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(Sung to the tune of the National Anthem…..)
Oh, say, can you see?
By the pale florescent light.
What once was so proudly was hailed,
As the reason for Sussex’s being…..
Whose broad girths and wide ties.
Led Conservative battles galore…
Illegal prayers and hot sexed lies….
Made them more desire… a Conservator…..
As county sheriffs, with posse’s in arms…..
Or as popes whose morals were in great harm….
They kept the brown skinned down,
So only those who were white… could farm….
Oh say, doth… those… fallen… bigots,
From last century in rural Sussex’s Way……..
Represent the best, that Sussex can ever be-eee?
Or like the Georgetown hatchet? Should be buried after election day……..
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As the weeks sneak past, the cry of the unemployed becomes fainter and fainter. It’s official. The Republicans won. They were right; we were wrong. For them, indeed, it was a good political move. They were right. Everyone cares about money saved; no one cares about people anymore, even those suddenly destitute, hit almost without warning.
I guess since there are no stories out there now of what it is like to have no money, the Republican got it right about our concern over the long term unemployed. Those unemployment checks were going to freeloaders and as soon as the money quit, they all got jobs. At least that is what one would certainly think, from the silence, from the complete lack of stories, lack of diaries, or even lack of pleas to get something moving again on the assisting the unemployed. It’s like the Republicans said “no”, and that was it… no more long term unemployment… Gravy train—> over… Back to work you scum….
Who would have expected it could have worked out this well? Certainly no one I know. We are all shell-shocked that any concern for these fellow citizens has just gone, evaporated. It appears that people are indeed, despite their lip-service, privately tired ot those lazy, cheapskates, mooching off the public dole, and that, though they say “tisk, tisk, you shouldn’t cut them”, there simply is no heart in them anymore to treat people more humanely than say, corporations….
Just out of curiosity over how this could be so, how we could have been so wrong, I wanted to crunch numbers for myself to see if it was true.
It is estimated that there are 4 million workers who are over 26 weeks unemployed. As of December 28th, there were 1.3 million who would lose benefits. That would be week zero of the crises. From December 29th through January 4th. 70,000 more were Immediately dropped high and dry. Then the following week, January 5th through the 11th, another 70,000 tumbled off the roles.. The week following, January 12th through the 18th, 70,000 more…. Last Saturday, saw the grand total rise by another 70,000 people…. We have now gone a full month, at four times 70,000 and have added 280,000 more destitute families to our national roster…. 1.58 million families are facing their own personal Grapes of Wrath… In the silence of public outcry, Republicans just laugh and laugh while they swim in the Congressional pool and wipe their clean butts now with clean towels, (now that the sequester and shutdowns are over)….
What’s the effect of all this? I do Federal Budgets so these numbers are small to me… What’s a million?. Chump change… or 1 X 10^-12 or 0.000000000001 of my problems….It is so small it is very hard to visualize the human cost. It is far easier to visualize the dollars saved.. The initial cut saved approximately . $ 397 million ($306 listed as the average unemployment check amount)… Each subsequent week that total climbs as 70,000 X $306 or $21,420,000 gets added to the amount the Republicans are saving America….So as of last week, January 25th the chart of weekly savings looks like this….
- $397 million as of January 4th
- $418 million as of January 11th
- $440 million as of January 18th
- $461 million as of January 25th.
Total saved America courtesy of the Republicans of the United States of America is… $1.76 billion dollars! Roughly one thousandth of our budget….
Hats off to them. They saved money by taking care of a problem Democrats were too squeamish to handle. Why have extended unemployment at all? There was no where else that money could be saved, and it was time those lazy, useless freeloaders went back to work anyways. There is no where else to make up that money.
For last month they already let tax breaks expire for college tuitions. That’s been done; $4 billion saved.. Last month they let teachers writing-off their classroom expenses, expire. That saved almost a billion. No mortgage insurance premiums can be now be deducted. That saved over $5 billion dollars. If you lived in a state with no sales tax, where you used to be able to deduct state and local sales taxes, .. you can’t now. Savings of $16 billion. The mortgage-modification tax break expired… meaning if your home was under water, and you got relief from a bank, you get taxed on the amount of relief, thousands more than you can afford…. Got to love those Republicans, saving America money..
