two. If you include housing and medical expenses in the calculation, it raises the percentage of Americans living in poverty to 14%. That’s 45 million people...

If we link to that Nation article by Rejan Menon, we get more details:

For a fuller picture of American (in)security, however, it’s necessary to delve deeper into the relevant data, starting with hourly wages, which are the way more than 58 percent of adult workers are paid. The good news: Only 1.8 million, or 2.3 percent of them, subsist at or below minimum wage. The not-so-good news: One-third of all workers earn less than $12 an hour and 42 percent earn less than $15. That’s $24,960 and $31,200 a year. Imagine raising a family on such incomes, figuring in the cost of food, rent, childcare, car payments (since a car is often a necessity simply to get to a job in a country with inadequate public transportation), and medical costs.

The problem facing the working poor isn’t just low wages, but the widening gap between wages and rising prices. The government has increased the hourly federal minimum wage more than 20 times since it was set at 25 cents under the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. Between 2007 and 2009 it rose to $7.25, but over the past decade that sum lost nearly 10 percent of its purchasing power to inflation, which means that, in 2018, someone would have to work 41 additional days to make the equivalent of the 2009 minimum wage...

Take the poverty gap, which the OECD defines as the difference between a country’s official poverty line and the average income of those who fall below it. The United States has the second-largest poverty gap among wealthy countries; only Italy does worse...

No nation can honestly maintain itself under this kind of income inequality. At some point, the financial scams at the top can't find any more suckers, and the debt consumes itself (this is what happened with the housing speculation in 2007-08 causing the Great Recession). At some point, the public frustration at being constantly in debt will erupt.

The United States has been separate from the rest of the world when it comes to this kind of oppressive economic decay. Most other countries would have broken out the pitchforks and Molotov Cocktails by now. But in the U.S., we've been able to hide from the economic despair by leaving most of the class warfare to revolve around Race instead of Poverty (despite all the Progressives thinking our class struggle is economic, all of the violent moments in American history have been over racism SEE Tulsa, Rosewood, Japanese internment, Jim Crow and Slavery eras, etc).

But sooner or later, the corrupt minority rule of Republican oligarchs - who are suppressing voters by ethnicity, gender, and youth - worried more about their goddamned tax cuts than good wages for mos workers cannot contain the anger that's brewing. trump can siphon off that rage to confuse his voting base into blaming Illegals for all their ills, but what happens when the boogeymen are gone and the oligarchs are still raking in our wages? How many Latinos and Blacks and feminists are you gonna blame for your $7.65 an hour paycheck (without health benefits) before you realize it's your $21 million a year CEO ripping you off with wage theft?

If voters were genuinely rising up over "economic anxiety" they'd be in the streets demanding $15 an hour minimum wage, caps on CEO pay, ending the GOP 2017 Tax Cut Disaster that made income inequality worse, and relief for majority of Americans regarding college/health care/homeowner debts.

They sure as hell wouldn't be voting for the Tax-Cheat-in-Chief and his Republican buddies.

Job Hunting In Florida 2014: Still A Nightmare

Remember the noise over Obamacare's website woes?

At least Healthcare.gov eventually got fixed within two months.  We've got a situation here in Florida where the state's unemployment benefit claims site has been broken for a full year since it got revamped (via Tampa Bay Times):

Despite promises from Gov. Rick Scott's administration that the state's new online unemployment system is fixed, unpaid claims keep mounting and Florida now ranks last in the nation at providing timely relief for jobless workers...

...Complaints like that are nothing new for CONNECT, the state's online filing system for unemployment benefits that 1.1 million workers rely on every year. Upon its launch — one year ago — it wrongly withheld payments from thousands of job seekers because of more than 100 technical defects. But after a series of emergency measures, a Scott appointee in March vowed that problems had been fixed.

"The bottom line is that we have resolved the delays caused by CONNECT's launch," Jesse Panuccio, the executive director of the Department of Economic Opportunity, told state senators in late March. "Service is now better than it was prior to CONNECT."

Federal labor statistics say otherwise.

In the year before CONNECT launched, Florida paid 78 percent of initial claims of up to $275 within two to three weeks, a federal benchmark that measures timeliness, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

The claims Florida paid on time dropped to 48 percent, however, in the year since CONNECT launched, making it last in the nation.

And it could be getting worse. Based on preliminary data, only 27 percent were paid on time over the last three months...

I can tell you from my own perspective at the library where I work the CONNECT system is still a major headache.  There's been a good number - about six or seven new people in the last two weeks - of people trying to get into CONNECT only to run into roadblocks such as the database not confirming data or having their determination still on hold because a certain form hasn't been faxed or emailed to the main office.

Meanwhile, the county's employment offices - renamed CareerSource Polk - are still packed and overwhelmed with people needing help with filing claims and job-hunting.  I try to help as much as possible at the library, but since I'm not fully tied into the employment system there's only so much I can do, and I'm forced to refer our library users to those career offices where they'd have to wait for hours to get any help.  We had a mobile bus service that stopped by once a month (it'd be nice if CareerSource could set up offices in more cities around here) but the manager for that changed jobs two months ago and they haven't found a replacement yet (if ever).

And these people need help.  They are not for the most part tech-savvy.  I've had two of them confused by odd wording on their options.  They end up clicking menu choices that detour them from where they need to go.  We need a cleaner, more concise website.  Hell, we need more people to help out navigate these sites: we need to recognize that not everything can or should be all self-serve online, that our job-seekers need help.

And for all of this, the fact that the government is delaying their payments must be maddening.  No wonder that Times article notes that our real unemployment numbers - where work-capable people simply opt out - are worse than the official 6.2 percent in-state.

What's maddening for me is how this isn't a bigger story.  We're talking about a system's state-wide failure that's been going on for a full year now, and yet it's barely made a beep on the radar until now.  Here's hoping this story gets picked up and promoted as we head into the election, because this needs to be one more nail in Rick "What Part of FRAUD Did You Republican Voters Keep Overlooking" Scott's electoral coffin.  One big reason the CONNECT system hasn't been fixed is that the damn company paid to implement it is still getting money they haven't earned:

Despite the growing backlog, Deloitte's relationship with Florida did improve. In June, it negotiated a contract extension that pays the company another $1.5 million to fix its own errors.

