Benefits: Jobless relieved life raft still afloat

[Still a Democrat]

...

President Barack Obama extended unemployment benefits for Smith and millions of other Americans when he signed tax-cut legislation Friday. It helps people who have been out of work more than 26 weeks but less than 99 weeks, though the benefits vary greatly from state to state.

They could be just about anybody. People with college degrees and people with no higher education. People who have resorted to living out of their cars. People who have cashed out their retirement savings. People who once held six-figure jobs and people like Smith, who was laid off from her job as a department manager at a jeweler's a year and a half ago.

What unites them is the bitterness in their voices as they talk about how badly they need unemployment benefits — to clothe their children, to pay for heat, to save their homes from foreclosure.

...

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hg20c0EGoaFzyYqY62b4SEz_tSgg?docId=4d756cb7afd248aa8184c2b11ae01a7e

[kentuck]

1. This is the argument the President should have made.

If, for nothing else, the enlightenment of the people.

But, he didn't. He made a deal that the Congress did not even know about. Not acceptable.

[Still a Democrat]

2. He never argued on their behalf?

Really?

He did in fact, as well as cutting a deal to keep them in benefits.

[Newest Reality]

3. Meanwhile, prepare for the

waves of '99ers that will be hitting the skids as they walk the tight-wire without any nets. We have hundreds of thousands on the brink of saying goodbye to everything they once valued and with them will go spouses and many, many children of all ages. They will enter the ranks of the baggy-eyed, homeless, unwashed legions of the Underclass

When you are already living precariously on the edge, even a strong breeze can knock you into oblivion. Those of them who have no family members to live with or who have no more resources to survive on will enter the dark cloud of abandonment by their country and fellow citizens. For the most part, they will un-exist.

We know that the bell is tolling loudly and with increasing frequency. Do we have to ask for whom it tolls, still?

[aquart]

4. Remember what the unemployed were called in the Depression?

Bums? Tramps? No-accounts? "Will work for food." The ones who showed up at the back door willing to do anything for a meal.

I guess a lot of people here don't remember or never read a history book. All those people desperate to work, regarded as nothing.