And of course no one can make changes to these tax breaks... The Cato Institute estimates that direct federal subsidies to corporations costs taxpayers almost $100 billion every year. Furthermore, the tax code gives corporations special tax-breaks which reduced what is supposed to be a 35 percent tax rate to an actual tax rate of 13 percent, saving these corporations an additional $200 billion annually,,, Likewise, special tax breaks for hedge fund managers allowing them to pay only 15% rate? (This is the break where the multimillionaire manager pays less of a percentage in taxes than her secretary). Estimates are that this costs taxpayers $83 billion annually and 68% of those who receive this special tax break earn far more than $462,500 per year (the top one percent of earners).
So Republicans are laughing all the way to the bank. None of their money was touched, and $1.6 billion was saved on the backs of people who apparently live inside the cone of silence… I don’t hear outrage anymore, do you?
After all, what they did all those freeloaders, was apparently a favor. They finally got them off their ass and made them get a job. No lazy asses in a Republican-run world.. Bring on 2014…
They did all get a job, right? No one is saying anything to the contrary, so surely, they all got a job, right? All you have to do is walk up to a business and say, “I need a job” and they give it to you on the spot, right? Of course, right? Isn’t that how it’s done on TV sitcoms? If you need a job, you just go out and get one. Like Drake and Josh? So, everybody is now working, right, except those lazy butts whose long term still has not run out!
Let’s look. Here is the unemployment table for December 2013….
- A) According to the BLS 37.7% or over one third of all our unemployed are over 27 weeks…
- B) 24.4% or one fourth land a job in 4 weeks and start in 5…
- C) Another quarter or 24.4% get a job their second month… that’s up to 8 weeks between jobs.
- D) The remaining 16% or one seventh of the unemployed, get their replacement job somewhere between the 3rd and 6th month….
- It is the first third, or 37.7%, who will lose benefits…. They are the losers….
“These had better get off their sasses, get over to Burger King, and start flipping (cooking) burgers.” (actual statement by Congressman on Budget Committee). So are they?
The advanced number for seasonally-adjusted insured-unemployment during the week ending January 11, was 3,056,000, an increase of 34,000 from the preceding week’s revised level of 3,022,000. The 4-week moving average was 2,939,000, an increase of 31,000 from the preceding week’s revised average of 2,908,000.
What? Unemployment claims are rising? That can’t be. People should be going back to work, not more people getting laid off! How will those long-term people now with no income, courtesy of the laughing House Republicans, get all those jobs they were supposed to walk in, demand, and get? You say there are now even more unemployed?
December’s unemployment for the month, was at a 6.7 %… The last monthly rate below 6.7% occurred in October 2008... the month after Lehman collapsed. (Amazing this Obama) Unemployment is almost at pre-recession levels. But wait! Something must be wrong… 1 million unemployment claims just disappeared overnight on December 28th… What jobs did they all get? Burger King?
January’s jobs data is embargoed until February 7th…. But based off of December’s estimates, here is what HAS to happen for Republican wet dreams to come true. Over the course of last year, across all of 2013, the ranks of the long-term unemployment declined by 897,000. For Republican dreams to materialize, this month of, January 2014, total employment must rise by 1.58 million workers or by a total equal to all those left unpaid by long term employment…. For the record, that would be a 60% increase in one single month, over the entire past year’s hirings decreasing the totals of the long-term unemployed….
It probably won’t happen.
Since the unemployed usually spend all their check each week, the economy for January just toof a hit of $1.67 billion dollars from the lack of money these unemployed would have spent.. Most of that was felt immediately in retail. Retail just hired 55,000 new hires in December. I hope most still have jobs.
One further factor which sort of smudges up the calculations, making things not so clear cut, … is the the huge number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) which has remained essentially unchanged at 7.8 million through December. These individuals who are working part time because their hours have been cut back or because they were unable to find full-time work.
I expect this to probably be where most of the absorption of the ex-communicated long termed unemployed will be found…..
Now so far, all I’ve talked about is money. But being unemployed is much more. It is about people…Human beings less fortunate than you or I, but, at a moment’s notice, at the whim of a boss and having no protections, we know we could be there too.(let’s hope the swirling rumors over HSBC’s imminent Lehman-sized collapse, aren’t true.)