Deloitte's contract extension ends Nov. 20, but gives the company the option to remain on the project another six months for up to $2.4 million... In all, Deloitte's total payday could be $49.6 million for the CONNECT job, 30 percent more than the contract's 2011 price...

Want a better working system, Florida?  Vote for Crist.  If Scott is in office by Nov. 20th, I guarantee you he'll sign Deloitte to a contract extension that will screw us Florida residents for even more money for bad service.

Rage: The Long-Term Unemployed Are STILL SCREWED

From Five-Thirty-Eight:

Laurusevage, 52, is one of more than a million Americans who lost payments when Congress allowed the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program to expire at the end of last year. The program, which Congress created in 2008, extended jobless benefits beyond the standard 26 weeks provided by most states; at its peak, the federal government provided an unprecedented 6 million workers with up to 73 weeks of benefits. The Senate earlier this year voted to renew the program, but House Speaker John Boehner (personal note: you sonofabitch!) hasn't allowed the measure to come to a vote in the House.

The case against extending unemployment benefits essentially boils down to two arguments. First, the economy has improved, so the unemployed should no longer need extra time to find a new job. Second, extended benefits could lead job seekers either to not search as hard or to become choosier about the kind of job they will accept, ultimately delaying their return to the workforce.

But the evidence doesn't support either of those arguments. The economy has indeed improved, but not for the long-term unemployed, whose odds of finding a job are barely higher today than when the recession ended nearly five years ago. And the end of extended benefits hasn't spurred the unemployed back to work; if anything, it has pushed them out of the labor force altogether.

Of the roughly 1.3 million Americans whose benefits disappeared with the end of the program, only about a quarter had found jobs as of March, about the same success rate as when the program was still in effect; roughly another quarter had given up searching. The rest, like Laurusevage, were still looking...

With chart from the article:

It's that "Stopped Looking" that should break your heart.  It's more than the ones who found a job in time.  It's the number of people dropping out - despairing - and most likely not coming back.  For bad and for worse.

Regarding Laurusevage:

Laurusevage didn't expect it to be this hard. She had been her family’s primary breadwinner, earning roughly $60,000 as a health and safety officer for a Philadelphia-area heating and air conditioning company. Her husband, David, earns less than $35,000 a year selling truck parts. When her position was outsourced in April of last year, she thought that as a college graduate with a three-plus-decade history of steady work, she would find a job relatively quickly. But in many ways, her experience is typical. The long-term unemployed — typically defined as those out of work more than six months — are slightly more educated on average than the broader population of job seekers. And older workers like Laurusevage face a particularly tough time: The typical job seeker in her 50s has been out of work 26 weeks, versus 17 weeks for the typical 20-something.

There has been, continues to be, massive age discrimination against the unemployed.  Part of it involves the practical issues of re-training someone to new work, part of it the refusal of companies to invest in a worker who'll retire in 10-15 years compared to a worker they can control for 20-30, part of it the irrational fear of hiring someone who lost a job, like as though there was something wrong with that person rather than a problem with the down-sizing company who slashed and cut with haphazard panic.

There's also the problem of the education.  Normally having a college or graduate degree gets you hired right quick.  In this recession, it's two strikes against you.  If you seek a job in a profession unrelated to your degree, your would-be employer is afraid you'll bolt for that other profession the moment you get a chance (this really hurts when you're a graduate-level job-seeker looking for part-time work in anything).  Other would-be employers would fear you would be too experienced, someone less malleable in terms of training and inter-office politicking.

And so, into all of this, we still have a sizable population of the United States struggling to stay afloat, struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on their tables.  We have a situation that calls on Congress to provide help as they've provided help before: with emergency aid funding, and laws to fix the discriminatory hiring practices against the long-term unemployed.

And Boehner, that coward that crook that SONOFABITCH, refuses to get the House to act.  Because it's against the Far Right ethos of helping "the lazy".  Because it's too Keynesian for their ideological obsession with austerity and "small government".  Because it's not something that will embarrass or impeach Obama.  Because it's not #Benghazi or tax cuts or repealing Obamacare for the 58th time.

Goddamn them.

WILL YOU PLEASE AMERICA FOR THE LOVE OF GOD VOTE THE REPUBLICAN PARTY OUT OF CONGRESS?!  PLEASE?!  GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT.

Here's a Bad Launch of a Website, Fellahs

For all the griping done about the HealthCare.gov launch fiasco of three months ago, it has nothing on how bad the redesign and launch of the website (once FLUID, now CONNECT) accessing Florida unemployment benefits went.

A week before the botched launch of Florida's new unemployment benefits website, state senators grilled an agency chief and heard no warning about the chaos to come.

The CONNECT project was well managed and extensive testing showed system failure was unlikely, said Tom Clendenning, director of the Department of Economic Opportunity's workforce services.
"This has been carefully planned out," Clendenning said, smiling broadly during an Oct. 9 Senate hearing. "You can never be too 100 percent bulletproof, so we do have a contingency if in fact the new system isn't ready."

Six days later, the $63 million CONNECT website launched so riddled with technical glitches that it has left thousands of unemployed Floridians without the money they need for food, rent and bills.

The problems were so bad that the DEO began fining the contractor $15,000 a day and federal officials intervened, convincing the state to pay the back claims so claimants could get their money. Two months after CONNECT's debut, so many claims remained unpaid that the DEO hired an extra 330 employees, at a cost of $165,000 a week...

The only good thing that could be said about this disaster was that at least 330 new jobs were filled, however temporary.

