Motley Moose – Archive

From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, President Obama said Congress should act to extend emergency unemployment insurance for more than one million Americans who have lost this vital economic lifeline while looking for a job. Letting emergency unemployment insurance expire not only harms American families, but it is also a drag on the overall economy. The President urges both parties to pass the bipartisan three-month extension under consideration in the Senate so that we can once again focus on expanding opportunities for the middle class and creating jobs for all hardworking Americans.

From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, President Obama said that before Congress leaves for vacation, they should extend unemployment benefits for 1.3 million hardworking Americans who will lose this lifeline at the end of the year. For families, unemployment benefits can mean the difference between hardship and catastrophe, and it is also one of the most effective ways to boost our economy. This holiday season, Congress should do the right thing for the American people and make it easier for our economy to keep growing and adding jobs.  

Today headlines blared that the Boston bombers had been funding their terrorist lifestyles with welfare. How could we, the cash-strapped people, have been allowed to provide for these shady characters? The American-born wife and baby were obviously part of a long con on the generosity of the American people. That the wife chose to work 80 hours a week (possibly for less than minimum wage) as a quasi-servant rather than continue with those benefits does not mitigate the fact that someone who later became a terrorist got to mooch! Who would have the insolence to even wonder whether the indignities of the broken welfare system factored into how much these “losers” came to hate the United States…?

Well, I’m going to dare to bring it up.

The welfare approach in the United States are ridiculously fragmented, inadequate, poorly implemented, and outright broken. Political rhetoric from all sides raises the taxpayer’s awareness that their money pays for an enormous welfare system. Yet when the taxpayer turns to this system during their own time of desperation, they discover unanswered phone calls, months (if not years) of applications and appeals, bureaucratistans that don’t bother to deliver the measly few “services” they meticulously document on your “plan” (the California Department of Rehabilitation, which is supposed to be putting people back to work, is a major offender here), and have abundant means to retaliate (for example, by consigning your case to limbo) if anyone complains.

There is a deliberate rightwing campaign to make stymied taxpayers believe that “someone else” (of a different race, religion, or political affiliation) is getting paid “regular checks from the government”, while anyone who has ever tried to deal with this system knows for sure it’s not them. “Disability checks” are the latest spearhead in the rightwing’s egregiously misinformed attack on welfare.

But while Republicans regular twist and ignore facts to shore up their 47 percent Entitlement Society propaganda, Democrats are failing in the other direction by blindly defending the system without acknowledging the problems or making any attempts to fix them. President Obama’s idea of a bipartisan bridge is cutting Social Security benefits, when many seniors are already struggling to get by on a few hundred dollars a month. There is no way around the fact that the only way to get everyone off welfare is to guarantee full employment.

Last year I wrote a series of posts about my own experience of the welfare fiasco for Daily Kos, but I found this was the wrong venue since too many comments trivialized or even flamed a subject that is a matter of life-and-death to a significant segment of the U.S. population. I looked for another place to repost my series, but I could not find another place where I could convey what I knew about welfare to a broad audience of voters. Finally I just boiled down what I had to say in 10 Ways to Fix Welfare on a free WordPress blog and left my message to float on the ether. As far as I know, no one is reading it or referencing it. It’s vitally important to dispel the fog of ignorance that surrounds welfare. So it’s time to make another attempt to shed light on the real problems with welfare and how to fix them.

I am copying my “10 ways to Fix Welfare” here in the hope that this post will be passed around and spark a larger conversation, with testimony from the people who have actually interacted with the welfare system. My complete article is pasted below, and there is a little more information about me on the WordPress site.

I Heard the Owl Call my Name is a wonderful book.  It is a book about an Anglican vicar who is sent to a parish of indigenous people in Canada.  Unbeknownst to him, he has a terminal illness.  The title comes from a belief that when one hears the owl call one’s name, death is imminent.  I don’t see it quite that way.  I have found that, in my life, when I encounter an owl, life change is imminent.

Disclaimer: This is purely hypothetical. A true Tea Party “Patriot” would never apologize; they’d simply reload. They’d also have more typographical and grammatical errors if they did write anything. Still…

February 12, 2013

Dear Joanie,

Since we haven’t talked in so long, I was shocked to see you sitting in the very back of the church at Dad’s funeral last week. I wanted to see you, to hold you, to tell you so much, but by the time I got through the crowd, you were gone.  

After that last argument when you walked out after we thanked Fox News in our Thanksgiving prayer, I wasn’t sure I would ever see you and Jamal and the kids again. I know you probably still hate me and you probably don’t ever want to talk to me again, but please at least read this letter before you decide.

