posted on August 10, 2003 10:17:34 AM new
Why is that those unwilling to work for what they want, expect others to hand over their hard earned money?
We in the US were not founded on giving away our money to those who have not earned it.
What has happend to the work ethic of this country? Hell my sister couldn't even get the neighbor kid to mow the lawn for a a decent weekly amount... said his parents give him all he needs... fine, but what happens when mommy and daddy no longer do that... this kid will be pi$$ing and moaning about where is his free handout. Worse his parents seem to think this is ok...
I worked 2 jobs for 5 years to get the captital together to start my business, I will be damned if I will let some lazy POS get a free handout from me.
How about people get off their lazy a$$es and get back to work...
posted on August 10, 2003 12:07:41 PM newHow about people get off their lazy a$$es and get back to work..
I couldn't agree more.One of the reasons immigrants flock to the US is because they are willing to accept the jobs lazy Americans are too good to take.
___________________________________
What luck for the leaders that men do not think. - Adolph Hitler
posted on August 11, 2003 09:23:36 AM new
I have to agree, when is the government going to stop giving extremely profitable corporations all the free money to relocate their jobs overseas?
Social Welfare costs each a every American 72 cents a day....Corporate Welfare costs each and every American over twice that amount every day. But this is old data...I think the Social number is actually less today and the corporate is more today even as they are posting RECORD profits.....
[ edited by mlecher on Aug 11, 2003 09:24 AM ]
posted on August 11, 2003 09:31:18 AM new
ML - Specifically what handouts are being given to companies for operating offshore?
~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~ • ~~~
If it's really Common Sense, why do so few people actually have it?
posted on August 11, 2003 10:01:47 AM new
Start with tax incentives and go from there. By tailoring the tax code in such a way as to exempt profits from taxation that are made overseas by US corporations as well as circumnavigating environmental regs our government send a clear message to corporations to go off shore if they wish to profit.
posted on August 11, 2003 10:07:40 AM new
Actually, the number of big profitable corporations paying nothing (or virtually nothing) in taxes is expected to skyrocket.
posted on August 11, 2003 11:10:25 AM new
It’s Like Leona Helmsley Said:
Taxes are for the Little People
Stanley Works, like many other corporate patriots, is incorporating in Bermuda to avoid taxes. Their accountant, Kate Barton of Ernst & Young, describes the wrenching decision Stanley faced: “Is it the right time to be migrating a corporation’s headquarters to an offshore location? And yet, that said, we are working through a lot of companies who feel that it is, that just the improvement on earnings is powerful enough that maybe the patriotism issue needs to take a back seat to that.” (New York Times, February 18, 2002)
posted on August 11, 2003 01:32:48 PM new
ebayauctionguy
"hibbertst, you sound like you hate your country. And you people wonder why we call you unAmerican."
I don't wonder why you use the term un-American. I know that such name calling is generated by the condition of being uninformed.
posted on August 11, 2003 02:19:14 PM new
Heck, what's the problem? Oh, ya, JOB LOSS!
US job losses hit nine-year high
The US unemployment rate in June unexpectedly climbed to a nine-year high as the world's largest economy shed 30,000 jobs last month, official figures showed today.
By Guardian Newspapers, 7/3/2003
The US unemployment rate in June unexpectedly climbed to a nine-year high as the world's largest economy shed 30,000 jobs last month, official figures showed today.
In a bleaker report than anticipated, the labour department said that the jobless rate rose to 6.4% last month from May's 6.1%. Most economists had expected June's jobless rate to be 6.2%.
Job losses in May were much higher than previously reported as the labour department sharply revised that month's numbers to 70,000 from an original 17,000. The battered manufacturing sector lost 56,000 jobs, and information industries shed 10,000 workers.
The figures will make gloomy reading for the White House as some administration officials thought June would see an increase in payrolls, the first since January. But today's bleak report dashed hopes of the beginnings of a rebound in the jobs market.
Because growth has been lacklustre since the US emerged from recession in 2001, the economy has failed to create jobs. On the contrary, under the so-called jobless recovery, more than two million jobs have disappeared since the president, George Bush, took office in January 2001.
