discocrisco01
discocrisco01's JournalExtending Unemployment benefits
I am getting scared of running out of an unemployment extensions, but I realize it is time for them to come to an end. I totally understand our country has funded these extension for too long and I need to get off this government subsidy so I can start working day laborer and telemarketing jobs to eek out a living. It is also provide me incentive to start to cold-calling employers out of the phone book for jobs. Yes, I hate my dilemma, but not having a subsidy incentives me to take more drastic actions to look for a job.
Yes, I would like to have an accounting or even a clerical jobs that pays as low as $12.00 (I really do not care about pay, I just want to have a desk job), but the reality is that I got a take a crap job because I did not rely on the right methods to look for a job.
It is time for an extended unemployment benefits to end and to get rid of an artificial incentive not to work.
However, I live an area whether there is lots of low-paying jobs and less surplus labor than most areas so I should not be extended unemployment benefits after the end of the year.
What my real concern about losing long-term unemployment benefit is the effect on people that lives in very economically depressed regions which do not have abundance of low-paying jobs and do not have to resources to relocate. This is why I believe that the unemployment benefits need to be extended for another year. The other statistic is that the labor participation is right now is real low so there is real suppression on the true amount of labor that is potentially available work right now.
Our lawmakers seem ignore these facts and I am afraid that a lot of people are going to hungry because of government inaction. For me, I think the government should not incentive me for not using the correct methods for job-searching such as personal networking or cold-calling employers which are considered to be the correct methods for job searching.
Bitcoin a Ponzi Scheme?
Here is an interesting read on bitcoins
I hereby make a prediction: Bitcoins will go down in history as the most spectacular private Ponzi scheme in history. It will dwarf anything dreamed of by Bernard Madoff. (It will never rival Social Security, however.)
To explain my position, I must do two things. First, I will describe the economics of every Ponzi scheme. Second, I will explain the Austrian school of economics' theory of the origin of money. My analysis is strictly economic. As far as I know, it is a legal scheme -- and should be.
PONZI ECONOMICS
First, someone who no one has ever heard of before announces that he has discovered a way to make money. In the case of Bitcoins, the claim is literal. The creator literally made what he says is money, or will be money. He made this money out of digits. He made it out of nothing. Think "Federal Reserve wanna-be."
Second, the individual claims that a particular market provides unexploited arbitrage opportunities. Something is selling too low. If you buy into the program now, the person running the scheme will be able to sell it high on your behalf. So, you will take advantage of the arbitrage opportunity.
Today, with high-speed trading, arbitrage opportunities last only for a few milliseconds seconds in widely traded markets. Arbitrage opportunities in the commodity futures market last for very short periods. But in the most leveraged and sophisticated of all the futures markets, namely, the currency futures markets, arbitrage opportunities last for so brief a period of time that only high-speed computer programs can take advantage of them.
The question of the week is whether Bitcoins will become a sustainable private currency used by the black market as currency of trade or just another huge investment bubble that will soon inevitably collapse. At this time, only time can tell what direction the Bitcoin market will go.
GOP Fearmongering about Immigrants Voting is Misguided Approach to Immigration Reform
The GOP fearmongering about losing the "White Christian vote" is gross mistated as explained by the Washington Post
MANY REPUBLICANS in Congress oppose immigration reform for fear of it creating millions of new Democratic voters and putting the White House forever beyond the GOP’s electoral reach. “This is President Obama’s number one political agenda item because he knows we will never again have a Republican president, ever, if amnesty goes into effect,” Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) told World Net Daily, an online publication, in June.
That conviction helps explain the party’s opposition to a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. But there are at least two reasons to doubt the Republican assumption. One is that any plan with a chance of enactment will contain a very long timeline for naturalizing the nation’s 11 million illegal immigrants. Under the Senate bill passed in June, immigrants would have to wait 13 years to become citizens; under some House proposals, the wait would be even longer. It is folly to predict how the nation, let alone particular voting blocs, might tilt in the 2028 or 2032 presidential elections.
The second problem is the numbers themselves. Even if all 11 million of these people had magically been made eligible for citizenship — and, for those over 18, the vote — in time for last year’s presidential election, there is no evidence they would have had a major impact on the outcome or on Mr. Obama’s margin of victory in the electoral college.
For 20 Years the Nuclear Launch Code at US Minuteman Silos Was 00000000 http://bit.ly/1bw6w9
For 20 Years the Nuclear Launch Code at US Minuteman Silos Was 00000000 http://bit.ly/1bw6w9x
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You would expect better from our cryptographers, but I guess the cyrtographers were dumb as the guy who put "012345" for his workplace computer's password.
Topless Barber Charged With Unlicensed Cosmetology
The AP reports
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A woman who allegedly offered topless hairstyling services in northern Colorado faces criminal charges. But police say the problem isn't cutting hair without a top. It's cutting hair without a license.
The Longmont Times-Call reports ( http://goo.gl/Hh55PN ) 46-year old Suzette Hall was arrested Wednesday night on suspicion of practicing cosmetology without a license.