How does one possibly show the human cost that this Republican obstinance is doing to the optimism, and the pride of this nation, the United States of America? Many of you are too young to remember this image ingrained in us, but try to imagine a map of the United States of America and that it is under attack by nuclear weapons… When a strike hits, a white circle flashes on the map showing each lost city….
December 28th 2013….. San Diego…… Gone…… 1.3 million people.
January 4th 2014….. Wilmington Delaware…. gone… 70,000 people
January 11th 2014….. Canton, Ohio…… gone…. 70,000 people.
January 18th 2014….. Rapid City SD … gone…. 70,000 people.
January 25th 2014….. Scranton PA…… gone…. 70,000 people.
If these were real nukes dropping on our fellow citizens, launched by a sub-class of our fellow citizens, would we still be as silent, afraid to step out of line and express concern over fear of how we’d look to our corporate bosses and the snitches we work beside, and just shrug off the laughing Boehner and Cantor as they dry off with clean white cotton towels in the U.S House of Representatives members-only pool? I’m worried the answer is yes.
Well, guess what? There is something you can do. Act. Stop waiting. Do something. Act. Phone. Email. Text… Just act and tell your friends to act too.
Addendum: I saw this afterwards… it’s so ironic. After snuggly bashing the Soviets for years (and I was good at it) as being softly inferior to us tough, old capitalists, I with pure admiration today see their progeny in the squares of Ukraine, who won’t accept injustice lying down, who won’t see their dreams arbitrarily squelched, who won’t let something just get taken away from them because that entity is so powerful and distant, it seems senseless to contest it… I see them, and I say… wow, we really suck as human beings.. What is wrong with us?
And then I again see by the pool, Boehner and Cantor, just gaffawing away at us timid Democrats… Oh well. I guess that is how it goes. Sigh.
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Titled Supernova of a Generation, it will be visible tonight, fading by the end of this week…
What may make this the most viewed supernova (requiring binoculars) is its location… It’s near a well known astronomical landmark.
Titled SN 2011fe, it is located in the constellation Ursa Major, better known as the Big Dipper. “The easiest way to find it is to take the last two stars in the handle of the Big Dipper, form an equilateral triangle heading north and bang, you’ll find the Pinwheel Galaxy,”
(A pair of 80 mm binoculars suffice to view the display, but a telescope with a lens measuring greater than three inches would be better.)
By Friday, the supernova could hit magnitude 10, still below the 6.5-magnitude threshold to be seen with the naked eye.
The last one occurring was in 1986; prior to that 1972…
In 1604 one burned so bright it was visible during daylight hours.
Duffy is God’s answer to a prayer.. I miss the old days of blogging when we were debating principals instead of people… Duffy has stuck to the old line of debating principals with facts, and that is what makes him special in the eyes of bloggers everywhere…
Since the passing of Steve Newton, he has been the only one to challenge me in any argument, and usually some pretty good stuff comes out of both sides during the exchange… I have respected that.. Cause once again, opinions mean dick. Facts are what we steer by.. It is my hope that in responding to his challenge that an answer may make itself apparent.. Who knows? It may not come from me… But if I’m the catalyst for bringing it out in the open, then… none of this was in vain..
Why I like to debate Duffy is simple.. Neither side, he or I, is concretely set in their opinions… We accept it when the other side makes sense… I usually go into such debates having no idea where they’ll end up… I hope the rest of you enjoy the ride as welI….
That said..
kavips rebutt’s:Uh… Mr. President. That’s not entirely accurate.
First off, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 was developed for, and locked in on, urban developmental areas and had no part of the subprime boom, which primarily occurred out in western desert regions where owning 4 to 5 investment homes was normal… Those homes were overwhelmingly funded by loan originators NOT SUBJECT to the act… We all know the crises was not because people couldn’t afford a payment on their house. It came about, because with no occupants, people could not afford the payments of 4 to 5 houses….. Instead of one loan per borrower turning up in default; four to five were.
Second off, The housing bubble reached its point of maximum inflation in 2005.