In fact, Mr Bush could be the first president since Herbert Hoover, who was in the White House from 1929 to 1933, the years of the Great Depression, to oversee a decline in total US jobs during his term. By contrast, 22 million jobs were created during the Clinton years.
The persistence of sluggishness has surprised economists, and some believe that the job market will not have recovered by the end of 2004, when Mr Bush will have to fight for re-election. With the presidential elections looming next year, Democrats have focused on the economy as Mr Bush's weak spot.
Cheryl
Power to the people. Power to the people, right on. - John Lennon
[ edited by CBlev65252 on Aug 11, 2003 02:19 PM ]
posted on August 11, 2003 02:24:18 PM new
man are these right wing facists dumb, dirty, and just plan retarded, must be something in the water, handouts, really ?
Take This Jobless Recovery and Shove It
By Genevieve Roja, AlterNet
August 11, 2003
In the larger scheme of President Bush's agenda, it's people like me who don't really matter. And why would I? I'm no CEO of a big monied corporation. I'm neither a fundraiser nor a politico.
It's worse – I'm unemployed.
While the President is horseback-riding around his Crawford, Texas ranch during his month-long hiatus, my fellow unemployeds and I try to land the job of today, rather than the job of our dreams. That's what happens when you're out of work – you take the measly scraps and wait for the steak dinner.
Some of us go back to school in the hopes that the economy will recover by the time someone hands us a diploma. Or we move in with our parents, sell our cars and apply for jobs netting half what we used to make. There is no real feeling of optimism – just desperation. Our anxiety makes others around us crazy. We want jobs not just for the money, but to join the others out there who are contributing something to the world, whether it's shoveling dirt or pushing paper. Take away someone's job and you take away a sliver of that person's self-worth. Sometimes, working, whether we like our jobs or not, validates our sense of presence, of being a valued member of society.
It's too bad television news can't broadcast the life of the jobless like they do soldiers duking it out in lawless Iraq. Joblessness is rarely sexy or scary. What would the cameras capture if they could? How about roads and highways bogged down by traffic, regardless of the time of day? Try going to Whole Foods at two in the afternoon. Nightmare. Bodies abound, jostling for sale-priced baskets of raspberries and freshly cut samples of nectarines.
Ditto the scene at drycleaners, restaurants, pharmacies, coffee shops and department stores. I can't go to the library anymore to job-hunt online because there are too many people camped out at the computer stations. They're like the ghosts of employed days past who refuse to leave their haunting posts. There's the white-bearded hippie professor type with his stacks of Chicano literature by his side. Or the polo shirt-clad man with his weather-beaten briefcase sitting atop the table of his workstation. He looks quietly displaced pounding away at the keyboard; it's as if the library has become his new cubicle.
Since Bush took his cubicle, about 3.4 million Americans have lost their jobs. Last month, 470,000 Americans became discouraged and stopped looking for work. We have a 6.2 unemployment rate and the highest level of unemployment in nine years. And how does Bush respond? He signed a tax cut bill he claimed would create a million more new jobs but in actuality, did not. He recently sent three Cabinet members by bus to Wisconsin and Minnesota who reported "a positive feeling in America about our economy."
Well, what about the sentiment of the other 48 states? As a Californian, I can tell you a lot about the daily struggle of an unemployed. It is a constant period of personal re-evaulation and daily affirmation. It's learning to forgive myself, telling myself it wasn't my fault I was let go, that I'm good enough and smart enough, and by golly, someone will hire me someday. It's difficult hanging onto hope when you've been out of work for almost a year. Unemployment means readjusting to job hunting too, maybe lowering your standards in the process. I now click on part-time job postings and submit my name for marketing studies that pay $20 for my cooperation. I explore volunteer opportunities because that's always good for the soul and there's virtually no rejection – everyone loves an employee who doesn't have to be paid.
But it's still not a job. Nothing can replace that feeling of making a important contribution toward the greater good. Also irreplaceable is the feeling of waking up in the morning not in a state of panic, but in a state of employed serenity.
