Over Two Million Desperate Americans Are Being Thrown to the WOLVES by Congress RIGHT NOW!
It is rather astounding that such a large group of Americans can be thrust into abject poverty and the story is hardly a blip in the news cycle these days. Congress has yet to pass an extension of unemployment benefits to over two million laid off workers in America. While this is primarily the fault of the GOP, there is also gamesmanship being played by Harry Reid on this issue. By November there will be FIVE million laid off workers that will have been denied extended benefits. Make no mistake! This is a disaster of biblical scale for many of these millions. They are losing everything. Savings, retirement accounts, cars, homes, apartments and more are going up in smoke. Even here on DU the issue is hardly brought up.
I have a sibling that is going down the tubes right now and the rest of the family is coming together to do what we can. It is a heartbreaking to see this happen to a man that has worked so hard all his life. It isn't just the fact that he is losing everything, it is the destruction of his spirit that is equally as tragic. He is broken.
I hope all of you DU'ers take a moment to reflect on your good fortune of having a job and I hope all of you will be champions for the millions of your countrymen that are facing catastrophe if the opportunity arises. I would urge all of you to shoot a quick note to your Senators to urge them to pass the UI extension bill.
Cheers!
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I do believe you have that correct. 
These people suck big time..
My niece has family, but unfortunately, they are mostly estranged from her. On the bright side, she
does have me and her boyfriend, so she seems to be holding up okay.
Your brothers are out of work too, I see. I'm glad they're getting by...It seems they have a caring
sister in you.
That being said, this is the kind of thing that infuriates me about the Repukes..I do hope the 1 plus million denied
the extension of benefits will REMEMBER this at election time. 
it is exactly what is needed now. This is so wrong, the way this country jerks its own citizens around and lets people in need just fall by the wayside. I call it criminal the way they exploit and abuse. But as you say, more are waking up and coming together.
Co-housing, community, sharing resources, local action
are still disappointed that they didn't get their Great Depression II in '08.
If they keep fucking around, they'll get it.
As Nine Eleven has become the backbone of a new societal and governmental dictate, that continually demands massive sums (that seem to total almost to infinity) to be spent on "needed weaponry" such as drones, and that even more money is needed in terms of Surveillance, yet not a penny can be spent on people's basic needs.
By design, the Middle Class is witnessing the loss of housing, including homes they had almost paid off, they see the loss of jobs to overseas call centers and manufacturing bases, they experience the fact that there are no jobs for their children that will help their children pay off the amounts of money that are needed to pay the student loans,etc.
Recently a headline in the Record Bee informed citizens here in Lake County Calif. that one of those stoopid MRAP vehicles was being "gifted" to the County by county officials to the south of us.
So while we have no money for the needed repairs for the community swimming pool (Cost: between $ 15,000 and $ 30,000) and we have no needed funds, (again under $ 30,000,) to insulate a hillside where a predicted landslide will close the main road to the hospital! yet we have a "gift" of a vehicle that was designed to shelter and transport our troops while they were in Iraq, and even to shield them from IEDs. And this vehicle cost us taxpayers some $ 350,000!!
Remember how Obama let us know last summer that if we would just let him take on a new war, one involving the nation of Syria, he could find the the money for it? Yet he certainly does not take to the bully pulpit to plead a case for the citizens in this country to have the jobs returned to the USA, to have unemployment benefits for the unemployed, etc.
I can only image the soil disturbances at the graves of FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, JFK if they are privy to what is happening in this country. I totally expect both candidates for the presidency in 2016 to re-phrase Eisenhower's famous speech so that it no longer reads:
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final
sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.
It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.
It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.
It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.
We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking.
This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.
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But instead I suspect and expect these words to be re-written by both candidates in 2016 to lambast the poor for those pennies they still hold, and those possessions that they have not yet pawned or sold for cheap, as those pennies and personal items represent a withholding from the military beast that needs and deserves MORE AND MORE AND MORE.
sorry to hear about your relative
are vicious and evil. Just sayin'.