Courtesy of NYT
Third off, During those exact same years, Fannie and Freddie were sidelined by Congressional pressure, and saw a sharp drop in their share of loans secured by the Feds… Follow the dotted line on the very bottom of the graph…
Courtesy of NYT
Fourth off; During those exact same years, private secures, like Delaware’s own AIG, grabbed the lions share of the market.
Courtesy of NYT
Remember these graphs for later on when I discuss the results of deregulation, versus regulation… But like it or not, these graphs conclusively show that private insurers, who thanks to Marie Evans, we now know were deregulated by Phil Gramm in the 2000 Omnibus Bill, were the primary cause of the worlds financial collapse.. Probably put best by these words of AIG’s spokesperson, who when asked why they didn’t have sufficient funds to cover losses, said point blank, “We were deregulated. We were no laws requiring us to keep any funds, ..so we spent it…”
kavips rebutt’s:Uh… Mr. President. That’s not entirely accurate. I agree that the hedge funds did survive better than the banks. Not because of bailouts, but because they sold short during the crises and made billions while firms closed and people got thrown out of work. There is nothing wrong with that; I did the same. In fact close readers may remember my warnings that the crises was impending almost a year earlier. Very close readers may remember my telling them exactly when to sell, and at what point the stock market would rebound… I must say: I called it rather well. 🙂
De regulated hedge funds are not the issue… De-regulated, excessively leveraged, mortgage securities, are a different story however… They, not the banks that held them, are the cause of the crises…Years from now, when academics search for causes of the stock market crash of 2008, they will focus on the pivotal role of mortgage-backed securities. These exotic financial instruments allowed a downturn in U.S. home prices to morph into a contagion that brought down Bear Stearns a year ago this month – and more recently have brought the global banking system to its knees.
Where you err is when you state that banks too big to fail, assumed they would be bailed out… By implication, you say imply they failed from squandering money, and wanted the bailouts.. But your tax dollars didn’t flow directly to the bottom line.
So in that sense, the bailout money represents an expense for banks. That’s one reason a number of banks have said they want to give the money back as soon as possible.
You say big banks were counting on a bailout, and they got them? That didn’t happen to these banks. New Mexico, Georgia, and Florida each lost a bank just last Friday. That brings to 8, the number of banks failed in June. Unfortunately if a bank is failing, it can’t bet on itself to fail, as can a hedge fund.
kavips rebutt’s:Uh… Mr. President. That’s not entirely accurate. The idea is that the banks made bad decisions knowing taxpayers would bail them out is the issue that is inaccurate. For the record, I have no qualms that it was the Clinton legacy who tore down the wall between banks and investment banking. Like you, I feel it was a good idea to do so… Again the problem was not primarily with banks making loans to people who could not pay.. Although, it was as late as October 2009, when I was made aware of one private Bank in Denver still exaggerating income to make loans look good enough on paper to get approval of securitization. What caused the collapse was the leveraging of those loans as securities, so that as the housing market became overextended, and the ARM jumped past the low cost opening years, the damage was 100 times worse because of leveraging. What made the collapse criminal, was that the insurance most financial institutions had bought from AIG, to cover such an improbable event, had already spent by that companies executives, out on bonuses to themselves. What made it doubly criminal, was that when they received government dollars through a taxpayer bailout, those same executives assumed it was to first go towards paying their bonuses again. However, very recent events may give some cover to the argument that some collusion was implicit in the bailing out of Goldman Sacs and AIG… Basically, once bailed out, AIG paid Goldman Sacs for shares twice as much as they were worth. The documents also indicate that regulators ignored recommendations from their own advisers to force the banks to accept losses on their A.I.G. deals and instead paid the banks in full for the contracts.
WDEL featured the Americans Against Escalation in Iraq today. It was good that the group gets some publicity.
However I was surprised that most of the show was an attempt to discredit the group by tying them to a ‘partisan’ partner, and trying to blow the lid off of their non partisan status.
At one point, the inexplicable was asked of the group? “Why are you protesting only Mike Castle, a republican, and not Tom Carper, or Senator Biden?”
I’m listening and not believing my ears. There was no way he was saying what I heard him say. The last time something so off base was allowed over the air waves, was when Gerald Ford said Eastern Europe was not, and never would be under Soviet domination during a Ford Administration. Could anyone else be that confused while on the air?