Now, with everything that’s happened, I can see why you did what you did. I am so sorry, more sorry than you will ever know, that I got involved with those Tea Party people. They seemed so patriotic. It was like they “got it”. Less taxes? Who wouldn’t want that? Get the government out of our lives? Well, at first I was kind of uneasy about that, with Dad working in the defense industry, but it turns out a bunch of them were in the same sort of situation or on Social Security or disability, and it didn’t seem like it was a problem for them.  

We were all just so worried that the country was going to hell in a handbasket, with all those people out of work and the government just spending and spending and spending. It was like people like us – good upstanding people who worked hard and paid our taxes just kept losing ground to people who were… well, you know.

The people over on Fox were the only ones who made sense out of it. Your Dad was the one who first started watching them he was home from work when he hurt his back. After I started watching it, I just got hooked. Glenn Beck was his favorite. He was the only person smart enough to figure out how all this politics and money and religion stuff was connected, and brave enough to say it. It’s too bad somebody silenced him. Hannity and O’Reilly and the others were okay, though, and after a while, we left the TV on Fox all the time.  

When you screamed at us that “you love Fox more than you love me and the kids!”, I am ashamed to say that you might have been right. I DO love you and Jamal and the kids (and Dad loved you guys too), but you were back east and we hardly ever saw you. I know it sounds stupid now, but Fox was our family.  

This is Dedicated to My Pal Shauna

.

.

The What, I walk dogs, I care for cats and occasionaly an odd assortment of little pet creatures. By industry standards at three years plus, I’m a longtime veteran.

I had planned on telling you how phenomenal my employers are, about how our mission statement might be a model for other businesses to emulate, but I made the doing the fun part first mistake of writing about the woozles, heh so this diary will be too long if I did.

The What part can wait and probably deserves it’s own diary.

.

The Why, well that’s easy. I’m an animal lover, always have been and always will be. My wife is too and the joke around here is that we have 10 pairs of legs in our family: 2 humans, 2 pooties and 2 woozles. There hasn’t been a time when I didn’t have a pet and when it wasn’t a cat or dog, it was a lopp eared rabbit.

The more immediate question is why now, at 58? That answer has some history, all recent and none of it very positive really. Although I’m happy doing what I’m doing, the journey to get here was painful and there are scars still healing.

I’ve been self employed almost my entire life and I’ve reinvented myself three times, starting three completely different businesses on a shoestring, chasing a passion. At 48 I was ready again. I loved to cook, I’ve always wanted a little cafe and at that age, cooking seemed like a career I could continue until I was ready to retire or unable to work. Industry people I spoke with had their doubts but I know what I can accomplish when I make up my mind, so I went for it.

I spent two years learning in kitchens, working 14 -16 hour days, commuting for hours and honing my craft. I applied for line cook positions at two restaurants and set up both interviews in one day. The restaurants were across the street from each other and I was hired for both jobs, one morning shift, one afternoon.  

I worked my way up to managerial positions at both spots, trying new recipes, designing menus and managing staff. I was seemingly on my way, it all pointed positive until the the bottom fell out of the restaurant business here in Chicago, between Thanksgiving and Christmas of 2007. It was the foreshadowing of our Great Recession and of worse things to come.

I was laid off from both restaurants the same week and I spent the next two years, the most difficult years of my adult life, without work. We’ve all heard the horrible stories about the new discrimination of fifty year olds, I was suddenly a statistic with a very odd resume. I never gave up looking and in a very quirky,

‘I really don’t care what I write on this application because no will really read it’, answer to a question about something I was passionate about, the answer got my app noticed.

I wrote paragraphs extolling the many virtues of our Honda Element. Worried sick about having to sell it because we were getting so heavily into debt, I was already beginning to miss it. I recieved a call from the interviewer the next day. We spent an hour talking Honda, he finally decided to buy the one he had test driven, oh and I was hired.

.

At 7:00 PM Eastern (4:00 PM Pacific), President Obama will address a joint session of Congress to deliver his plan to create jobs and grow the economy. Senior Advisor, David Plouffe, who has been a key figure in crafting the strategy, says we can expect to hear the President detail a plan that will rebuild our economy, and further, issue a challenge to Congress to meet their responsibilities. All indications are that the address will be part policy, and part politics:

Barack Obama is to throw down the gauntlet to Republicans, demanding they back his $300 billion jobs plan or face the wrath of voters blaming them for refusing to help revive the American economy.

The stakes are high, and so are expectations. This just might be the President’s last, best chance to jumpstart the economy and bring some semblance of balance to the debate in Washington, where The H2tN (Hell to the NO!) Party have been dry-humping the agenda since the midterms. The challenges are immense: Can he appeal to D.C.-weary independents? Appease liberals? We’ll find out soon enough.