The price to be paid

 

Republicans = Losers

Peace,

emaycee

Oh, here's a surprise--corporations are still fucking us over

the “worker shortage” is corporate PR spin for a capital strike. They’re holding off on hiring in an attempt to force workers to take lower wages. They even try to enlist customers on their side with those bullshit “sorry we’re slow, no one wants to work right now!” signs. https://t.co/kkKcWcxxdB

— Natalie Shure (@nataliesurely) October 8, 2021

The Republican Party Is Now a Fascist Cult Just Like Nazi Germany

Peace,

emaycee

 

Elections matter

And keep feeding your family...

 Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer this week vetoed republican efforts to end the $300 supplement the federal government has been adding to our unemployment benefits...just as news broke that the red states who have ended the extra benefits have done nothing other than to deprive their economies of the extra dollars that could have been spent by its citizens had they left well enough alone.  And that's what they deserve for trying to score political points instead of looking out for the best interests of their states and their citizens.

And this is just another in a long line of reasons why elections matter--instead of being at the beck and call of corporations that won't pay their employees a living wage or the notoriously worker unfriendly Chamber of Commerce like republican leaders, Democrats are out there making sure that the people on whose backs this country is carried are getting enough to feed their families until they can find decent paying jobs in industries they've spent their lives preparing for.

There very well might be forty percent of this country who are happy to screw themselves financially to own the libs, but the other sixty percent are firmly in the Screw That Bullshit Camp.

And those are the voters we need to be reaching out to in the 2022 elections and beyond.

Taxing the Wealthy Is Good Politics for the Democratic Party

Peace,

emaycee

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone

Especially if you're looking for dignity in the Catholic Church

 Oh, here's a surprise--the Catholic Church in America is making a pathetic spectacle of itself once again--apparently they can sink below being Perverts 'r' Us .  Seems American Catholic Bishops voted overwhelmingly  this week to rebuke Catholic politicians (read Joe Biden) for receiving communion while supporting abortion rights.

For a religion that's so high and mighty concerning the sanctity of life, they sure stayed awfully tight-lipped while Donald Trump played politics with COVID-19 and stood idly by while over 600,000 Americans died because he thought it was a "blue state" problem.  For a faith that requires its parishioners to confess their sins (most notably the breaking of any of the Ten Commandments), they didn't seem to much mind Donald Trump's adulterous affairs with hookers while his wife was taking care of their newborn and the whole "thou shalt not bear false witness" didn't seem to bother them while Donald Trump told over thirty thousand lies in four years.  And for a church that advocates that we take care of the least of our brothers, they've turned a blind eye to Trump trying to cut SNAP benefits to please the bloodthirsty republican base and republican governors taking food out of Americans' mouths while they cozy up to Corporate America by cutting supplemental unemployment benefits.

The hypocrisy of these pieces of shit is unfathomable.

How any self-respecting Democrat who is a Catholic can still remain in the Church is completely beyond me.

You Have a Choice:  Pass a Voting Rights Bill, or Welcome Fascism to America

Peace,

emaycee

Will the last person leaving Montana please turn out the lights?

And fuck the small fry country

 The Governor of Montana, Greg Gianforte, has announced that effective June 27th, Montana is cutting off its residents from federal unemployment benefits (which include the extra $300 a week plus the extension for those long term unemployed) in the hope of forcing people back to work because Montana is experiencing a severe labor shortage.  It is estimated this will cost Montana workers from $3000 to $4500 each.

To make clear, as Montana is a solidly red state, republicans are saying they are more than happy to make their own voters suffer financially to help businesses.  They are also explicitly sanctioning slave labor--forcing workers to return to work in the midst of a pandemic for peanuts shows exactly the same level of callousness as did the plantation owners of old.

Frankly, if we truly did live in a capitalist system, the easiest way to get workers to return to work would be for businesses to raise salaries enough to make it worthwhile to Montana's workers.  The state itself could raise its minimum wage significantly.  But as republicans have repeatedly shown, they do not give a whit either for capitalism or people.

This is just another in a long line of sops to their wealthy benefactors--the only thing free about our supposedly free market is the gifts republicans continue to give to Big Business at the financial expense of the rest of us.

It's Not Just an Infrastructure Bill, It's a Jobs Plan, Too

Peace,

emaycee

There's no there there

Me, me, me, me, me, me.....

 Word this week that Joe Manchin's opposition to ending the filibuster, as well as his determination to have republican votes on Joe Biden's infrastructure bill, are built upon his desire to polish his political legacy is laughable to the point of being pathetic.

At best Manchin's legacy will be a footnote that he was that rare Democratic candidate who proved so personally popular in his home state (West Virginia) that he could overcome his state's decidedly republican lean and win multiple elections (no small feat, but not all that historically noteworthy).  At worst, Manchin's legacy will be a footnote that he cost ordinary Americans thousands of dollars by requiring that the COVID Relief Package reduce the extra unemployment benefit from $400 to $300 a week and cut the time extension by two months just to get his necessary vote (guaranteed that his required cuts didn't affect anyone in his family).

Other than that, Manchin is a forgettable Senator from a forgettable state who a hundred years from now will have his name be listed in a Wikipedia entry as one of numerous forgettable Senators from the state of West Virginia.