There is much to be done about this Bush-termed "jobless recovery." It may start with a bus ride survey, but it certainly doesn't end there. Sure, the rest of America wants to have positive feelings about the economy. But first of all they want to believe that the creation of jobs is high on the agenda, not just an empty promise on the eve of a presidential respite. Our leaders need to work hard to find real solutions the way Americans work to find jobs and retain those jobs – with integrity, intensity and with stubborn determination.
Genevieve Roja is a freelance writer living in San Francisco
posted on August 11, 2003 03:38:11 PM new
Don't forget other government handouts to the corporations.
McDonald's receives millions every year to market their chicken McNuggets OVERSEAS! To places like India, where what, 95% of the people are strict vegetarians?
The fast-food industry receives millions in "training" subsidies where they are to hire individuals on welfare and social services and train them to work in fast-food places. They are trained for six months where upon they are "supposed" to be hired at full wage. However, generally, they are laid off and a new group of "trainees" are hired to keep the subsidies coming.... And those trained? Well, since all the other places want to collect the gov't money, they will not hire "experienced" personnel.
Lockheed-Martin recieved a multi-million bonus from the government for selling a record amount of arms to our overseas allies. How were they able to sell so much, well, they were able to lower the prices to dirt-cheap because producing the arms and equipment was largely subsidized through gov't grants...
Corporations recieved billions in tax-credits and interest-free loans from principalities that want them to relocate in the area. However, once the perks run out they are supposed to agree to stay in the area. They don't, they move on to somewhere else to get more tax-breaks and loans.
Anything else you'd like fenix03? There are thousands of them.
posted on August 12, 2003 12:33:00 PM new
hey you right wing morons hand this out!!!
Homelessness grows as more live check-to-check
By Stephanie Armour, USA TODAY
Homelessness in major cities is escalating as more laid-off workers already living paycheck-to-paycheck wind up on the streets or in shelters.
William and Sue Kamstra and sons. Kamstra lost a $43,000-a-year job, forcing them to live at the mission.
By Robert Hanashiro, USA TODAY
As Americans file for bankruptcy in record numbers and credit card debt explodes, more workers are a paycheck away from losing their homes. Now the frail economy is pushing them over the edge. With 9 million unemployed workers in July, the face of homelessness is changing to include more families shaken by joblessness.
Former neighbors and co-workers are on the streets, live with relatives or stay in shelters. Unemployed managers are living with their elderly parents. Families who once owned their own homes now sleep on bunk beds in homeless shelters. Job seekers in suits and ties stop by soup kitchens heading out to afternoon interviews. With no place to live, some homeless are camping out in their cars until work comes along.
"There is still a mind-set that the homeless are substance abusers who have made bad life decisions," says Ralph Plumb, CEO of the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles. "But more and more, they are individuals responding to a catastrophic financial event. The homeless are us. They're regular folk."
Requests for emergency shelter assistance grew an average of 19% from 2001 to 2002, according to the 18 cities that reported an increase — the steepest rise in a decade. The findings are from a 2003 survey of 25 cities by the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Among the trends:
• Families with children are among the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. The Conference of Mayors found that 41% of the homeless are families with children, up from 34% in 2000. The Urban Institute reports about 23% of the homeless are children.
• Cities and shelters are also seeing the shift. In New York, the number of homeless families jumped 40% from 1999 to 2002. In Boston, the number of homeless families increased 8.3% to 2,328 in 2002 compared with 2001.
• An estimated 3.5 million people are likely to experience homelessness in a given year, the Urban Institute reports. People remained homeless for an average of six months, according to the Conference of Mayors survey — a figure that increased from a year ago in all but four cities.
Homelessness also increased during past recessions, but advocates say several issues are making the current rise more disconcerting. Those factors include the five-year cap on welfare benefits, a surge in home prices adding to longer periods of homelessness, and the fact that this recovery has been a jobless one, providing little immediate hope.
In fact, the majority of cities polled by the Conference of Mayors expect homelessness to increase over the next year.
