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I know we’re classified as a “Superpower” or “one of the largest consumers of products(and generators of waste) on the planet”, but the United States could really use some assistance.
I know every country or region of the world is suffering from a wide spread infection, under brutal foot by a Malefactor, or recovering from a disaster, but how about this time around, just this once, someone there send us the care packages, aid, or money.
The U.S., like a codger trying to return coup, won’t admit it, but we has an employment problem. Not only an employment problem but a “retention” issue when it comes to retaining Corporations or talent on this side of the Atlantic/Pacific coast.
We’re in denial, or better put, those in charge are in denial.
Made in America doesn’t mean much when 1/3 is unemployment and without health insurance.
Made in America use to mean beat your chest with pride.
Well, we’ve been sold out.
I wish someone would say “I’m going to send money to the United States. I know there’s a child who is most likely going to go hungry tonight.”
America is in an unemployment crisis. Every week, we’re bringing you true firsthand stories from unemployed Americans. Today: pain, fear, hope, and desperation. This is what’s happening out there.
My identity had been my job
For the second time in a year, I am unemployed. This time, it’s still fresh; just under a week ago, I was told that due to a “new strategic direction” my title was no longer needed at a small nonprofit. Not my skills writing, managing programs, analyzing data, providing web content - my title. An arbitrarily assigned thing for which there was no actual job description, except the one I’d written for review a month or two prior that was still wasting away in the recipient’s email.
We’d been having some funding issues, and something had to be done, but I thought I had a couple months left. I’d been offering to do whatever I could for anything I knew had incoming grants to complete, and working long hours/weekends/skipping lunch. I still think that maybe I should’ve seen it coming: multiple things I was working on were either halted indefinitely pending receipt of funding that was ten months late, or had been cut altogether. In retrospect, maybe I should’ve interpreted this as a shift in priorities, but even at the strategic planning meetings I participated in, I still thought I had plenty to offer as we built a membership, private donor-base, and new programs. As I tearfully collected what things I could, I was told how fantastic my work had been, how much the Board of Directors struggled with the decision, and how it “might not be permanent.”
At the very end of June, 2011, I’d lost a job I held for four years. I’d been having some disagreements with a coworker about design and marketing strategy, and new ownership (then my friends) sided with her. I was admittedly difficult to work with in the most stressful times, but I’d been sincerely trying to improve that perception - and I was very good at my job. In the end, the people who mattered didn’t see any change, even if others had.
However shocking it was to be fired in June, it was so many times worse last week. In 2011, I was leaving a $23,000 a year job with a pretty good resume. Money would be tight, but after a day of crying, I was immediately applying for anything that might hire me. I had excellent interviews for jobs in New York and DC that I didn’t end up getting (how insanely difficult it is to get someone to believe you will absolutely move across the country to work at a national arts organization), and I was feeling more valuable as a potential employee than I’d felt in a while.
This time, it’s totally different. Once I felt stable at the nonprofit, I moved to a nicer house, bought a cat, and was pretty confident in my ability to pay off student loans. My salary had almost doubled, and I had complete benefits - and felt good about the work I was doing and the experience I was gaining towards my career hopes. I was considering going back to school for a second Master’s degree, this time in public administration, so I had an actual credential that wasn’t related to music performance. On Thursday, the only thing I could think about was how petrified I was to go through it all again, alone. I had to request wages in lieu of notice - which I received -knowing that we’d never implemented any policies that required even that support.
No one I know has been unemployed, and I’m not sure anyone who hasn’t really understands its effects. In spite of my relative resilience the first time around (three months of unemployment), it had taken me nearly a year to stop feeling insecure about my credentials, my skill-set, or my capability. My identity had been my job, and my friends from work had all disintegrated. I’ve always been an extremely independent person, and I felt worthless, powerless. I felt needy. I probably submitted a couple hundred resumes and individual cover letters, and heard back from only half a dozen in that three month period.
