Nick/Jan—-I saw a couple on our local newstation
with conditions similar to yours.  The TV station
covered there situation and they received a lot of
support.  You might contact your local TV news to
see if they might do a story about your conditions.
I would suggest contacting churches but I didn’t
have a lot of luck with them.  Years ago, I picked
up an elderly gentleman just outside of Parkersburg,
West Virginia.  He had one leg and smelled like he
hadn’t had a bath in ages.  He was going somewhere
in Missouri.  I ask him if he liked Mexican food.
After he said “yes” I took him with me to a Mexican
restaurant in Parkersburg I use to frequent on my
way home to North Central West Virginia.  While we
were waiting on our food I excused myself and called
Greyhound.  They wanted $75 bucks for a ticket to
Missouri.  I didn’t have that much money on me and
didn’t have a credit card.  I decided to call preachers in the Parkersburg area to see if I could
come up with the $75 bucks.  I’ll bet I called just
about every preacher in the yellow pages.  No help.
The local Catholic priest hung up on me when I said,
“Surely, you can spare a little bingo money.” Later,
I told a friend I went to college with the story.
He said, “You contacted the wrong people.  If you
had gone into a couple of bars you would have come
up with the 75 bucks.”  Sadly, he’s probably right.
After our meal I drove the old fellow to West Parkersburg, gave him 20 dollars, and dropped him
off on Rt. 50 so he could continue hitchhiking to
Missouri.  I feel for your situation.  I’ve been
there many times.  Unemployment is what keeps me
from arresting a 30 physican’s assistant at our local
hospital.  I went to the emergency room in Feb. 09
with chest pains.  After I had been there several
hours the doctor told me I hadn’t had a heart attack.
He said, “You can go home or stay and we will move
you to a more comfortable room for obervation.”  I
told him I would stay.  A couple hours later I was
still in that same emergency room bed.  I decided
to go home.  I tried to ring the nurse several times
with no success.  I, finally, removed my gown and
the heart monitors on my chest.  That got the nurse’s
attention. I told him I had decided to go home. He
told me I couldn’t leave without signing out against
hospital recommendations.  I reminded him the doctor
had said I could go home. I ask him to get the doctor.  He returned with the doctor’s assistant.
A young guy probably 30 years old.  Big guy.  Over
200 pounds. He started getting smart with me.  I
threw my gown at him.  He threw a punch at me.  I
saw the punch coming and turned my head.  He hit me
several times with his fist in the back of the head,
knocking me into the side of the bed and to the floor.  He then jumped on my back while I was on the
floor and grabbed both arms.  I was almost 69 years
old.  When I got up I said, “Buddy, the nurse just
witnessed what you did.”  The nurse said, “I didn’t
see anything.”  Other nurses came in the room, cared
for me and moved me to another room.  I didn’t have
him arrested because I am a Christian and I hated
to see him lose his job just becaused he made a
mistake.  He probably has a wife and children. Hitting a senior citizen is a felony.  He probably
wouldn’t be able to find a job.  I found out 2 days
ago he is still working in the emergency room.  I
think I have 2 years to have him arrested.  Maybe
I should do so to protect other senior citizens who
might be abused at the hospital.  I’m thinking about
it.  I have until Feb. to have him arrested.

Nick/Jan:

Good luck. The vast majority of the people on this website are net takers, not producers, so charity or job prospects will be very hard to come by here.

Hulk—-If it gets much worse these unemployed fathers
with families to feed and clothe are going to start
killing the wealthy.  That’s when, as we use to say
back in West Virginia, “the shit will hit the fan.”
I’m really suprised it hasn’t already started.
Maybe it has and just isn’t publicized. Don’t want
to put ideas into people’s heads.  If there is a high
incidence that’s when the gov’t turns the military
lose on the American people.  Americans killing
Americans and it will all be Washington’s fault.

When I ran my own business for 11 years, my partner and I paid “Unemployment Insurance” each payday - one part to the Fed and one part to the state.  Here in Indiana, the Republican controlled legislature and governor chose NOT to keep that funded at the proper rate (it’s a very business friendly place).  The fiscal year just ended and although a great deal of spending occurred, Indiana ended with a surplus - again.  The so-called “rainy day fund” was left basically untouched despite the torrential problems of the last 2 years. 