While the economy is driving some of the increase in demand for shelter and food assistance, other factors include mental illness, substance abuse and low-paying jobs, according to the Conference of Mayors survey.
Jobs hard to find
For many families already on the edge, homelessness is a catastrophic reality. Less than a year ago, Kimberly Brochu was expecting a baby and living with her husband and four children in an apartment in Winslow, Maine. Then her husband, Allen, was laid off from his painting job.
Eight months pregnant, Brochu wound up on the streets with her family. They spent their nights sleeping in bunk beds at a homeless shelter and during the day camped out in their car at a Burger King. Today, she and her husband rent a duplex and are both working again.
"People think we get homeless because we're irresponsible, but it's hard finding jobs," says Brochu, 29, who works as a housekeeper and a waitress; Allen is a farmer's helper. "But my kids, if they become successful, they won't look down on people who are poor."
A growing number of families are vulnerable to homelessness because of the dismal job climate. The unemployment rate reached 6.4% in June, the highest since April 1994 before edging back to 6.2% in July. Last month, there were nearly 2 million unemployed workers who had been looking for a job for 27 weeks or longer, an increase of 276,000 since January, according to the Department of Labor.
For the homeless, getting or keeping a job without a place to live is a challenge. About 20% of homeless are employed, according to the Conference of Mayors.
More of those workers losing their jobs aren't able to afford a stint of unemployment. Nearly a quarter of Americans would be late on mortgages, rent or other bills if a single paycheck were delayed, according to a 2003 poll by Automatic Data Processing.
The proportion of disposable personal income that Americans are putting into savings was about 8% in the 1970s but has tumbled to less than 4% today, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis.
Layoff led to homelessness
All it took was a layoff to push Robert Garner over the edge. About a month ago, the 40-year-old was laid off from his job at a packing plant and could no longer afford the $475 rent for his mobile home in Lima, Ohio. So he packed a backpack with whatever he could carry — clothes, a razor and sleeping bag — and hitchhiked 122 miles to Cincinnati, where he wound up sleeping under a bridge. He sold his car because he couldn't keep up with the payments.
He went to soup kitchens for meals or worked odd jobs to pay for food. Drop-in homeless shelters provided a place for him to shower. In late July, he got a $9.50-an-hour job driving a forklift for the Ohio Valley Goodwill Industries Rehabilitation Center, which also provided him with housing.
"The economy has really taken a toll on manufacturing," Garner says. "It was hard. I don't like to take things from people. I like to help myself. In a way, you get a sense of hopelessness. But I tried to keep a nice, clean appearance."
Other factors putting more families and workers at risk:
•Soaring housing costs. The median price for existing homes is projected to rise 6% in 2003 to $167,800, according to the National Association of Realtors.
"The economy has been in a down phase before, but this time housing prices have really continued to skyrocket. It's been a huge factor in the explosion in homelessness among families," says Mitchell Netburn, director of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, which coordinates homeless programs in the city and county. The median home price in the Los Angeles area for the first quarter of 2003 was $307,900. That's up 16.2% from the first quarter of 2002.
As prices go up, it becomes harder for the poor to purchase a home or even afford rent.
Nearly 28 million households — one in four — reported spending more than 30% of their income on housing, according to the Millennial Housing Commission. That amount is more than the government deems affordable, the commission reports. Median monthly gross rent in the nation climbed to $602 in 2000 from $481 a month in 1980, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
•Mounting debt. Consumer debt is growing, and more homeowners are taking out loans to pay credit card debts. Foreclosures are up. Last year, there were 1.5 million bankruptcy filings by individuals — the highest on record — up from 289,000 non-business filings in 1980, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute.
Though about 20% of the homeless live in the suburbs, the rise in homelessness is mostly manifesting itself in major urban areas.
In Boston, the number of homeless women increased by 10% in 2002 compared with 2001, according to a city census. In San Francisco, the city reports that the homeless population in 2002 was 8,640, an 18% rise over 2001.