Today, it’s worse. I know I’m experiencing depression, and I feel guilty for it - and I hide it. Mostly, I have been able to seem positive when I see friends (minimally). I talk about the jobs I’m applying for that seem like great fits (they really do), but I’ve only been able to submit a few inquiries, compared to the dozens each day last year. I have cried every day, and I have yelled at the one person I thought I could actually talk to about precisely what I’m feeling. I wonder if I’ll be able to be as invested in a job again, having twice had such unexpected termination. A friend on Facebook - in response to a post about how hard it is to maintain positivity - told me, “You haven’t hit rock bottom yet!” Encouraging.
The thing is, no one wants to hear about how tough it is. It’s awkward. Uncomfortable. In spite of the fact that unemployment is so common, no one really wants to know how it feels. How humiliating it is to be offered a job that pays half your prior (low) salary. How hard it is to fill the empty days, because you’re not able to just sleep them all away. How you worry about posting anything that isn’t a chipper job search update, because employers have learned how to check Facebook. How you’re not sure if you’re actually qualified for this or that job, because even if you are, you’re just not sure about anything anymore. And if they do listen, they aren’t useful - even writing this is more therapeutic than the platitudes that are offered.
‘I’m sorry, I won’t stop trying’
I became unemployed June 28, 2011. I am 27 years old and my wife and I have a 4 year old son whom we adore. My wife works but does not make nearly enough to support us.
I was in the tech sales industry and mad quite a bit of money before having to take a leave of absence and working less due to a health problem I found out I would be dealing with for the rest of my life. I was definitely included in the layoffs due to my health. They pretty much said so. To make things worse, I was not able to leave that day. They notified me that I would be laid off but had to work there for the next two weeks. Immediately I thought, well fuck that, i am out of here, until they said I would not be given my measly severance if I chose to do so. Unfortunately, I really needed that money. It was only 1 week’s pay for each year you had been there so that meant 3 weeks salary for me after 3 years of service. I was in sales so most of my income was from bonus anyway, the 3 weeks pay was really not much at all considering. I still needed it.
These were the most awkward two weeks of my life I think…they did trainings, had large meetings about the restructuring, etc. When this would happen some one would come up to me and the 6 others and say “you can just answer the phones”. I felt as though i was being put on display. We did not have offices, it was completely open. My other co-workers still hung together while I became the guy with that contagious laid off disease no one wanted to use the bathroom after.
I finally got to leave the place and I went to file for unemployment. A surprisingly easy process. At first I felt guilty but then I remembered I had held a full time job since I was 16 (now 27) so I convinced my self that I had sort of earned the benefit of having a little help while I looked for more work.
There was no work. All the jobs i tried to get I was either overqualified for or didn’t have any experience. The overqualified part was funny to me at first. I just kept thinking about how I really needed the job and they wouldn’t hire me for fear that i would move on as soon as something better came along. They were right but that basically meant I needed to find the perfect job, one that I precisely qualified for which would be very hard.
Then I lost my insurance. I have 8 medications and at least 1 doctors visit per month with MRI and CT scans every 3 months. Cobra was wayyyyy too expensive, i did not qualify for medicaid and I had a pre-exisitng condition. Basically a prescription discount plan was as good as I could do for the time being.
Another obstacle I would run into is when a prospective employer would find out that i was laid off mostly because of absences which would lead to my leave of absence and me trying to explain my medical condition. The interview pretty much stops there. As a result I have had to start looking into disability.
I would really like to avoid going on disability. I want to contribute to society. In school when people ask my son what their dad does I want him to have an answer. That part alone has made me cry at night.
I have worked at some of the top corporations in the world. Now I write and rewrite my resume while watching PTI and Around the Horn. I garden a lot which relieves stress and saves money and it produces surprising amounts of fruits and vegetables. I am depressed.
Every day that passes is one that convinces me disability is the way to go. I have a very painful disease that requires lots of medication, vomiting, seizures, etc. The problem is I have never not held a job a I feel as though that would be giving in. I still search for work everyday, as hard as I can.
