Forum Post: Just Four Lawmakers Show Up To Congressional Hearing On Long-Term Unemployment
Posted 11 years ago on April 24, 2013, 9:55 p.m. EST by GirlFriday
(17435)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
There are currently 4.7 million American workers who have been unemployed for at least six months, and the challenges they face are immense. Not only do they long-term unemployed face discriminatory hiring policies that make it nearly impossible for them to find work, they are also losing federal unemployment insurance thanks to state-level cuts and sequestration, which slashed 10 percent from federal benefits.
And they leave themselves wide open again!
We either need a BIG campaign to Impeach 70% of Congress....
or we need to build the "Social Reserve Bank"... to make available the funds necessary to rebuild our middle class economy... it's obvious that congress is incapable of doing it...
or both... however I truly believe that building the bank would be easiest
Nobody is under any illusions here, these four will suffice for the moment.
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Ya! Lemme see, can't read the entirety of a piece of legislation. Usually have someone else write the legislation. Can't seem to get anything accomplished. Can't show up to a hearing on unemployment. Have a bunch of online trolls argue talking points. Smile or frown for the camera and occasionally show up on a talk show. Talk a lot about personal responsibility.
Got it.
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Yes. They're just blowin off there job and duty. Accountability for all.
That's pretty much where I am at. They aren't doing anything else. You don't want to listen to the people. Now, you can listen to the people.
Norquist is one of the biggest lyin' and conniving thugs that I have ever witnessed cross the grand stage of life.
why is GF's comment here downgraded ? .... do we have some anti-occupy ass-holes here?
It's a game. I'm supposed to be all ticked off and this is supposed to demonstrate a bunch of crap. Technically it merely shows that someone lacks the cajones to step up.
Yeah, I noticed it starting about 9pm EST last night. Just indiscriminate down-voting of both GF and DKA. I don't know what set it off.
The longer I refuse to get on board with the Art 5 the better it's going to be.
When I refuse to do it, certain people have a knipshit. Don't want me to get in the way with the fund raising.
I don't think you do. This is our government on drugs; it wouldn't surprise me if they are all sitting around snorting cocaine at this very moment.
Oh, I do. What we will disagree on ;is what we usually disagree on--the solution.
lets make sure that we add the MIA legislators to the long term unemployed at the next election
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Just think if the Unemployed, Poor and Homeless had a strong, loud and tenacious lobby firm to lobby Congress and the American People for their Constitutional Rights, like the NRA dishonestly does for the Weapons Industry.
We 99%ers could out-lobby any swindling and CU-funded NRA if we ignored each other's imperfections and differences and organized and took action. Together, united, we can do anything; divided the 1% does.
Impeachment.
Amazing ... hehe ... neg's for the simple comment "Impeachment" on an activist board ??? ....
How about participation?
Then we wouldn't have anti-democracy servants of the 1% doing dirty deeds that require impeachment. That way we'll spare ourselves all the pain and suffering their dirty deeds cause.
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She should have!
http://signon.org/sign/the-case-to-impeach-senators?source=c.em.cp&r_by=7675197
Is there something going on in the zombie world?? Getting a lot of random blow back lately. Is or has there been a Unicorn convention?
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I see... Black Uruks and Nazgûl mounted upon Fell beasts, and they also had naval support from the Corsairs of Umbar... OI!
Beg just a little bit more.
Please please please!!!
Because it's you, I'm going to need to see you crawl as well.
Seems like your cat or bird got sick or something... moving in with mom in Floriduh.
Now, bark like a dog.
Impeachment
OK, how then do you fill the impeached politician's empty seat? Vacated Congressional seats can be filled by Governor appointments. And since we have not participated (a la 2010) and allowed so many RepubliCons to snatch Governorships (about 65%), the reappointment would most likely be done by a Rick Scott, who would appoint a radical Rightie who could never be elected to do even worse dirty work for the 1%. Then what?
Listen.
I will not campaign for you or anyone else. Not now, not ever. You will have to figure out how you are going to deal with that because I let you guys know this upfront.
OK, Tank Girl. I'm not asking you to campaign "...for me or anyone else... not now, not ever." But you do seem to have let your conspiracy theories edge out reality and reason on this. You seem to have me confused with whatever you're imagining. But you are being played, just not by me, nor do I want to. Keep it real... or at least try.
You don't like my stance and that's more than fine but, you come off like a used car salesman and you might want to keep that shit in check.
I will not work on any campaign. I will not support any person that you want to see elected. i will not attempt to garnish support for a lobbyist. You find someone else to do your dirty work.
"Impeach" and nothing else is a stance? Whet then?? Rant?? Imaginary accusations?? This is a stance?? It sounds like symptoms.
I'm OK with "used car salesman" coming from someone whose imagination seems to be overwhelming facts. But you have been amping up the insinuations for quite a while, and I should have asked before, but I thought you were being goofy or humorous or joking around.
