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Thursday, August 4, 2011

House doesn't care if you have a job or not

Wonder why the unemployment rate is going up? Look in one place for the answer. Hint, it's in Washington DC. The building is supposed to be housing people with one mission. That mission is supposed to take care of the people in this country. They called it "the people's house" for that reason.

The People's House is a colloquial term used to describe the institution of the United States House of Representatives.
The term comes from the populist characteristics of the House: smaller representative districts, shorter terms of office for its members and (perhaps most importantly) direct election by the people. The House of Representatives was the only branch of the Federal government to be directly elected by the people until ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1913, when the Senate was made a directly elected body.

Ever since January when this congress began session, it has not been about what the people in this country need. It has not been about our jobs or making this country a better place for all of her citizens. It has been all about focusing on the wealthy, protecting their tax discounts and cutting everything else so that the people in this country not interested in paying taxes won't have to. How unAmerican is that? It sounds good because no one wants to pay taxes but most of the people in this country fully understand that we have to pay to have this country succeed.

The military, funded by taxes, is not just about contractors making millions off every contract. It is also about the men and women serving this country, putting their physical lives on the line and their personal lives on hold. It's their families wondering how to make ends meet at the same time they are wondering if their loved one is in danger, hurt or if they will get the stranger in uniform at the door with sad news. It is about their retirement after they served their 20 years or more being able to collect military retirement and Social Security after paying into both systems. It is about knowing they will be able to take care of their families if they are wounded in action and if they will have their medical needs met.

You want to be able to fly with some assurance you will arrive safely? We're heading into the tenth year after this nation was attacked on that bright September morning. Four planes were taken over and since then security at airports across the country has been increased so that people will be safe to fly and no more plans will be used as weapons against civilians. We all understood this ten years ago but the people working for the TSA and the FAA don't do it for free. They have bills to pay just like everyone else. What did Congress do? They took off for vacations without funding the FAA. Now we have people out of work and money paid by passengers not collected for the country.

FAA
$200 million a week not being collected in taxes but paid by passengers. Fiscal responsibility? Nope. Then there are the employees out of jobs and in the unemployment line.


There are 4,000 of them in the unemployment line now along with 70,000 construction workers.

Then there are the weakest among us. The homeless. Since there are not enough jobs to go around even though some folks in congress kept the tax discounts for the rich going claiming they are the job creators instead of terminators, more people became homeless under their watch. Well, it looks like once we finally arrived at a time when there was a lot being done to help the homeless, we did a u-turn. Not only are they being left to fend for themselves more and more, now there are wonderful people out of work who used to take care of them.

Chicago
City Lays Off 24,

Owing to their homeless program's state funding being cut in half, the city's Department of Family and Support Services announced Tuesday that they have been forced to lay off 24 employees effective Sept. 1.

The majority of the workers being laid off staffed the overnight, midnight-to-8 a.m. shift, picking up homeless individuals and transporting them to shelters, the Chicago Sun-Times reports. Now those individuals will likely go without the city's help during the evening, making an already bad system even worse, according to Julie Dworkin, director of policy for the Chicago Coalition of the Homeless.

"They tell you to go to a hospital or a police station and the van will come to take you to a shelter. But, people often have to wait hours for the van to come," Dworkin told the Sun-Times.

"From now on if you call in the middle of the night, you can add another eight hours to your wait."
read more here
Cuts Overnight Emergency Homeless Services

In state after state public employees are losing their jobs, yet the same folks responsible for them walking the streets are the ones screaming about the unemployment rate pointing a twisted finger at the President as if they had nothing to do with any of this. Well, in a way they are right. They had nothing to do with putting people back to work but plenty to do with putting them out of work and as for the term "the People's House" they should put a sing up "Sold to the highest bidder."

One third of the homeless are veterans. Veteran lose their homes all the time because they cannot work and their claims are not approved fast enough leaving them with no income. National Guards and Reservist usually work in public service on their regular jobs, as police officers, firefighters, emergency responders and every other agency the rest of us depend on. Imagine being notified you will be deployed at the same time you get a layoff notice.

Now we may be able to appreciate the folks saying they don't want to pass on the debt to their kids but that is only if we don't look at them right now. What kind of country do we want them growing up in? One that takes care of the wealthy on the backs of the rest of the population or one that manages to do the right thing? Do we want them growing up worrying about their roads, bridges and tunnels being safe for us to take them for a ride? Safe to fly down to Disney for a vacation? Safe to take medicine, drink water, eat food without being made sick? Do we want to know that if they do get sick they can go to a doctor to get better?

Do we want them to grow up worried they will not learn enough in school because their classroom is overcrowded due to teacher layoffs? What kind of future will they have with a lousy education? Do we want them to know that they do matter and we fully accept the responsibility to make sure they have the best education possible no matter what income class their parents belong in?

There are folks in congress wanting to keep things plan and simple so that people will just think of their words instead of what their words mean. They want us to be deaf to the cries of our own neighbors, dumb enough to follow where they want us to go and blind to the fact they are being funded by the wealthy they owe their careers to.

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