Lastly, it is very, very hard on me emotionally. I feel like a complete failure. I am a 27 year old “man” that is struggling to support his family. Nothing is more demeaning than not knowing if your son will have everything he needs a year from now. When he was born I used to check on him in the middle of the night, kiss him on the forehead and say “i promise I will always make sure you have everything you need and some things you want.” now I go check on him in the middle of the night, kiss him on the forehead as one of my tears drops on his face and I say “i’m sorry, I won’t stop trying”
A new survey finds that one in three homeless people in Boston are clinically obese, a number that casts in relief the strange reality of food in the 21st century United States.
Not long ago, malnourishment was embodied by emaciation. Now it’s far more likely to be hidden in folds of fat.
“This study suggests that obesity may be the new malnutrition of the homeless in the United States,” wrote the researchers, led by Harvard Medical School student Katherine Koh, in an upcoming Journal of Urban Health study.
The findings are the latest and most dramatic illustration of what’s called the “hunger-obesity paradox,” a term coined in 2005 by neurophysiologist Lawrence Scheier to describe the simultaneous presence of hunger and obesity.
Around that time, a vernacular sea change occurred, with “hunger” and its connotations of starvationreplaced by “food insecure,” a term more descriptive of people who might consume enough raw calories but not enough nutrients.
The paradox fit with a general modern relationship in the United States between weight and wealth. Whereas obesity was once a sign of wealth, it now tracks with poverty. The poorer and less food-secure people are, the more likely they are to be overweight or obese.
Have you heard about the Race War? It’s being censored by the media, but maybe you caught the news on Rush Limbaugh’s show — “In Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering” — or The O’Reilly Factor, or on the front page of the Drudge Report, or in Thomas Sowell’s nationally-syndicated column, or on one of many blogs, like the Daily Caller. Or maybe you heard about it when you were beat up by one of our country’s many roving mobs of black teens?
If nothing else you’ve probably noticed that “race relations are probably worse now among the average person on the street than they were the day President Obama was elected,” as activist Ward Connerly tells McKay Coppins in Coppins’ “In Conservative Media, A ‘Race War’ Rages,” an excellent summary of the current state of conservative journalism. Connerly is filled with pearls of wisdom: “Obama has been more racial than any white president has ever been in my lifetime,” he tells Coppins in an attempt to explain his perception of a current low ebb in American race relations. What a wonderful way of putting into words the conservative problem with Obama! He’s more racial than other presidents.
I would like to extend my very deepest sympathies to the family and other loved ones of murdered teenager, Treyvon Martin. I am very sad today (and am certain the whole of Ireland is) to learn of poor Treyvon’s terrifying ordeal and horrified by the fact his known and named and admitted killer has not been arrested, despite the crime having taken place a month ago. This is a disgrace to the entire human race.
For those out there who believe black people to be less than pure royalty, let me inform you of a little known, but scientifically proven, many times over, FACT. Which after reading, you will hopefully feel both very stupid and very sorry. For you dishonor your own mothers and grandmothers.
EVERY human being on earth, no matter what their culture, creed, skin colour, or nationality, shares one gene traceable back to one African woman. Scientists have named it ‘The Eve Gene’. This means ALL of us, even ridiculously stupid, ignorant, perverted, blaspheming racists are the descendants of one African woman.
One African woman is the mother of all of us. Africa was the first world. You come from there! Your skin may be ‘white’.. because you didn’t need it to be black any more where you lived. But as Curtis Mayfield said.. “You’re just the surface of our dark, deep well”. So you’re being morons. And God is having the last laugh at your ignorant expense.
If you hate black people, its yourself you hate. And the mother who bore you. If you kill or wish ill on black people, its yourself you kill and wish ill on. As well as the mother who bore you.
When you dishonor the the utter glory and majesty of black people, you lie. Your heart lies to you and you let it. Despite seeing every day, all your life, how you and your country would be less than wonderfully functioning and inspiring to the world, without the manifold and glorious contributions made by the descendants of African slaves, who did not by the way actually ask to go to America and leave their future families there to be disrespected for eternity.