...The main contractor of the project, Deloitte Consulting, won the bid to modernize Florida's unemployment compensation system by beating out nine other firms. In early 2011, the company negotiated with Florida that it could do all the work for $39.8 million and finish by December 2012, a deadline it blew — badly. (note: the rollout was finally done in October 2013, which tells you how bad)

As contracts go, this wasn't a big one for Deloitte Consulting, a U.S. company that's part of an international British conglomerate better known as Deloitte & Touche. Since 2007, Deloitte Consulting has won $283.4 million in contracts with Florida agencies.

Its interests are protected by one of the most powerful lobbyists in Tallahassee, Brian Ballard, a major campaign fundraiser for Gov. Rick Scott and other GOP officials...

Nah, nothing to see here, just another living-off-the-government-teat private firm allied with a political party that's openly accusing the unemployed of being lazy free-loaders.  Nothing to see, move along move along...

...McCullion put Deloitte on notice that the contract would be terminated unless an agreement was reached on how to conclude the project, alluding to the company's problems in other states, such as California, New Mexico and Massachusetts, with launching a similar system for unemployment benefits.

"Deloitte's demonstrated inability to implement the solution in other jurisdictions has undermined the (DEO's) confidence that Deloitte will successfully complete the (project)," McCullion wrote on June 15, 2012. "The Department contracted for a viable, proven solution. It now appears that the Department is being asked to fund a software development project with limited prospects for success."

One week later, though, the DEO approved Deloitte's final design. On July 13, Deloitte and the DEO signed a new agreement that stated the contractor has "demonstrated its willingness and ability to perform in adherence to the contract terms and condition."

By the time Panuccio, a lawyer by training with no administrative experience, became DEO executive director in 2013, Deloitte again began submitting expensive cost requests...

At the library where I work, we have a constant flow of patrons coming in to file for benefits.  Ever since the launch of the CONNECT system, I haven't seen that many of them: I'm wondering how many of them were so discouraged by the foul-ups that they stopped even trying (or if they went to the One-Stop employment centers for direct help).

As someone who was long-suffering in the job-hunting process between 2009 to 2013, I can tell you the benefits I got from the unemployment funds helped.  Not enough to cover things like a mortgage and car repairs (that fell upon my parents, and damn I owe them a lot more than just the money), but enough to keep me out there on a daily basis looking for work and interviewing for openings.

For the state of Florida to pay out such an important project to a company that had shown a poor history of website design and launching... for them to pay out to a company tied in deep to the dominating political party of both the state legislature and the governor's office... for letting this go MONTHS to such an extent that the feds have to step in to try and fix things...  This story is a bigger scandal than how it's being told.  This is a disaster that has been decades in the making, as the Republicans have been the dominant party since the 1990s and have developed enough rot and corruption to have this state on the verge of collapse...

It's not just this website rollout that's been a nightmare.  There's been a lot of other disasters that our state legislature are failing to address, that our governor's office is choosing to ignore.

GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT, FLORIDA.  Stop voting Republican.  You're just encouraging the rot.

Dear Unemployed: Time To Get Your RAGE On

This continues to piss me off, even though - THANK GOD - I am now employed.

...Republican senators on Thursday blocked a three-month revival of long-term unemployment compensation for 1.7 million Americans out of work.

Democrats fell just one vote short of the 60 needed to break a filibuster. Four Republicans voted with Democrats -- Sen. Dean Heller (NV), Kelly Ayotte (NH), Lisa Murkowski (AK) and Susan Collins (ME). Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) changed his vote at the last minute to preserve the option of bringing up the bill in the future. The final vote was 58-40...

...The reality is a large number of Republicans want the program to end but don't want to say so because it's popular. First enacted in 2008, amid economic free-fall, it provides insurance to Americans who are looking for work for up to 99 weeks. It expired on Dec. 28.

A follow-up vote Thursday to extend the unemployment benefits for three months, without a pay-for, also failed 55-43...

I guarantee this continues to piss off millions of long-term unemployed Americans who've been stuck like I had been for years: unable to convince HR departments to hire us, unable to find money to start our own businesses, unable to get into a job market that's biased against anyone with a high-level college degree or is over the age of 40...

In a just world, every damn Senator who just voted to block this emergency extension should stand in the unemployment lines for six straight months and see how THEY like it.  No, better, make it six straight YEARS...

The g-ddamn filibuster needs to go for ALL non-appointee bills coming to the floor.  THIS OBSTRUCTION IS KILLING OUR ECONOMY AND OUR NATION.  I know Dems fear the possibility that they'll find themselves in a minority in the Senate, but DAMMIT we shouldn't have our government stuck on STALL all the time!

Every unemployed person needs to find the nearest Republican Senator's office and start a sit-in protest.  DAMN THESE SENATORS.  They gonna arrest you?  So?  No jury in the nation - unless it's a jury made up of hedge fund managers - will convict you.

RAGE.

Congress Still Not Getting It, Pt. DCCIV

that's the Roman numeral for Pt. 704, by the by, yeah I'm exaggerating but I'm trying to make a point here...

It took some doing, but the Senate passed a resolution today to get some benefit extensions to the long-term unemployed:

The move means that lawmakers are now wrangling about whether -- and how -- the cost of the $6.4 billion program should be offset.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters Tuesday afternoon that the White House has indicated it will "run the traps" on "reasonable" proposals to pay for the jobless aid extension but that Democrats believe the program should be extended without offsets. His Republican counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said "there may be a way forward here" if Democrats allow some GOP amendments to be considered.

The bad news: it's for just a measly three months.  We're talking about long-term unemployed who are having a difficult time finding work after six months no wait two years no even worse five years of getting overlooked by HR departments for being too old, too overqualified, too dusty.

The worse news: the House - oh yeah, them - still has to take up this issue.

If the final bill does pass the Senate, it's not clear that the GOP-led House will take it up. House Republican leaders have painted the current proposal as fiscally irresponsible.

In a statement, House Speaker John Boehner said that any extension of the program must be paid for and contain House-backed job creation plans.

"One month ago I personally told the White House that another extension of temporary emergency unemployment benefits should not only be paid for but include something to help put people back to work," he said. "To date, the president has offered no such plan."