This state is conservative and libertarian to its core - so any hope of help to the unemployed or welfare folks is strictly limited.  In fact, to be unemployed here, one must document 3 legitimate job applications per week for actual open slots - a state agent actively follows these up; beyond the first 26 weeks, the applicant must accept ANY minimum wage job that gets offered, regardless of skills or applicable job background.  Welfare recipients, few though they be, have gotten far less than prior years, as documented by the local conservative newspaper. 

A local TV station investigated the details of the governor’s jobs programs over the last few years.  Of about 130 such outreach programs, only 4 actually produced new jobs.  The outreaches always involved tax abatement for prospective employers and other similar business give-aways.  In fact, the city of Indianapolis just handed over 33.5 million bucks to the local NBA team to stay in town with NO real prospect of repayment.  Actually, there is much more interest in high school and college basketball here than any pro team ever garnered (from the former Fort Wayne/later Detroit Pistons to the ABA-now-NBA Pacers). 

Keeping in mind that the current governor is Mitch Daniels, be aware that he intends to run for President at some point.  Bush labeled him “The Blade” when he was Bush’s budget director. 

It sure seems like conservatives and conservative states are in a mood to rein in ALL spending on social programs - even the ones paid for by “insurance” premiums from business. 

By the way, someone suggested a march on Washington - check out the famous Coxie’s Army march of old - veterans who were never paid their wages or pensions for military service - and treated badly in Washington. 

It’s mighty hard to pull one’s self up by the bootstraps if one is barefoot.

If you are unemployed and have a Florida address
I have an idea for you.  Submit a claim to BP for
all the mental anguish you have had to suffer for
traveling on the Florida highways with all these
angry people.  I’m not unemployed but I figure my
claim should be worth a couple million.  I’ll sign
a statement that I agree not to sue in the future.

Extending unemployment benefits achieves one thing: It extends unemployment. Yeah, yeah, I know, “chronic (six months or more) unemployment is at an all time high. It will get worse.

I fail to see where the Republican-Tea Party people seem to think that unemployment is unfunded and it makes Americans lazy and thus they refuse to seek work.

First: part of the unemployment money, half is paid for by those who are working through the tax dollars collected before you every get your paycheck and your take home pay and the other half is paid for by employers, even if they never pay one of their own employees unemployment. It used to be a known fact, that somehow has been forgotten during the Bush years and still current today as to where this funding used to come from.

Unlike the wars and a lot of other b.s spending that has been unfunded in the last decade, without question as to where the money to pay for those un-needed and wasteful things are going to come from,  the unemployment and social security funds already paid into by the working people for those purposes have been raided for the wrong things. But you never heard the repugs demand that they be funded and from where that funding was coming from before they so blindly and stupidly drug America into that quagmire.

The current claim is there are 5-6 people for every job available that are still looking-never mind the ones who gave up. At the cancer center last week one man who bring in his mother runs a funeral home and they placed an ad for 1 maintenance worker and on the first day the ad ran 67 people showed up, that tells you things are worse that the repugs want you to believe. Then with Mitch McConnell(R) wanting to lower minimum wage for wait people to less that $2.00 an hour last week shows the hatred that the repugs feel toward the American worker. Many wait staff jobs receive no tips, like my friend who waits in the snack bar of a bowling alley owned by her uncle and most the patrons are kids-who do not tip for a bag of chips and a pop. The PTB are so out of touch with the cost of housing,food, utilities, medical, insurance and other things needed for surviving living in America today that they think that by lowering a wage even more is going to help America get out of the hole they dug during the Bush years. Wait people make just over $2.00/hr in most places in my state, relying on tips to make up the rest and when they don’t it is bad for all concerned. Even a minimum wage of $7 something an hour is not a living wage and if you have a family to support it is definitely not enough, so how is lowering wages and wanting to end the safety nets of the gutted social programs we currently have now going to make America great again? It’s not.

Time for the republican party to go away and not come back. They never did and certainly do not now give a riff to what happens to the people who built this country. Their concern is with the less than 2% of the elite and mega corps and Wall St. and to hell with the other 98+% of us.

Problem with that is, when the base falls, the top come tumbling down too.They forgot that.

In Private Capitalism, when jobs aren’t provided, there is no way for good workers to survive.  It is outrageous that the Bush administration with the cooperation of the Conservative (not fiscal)/Moderate members of the Democrats allowed all the jobs to be outsourced.

Private Capitalism has failed, again.  Now it is time for a change from Private Capitalism to Social Capitalism, where everyone is a capitalist, instead of a few greedy capitalists at the top of the pyramid, so that the environment and the people as a whole will be considered in their best interest, instead of scrapping our nation and our nation’s populace for conservative profit.