So you seem to think I'm up to something, and I don't think it's selling used cars. Why don't you spit it out! Bust my sneaky, clandestine, used car salesman ass!! What are the "games"? What am I trying to get you to "campaign" for? "...garnish support for a lobbyist. You find someone else to do your dirty work." ?? WTF are you talking about?? Do you even know?? Are you well?? Did you have a fall?? Let it all out, maybe you'll feel better.
Debtors' Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility
Buy: April 29, 2013 | Robert Kuttner
One of our foremost economic thinkers challenges a cherished tenet of today’s financial orthodoxy: that spending less, refusing to forgive debt, and shrinking government—“austerity”—is the solution to a persisting economic crisis like ours or Europe’s, now in its fifth year.
Since the collapse of September 2008, the conversation about economic recovery has centered on the question of debt: whether we have too much of it, whose debt to forgive, and how to cut the deficit. These questions dominated the sound bites of the 2012 U.S. presidential election, the fiscal-cliff debates, and the perverse policies of the European Union.
Robert Kuttner makes the most powerful argument to date that these are the wrong questions and that austerity is the wrong answer. Blending economics with historical contrasts of effective debt relief and punitive debt enforcement, he makes clear that universal belt-tightening, as a prescription for recession, defies economic logic. And while the public debt gets most of the attention, it is private debts that crashed the economy and are sandbagging the recovery—mortgages, student loans, consumer borrowing to make up for lagging wages, speculative shortfalls incurred by banks. As Kuttner observes, corporations get to use bankruptcy to walk away from debts. Homeowners and small nations don’t. Thus, we need more public borrowing and investment to revive a depressed economy, and more forgiveness and reform of the overhang of past debts.
In making his case, Kuttner uncovers the double standards in the politics of debt, from Robinson Crusoeauthor Daniel Defoe’s campaign for debt forgiveness in the seventeenth century to the two world wars and Bretton Woods. Just as debtors’ prisons once prevented individuals from surmounting their debts and resuming productive life, austerity measures shackle, rather than restore, economic growth—as the weight of past debt crushes the economy’s future potential. Above all, Kuttner shows how austerity serves only the interest of creditors—the very bankers and financial elites whose actions precipitated the collapse. Lucid, authoritative, provocative—a book that will shape the economic conversation and the search for new solutions.
Praise for Debtors' Prison “Kuttner (The Squandering of America), cofounder and co-editor of the American Prospect, pulls no punches in his latest full-throated defense of Keynesian economics and repudiation of the modern neoliberal system . . . Kuttner’s deft overview of economic history—most notably his coverage of the Marshall Plan—demonstrates that economic stimulus can be very effective at ending recessions.”
—Publishers Weekly
"A highly readable, thought provoking analysis of America's—and the world's—situation, a unique blend of history, economics, and politics that shows a clear way out of our morass, if only our politics would 'allow us to get from here to there.' Kuttner explains why we don't have to be doomed to a generation of depression, but that current debt, finance, and austerity policies make that a likely prospect. Even those who disagree with his conclusions will find his wealth of historical insights invaluable."
—Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics and author of The Price of Inequality
“Robert Kuttner has a gift for clear and forceful explanations of the complex dealings that brought the economy to its knees. Debtors’ Prison takes an innovative approach to economic history, using the lens of credit and debt to explore past boom-and-bust cycles and to illuminate the central issues in current economic debates. Kuttner’s impressive history also catapults the reader into the future, providing critical insight on strengthening the financial system. A must-read for anyone interested our economic future.”
—Senator Elizabeth Warren
“Debtors’ Prison is more than a devastating brief against the trans-Atlantic pursuit of austerity. It is a magisterial retelling of our history through the prism of the struggle over credit and debt. Navigating between countries and eras with the authority of a scholar and the narrative skill of a journalist, Robert Kuttner has written the authoritative guide to economic recovery and financial reform.”
—Jacob S. Hacker, co-Author of Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer—And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class
“Robert Kuttner nails the missing piece in Barack Obama’s presidency—the reason the American economy is still stalled and sickly. Read this book, then send it to the White House. Kuttner has the plan. The president needs to see it."
—William Greider, author of Come Home, America
“No topics in modern political life have spawned more confusion, misdirected effort, and overall malarkey than ‘deficits’ and ‘debt.’ Robert Kuttner does us the enormous service of explaining which kinds of debt we should worry more about, and which kinds less—and how to manage public and private debt so as to sustain an age of broadly shared prosperity rather than of austere decline.”
—James Fallows, author of China Airborne
Impeachment.
Maybe, government doesn't produce jobs? If it did then, we could give them all of our money.
You should slow down there.
These four have a job, right?
Are they performing their role for their employers?
Hence, impeachment.