By the by, the "House-back job creation plans?"  To ease regulations on onshore and offshore oil and gas drilling (with no guarantees it will create more jobs), to cut regulations overall, and cut taxes on small businesses that economists note won't do much to encourage any increase in hirings.

And when Boehner claims Obama isn't offering any jobs bill, just remember Boehner is lying through his ass.

The worser news: the most obvious way to pay for this - reforming the tax code to close tax loopholes for the uber-rich, or raising the tax rate on capital gains which most rich people live off of and which rates are lower than income tax rates - will be off the table because God Help Us the modern GOP will NEVER raise taxes as long as Grover Norquist and the Club for Greed crowd are around to throw their goddamn hissy fits.

There's a good amount of talk about how income inequality and GOP failure to take unemployment seriously is making the Republicans look bad.  That's not the issue.  The issue is that GODDAMMIT we need to make job creation a top priority in our nation, and that involves getting government (Congress, HELLO WAKE UP) to pass the economic programs we know create jobs: construction and bridge repair, to top the list.  But if we're stuck with a House GOP that refuses to do a damn thing to help the lower classes (this is including what's left of the middle class), then by all means let's make the Republicans look as bad as they deserve, so that when November 2014 rolls around we can get Americans to vote the bums out and vote in people who WILL do something about creating good jobs at good wages.

Unemployment Emergency Funding Set To Expire as 2013 Ends. Happy F-cking New Year To You Too, Congress

Pardon my Swedish for the blog title.  Still and all.

More than 1 million Americans are bracing for a post-Christmas jolt as extended federal unemployment benefits come to a halt this weekend, potentially impacting the recovering economy and setting up a battle when Congress reconvenes.
For families dependent on cash assistance, the end of the federal government's "emergency unemployment compensation" will mean some difficult belt-tightening as enrollees lose their average monthly stipend of $1,166.
Jobless rates could drop, but analysts say the economy may suffer with less money for consumers to spend on everything from clothes to cars. Having let the "emergency" program expire as part of a budget deal, it's unclear if Congress has the appetite to start it anew.
An estimated 1.3 million people will be cut off when the federally funded unemployment payments end Saturday. Across Florida, 73,000 recipients of federal emergency unemployment compensation stand to lose their benefits.
The average Florida benefit is about $230 per week, which is tied to the amount of wages earned over two weeks at a worker’s last job.
An additional 850,000 people nationwide will also lose state unemployment benefits over the next three months...

I'm a bit upset with not only the Republicans but also the Democrats in Congress, who both failed to recognize the serious issue we've got in this nation with the long-term unemployed.

While the overall unemployment rate has fallen to a nearly healthy (emphasis on the nearly) 7 percent (personal edit: a truly healthy unemployment rate is below 4 percent) – long-term unemployment has been more stubborn. The long-term unemployment rate, at 2.6 percent, remains as high as any previous recession since the end of World War II, reports the LA Times...

The long-term unemployed tend to be higher-educated and older, which are two strikes against them when the only jobs left open to them would be lower-wage service economy jobs that will not hire anyone with a college degree and an expectation of a pension plan.  Trust me: I've been in that boat for 4 years, where applying to places like Target and Wal-Mart led to either rejection or silence.  I swear, Target emailed back the fastest rejection notice I ever got (clocked in at 10 minutes, I sh-t you not).

My problem with the Republican leadership who think ending these benefits would force the long-term unemployed to "get off their asses and take any job they can," they're overlooking the fact that HR departments get their pick of the litter in this jobless recession and those HR departments are under no obligation to hire the better-educated, better-experienced.  HR departments will hire those who work the cheapest and will be the easiest to train (re-training older workers is harder than training fresh minds), and HR departments won't hire someone with education and background in other fields because those employees may bolt for an opening they do qualify for and pay better.

When I got into a shouting match with my twin brother two years ago, he thought much like the GOP did, that I was just loafing about and living off the unemployment benefits (and my parents' financial help).  He never sat with me during my daily job hunts, he never saw the rejection slips I'd occasionally get from some of these companies, he never saw the statistics I'd sometimes get from the HR departments telling me there were 60, 75, 120 applicants for one opening, he never listened in to the phone call interviews I'd have with some firms who politely point out that I'm not really the best fit for what they're looking for...  This is a problem: people don't get it, they don't get the fact that it's not our fault we're unemployed for so long...

There was a reason I was out of full-time employ for 4 years, and why I had a hard time finding or keeping any part-time employ: I was over-qualified for what was available on the local - Florida - job markets.  That was the big reason dad insisted last year I needed to get shipped to Maryland and try up where my educational/research skill sets would be more attractive.  Thank God for Bartow Public Library.  But I have to admit: I lucked out at the right time with a decent job.  The other long-term unemployed out there?  What luck are they gonna find, Republican Congresscritters, when there's no money left to keep them afloat while they look?

My problem with the Democrats is that they're not taking this unemployment problem as seriously as they need to.  For the love of God, the GOP was willing to shut down government and default on our nation's debts just for the lulz of it back in October: the least we should expect from a party like the Dems - who WANT government helping people survive and get out of this economic malaise - to fight harder, like force their own threats of cutting off something the GOP prize above all else, force Congress to stay open this holiday season, force the GOP to stand up there and get brow-beaten by the fact there are still too many unemployed Americans out here.

At what point will our own government wake up to the fact that the number one problem in our nation is that we do not have enough good jobs at good wages?  At what point will we the voters put into office elected officials who will get off their asses and get us the jobs and high wages we need?

The Real Scandal In DC: No One Cares

For all the yelling and screaming we've heard about Benghazi... for all the yelling and screaming we're gonna hear about the IRS investigating Tea Party groups... the real problem in Washington DC is that no one in power really gives a crap about the long-term unemployed and even the lucky-for-now employed average Americans struggling through this austerity-cramped "recovery".