What are you doing hating yourself by hating your brothers and sisters who daily show you nothing but inspiration and love, despite having NOTHING, in their own country? Despite having barely a chance of anything, because of racism. Despite being granted no ‘permission’ for proper self-esteem.
These beautiful people continue to believe in and even manifest Jesus Christ better than you do. That alone could stand as the greatest reason your racism is blasphemy, were it not for all the other reasons.
These people you hate and fear ARE the body of Christ, just as we all are. Every child, woman or man. And they know it. Maybe thats why you cant bear to look at them. Because you see Jesus Christ and you cant stand the light.
Stop this ridiculous and uneducated attitude. You would be dead without black people. Think of all the greatest music ever composed. The greatest songs. The greatest inspirational heroes.. Muhammad Ali, Mandela, Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Soujourner Truth, Bob Marley, Nina Simone, Curtis Mayfield. So many absolute angels, sent from God.
Without the inspiration of these people many millions of so-called ‘white’ people, including myself would not have had the strength to pay the price of life.
And black youth in America. I’m talking to you here too. I love you. So I don’t mean to sound cross, I’m just being a mother.. Why are you killing each other? Why are you hating yourselves? You are the most important people God ever sent to this earth, every man, woman and child among you! Don’t let uneducated people win and take your self-esteem or your esteem for each other, and make you kill each other. over guns, drugs, bling, or any other nonsense.
You are now entering YOUR version of a sort of civil rights movement and you’re gonna see history being made in what has certainly the profoundest potential to become THE most wonderful country on earth. Because soon ALL ‘isms’ and ‘sits” will end. including racism, as the people of the earth begin to understand, we are all one.
We came from one mother. We are all brothers and sisters. And we CAN get beyond this ILLUSION of separateness. With prayer and love. It CAN change. It WILL change. And YOU guys (young people of all kinds) are the ones who are gonna GENTLY change it. And you know where it starts? With MUSIC.
Don’t be guided by rap. Gangsta or otherwise. Sure.. enjoy it.. adore it.as I do.. but realize this.. rap ain’t about your civil or spiritual rights, baby boys and girls. It.. along with most music nowadays.. is about falsenesses and vanities. Bling, drugs, sex, guns and people- dissing. Its giving you the message you ain’t ‘good enough’ if you don’t have bling and ting.. and money. Or if you’re not what it deems ‘sexy’.
(This is true of all popular music not rap alone. I know. Its tragically true of all popular youth culture the world over).
Poor Curtis Mayfield must be crying all day and night ALL day and night in heaven, every day and night.. To see what has been so successfully achieved by those who sent guns, drugs, and bling to squash the civil rights movement. Now you all don’t have to be murdered by racists any more.. you’re murdering each other FOR them! And your parents and grandparents are left crying.
Go back to strong black musical guides who left you information in the 60s and 70s. when they were living through the civil rights struggle. Curtis Mayfield. The Impressions. Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson. Sing back the Holy Spirit ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, as those artists did.
Forget bling. Forget “Get Rich Or Die Trying”. That is an evil message. Evil my dears is only life backwards. Turn it the right way up. With music. The messages American black youth are being given through music are not about the spiritual and therefore strong and conquering but PEACEFUL making of YOUR country into the wonderful place it secretly is and can be.. BECAUSE OF YOU, and BY YOU!!
You know not how you are adored, appreciated, valued, loved, cried for,smiled for, prayed for, all over the world. You know not how much inspiration and uplift-ment of heart you give to millions just by your presence on earth.
These musical guides will give you self-esteem. When you have self-esteem you can achieve anything. You can stand in the street as many did yesterday and change your country peacefully and with song. Chant down Babylon as the Rastas say. Rastafari will also give you self esteem. Investigate it.
