Jennifer Gonnerman of The New York Times writes of a New Yorker who is not dissimilar from many workers during this prolonged economic slump:
On June 25, 2010, Frederick Deare punched out for the last time from his job driving a forklift at the Old London factory in the Bronx. That summer, everyone at the plant was being laid off: the oven operators, the assembly-line packers, the forklift drivers, the sanitation workers. Total jobs lost: 228. Old London, the snack manufacturer that invented the Cheez Doodle, wasmoving its operations to North Carolina. At 53, Mr. Deare, known as Freddy or Teddy Bear to his co-workers, would have to find a new job.
After a period of unemployment, Deare found a new job, and got laid off again. But then he heard about a job opening: forklift driver at a coffee warehouse in Yonkers.
He got an interview, and the supervisor he met with sounded optimistic about his chances of being hired. But there was no formal offer. Day after day went by. For three weeks the wait stretched on. This time, however, he got the job. And it was a union job, with benefits. He started on April 11 — 290 days after Old London laid him off.
“You’re speaking to a happy man,” he said after his first day. “I am in my glory. I mean, today was wonderful.”
There was only one downside: The work paid $10 an hour, 40 percent less than he had made at Old London. After taxes, his paycheck was even less than the unemployment benefits he had been collecting. But he tried not to dwell on this. “I don’t let it bother me that I’m getting less, because of the simple fact I have something, and a lot of people have nothing,” he said. “You have to crawl before you can walk.” Four and a half months later, he is still on the job.
There are a lot of lessons here. Digby, for instance, comments
Everybody sees this, whether they're employed or not. And it's made working people very accommodating. Being scared you might never find a decent job again will do that to a person.
It's great for employers, though.
That might be one of the reasons there was no net job creation in August while corporate profits continue to soar. However, it also brings to mind comments of various Republicans during the debate last year over extension of unemployment benefits. Then-New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg contended unemployment compensation "encourages people to, rather than go out and look for work, to stay on unemployment" while to Sharron Angle, who would be defeated by Harry Reid, it was "this system of entitlement (which) has caused us to have a spoilage with our ability to go out and get a job."
Running, successfully, for a Senate seat from Kentucky, Rand Paul patronizingly remarked "As bad as it sounds, ultimately we do have to sometimes accept a wage that's less than we had at our previous job in order to get back to work and allow the economy to get started again. Nobody likes that, but it may be one of the tough love things that has to happen. Wisconsin's Ron Johnson, who would go on to be elected to the U.S. Senate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and former House Majority Leader and criminal Tom DeLay all maintained that unemployment benefits discourage work. The last even claimed "in fact there are some studies that have been done that show people stay on unemployment compensation and they don’t look for a job until two or three weeks before they know the benefits are going to run out.”
These "some studies" appear to be one 1990 study, largely debunked by a 2007 study (The Spike at Benefit Exhaustion: Leaving the Unemployment System or Starting a New Job?"), as Jonathan Chait explains here. Researchers David Card, Raj Chetty, and Andrea Weber found that when unemployment benefits ran out, individuals would discontinue submitting to the government the information which would have qualified them prior to expiration of benefits. No longer part of the unemployment compensation system, they would appear to have obtained work.
Most unemployment can be explained far more simply- more available workers than jobs, a 4.7:1 ratio at last accounting. Attention, however, has shifted to the tax, with many conservatives, posing as opponents of high taxation and sometimes even provoked to righteous indignation at mere mention of the word "tax," whining that too few Americans pay income taxes. Corporate loopholes remain sacrosanct in the drive to make the tax system "flatter." No one, they imply, should be spared having to pay income tax because of the child tax credit, earned income tax, 0r because they're elderly with Social Security their only source of income.
Republicans helpfully remind us that everywhere there are Americans collecting unemployment to avoid work or working without contributing to the "shared sacrifice" endured by those long-suffering "job creators."