To wit, from Derek Thompson at The Atlantic:

On April 24, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar scheduled a hearing. Fun story, right? A hearing in Washington is like a fern in the rainforest. But this hearing was notable for both its subject and its attendance. It was a meeting about the most important economic crisis facing America today: long-term unemployment. At 10:30am, the hearing began. She was the only attendant...I have two stories for you about Washington and the economy. Both true. But very different.The first story is called: How Washington Saved the Economy. You might begin in 2008, when the Federal Reserve went on an unprecedented spree of asset-buying to un-gunk the banks, push down interest rates, and spur investing in mortally weakened economy. This was followed, in 2009, with an equally historic stimulus package aimed at filling holes in state budgets and sending cash back to families and businesses... There is little question that monetary and fiscal stimulus blunted the recession -- and saved the economy.The second story is called: How Washington Permanently Scarred the Labor Market. You might begin this story in 2011, when Congress (led by Republican obstructionism) embarked on a historic quest to crush deficit spending by any means necessary. Hold the economy hostage over the debt ceiling? Check. Kill the American Jobs Act while scheduling a too-awful-to-be-a-real-law sequester? Check. Allow the too-awful-to-be-a-real-law sequester to become a real law? Checkmate... The deficit fell fast. As unemployment ebbed, the ranks of long-term jobless calcified, creating two separate job markets. One broken market for people out of work for more than six months. And another slowly healing market for everybody else. But the combination of a thermostatic recovery and a deep aversion to stimulus crushed any hope that the long-term unemployed would get the help they needed. Long-term unemployment isn't special just because it's longer; it's special because it's self-perpetuating. Skills atrophy, networks dry up, and employers discriminate, creating a vicious cycle of joblessness that can't be cured by normal economic growth...

Enough to make one rage, don't it?  Pity of it is, there's no lobby group for unemployed people.  It costs money to hire a lobbying firm: unemployed people by sheer fact of no job/no money means they can't afford one.  Meanwhile, banks and anti-union business owners and rich people can afford lobbyists by the limo load, meaning they can drown out the local echo chamber to their hearts' content.  Without dedicated political activism in the place where it really matters - the halls of Congress - the unemployed are screwed.

To the seven people reading this blog: Swear upon your personal honor to find and support any and all political candidates pledged to pass a jobs stimulus bill campaigning for 2014.  Swear it!  Not to me.  Swear it to the millions of unemployed and underemployed Americans who need our help.

.

The Difference Between a Recession and a Depression

The truism is that when your neighbors lose their jobs, it's a recession: when YOU lose your job, it's a depression.

The last 5 years, however, has kind of skewed that joke.  Which really isn't all that funny when you consider the hell you and your neighbors are going through trying to find solid work.

The normal turn-around on losing a job and finding a new one tended to be less than six months (if you couldn't find anything in six months you were looking in the wrong places).  This prolonged economic downturn, however, saw a turn-around rate averaging a year, maybe more.  I personally knew of fellow unemployed who were struggling to find even part-time employ (no benefits, not enough income) for more than a year.

I personally struggled to find full-time employment for more than 4 years.  Part-time work came and went and was hard to find (and keep): for all of 2011 I had no employment at all.  And I was putting in for five to ten jobs a week.  The simple reason was that there were few jobs being created in the first place... with each new opening getting swarmed with 60 to 150 applicants within two days of the posting.  I once handed my resume to an HR person speaking at the Career Center for a position that my research background fit to a tee that the HR person mentioned just opened the day before... only to have her tell me she'd already gotten 75 applicants for that spot.

So, from where I was sitting - where my family was coping along with me, doing what they could to help out, and all the burdens they've had to bear - this Great Recession felt like a Depression.

This is a very long-winded setup for the good news.  I finally found a full-time job.  They really liked my resume: they really liked me.  I'll be doing what I like: helping people find books and research materials and getting into computer usage.

I would joke - and I have, elsewhere - that our long national nightmare... is over.  Except, well, it's not over.

We're still a nation mired in a jobless economic recovery.  Unemployment may be hovering around 7.9 percent (official number: the unofficial unemployment numbers are always a lot worse... and always more accurate) which is better than the 10 percent and worse that it had been at the deepest part of the 2009 valley, but that's not normal.  Unemployment should ever be around 4 percent for the economy to be chugging along just fine: an unemployment rate of 2 percent is a strong economy.

We need more action from government to spur businesses to use their profits to grow and hire on more people.  We need to stop the wave of cutbacks in the public sector which is hurting that job sector: if our states, counties, and federal government weren't cutting back on their workforce, the unemployment rate would be a full percent less than it is now.  We need a jobs bill.

Meantime, to all my fellow job-seekers.  I may be employed but I stand with you.  Good luck finding work.  Really good luck to you all.

Wrong Kind of Anniversary... Again

It is now four years to the day since I lost my full-time job as a librarian.

I've found some part-time jobs here and there, and I currently have a contractual job with an IT vendor needing desktop support... but it's not a full-time, 40 hours a week, with benefits type of job.

This year (2012) saw a lot more interviews by libraries than I've had since 2008 - six separate libraries interviewing, two of them interviewed me twice - and one can hope that the coming year will see more opportunities and with any luck an actual hire.

But in the meantime... still job-hunting... still trying to get around my writer's block to see about getting something published and marketed... still...

What I Want To Hear From Obama On His Jobs Speech

Obama is set to appear tonight before a Joint Session of Congress to present a plan for doing something about the horrendous unemployment numbers that are miring our economy in the most prolonged recession this nation's ever seen (it's getting into Depression-type numbers, which is never good).

These are some of the things I'd like to hear Obama say:

"There is growing evidence that businesses and corporations are intentionally overlooking the long-term unemployed.  They are refusing to hire anyone who's been out of work longer than six months.  Even if that unemployed candidate has years of relevant experience.  This is wrong.  This is unacceptable.  It is prolonging our nation's economic woes by creating and expanding our unemployed population and putting more of a burden on our nation's social safety net already facing tight budget restrictions.  This is creating a self-fulfilling belief that the long-term unemployed are unemployable because, well, you're keeping them that way.  We need to look at this as discriminatory hiring practices, and we need to enforce hiring laws to tell corporations they need to hire more people who have been out of work for longer than six months, for longer than a year, for longer than two years.  Hire the long-term unemployed first before even thinking about hiring people who already have a job.  If we catch you hiring people who already have employment over people who've been begging and praying for work for years, we will fine your sorry corporate HR asses so much you'd think filing for bankruptcy will be cheaper."