You will notice, my beautiful sons and daughters, when you study, as you must, footage of all civil rights gatherings, how singing and music and sound and voice and the Holy Spirit were all employed and were so much part of the energy which moved things along.. just as running was in the South African gatherings I saw on tv in my own childhood, which inspired me to survive my own horrors.
What you listen to musically and whether or not you employ the Holy Spirit’s highest will for your life is whats gonna make you transcend all you’re having to suffer (the worst of which is low self-esteem.. or esteem based upon material ‘success’ or ‘sexiness’)) as a result of being the descendants of people who didn’t ask to be stolen and leave you where you are. Delete bling. Get conscious with your music. Demand conscious music from your artists. Go back to the artists who left you proper guidance.
This is some serious stuff and we (all manner of musical artists) are too silent on matters of enormous spiritual importance. Lemme ask you.. Jayzee and Eminem et al. Why was it always the black people only worked in the post rooms of record companies, which was always in the basement? Why was it that as each floor went up the skins got paler till it was fuckin ghosts at the top? And all us artists.. even me.. said nothing? Those buildings (record companies) always struck me as being a microcosm or painting of America, racially speaking. Christ almighty.. if its like that in the music business how is anything ever going to change?
We, musical artists are too silent on important stuff. And it is our job to be the gate-keepers of truth. ALL the people of this earth must come together eventually and see that we are one. ALL artists must stand up. Black, white, yellow, green, pink, fucking polka dot.. and be a light in these times.
The world is going to shift massively this year.. spiritually speaking. Musical artists are to be a massive part of that shift. Get up, lets all of us. And light Jah fire.. and BE lights.
Where’s the fire gone from music? Where is the love? the oneness? The knowing that music CAN and WILL move things in the right spiritual direction without hatred or violence? We must box clever. Sing the devil to sleep at your feet. Thats what Curtis teaches. He is the master of ALL musical masters. forget, forget, forget and forget again bling and guns and drugs and the worship of fame and money. Its time to wake up. We KNOW the power of music. Why aren’t we using it to change anything important?
Musicians all over the world should now gently demand this child’s killer be arrested immediately and the family of Treyvon Martin be immediately apologized to upon bended knee. Frankly. I myself would like an apology! America is a country I love and adore. what this man has done is un-American in the most horrific extreme.
Him not being arrested is extremely embarrassing and does absolutely NOT paint the true picture of of a country and a people who for the 90% majority are the kindest, most loving, intelligent, and wonderful people you could know.
Please.. ALL Americans should deplore this crime. As should ALL people of ALL nations. And deplore the fact this man has not been arrested. All Irish people should do the same. And I ask that we here in Ireland should express through our American embassy that we would like to see this man arrested this very minute. Because racism is not acceptable. Nor is vigilantism. And this was very clearly in no way at all a case of self-defense.
I leave you with some lyrics of Curtis Mayfield’s which I feel are appropriate for this situation. I am certain Curtis would have wanted to contribute to discussion on the issue of Treyvon’s murder and the condition of young black people in America today.. so here goes.. the song is called This Is My Country.. from the album of the same name.
Some people think we don’t have the right
to say its my country
before they give in
they’d rather fuss and fight
than say its my country
I’ve paid three hundred years or more
of slave-driving sweat and welts on my back
This is my country
Too many have died in protecting my pride
for me to go second class
We’ve survived a hard blow and I want you to know
that you must face us at last
And I know you will give consideration
shall we perish unjust or live equal as a nation?
This is my country.
As public funding for our schools continues to be slashed, the cost of getting an education in the United States has skyrocketed. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the amount of student borrowing has exploded from $100 billion in 2010 to $867 billion last year, nearly a 900% increase.
Thousands of parents and families who co-signed for their children’s education loans are now threatened with the prospect of losing their life savings or their homes to greedy corporate banks who are racking up exorbitant fees for everything posible, even for putting a loan temporarily into forebearance due to unemployment or financial hardship.
Source: EcoLocalizer (http://s.tt/17bng)
“In 2001 Portugal became the first European country to officially abolish all criminal penalties for personal possession of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines. “Jail time was replaced with offer of therapy. (The argument was that the fear of prison drives addicts underground and that incarceration is much more expensive than treatment).
