Chupacabra Report

News that gets my goat..

While Senate Democrats wait to swear in a new Senator from West Virginia, so that they can break a Republican filibuster holding up an extension of unemployment benefits for a million out of work Americans, Republicans continue to play to their troglodyte base, saying that unemployment is a disincentive to work.

These folks are still fighting the New Deal. If they could, they would end Social Security and the Minimum Wage too, if not the Thirteenth Amendment.

I was talking about this around the shop the other day, and somebody commented that “if you can’t find a job in Houston there’s something wrong with you.”

Maybe so, but what do you say to people in Nevada, or Michigan, or any of the sixteen states with double-digit jobless rates?

When I was downsized by the Cosmodemonic Computer Company and was out of work for three months with Cobra payments, a mortgage and a baby on the way, I learned that looking for work is like a full time job. I remember getting an offer from a company that ran a high-rise condo tower for millionaires. The salary would have meant a heinous pay cut that would have kept me underwater as long as I stayed there. We had a family meeting and decided to stick it out until something more suitable came along. We could do that because of unemployment compensation.

Digby today quotes Mitch McConnell ranting about the President asking taxpayers for $34 billion more in deficit spending to continue paying unemployment benefits. At the same time, he wants to extend the Bush tax cuts that have already given a $2 trillion in tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans.

Rush Limbaugh is calling unemployment “welfare.” Somebody ought to ask him how many months he collected “welfare” after the Kansas City Royals front office let him go. See if he lies about that too.

The GOP thinks that they’re going to take over the Congress this fall. I hope the voters are wise to how the party that put this country in the ditch is now standing in the way of the folks that are trying to do something about it.