"The vast long-term unemployed WANT to work.  They want to make something of their lives.  They want to earn a paycheck so they can feed their own families and pay for that roof over their heads.  There's not a one of them who prefers sitting at home doing nothing and earning unemployment benefits that barely covers the cost of weekly groceries or rent.  If any of you politicians even THINK of accusing the long-term unemployed as drug abusers or welfare queens, I will personally escort you to your district's or state's unemployment offices and have you sit there for six months so you can see how hard-pressed and desperate the unemployed REALLY ARE to find any work."

"That said.  FUCK YOU JIM DEMINT.  FUCK YOU AND YOUR BULLSHIT FANTASIES ABOUT THE UNEMPLOYED BEING LAZY."  (NOTE: Yes, I want Obama to say this.  After the Joe Wilson "You Lie" crap, why pretend civility is a part of Congress anymore?)

"There is no evidence that cutting taxes creates jobs.  There is no evidence that cutting regulations creates jobs.  What we do know is that cutting taxes INCREASES the federal deficits to unsustainable levels.  What we do know is that cutting regulations or ignoring regulations to make profits leads to increased pollution, unsafe work areas, and people dying.  So to my Republicans opponents: STOP SHILLING TAX CUTS AND DEREGULATION AS JOB-CREATORS.  You're selling snake oil, you fuckers."

"What we need in this country is another WPA.  We need to get construction jobs up and running.  We need to repair bridges and roads that haven't been fixed or upgraded in 40 years.  We need to repair and upgrade nuclear reactors that are 20 years past their expiration date, and yes while nuclear reactors carry enormous risk our energy needs rely on them right now, so we need to upgrade them to newer safer models than the old-style reactors from 40 years ago that aren't as safe against earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and other natural disasters.  We need to replace schools older than 20 years, make them compatible with today's technologies, so we can start teaching our children on the tools of today and tomorrow.  We need to get people working: for every one person who was hired back during the WPA of the 1930s, that job created two other jobs in response."

"All we need is a construction-jobs program that hires people across this nation.  The WPA of the 1930s hired 8 million people.  We don't need to go that big.  We can hire 4 million people, and if one WPA job creates two more that can translate up to 12 million Americans getting jobs, cutting more than half of our unemployment numbers right there.  IT WORKED BEFORE AND IT CAN WORK AGAIN."

"And we can pay for this new WPA.  We can look at our budgets and make the adjustments needed to make budget room for this jobs program.  We can eliminate some of the tax credits on billionaires that won't hurt their wallets but will pay back into this jobs programs FOR ALL AMERICANS to benefit.  IT WORKED BEFORE AND IT CAN WORK AGAIN."

"Our nation's economy is struggling.  We can't ignore that.  One of the two reasons our economy is struggling is because we lack the jobs to hire the unemployed.  We can solve that with a jobs bill.  But we can't ignore the other reason our economy is struggling, and that is the household debt our citizens are fighting.  And the largest form of household debt are mortgages.  Too many families are struggling at too-low incomes paying off mortgages on houses whose values have gone underwater.  Our housing industry is facing another series of destructive foreclosures and abandoned properties.  Each foreclosure lowers the property values of everyone else's homes surrounding them.  This is making it hard for people to sell their homes if they have to move to new jobs.  This is making it hard for people to pay off their mortgages, period.  And this is shuffling their debts from one thing to another like their overdrawn credit cards or unpaid college loans.  Above all, paying off all this debt is making it impossible for our citizens to pay for anything else like products and services that would boost our consumer-driven economy.  We need to look into resolving some of these debt issues.  Instead of bailing out banks, bail out the mortgage holders.  Help them pay off their mortgages to where their homes are no longer underwater.  Help pay off their mortgages so none of them fall into foreclosure.  By helping them, we free up the banks overwhelmed with foreclosures to begin making safe loans that can stabilize our housing market."

"And again, I cannot stress this enough, FUCK YOU JIM DEMINT.  FUCK YOU SIDEWAYS WITH A CHAINSAW."

"Thank you, God Bless to all the families across our nation, God Bless the United States of America."

The Problem Of The Unemployed, And Why We Need To Get the Long-Term Unemployed Back To Work

Over on Ta-Nehisi's Open Thread (For The Horde) for the day, commenter JHarper2 wrote an entry about the suffering he's enduring with kidney disease and the long wait he has for surgery and treatment.

Most of his entry borrows the writing of a young Irish woman (Regina H) also suffering while waiting for a replacement kidney, and while the original gist of the article is about enduring an illness, the woman writer compares the wait to being unemployed: (highlights mine)

...This week, I spoke with an academic who has studied the effects of unemployment, psychologically as well as socially.

He talked me through Year One. How the initial stress and nail-biting over bills and mortgages fades into feelings of depression, of failure. The gradual and growing feeling of becoming invisible.

The back-end of Year One is a watershed, for if Year One becomes Year Two, then the unemployed person is statistically unlikely to ever work again. They are then classed as long-term unemployed. Bye-bye fulfillment, farewell dignity, rest in peace all the hopes and dreams of that fragile human being.

It is not that they are suddenly useless. No, it is because over the months of nothingness, they become the disappointed parent to their own situation; they fill their heads and their sleepless nights with criticisms of how they have let themselves and their families down.

Their confidence is an early casualty, they become depressed, they start staying up late and losing the best part of the day to a lethargy that doesn't lift until noon. They falter their way through a calendar's worth of groundhog days, until they sink into dependency, and then, they stay there.

This conversation was of an enormous amount of interest to me, mostly because the feelings described were familiar.

I asked him to differentiate between levels of damage: the impact of being out of work as a result of this blasted recession VS the impact of not working because you are sick.

