Strapped states chop jobless aid: "unprecedented cuts"

[Karmadillo]

Thank heavens we were able to afford the extension of those Bush tax cuts for the rich and that trillion dollar defense budget.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/03/us-usa-states-jobless-idUSTRE7725Z520110803

Strapped states chop jobless aid

(Reuters) - U.S. states are making "unprecedented" cuts to unemployment benefit programs, hoping to keep their budgets in line as the country's jobless rate shows no sign of budging, according to a report the National Employment Law Project released on Wednesday.

The group, which tracks labor issues, found six states in 2011 shortened the amount of time the unemployed can collect insurance payments. For 50 years, states offered at least 26 weeks of benefits, with the federal government recently helping to cover additional weeks.

Other states altered the formulas for determining the amount of benefits people can receive or tightened eligibility in order to reduce spending on the program.

"Most states that addressed solvency concerns this year favored policies that limit the amount of benefits ... by cutting them absolutely or by reducing the number of workers they may reach," the group found.

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[sakabatou]

1. Ugh...

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

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[glowing]

3. FL is enacting these crazy rules regarding the qualifications of unemployment.

They want the applied jobs to be signed off by th HR or Manager.. However, many applied to positions these days require an electronic e-mail of ones resume and they call you; not the other way around. So, how does one prove that they have aplied to these jobs? And they shortened the weeks, I believe, to 14 weeks. All this in a state that is right to work and severely lacking jobs for Floridians.

It still pisses memofd that this pRick Scott threw away our high speed rail project money over politics. Mthwt was 24,000 jobs he'd threw away plus the progressive, positive way to help reduce traffic between 2 heavily populated, tourist areas. playing politics and propping up their already too rich buddies is just getting to be too much. I just don't know when people in FL will finally have had enough and really take a stand to rise up and make these reps afghani represent. Maybe it's the heat or the diverse population of immigrants, minorities, seniors, and basically "transplanted" people from other states that makes it soooo hard to get any sort of viable United front against being scammed and lied to and stolen from.

Its past rime for all of us to become pro-active instead of reactive. I doubt if people went on a general strike or had amassed large protests, etc while the debt ceiling crappy bill might not have been passed in the manner it was. The polls reflect the desire to take from the rich to pay for the funding the govt needs and for the govt to hire directly and progress towards addressing the needs of the nation. Honestly, where is the vision? Instead of dicing around withthese red state losers, the stimulus should have remained largely up to the federal Vogt to implement. The federal govt could have taken one of the big 3 carnfavtories and converted the plant into high speed rail production. The federal govt could take over the land to build the highspeed rail instead of playing political games if chicken... Had some if this forward thinking ideas and direction taken place 2 yrs ago with the stimulus package, the people would have seen the federal govt working. More people would have jobs. Tax revenue would be coming in. The housing market could stabilize. People would feel better about spending a bit. and those tea party racist pigs would have looked like fools for saying govt doesn't work... Oh and if we actually close our imperial military bases and stopped the wars in foreign countries, we'd save a lot of mine and be able to pay for more direct federal economic stimulus into the country, and m not talking about tax cuts to the "job creaters" who had already proven in the 8 yrs of Bush as a failed policy for economic prosperity and growth.