“Under Portugal’s new regime, people found guilty of possessing small amounts of drugs are sent to a panel consisting of a psychologist, social worker, and legal adviser for appropriate treatment (which may be refused without criminal punishment), instead of jail.”
Posted by: The Stache
Im sitting here on my lush villa in Maui overlooking the Pacific Ocean reading emails from subscribers and thinking of stories to write when I return home, when I think to myself—I dont want to do this alone anymore! IndieCon has grown in subscribers since our launch just…
[…] Franklin D. Roosevelt offered Americans a promise to use the power of his office to make their lives better and to keep trying until he got it right. Beginning in his first inaugural address, and in the fireside chats that followed, he explained how the crash had happened, and he minced no words about those who had caused it. He promised to do something no president had done before: to use the resources of the United States to put Americans directly to work, building the infrastructure we still rely on today. He swore to keep the people who had caused the crisis out of the halls of power, and he made good on that promise. In a 1936 speech at Madison Square Garden, he thundered, “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.”
When Barack Obama stepped into the Oval Office, he stepped into a cycle of American history, best exemplified by F.D.R. and his distant cousin, Teddy. After a great technological revolution or a major economic transition, as when America changed from a nation of farmers to an urban industrial one, there is often a period of great concentration of wealth, and with it, a concentration of power in the wealthy. That’s what we saw in 1928, and that’s what we see today. At some point that power is exercised so injudiciously, and the lives of so many become so unbearable, that a period of reform ensues — and a charismatic reformer emerges to lead that renewal. In that sense, Teddy Roosevelt started the cycle of reform his cousin picked up 30 years later, as he began efforts to bust the trusts and regulate the railroads, exercise federal power over the banks and the nation’s food supply, and protect America’s land and wildlife, creating the modern environmental movement.
Those were the shoes — that was the historic role — that Americans elected Barack Obama to fill. The president is fond of referring to “the arc of history,” paraphrasing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous statement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” But with his deep-seated aversion to conflict and his profound failure to understand bully dynamics — in which conciliation is always the wrong course of action, because bullies perceive it as weakness and just punch harder the next time — he has broken that arc and has likely bent it backward for at least a generation.
When Dr. King spoke of the great arc bending toward justice, he did not mean that we should wait for it to bend. He exhorted others to put their full weight behind it, and he gave his life speaking with a voice that cut through the blistering force of water cannons and the gnashing teeth of police dogs. He preached the gospel of nonviolence, but he knew that whether a bully hid behind a club or a poll tax, the only effective response was to face the bully down, and to make the bully show his true and repugnant face in public.
IN contrast, when faced with the greatest economic crisis, the greatest levels of economic inequality, and the greatest levels of corporate influence on politics since the Depression, Barack Obama stared into the eyes of history and chose to avert his gaze. Instead of indicting the people whose recklessness wrecked the economy, he put them in charge of it. He never explained that decision to the public — a failure in storytelling as extraordinary as the failure in judgment behind it. Had the president chosen to bend the arc of history, he would have told the public the story of the destruction wrought by the dismantling of the New Deal regulations that had protected them for more than half a century. He would have offered them a counternarrative of how to fix the problem other than the politics of appeasement, one that emphasized creating economic demand and consumer confidence by putting consumers back to work. He would have had to stare down those who had wrecked the economy, and he would have had to tolerate their hatred if not welcome it. But the arc of his temperament just didn’t bend that far. […]
Carve out some time to read the whole piece.
Also, Paul Krugman’s reaction, and MoJo’s Kevin Drum’s thoughts.
Based on a survey of consumers in the United States, the 2010 Index, released in October 2010, shows the following companies in the top 10 positions:
(click link to continue)
For the last three years the Boston College Center and Reputation Institute have created a ranking of the top 50 companies in the United States that the public distinguishes for corporate social responsibility.Read more at www.bcccc.net