He told me all his hefty books would say there should be a world of difference. Being able-bodied and idle should have worse consequences than being unwell and unproductive...

The comparison of unemployment to illness is apt: not the physical aspects of illness but the psychological effects.  The ennui.  The repetition of useless duties about the house.  Withdrawal from friends and the world (mostly because you can't afford to).  Isolation and regret and doubt and no one else relying on you for good things to happen.  Sleepless nights.

And I see all those signs in myself: Unemployed now for two years and counting, unable to wake up early, unmotivated half the time, stuck in minor routines, questioning every action I commit to, staying up past 2 in the morning some nights for no reason but just sitting there both bored and unable to carry myself to bed...

I job interviewed this Monday.  The potential employer's stress question was "Why do you think you'll do a great job here?"  I answered "Because I've worked public service when I worked with libraries, and... there's that satisfaction of helping someone get that one thing, that one book off the shelf they were looking for. It's like... you know, when you help get a turtle off the road and walk him back to the swamp so he doesn't get hit by a car, and you feel good for the whole day because you saved that turtle, and that really happened to me too when I worked in Broward, I saved a turtle and felt good for the whole day, that's what I get out of doing a great job."

I wanna get back to work.  I wanna get back to thinking I can help people, that I can do something, that what I do has value.  I wanna get back to saving at least one turtle a day.

Dear Federal Government: WE NEED JOBS.  Dear Corrupt Bastard Overlords of Finance: WE NEED JOBS.

Now.
 

The Chart That Ought To Scare The Crap Out of Politicians... But Doesn't.

This was actually last week on Sullivan's blog, but there was a distraction or three going on...

This chart points to how long unemployed people are actually staying unemployed.
It shows that recently unemployed people have about double the chances of relocating a new job to get back into the grand economic circle of life.  But the second you get over that 27 weeks or more of unemployed... well, you're screwed.  That, by the by, is where the real problems of our current unemployment crisis is...

There's a couple of reasons for this:

• Those long-term unemployed are from sectors of the economy - construction, public works, finance, manufacturing - that have lost jobs that are NOT coming back any time soon.  The housing and foreclosure crisis has put a crimp on new housing and housing repairs, for example.  Manufacturing jobs are bleeding to overseas markets with cheaper non-union labor.  Public sector jobs - state and county and city - have been hit hard with massive deficits forcing spending cuts.  The quick rehiring of those out of work under 26 weeks involve industries that are fluctuating but not losing job openings that can be refilled.
• The other reason is psychological on the part of HR departments.  They seem reluctant to hire anyone who's been out of service for so long, as though there's a stench of failure all about a candidate who's been out of luck for 27 weeks or more.

The reason the long-term unemployed is a major problem for our government and our economy is that they will sooner rather than later become a burden on society in the worst way.  Sooner or later they drop out of the job-hunting and unemployment benefits system.  Unemployment really isn't at 9.8 percent: that's just the people still reporting for benefits.  REAL Unemployment, including the ones who've given up on benefits or no longer able to garner them (known as the 99ers for the ninty-nine weeks (and counting) they've been out of work), is actually past 10.4 percent (and might even be worse than that).  But what happens when the unemployment benefits end or the unemployed move on?  They move on over to Food Stamps, or some other form of welfare.  The burden merely shifts to another public sector that's facing cutbacks in the wake of statewide and national deficits.  Worse, they become a burden to family members or friends who may be employed (or retired living on benefits themselves) but who are incapable of paying for the needs of their out-of-work relative/friend.

Look.  Having one-tenth of your employable population out of work is NEVER good.  But there's little sign that the federal government is going to do anything about it, which sucks.  And the conservatives' solution - tax cuts that DON'T REALLY go to job creation or wage improvements - isn't going to work (all those tax cuts after 2001... and this is the shape of our job market today.  Buy a clue, Republicans: TAX CUTS DON'T WORK.  Grrrr.)

• We need laws in place to force HR departments to look at hiring the long-term unemployed first.  We're the ones at greater risk.
• We need laws in place to keep international corporations from shipping OUR jobs elsewhere.  You wanna get our tax breaks?  Give some breaks to the people who live here!
• We need a works program similar to the ones that FDR had back in the 1930s that helped us climb out of the Great Depression.  Nothing huge like the CCC, but at least something to get people back to work and stimulating the economy with their efforts and their spending.  I honestly don't get why there's this huge hate on for Keynesian policies of the 1930s that worked (nations like Japan that quickly adopted Keynesian economic models were the ones that survived the global economic meltdown).  I know that Keynesianism was choking on itself by the 1970s, but that was when our government and economy could operate without it... but today, dammit...

So an open call to all unemployed persons across the nation.  To all my fellow 99ers, this is pretty much the only solution left to us.  Run for office.  Run at the county level, state level, federal level, whatever it takes.  Go to your party if you've registered with one and sign up to run for any openings in the coming election cycle.  Trust me, you gotta start looking into the paperwork on that stuff before it gets too late... and the deadlines come up on the calendar faster than you realize.

Run for office, unemployed people.  We need more elected officials who have a damn good idea just how bad the job market is out here in the Real World.

Wartenberg in 2012.  I Need The Work.

(this has been edited for some grammar errors and to highlight additional thoughts)

Two Year Anniversary of Unemployment

Dec. 18, 2008... I lost my full-time job.

It's been two years since then.

During that time I've looked for work.  Both full-time and part-time.

The full-time job interviews have been few and far between.  Just one in 2009.  Just one this year 2010.

The part-time jobs had been more frequent... Two part-time job interviews in 2009 and three in 2010.

Out of... lessee.  At least one hundred applications sent in for work through... lessee... twelve different job agencies, four technical corporations, nine colleges and universities, tons of government offices, and seven different job fairs.

I did have part-time employment.  One was for an inventory counter position that wasn't getting a lot of business during a recession.  Even when I made myself more available for hours, they weren't calling me in for a lot of work.  The other job was with the U.S. Census, counting houses and the people who weren't living in them anymore.  That lasted a bit more than a month.  Nothing since.

