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1,800 Mainers among jobless workers losing benefits Saturday-Just What We Need-Sad Alert
Bangor Daily News ^ | 28 December 2002

Posted on 12/27/2002 11:50:30 PM PST by SheLion

WASHINGTON — AP — Federal unemployment benefits will get cut off Saturday for almost 800,000 jobless workers because Congress failed to pass an extension before adjourning for the year. There’s little holiday hope for those unemployed workers, and the 95,000 each week thereafter who start losing state benefits.

 Congress won’t reconvene until Jan. 7. “Regrettably, the House Republican leadership turned their backs on these families and refused to act, and the administration chose not to intervene before Congress adjourned,” Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle said Friday. “This inaction by Republicans was unconscionable then and it is even more so now.”

The Democratic-led Senate approved a comprehensive benefits extension costing anywhere from $2 billion to $5 billion that would have covered people affected by Saturday’s cutoff and another 1 million who already had exhausted all benefits. The House passed a more modest $900 million plan of five extra weeks for workers in a few states with high unemployment rates. But the two sides failed to resolve their differences.

President Bush, after weeks of criticism from Democrats, ended his silence on the issue in his radio address last week and said extending benefits for the unemployed should be the “first order of business” for the new Congress. But he failed to say how many people should be covered and for how long, or which plan he favors. In Maine, about 1,800 workers will lose their benefits when the money runs out on Saturday, said Edward Gorham, president of the Maine AFL-CIO.

 


TOPICS: Activism/Chapters; Culture/Society; Government; US: Maine
KEYWORDS: banking; budget; business; debt; economy; financial; industry; markets; taxes; trade
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To: buccaneer81
Dad retired fom the Air Force in 1969 and died suddenly in 1972 at the age of 40. But I'm glad to hear your son in law carried on with SAC.

Sorry to hear about your loss. My daddy died too. Aunts and uncles die. Grandparents die. But your parents are going to live forever! When you find out they don't, it's devestating!

21 posted on 12/28/2002 12:58:13 AM PST by SheLion
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To: chasio649
codeword: service sector=$7.00/hour

???

22 posted on 12/28/2002 12:58:44 AM PST by SheLion
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To: Jhoffa_
Willie will not be pleased at others cutting themselves in on his action like this..

Willie????? Must be the late night hour. You lost me. heh!

23 posted on 12/28/2002 1:00:18 AM PST by SheLion
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To: SheLion
the buzz word for our economy for the last 20 years has been service sector oriented...non manufaturing. Which means for the most part if you are not a professional...$7.00/hour retail if you are lucky...most start at around $6.00/hour. I'm sure there will be big city folks that flame me and mention free trade and all the other baloney...go ahead.
24 posted on 12/28/2002 1:04:54 AM PST by chasio649
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To: SheLion
Oh, it's an inside joke.

Willie Green is kind of known around here for posting stories about lay-off's and jobs moved overseas. I think he actively seeks them out and posts them.

He's liable to key your car for cutting in on his territory like this, make you pay protection or something..

:)

25 posted on 12/28/2002 1:05:08 AM PST by Jhoffa_
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To: SheLion
Can anyone cite where the U.S. Constitution enumerates the power of the federal government to take money from taxpayers and redistribute it to people who are not working? Don't spend too much time looking. It is completely unconstitutional. As is most of the distribution of taxpayer funds by politicians. Socialists like Daschle are content to spew venom in the direction of the Republicans for not continuing an unconstitutional practice to buy votes. Socialists are such compassionate people....especially when they can do it with other people's money.
26 posted on 12/28/2002 1:10:02 AM PST by Myrddin
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To: SheLion
But your parents are going to live forever! When you find out they don't, it's devestating!

The only thing worse would be outliving your kids. That has to be the worst. Come next June, I'll be older than my Dad ever lived. That's kind of weird. But that's life.

27 posted on 12/28/2002 1:11:54 AM PST by buccaneer81
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To: Myrddin
It is unconstitutional on the Federal level, however like Social Security there's a good argument for it.

These people were robbed of that money.

Look at SS, you don't have a choice, you are going to pay.. But if they did the constitutional thing and ended it tomorrow, then by all right's they (fedgov) owe a debt to the people they stole from all their lives.

28 posted on 12/28/2002 1:13:20 AM PST by Jhoffa_
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To: SheLion
Reminds me of Marie Antoinette right before they lobbed off her head in response to the starving of the masses "Feed them cake."

Didn't our illustrious congressmen and senators enjoy a nice, hefty (self-voted) pay raise?

Seriously, there needs to be a grass roots effort to shift pay increase authorizations from the congress and senate back to their constituents on a "compliance" standard based on whether or not they did the work the voters hired them to do in the first place.

29 posted on 12/28/2002 1:18:16 AM PST by Happy2BMe
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Comment #30 Removed by Moderator

To: Happy2BMe
"Didn't our illustrious congressmen and senators enjoy a nice, hefty (self-voted) pay raise?"

Sure, an irrelevantly small one. The pay raises for all of Congress combined could buy maybe a dozen cruise missiles, or extend welfare benefits for the whole country for about two hours. Heck, I'd gladly pay Congresscreatures a million dollars a year if that's what it took to get them to uphold their oaths to bear true faith to the Constitution.