Everyone in the studio was stunned and tried to save the interviewer’s face by saying politely……”like….duh…. they are on our side, they are against the war…………whereas Mike Castle supports the war, and as the republican, is the enabler who keeps this policy going forward, so we are targeting him……
All I can say is, fortunately they have commercial breaks to allow the interviewers to regroup.
So for those who listened in, here is how it went.
You are a partisan group. . . . . . Uh…..no we are not…..
You are a partisan group. . . . . . Uh…..no we are not…..
You are a partisan group. . . . . . Uh…..no we are not…..
You are a partisan group. . . . . . Uh…..no we are not…..
Of course I was expecting more… Does anyone care about those families who lost children for nothing? That is the true tragedy that republicans seem to ignore. What every American knows and out of politeness does not say, is that every death from Iraq, is the republican’s fault. Every future death in Iraq, is the republican’s fault. We don’t have to prove it to anyone. We know it. Deep down. We know it. It is the republicans fault. Mike Castle is a republican. Every death is his fault.
If Mike Castle stood up and said, this war was started under good intentions, but I cannot support it anymore, the house of cards that keeps this war funded, would dissolve. Years from now, some presidential candidate just might include Mike’s biography in a book titled “Profiles in Courage.” Any attempt, like Fox News, to shift the argument away from what matters, our sons and daughters, is a moral sin. Right now, in Arlington cemetery, lies a St. Marks graduate. From the pages of a William Penn yearbook, a ghost stares out….. And we have a radio host trying to say that stopping the war is a partisan adventure???
It is time for real Republicans to stand up and say this war is wrong. It is time for real Republicans to accept that we were sold a bill of goods that like Enron financial reports, were at the least, untruthful. It is time for real Republicans to publicly repudiate those who mock our servicemen by supporting this administration. It is time!
Just before the Fourth of July weekend, Dave challenged me on a comment I made regarding the loss of Federal Revenue that arrived into Delaware since Bush took office.
It was based on political talk that resonated through the Budget committees during the first and second years of the Minner administration. The political dialog complained that revenue was dropping and cuts needed to be made.
In my attempt to research for the “I told you so ” retort, I discovered that there was no such data. In fact, if one took the data present, more dollars came into this state under Bush than did Clinton. But then on further inspection one saw that Clinton brought in more dollars than Bush (41), who brought in more dollars than Reagan. Could the continued increase of these dollars be due to increase in the general growth as well?
I stumbled across some financial data that I thought could be used to clarify the issue. This data is published every year near tax time, and each year makes the front page of the News Journal. It is the data I call our “bang for the buck”. How much did Delaware get back from the Federal government for every dollar it spent? If we break even, we get one dollar back for every dollar we send. If we get more back, (whoopee) we are a receiver state. On the other hand, if we get less back, we are a donor state,
Delaware is a donor state.
However interesting trends appear when one watches the up or down level in just how much we get back. This is independent of growth.
Delaware taxpayers receive significantly less federal funding per dollar of federal tax paid than the average state. Per dollar of federal tax collected in 2004, Delaware citizens received approximately $0.79 in the way of federal spending. This ranks the state 11th lowest nationally, yet still represents a rise from 1992 when Delaware received only $0.72 per dollar of taxes in federal spending (then ranked 3rd lowest). Neighboring states and the amount of federal spending they received per dollar of federal taxes paid in 2004 were: Pennsylvania ($1.06), New Jersey ($0.55), and Maryland ($1.44).
Using the chart from the tax foundation I took the highest return of .90 cents on the dollar in 1999 as the base. The subsequent year, 2000 we paid .88 cents per dollar. To figure what we lost as potential revenue, a theoretical to begin with, I took the amount of federal dollars received, and and multiplied each of those dollars by the two cents we earned less back from our base level in 1999, which was our state’s highest return on our federal dollars,……ever.
That gave me a shortage of 117 million from what we could have received had we kept the ..90 return rate for every dollar we gave up to the federal government.
So applying the same formula to the Bush administration’s budgets, I came up with these theroitical deficits from what we could have received if we had again maintained the politically controlled .90 cents to a dollar from the base line.
2001 289,000,000
2002 505,000,000
2003 420,000,000
2004 615,000,000
2005est 615,000,000
2006est 615,000,000
2007est 615,000,000
2008est 615,000,000
As you can see my data stream stops at 2004.