Not much out there for a librarian.

Not much out there for someone with computer training, computer troubleshooting, and computer repair skills.

The story is that there's currently five applicants per position in this high-unemployment era.  Under normal circumstances it's supposed to be three per position.  The truth?  I'm hearing stories about 150 to 300 applicants per position.  'Cause it's not just the unemployed competing for work, it's also the employed people too, ones who are looking for better job security in an uncertain market.

But, say the naysayers, there are jobs to be had after all!  True.  But when you're one out of one-hundred, the odds are AGAINST you being even on a list of five to get through the door for interviews.

But, say the naysayers, you can ALWAYS find work at a retail or fast food business!  Not really.  I've put in for retail jobs and they never call me back.  And the pay these jobs give out WILL NOT COVER MY MORTGAGE, MY HEALTH CARE NEEDS, or anything else a full-time job would.  I *am* putting in for the part-time jobs anyway, just to have something, but still...  No calls.  Nothing.

But, say the naysayers, you're being too picky about what jobs to put in for!  You're just being too lazy about your job hunting!  Put in for every job and you're bound to get one!  Like a librarian will have qualifications to work in sales?  And like I mentioned earlier, I've put in for jobs where I'm qualified, and I even follow up on them to show my interest for them... and I still never hear a word back!

I'm at that point my depression is getting the better of me.  Convinced that it's not the overwhelmed job market, that it's me.  That for all my intellect, skills, work experience, all that... it's ME that people just don't want to hire.

I'm too young to retire, even if I could.  I'm too poor to have any investments or capital to afford starting my own business.

And this is, for what I know, the last week I have any unemployment benefits at all.  Even all the new benefits extensions that Obama just wrangled out of an obstructionist GOP isn't going to help me.  It's going to help the millions after me who have yet to use up their 99 weeks of unemployment.  All the ones I'm competing with for a handful of jobs.

Meanwhile, Congress is about to get taken over by a Republican Party whose idea of jobs creation is to cut social benefits, test the unemployed for drug abuse, and cut more corporate taxes that DON'T CREATE JOB GROWTH.  The state of Florida is about to get taken over by a MEDICARE FRAUD openly pledging to slash jobs, with a GOP-held state legislature obsessed with cutting state-level taxes to zero while wasting millions on pork-barrel projects.

I am totally serious about running for office.  Getting elected may be the only chance I have to ever seeing paid employment ever again.  "Vote for Wartenberg.  I Need The Work."

Happy New Year.

Letter to Obama: WHAT THE HELL IS TAKING YOU?

Dear Mr. President Obama: what part of HELP WE NEED F-CKING JOBS do you not understand?

This article from the St. Pete Times might help as a wake-up call (highlights are mine):

Even as the national unemployment picture slightly improved, the job front in Florida — and Tampa Bay in particular — took a turn for the worse in November.

Among lowlights revealed Friday:

• In shedding 16,700 more jobs last month, Florida not only lost more jobs than any other state, it exceeded the net loss of jobs for the entire country (11,000 jobs).

• Florida's unemployment rate rose to a 34-year high of 11.5 percent, up from a revised 11.3 percent in October. The state rate is now running a full 1.5 percentage points higher than the national unemployment rate. For much of the recession, the gap had been one percentage point or less.

• The Tampa Bay area's jobless rate jumped half a percentage point to 12.3 percent, making it the most job-challenged major metropolitan area in Florida. The region's most sluggish county remained Hernando, which saw its unemployment rate rocket to 14.7 percent, up from 14.0 percent the prior month.

At Career Central, a job resource center in Spring Hill (NOTE: I've been to that office! Hi guys!), Tara Romano, 24, was eager to replace a job she had lost at McDonald's just after Thanksgiving. Her boyfriend, who had been laid off from Wendy's, was searching job prospects at a nearby computer terminal.

"We're looking at retail," Romano said. "Kind of like everyone else, we'll take whatever we can get just to survive."

Lucy Diaz said she has never seen the job market this bad in her five years managing the Hernando County career center.

"We try to give people hope. We tell them this is just a transition," Diaz said. "It's hard, especially now with this season. People want to be able to buy presents for their kids."

Rebecca Rust, chief economist with the Florida Agency for Workforce Innovation, which coordinates the unemployment report, offered little hope of a fast turnaround.

As one of the states at the epicenter of the housing bust, Florida is expected to lag behind much of the country in creating new jobs.

November's rate is the highest posted in Florida since May 1975, when unemployment peaked at 11.9 percent. Several economists predict the state will break the 12 percent mark early next year before gradually retreating.

It could take until 2019 (NOTE: SONOFA... HEEEELPPPP!!), state economists project, before unemployment in Florida gets back to a more palatable 6 percent range.

With more than 1 million jobless out of a statewide labor force of 9.2 million, Florida was singled out by the Labor Department as the only state in the country to post a statistically significant increase in unemployment in November. Seven other states that posted significant changes in unemployment all saw their rates go down. In fact, 36 states and the District of Columbia all saw a dip in unemployment last month.

-Snippage-

Rust cited numerous factors hampering recovery: small businesses are still struggling to get credit; there's a mismatch between many of the unemployed and job openings; big budget deficits are holding down spending; and the housing market remains sluggish despite a recent increase in prices.

-Snippage-

Durr, 27, was laid off at Weeki Wachee Springs a year ago when the attraction became a state park. Since then, he has postponed his wedding and taken courses in the medical field to bolster his technology background.

And he has become more philosophical. "Being unemployed has been an eye-opener," Durr said. "I learned so many things about myself. You find you have friends in the strangest places. A lot of people say it builds character.

"I wouldn't trade it."

Um, I would. I'd trade it for a F-CKING JOB THAT PAYS WELL!

Dear Obama: There are 30 million Americans AND GROWING who need your help more than the F-CKING CEOS of the F-CKING BANKS. HEEEEEEELLPPPP! OVER HERE! HEY! HEEEEEELLPPPPPPPPppppppp...