Now it's not just Republican Party head Rush Limbaugh. It's also The Exterminator, former House Speaker Tom DeLay. You'll recall Rush on January 16, 2009 proudly proclaiming
I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: "Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails." Somebody's gotta say it.... So I can answer it, four words, "I hope he fails." And that would be the most outrageous thing anybody in this climate could say. Shows you just how far gone we are. Well, I know, I know. I am the last man standing.
Limbaugh wants Obama to fail because he hopes Obama's policies fail. But he unabashedly declared of the President of the United States "I hope he fails." And yesterday, excusing the statement of Governor Mark Sanford (R.-S.C.) that "anybody who wants him (Obama) to fail is an idiot," Limbaugh reiterated his hope that America fails, commenting
But, see, politicians have different audiences than I do and they've gotta say things in different ways, so after he said, "Anybody who wants Obama to fail is an idiot," then went on in his own way to say, "Gosh, I hope this doesn't work." But he just had to say, "We don't want the president to fail." Hell, we don't. We want something to blow up here, politically, we want something not to go right.
And Tom DeLay? This exchange (video below) took place today at he Conservative Political Action Conference in the interview by Think Progress with DeLay:
TP: Do you agree with Rush Limbaugh that we shouldn’t hope for President Obama to succeed?
DELAY: Well, exactly right. I don’t want this for our nation. That’s for sure.
So Tom DeLay has joined Rush Limbaugh in praying that the President of the United States fails. Steve Benen (before DeLay, responding to Rush) on February 14 in The Washington Monthly noted the double standard:
Keep in mind, of course, that such talk under Bush's presidency would force someone from the airwaves. If a prominent progressive figure said, just as the president was sending troops into war in early 2003, "I want everything he's doing to fail. I want the war in Iraq to fail. I do not want the president's national security agenda to succeed," he or she would lose all advertising revenue and be fired. In the midst of a crisis, Americans rooting against America, based on nothing but ideological rigidity, are pariahs.
We can't trust this theory because no prominent, mainstream liberal has argued in public for the failure of this country. However, we do know what happened to comedian Bill Maher when he stated on his ABC program Politically Incorrect on September 17, 2001
We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly.
Nothing unpatriotic- only recognition that murderous terrorists, no matter how evil, are hardly cowardly when willingly giving up their lives for their misguided cause. When ABC buckled under pressure, Bill Maher lost his network show, eventually ending up on HBO.
Rush and Tom can say all they want to entertain, as in the former's case, or to demonize, as in the latter's case. Still, it's up to the rest of us to view their statements in the context of the hostility they hold toward their country.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Irrelevant
Finally, former President George Herbert Walker Bush has endorsed for President Arizona Senator John McCain, contending he has the "right values and experience to guide our nation forward" and "no one is better prepared to lead our nation at these trying times....." Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report (generally a worthwhile read) commented "this is just another sign that the race for the Republican nomination is effectively over and that the party establishment is wrapping their arms around McCain."
What gave you your first clue, Charlie? Might it have be the 846 delegates won by McCain (with only 1191 needed for nomination) compared to the 268 by Romney (who has urged his delegates to vote for McCain), 243 for Huckabee (who makes the Repub establishment at least as queasy as does McCain), and the 14 for Ron Paul? Could it be that it's almost statistically impossible for McCain to blow the nomination?
Much of the Repub "party establishment" already supports the Arizona Senator, although his endorsements from GOP Representatives and Senators have been underwhelming. The Repub establishment is not McCain's problem. The right wing is McCain's problem, the likes of Thad Cochran, Rick Santorum, Tom DeLay, George F. Will, and Laura Ingraham. Instead, today's was an endorsement of the president who famously uttered "read my lips- no new taxes," then raised them when necessary, thereby incurring the disappointment of most of the GOP and the wrath of much of it. If George H.W. Bush was revered- or even respected- by the Republicans McCain has been courting (actually, pandering to), the Repub debates wouldn't have been consumed by each candidate (save Paul) trying to out-Reagan Reagan. And the presumptive nominee himself might have missed at least one opportunity to proclaim himself "a foot soldier in the Reagan revolution."
If former President Bush had endorsed John McCain six weeks ago, that might have had an effect on the Republican race. We now would be anticipating the nomination of Mitt Romney.