Though Wikipedia should note that Manchin was far more concerned with what was best for his legacy than what was best for the American people, and was therefore nothing more than your typical asshole politician.

It's Not Just an Infrastructure Bill, It's a Jobs Plan, Too

Peace,

emaycee

Brother Can You Spare a Dime?

Other than Paul Krugman, generally when I read an article by an economist my eyes glaze over after a paragraph or two and I scan down to the bottom to get the highlights and move on to other reading.  This piece by Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz for Vanity Fair--and it's great reference to our governement:  of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%--was not one of those dreary articles, and even better, has got me to thinking about the state of economic well-being for those of us who make up the poor, the working class, and the middle class.

It isn't pretty.

State legislatures are more interested in helping business than in helping us--South Carolina joined Michigan (fucking republicans), Missouri, Arkansas, and Florida in cutting the number of weeks one can collect unemployment ostensibly believing that cutting payroll taxes for businesses would create jobs.  Har-de-har-har.  One idiot actually said they had to cut it because some numb nut business owner had people turning down his job offers because they could make more on unemployment.  One supposes it never occured to the pinheads in the South Carolina legislature that the pay rates being offered were the problem.  Needless to say, the feelings of their constituents don't matter, as noted here in Michigan where republicans pushed through their $1.8 billion tax cuts for businesses despite Michigan residents being overwhelmingly against it.

Thanks to the republicans being in the White House for 20 of the last 30 years the Supreme Court is now made up of the best justices corporate money could buy--Scalia, Alito, Roberts, Thomas, Kennedy--and they somehow seem to have misinterpreted the Constitution as being a document that protects the powerful and not the powerless.  It's not bad enough that corporations can now buy our elections, they can pretty much now cheat, swindle, and maim their clientele with impunity.

Guess what?  CEO pay now exceeds the levels it had reached before the Great Recession.  Guess what else?  Though I'm sure this won't surprise most people, ours doesn't.  How long, do you suppose, is it before ordinary people say enough is enough and begin to demand their fair share--by any means necessary?  My guess is not much longer.

Bad news from the No, Shit Sherlock Files:  it seems a new study proclaims what anyone who has ever worked a minimum wage job already knows...you can't survive financially on minimum wage.  Which is especially unfortunate because we seem to be moving in the direction of minimum wage jobs for the vast majority of us.  Back to the future anyone?

All of you with health insurance you received through your job raise your hands...not so fast there, Mrs. Jackson!  Work for a small business that provides health insurance?  All it takes is one debilitating illness of a co-worker and voila!  Health insurance rates rise to prohibitive levels (intentionally) and your company soon finds it can no longer afford the premiums, and next thing you know, no health insurance for you and your family.  And the problem with Obamacare--other than it doesn't go far enough--was what, exactly?

The class divide keeps growing--this is another of those "No, you've got to be shitting me!" pieces, but while we struggle to put food on our tables, Saks Fifth Avenue is doubling down on the rich.  And why shouldn't they?  Every time we turn around the republicans are giving away our future to put more money in those who already have enough's pockets.  And all those claims of how broke we are to justify cuts to education and healthcare and the poor?  Complete and total bullshit.  But it sells newspapers and T.V. news advertising and income inequality (which will be the downfall of this nation) does not.

The point is not to be Donnie Downer--most of us realize how shitty the economy and our own personal finances are these days.  The point is to remember--and get the Democratic Party off its ass to promote--that these problems, these issues, this unfairness, this inequality, was created by republicans who are absolutely no different than the boneheads they were from 2000-2008.  The only difference is now they realize how short-lived their reign can be and are striving to take as much away from us as they can before they are out of power.

Heaven help us if we don't fight back with everything we have.

Peace,
emaycee

North Dakota it is!

Earlier this year I made the point (more or less) that the choice facing Michigan as a member of the freezing fucking cold belt (those states roughly in Michigan's latitude, all of which are known for their arctic like weather) was whether we wanted to be a middle of the pack state (Wisconsin or Minnesota) or a state that basically no one except those who live there give a fuck about (North Dakota or South Dakota). Looks like Gov. Snyder is making that choice for us...and the winner is...North Fucking Dakota!

Woo-fucking-hoo!

Being a former CEO, Gov. Snyder likes the unilateral power that comes with such a job, and he's doing his best to make the job of governor as dictatorial as possible with his emergency financial managers and public sector union busting. Give Brian Dickerson his props--kind of amazing how much republicans hate government having power over us until it involves busting public unions. I smell...bullshit in the air!

In addition to being able to cut your pay, dissolve your union, and oust your democratically elected leaders at the whim of an emergency financial "manager," Michigan citizens will now also be able to collect, at twenty weeks, the least lengthy unemployment benefits in the nation. Thanks once again, Governor! According to Jase "I Hate The Middle Class and The Poor" Bolger, Michigan's Speaker of the House, this was needed to strike "a balance between helping the unemployed in the short term and helping the job providers in the long term." What the mother fucking fuck? Corporations in Michigan need another tax break on top of their $1.8 billion giveaway? Jesus fucking Christ, most of our unemployment crisis has been caused by the ineptitude of the auto industry executives and we want to reward them even more for being incompetent?

Sometimes it seems as if I've entered an alternate universe where down is up, hot is cold, and logic is nonexistent.

Peace,
emaycee