31 posted on 12/28/2002 1:33:37 AM PST by Fabozz
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To: Fabozz
"Heck, I'd gladly pay Congresscreatures a million dollars a year if that's what it took to get them to uphold their oaths to bear true faith to the Constitution."

Sorry, but I can't go along with you on that one...

IMHO, the folks on capital hill are increasingly distant and out of touch with the hard realities back in the home districts.

Many of the professional polititians don't even return to the district that hired them when they don't win reelection (e.g., Tim Hutchinson, AR).

Instead of a $1M raise, I'd like to try witholding a paycheck or two to get their attention once in a while and breath a fresh whiff of reality into their special interest brown-nosing nostrils.

32 posted on 12/28/2002 1:39:06 AM PST by Happy2BMe
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To: Happy2BMe
"Instead of a $1M raise, I'd like to try witholding a paycheck or two to get their attention once in a while..."

But that won't work—most members of Congress are already millionaires, far beyond the realm where witholding a $10,000 paycheck or two will have any effect at all. For one thing, campaigning for office is a year-long full-time job, and you have to be fairly well-off to even contemplate it. For another thing, you cannot run for office without raising money, and to raise money you have to have wealthy friends you can tap for support, and most people with wealthy friends are themselves wealthy. Even those in Congress who are not already millionaires can expect to see their private-sector incomes shoot up when they leave office, as they go on to lobbying firms and other cushy "revolving door" positions.

The problem with politics isn't money, it's power, and the only answer is to cut back that power—which, coincidentally enough, is exactly what the Constitution was intended to do.

33 posted on 12/28/2002 1:57:26 AM PST by Fabozz
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To: Jhoffa_
SS goes right from your paycheck deduction to the checking account of a recipient. I count every penny contributed as lost. Many senior citizens have collected amounts far in excess of their contributions. The politicians aren't happy with that travesty. Now, they want to exacerbate the problem by stealing more money to pay for prescription drugs. They know this will buy them votes from the aging baby boomers in the future.

If you take the SS deductions from my paycheck and the amount matched by my employer, there would be enough money to hire a minimum wage employee. Businesses could actually get some productive work out of that money instead of supporting a non-working person in idleness. A business is not a jobs program. It exists to make money. Employees are hired only when needed to make the business productive enough to meet the marketplace demand.

The minimum wage is a crock too. It sets the minimum price for unskilled labor. No worker worth a damn will stay at minimum wage for very long. Many with no experience will never even get hired because the price is too high for an unskilled individual. They won't have a chance to demonstrate their real worth to an employer.

You mentioned "these people were robbed of that money". I submit that the unemployment benefits are taken from the taxpayer. No person receiving those benefits has explicitly paid for unemployment benefits as such. Social security is explicitly deducted. The right thing to do would be to fund an real account (like a 401K) with the amount taken from an employee and cease taking further deductions. If you haven't paid, you aren't entitled to a refund of monies not already disbursed to you via SS benefits. End of theft by the government.

34 posted on 12/28/2002 2:07:56 AM PST by Myrddin
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To: Brimack34
"my unemployment goes up too cover it."

Unemployment insurance is an employer expense, not deducted from your pay, and the rate that your employer pays is based on how many of their employees have drawn on their account and how much.

Overall unemployment has nothing to do with how much your employer pays into the system.

The only way you are paying is when Congress extends benefits to the point that it exceeds the miniscule amount that is payed into the federal unemployment insurance account by employers and is paid out of the general fund.
35 posted on 12/28/2002 2:19:12 AM PST by dalereed
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To: chasio649
chasio, want to hear something sad? When I was a SATO Government Travel Agent on Loring Air Force Base up here, I was making $8.64 an hour. I forget what I started at. But 7.5 years later, I was up to $8.64.

I ask one of the girls at SATO down at Rome, New York, and she was making $13 dollars an HOUR doing the same work as me! And she even had less time on the job!

I ask my boss "what is going on here," and she told me that it was because of "my location." Maine. Boy, was I pissed!

36 posted on 12/28/2002 4:12:52 AM PST by SheLion
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To: SheLion
Money to pay for the war has to come from somewhere. Chasio reminds that there are jobs in the service sector. That is a big chunk of Maine economy...but that will be cut soon. This war is a distraction from what is really happening economically to this country.

A few days ago, the Iraqis shot down a Predator and the commentator said "no big thing"..yeah, that missile would pay for a new school or a real cure for cancer.

37 posted on 12/28/2002 5:07:50 AM PST by rubbertramp
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To: rubbertramp
Money to pay for the war has to come from somewhere.

But this was back in 1994, and there was no war. It's just the "cost of living," so they say. But the cost of living up here is really expensive. It just doesn't make sense to me.

38 posted on 12/28/2002 5:18:23 AM PST by SheLion
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To: SheLion
Another good thread,Lioness. My SIL has his own business of self and wife. He hired his brother once but when there was no more business,he had to continue paying unemployment ins for his brother. So his bro was collecting and my SIL was broke. Now,get some sleep.
39 posted on 12/28/2002 5:28:17 AM PST by larryjohnson
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To: SheLion
The employment section in the Memphis paper is thin, real thin, the thinest I've ever seen it in 17 years. Truck driving and security guard jobs seem to domineer what there is of it.
40 posted on 12/28/2002 5:38:42 AM PST by GailA
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