Hall's former partner says she advertised $45 topless haircuts online.
According to the arrest warrant, the former partner called police about the topless styling because she "did not believe this was safe or proper."
Police weren't able to turn up any Craigslist ads.
Hall's ex-husband told police she set up shop in Loveland and offered services as "Rebel Barber." He told police she applied for "a nude license for hairstylists," but no such license exists.
Birthism Never End
You would think the birthers are gone, but they are still there
It will never end until this President is gone.
Boris Johnson is Arse
The Guardian reports
Boris Johnson has launched a bold bid to claim the mantle of Margaret Thatcher by declaring that inequality is essential to fostering "the spirit of envy" and hailed greed as a "valuable spur to economic activity".
In an attempt to shore up his support on the Tory right, as he positions himself as the natural successor to David Cameron, the London mayor called for the "Gordon Gekkos of London" to display their greed to promote economic growth.
Delivering the annual Margaret Thatcher lecture, Johnson also called for the return of a form of grammar schools.
He qualified his unabashed admiration for the "hedge fund kings" by saying they should do more to help poorer people who have suffered a real fall in income in recent years. But he moved to forge his own brand of Conservatism, which contrasts with the early modernising of the prime minister, by claiming that it was "futile" to try to end inequality.
In highly provocative remarks, Johnson mocked the 16% "of our species" with an IQ below 85 as he called for more to be done to help the 2% of the population who have an IQ above 130.
"Whatever you may think of the value of IQ tests it is surely relevant to a conversation about equality that as many as 16% of our species have an IQ below 85 while about 2% …" he said as he departed from the text of his speech to ask whether anyone in his City audience had a low IQ. To muted laughter he asked: "Over 16% anyone? Put up your hands." He then resumed his speech to talk about the 2% who have an IQ above 130.
In my opinion, this guys is major-league arse. He simply does not have deep understanding of poverty, the roots that cause of poverty, and how capitalism creates a permanent underclass without government intervention. I support free-market capitalism as much as Boris Johnson does, but I also do understand that it causes deep inequity that the government needs to deal with.
In addition, what about the concept of worker safety, pollution, climate change, are costs by general society made by the free market that the government has to deal with. I think Boris Johnson is very naive and gross ignorant of how capitalism does not properly deal with inequity without government intervention.
Not all members of the 1% are Grinches
There are lot of people in the 1% are pure grinches. But not this man as reported by UPI
SEATTLE, Nov. 27 (UPI) -- A man who by all appearances had no money, but left $187.6 million to several charities in Seattle when he died, was good at picking stocks, his family said.
Jack MacDonald, who died at age 98 in September, was known to most as a bargain hunter who wore shabby clothes and took buses instead of taxicabs. However, his family and close friends knew he had amassed millions of dollars, The Seattle Times reported Wednesday.
In his will, MacDonald left a $187.6 million charitable trust to Seattle Children's Research Institute, the University of Washington School of Law and the Salvation Army, the newspaper reported.
MacDonald, a native of British Columbia, worked as an attorney for the Department of Veterans Affairs when it was called the Veterans Administration. He had made contributions to hundreds of charities -- including $536,000 to Seattle Children's -- the Times reported.
He also invested money his parents earned from their business, MacDonald Meat Co., and passed on to him.
His stepdaughter, Regen Dennis of Utah, said "he was amazing" at picking stocks.
"He didn't trust a lot of other people to do his research; he directed what he wanted bought, and he really knew what he wanted," she said
Congress the Grinch
CNBC reports
t's the most wonderful time of the year, but for 1.3 million jobless Americans, it could be a bleak holiday season if Congress fails to extend federal unemployment benefits.
A program known as Emergency Unemployment Compensation provides federal checks to long-term unemployed when their state benefits run out. It expires at the end of the year, and Congress is engaged in political gamesmanship about whether to renew the program or make cuts. Uncertainty about its future has left those receiving the federal checks anxious and in belt-tightening mode ahead of the holiday season.
"As far as I'm concerned this year, there are no holidays," said Andrea Hinninge, of Syracuse, N.Y., who was laid off in March from a job at a physical therapist's office. She's hardly in a position to think about shopping for gifts or a special holiday meal, she said, fearing that her federal benefits might not be there after Dec. 31
Will Congress be the grinch this year and cut off benefits? I think it is intent of most progressive and some moderate conservative to extend unemployment benefits for at least another six months to a year. However, partisan rancor over Obama Care, Iran, and Harry Reid going nuclear will mostly turn Congress into the grinch and cut off benefits. The problem is that both sides recognize there is a need for unemployment benefits, but coming to agreement on a common set of metrics that will eventually cut off unemployment benefits after specific metrics are reached for the U6 rate has gone downward and the labor participation rates have increase.
Chomsky: Business Elites Are Waging a Brutal Class War in America
Chomsky: Business Elites Are Waging a Brutal Class War in America | Alternet http://bit.ly/18Ck8h5
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Member since: Fri Jun 5, 2009, 12:38 AMNumber of posts: 1,666