Unemployment and Welfare Entitlements

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly – no I’m not talking about the book, nor the movie. I am talking about the way some Americans are treated by systems that are meant to help and improve their status in life. I see Unemployment Insurance as a necessary evil and Welfare Entitlements as just as bad. While I am a liberty Democrat, I am not so liberty as to want to give away the people’s money without anything in return.

I would have expected our elected officials to have resolved this problem prior to my having to provide them with the necessary guidelines to achieve an end result that makes everybody happy. Here is my take…

Any decision to support an applicant for Welfare or Unemployment should have been accompanied by a solution to get that person off of the ‘social’ support that they requested.

Let me explain… currently, if you are on Welfare, you are required to do the same things that the unemployed are doing when they are receiving payments – look for a job! In some instances, Welfare recipients are required to come into their local office and use the facilities there to find a job. If you have children, you are required to request a voucher for the money that you would need to pay a baby-sitter while you cut out employment notices.

Why not institute this… ascertain the qualifications of the person receiving benefits to see where they stand in the job market. In most instances, re-tooling the individual to better meet the requirements/demands of the job market gives them a better chance to find a job sooner that will keep them employed for some time to come. The sooner the person can qualify for a job currently in demand by the job market, the sooner they are off of unemployment/welfare. Sounds too easy – doesn’t it; sometimes the best solution can be the easiest solution… then why is it not policy?

I asked an official within the Anne Arundel County Welfare Department why was it so hard for this idea to take root. His explanation… we are not required to re-educate people coming to us for help. The Welfare System is not responsible for re-tooling its applicants so that they can get a job and get off of Welfare – duh! I am thinking that the average person on Welfare collects those entitlements (food stamps, WIC, etc.) to the tune of more than thirty thousand dollars per year – multiply that by five years and you could have supported the schooling that would have gotten that person into the job market. It takes approximately six to eight months to finish school to be a Licensed Practical Nurse – we need qualified persons in the medical field. It takes even less time to produce a plumber, electrician, or other skill set that will keep a man working.

The same can be applied to unemployment recipients. No one wants to be receiving a ‘handout’ as has been said so many times by Republicans. Truly, the situation has never been worst for minorities – Blacks in particular! Education is the answer for any situation that involves destitute persons. The lack of an education is the common factor in all instances of the poor. A Rocket Scientist may be out of a job because of a layoff, but he is not going to be out of work for long. The same cannot be said for an uneducated man. Our responses in the past have been based along this policy line. Somebody has to get smart and make the change!

In a democracy, silence is not golden; it is condonance in the face of injustices; it is fear, where the thought of reprisal fosters control – Rodney A. Davis

It's the Economy, stupid!

You can’t charge, spend, and give away your savings and expect to prosper. When the Bush tax cuts were first introduced I was using the Washington Post’s Forum to get my point across that Bush’s tax cut would be the death of the United States as a world economic power! I was right then, and I will be right this time when I tell you that a win by the McCain ticket will be the death stroke for the United States and here is why...
Taxes collected are like you and I getting paid after a hard weeks work. How are we paying the bills with these tax cuts in place… by cutting State entitlements, reducing the benefits to our brave soldiers coming back for medical treatment, and a host of other social programs that benefit the majority of our citizens.
a. Bush Tax Cuts actually rewarded the rich and penalized the poor. McCain wants to make the tax cuts permanent. Please read the handwriting on the wall before it’s too late!
b. The first year the tax cuts went into effect Sachs Fifth Avenue got a fourth quarter raise in profits while Wal-Mart lost 1.6% in sales over the same period. What does that tell you? It tells you that the rich got a huge refund and everybody else pennies on every dollar the rich got. Personally, my return was 27,000.00! That’s right! Previously to that year, my returns had been averaging 2700 to 3000.00.
In the past middle class jobs, I am speaking of jobs in the fifty to sixty thousand dollar range, have supported the nation. Picture in your mind a vase – narrow at the top and bottom and wide in the middle and you get the idea that I am trying to put forward. The middle class is the middle of the vase. The middle class is where the bulk of the taxes are collected. You can’t out-source the middle class jobs and expect the tax base to support two wars and as well as support the government’s other responsibilities. As we have been able to see in hindsight, it can’t be done.
The Secretary of the Treasury would have you believe that the main reason we are hemorrhaging in the real estate industry is because of bad loans and the only way to stop the hemorrhaging is to buy out the banks that are failing and take over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Not so, if you reason as to why they are losing money – people aren’t paying their mortgages’.
a. The president favors propping up the financial institutions at cost to both you and I. The house owners lose twice. They lose their houses and their credit ratings go in the mud. The end result is a loss of future consumers with the domino effect continuing as before. Why not refinance the loan by extending the life of the mortgage to reduce the amount of the mortgage payments – after all, if the banks are receiving something, it’s better than nothing.
b. The methods that we use to recover from this situation are not going to be nice to anyone that is caught up in the mix, but innovative ideas are wanted, no needed to reduce the strain on the economy. McCain does not have the wherewithal to produce those kinds of ideas. I say that because he does not surround himself with people that would want to introduce ideas conducive to recovery without first bouncing off the bottom. Let’s not forget that McCain has supported the President ninety-five percent of the time.
Introducing the out-of-work populous to re-tooling so that they can get back into the job-market is a top priority. McCain has yet to mention that he will formulate a system of answering this need. Obama has said that he will do two things that will determine whether the middle class will return to its rightful place as the backbone of the nation’s source of tax collection.
a. All of those individuals that have applied for and received unemployment would be eligible for re-tooling. People on welfare would be considered for re-tooling. The new GI bill guarantees that returning servicemen will form the backbone of the new degreed individuals that we need to support the needs of industries nationwide in the quest to keep America on the leading edge in technical industries.
b. Support of our children in grade schools has never been as neglected as this President has done in his tenure in office. He promised ‘no child left behind’, but that has been the complete opposite when you check his record. He has voiced support for this program, as well as others, but the President has actually cut funding to the programs that he, himself, signed into law.

To be continued…