So with even these preliminary conservative estimates which (since I have no data to prove it) showed no increase in the years following 2004, we approach over the lifespan of the Bush budget, a deficit of 4 billion from what we theoretically could have received had we continued at the rate we were on in 1999.
This compares to the 635 million dollars less that Delawareans paid into the Federal treasury as a result of the Cheney/Bush tax cuts.
Recently in Delaware, a well know auto parts company did a comparative study and decided that Delaware was ripe for expansion. The acquisition costs were low, taxes low, and competition was archaic and outdated. They received the required financing and moved in.
They built a new store every 120 days. Gradually they had received all but the most loyal of its competitor’s regulars. They began to set the standards of how business could be run. Were one to write a textbook on how to succeed in acquiring a new market, they would have been the most quoted source. Comparatively their service times per transaction were faster, their customer satisfaction results the highest, and their return to the bottom line was better than those same company’s stores in other states.
Every opportunity was met with success. Investors as well as customers were happy they had moved in.
Then, almost inexplicably, the upper management decided to buy a local strip club that was up for sale. They tackled the purchase with meticulous detail. They wined and dined, then cold shouldered the prospective seller, until he, desperate to unload the property, gave it up for a song. No one is certain as to why this company would go into a venture half-cocked. Some thought it was for reasons, deep, secret personal reasons, that guided the chief executives decision. But for a song, the place was acquired and a great party was thrown to celebrate the new diversion. It was even whispered by some, that all entertainment costs charged to the auto parts conglomerate, would be at cost, if even charged at all. Those few who fearlessly stood up to the executive and challenged him to explain his weird choice of action, were chastised publicly and told not to worry, it would pay for itself ten times over……
But no one knew how to run it……Apparently upper management was so concerned with the acquisition and the possibility of future profits, that in their rush, they had failed to plan for its management.
“Don’t worry. We will do it” they said. They chose a bright young parts manager and put him in charge. Since the facility was intact, they placed want ads for employees and prepared to open their doors. But being new to the porn arena, caused many of the local entertainers to become a little leery of signing up. “Let’s wait and see” was their approach.
Desperate, because of upper management pressure to get something done immediately, the young part’s manager asked some of the company’s most loyal employees to moonlight for him in their off hours………Opening day was a flop.
Jeers, hoots, holla’s were shouted at the dancers. The locals treated them with contempt. Who pays to see a middle aged pot bellied male clerk, dance around in a thong? Not only did the employees get shouted off of stage, but they failed to receive tips as well. Desperate, the young parts manger made deals from his car’s window with hookers off of Route 13. He asked them to come in and fill his roster. The hookers would do so only if he stipulated that they could ply their other trade within the club’s walls. He felt he had no choice but to agree.
Costs were running 200% more than anticipated. They had underestimate the clientèle. Southern businessmen, these locals were not. Heroin was sold openly.
They had bitten off more than they could chew. Those who had supported the diversionary financial venture, began to come under fire by stockholders. Over and over the CEO reassured them that all would work out.
Close it down to stop the financial bleeding he was told. No he insisted. That would be a failure. He would not do that. Instead we will staff it with all our employees. Every employee will work half a day at one of the stores, and the other half would be at night, inside the strip club.
As the staff levels increased, operations stabilized. However the client base hemorrhaged. Most nights were devoid of customers. Occasionally a group would arrive from out of town. The strip club soon sucked up more profits than the auto part’s stores could afford. For the first time, the company dipped into the red. It never recovered…………
Then came the vice squad. Arrests were made and prostitutes and management were incarcerated. Fines were levied against the holding company. There was no money left to pay them. Under court order, the doors were closed.
For whatever the reason, whether it was due to loyalty, or trust in his past brilliance, or personal fear, no one stood up to the CEO. All who came to advise him, left with head hung, hat in hand……No one pushed back…at least not hard enough…….and as the result,…..the entire enterprise was eventually auctioned off to pay the creditors no more than 18 cents per dollar invested……….
Moral of the story: Extravagant adventures sometimes end where you least want to go……Planning make perfect……
Relevance of the story: I’m sure you are smart enough to have figured it out by now.
kavips 