•Lack of financial safety nets. The increase in homelessness and hunger is overwhelming some cities and shelters: An average of 30% of the requests for emergency shelter by homeless people — and 38% of the requests by homeless families — are estimated to have gone unmet in 2002, according to the Conference of Mayors.
In 60% of cities, shelters may have to turn away homeless families because of a lack of resources. Many cities have shelters that specifically accommodate families, but even then, husbands and wives often are separated.
In addition, more welfare recipients are reaching the five-year federal limit for receiving benefits. At the same time, philanthropic donations to homeless services are down along with overall charitable giving. That means there are fewer financial safety nets for workers who are already living on the financial precipice. And unemployment benefits aren't always a resource — in fact, less than half of laid-off workers qualify under varying state eligibility requirements.
David Smith, 46, worked in the stock room at Kmart until he was laid off earlier this year. He applied for public assistance but had already reached his lifetime cap for receiving federal benefits. Unable to pay his rent, Smith went to a homeless shelter. He is now living in housing provided by The Doe Fund, a New York-based organization that employs and supports the homeless in efforts to become self-sufficient through work.
"Without a job, I couldn't pay my rent," Smith says. "It's stressful when you go to the soup kitchen. I want to save money and get my life back on track."
Suit-and-tie homeless
Signs of the increase abound. Alfred Thompson, a job trainer at Goodwill Industries of Kentucky in Louisville, says one of his homeless clients lost his job and is living in his Mercedes, which is paid for, while he seeks employment.
At St. Bartholomew's Church in Manhattan, a mosaic-domed landmark near The Waldorf-Astoria hotel, more than 100 homeless men and women arrive on Monday and Wednesday mornings for a stick-to-your-ribs breakfast of beans-and-franks, corned beef hash or chicken stew.
"We see people dressed in suits and ties come in before they head out to look for work," says the Rev. John David Clarke, director of community ministries. "They can save a buck or two."
In Louisville, job seeker Reginald Cook, 53, dons his best interview clothes and shaves before heading out to try to land a steady job. At night, he calls the Salvation Army Center of Hope his home.
He arrives after 5 p.m. for a shower and reads a bit of a book before lying down on his dormitory-style bed to sleep. Before coming here, he'd lived with his parents in Birmingham, Ala., after being injured on the job. He left in hopes of finding better employment opportunities in Kentucky. Even though it's meant not having a home, he still believes the job opportunities are better in Louisville. "It's hard because quite a number of people are laid off, and you can't find the work,' " Cook says.
For William and Sue Kamstra, it took five months to lose everything. The couple and their three children were living in a three-bedroom home in Bellflower, Calif. They had a two-car garage and fruit trees in the backyard. He earned more than $40,000 a year working in customer service, providing operational support in the music division of Yamaha.
But then they were beset by personal financial problems, which caused them to miss house payments. Their home was foreclosed upon. They planned to rent an apartment, but then William lost his job, and they were unable to get back on their feet. An accident left their van totaled, so they had no way to get around. They stored their belongings and moved to a hotel until their money ran out in June. Now, they spend their nights at the Union Rescue Mission, a Los Angeles shelter.
During the day, William looks for work while Sue takes the children to the library. In 20 years of marriage, this is the first time the Kamstras have been homeless.
"If he hadn't gotten laid off, we'd have rented an apartment. We would have been OK," Sue says. The children expect to resume school in the area this fall.
"This is horrendous. You have a feeling of such alienation," says William, 43. His daughter is 14, and his sons are 12 and 11. "You have this view of homeless people, but I have one beer a year on my birthday, and I don't do drugs. But there are a lot of families here, a lot of children and babies in strollers."
posted on August 12, 2003 12:50:38 PM new
Skylite, other than feeble attempts at insults, do you have any original thoughts or must everything be cut and paste with you?
What the hell is a Rescue Mission doing having a "CEO", seems to me they should be using that salary to help those that need it.
posted on August 12, 2003 01:11:56 PM new
What's insulting Twelve, is President Bush continuing to allow this type of outrageous spending under the guise of protection, when the people he's trying to protect can't afford to eat or house themselves.
