| About:Michael Danielson- Website
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- Michael Danielson is a freelance journalist, a '99er, and a stay-at-home-dad. He writes for news sites, pop culture blogs, and SEO companies. He is available for freelance work through FaceBook.
About:Michael Danielson- Website
- http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1249162025
- Profile
- Michael Danielson is a freelance journalist, a '99er, and a stay-at-home-dad. He writes for news sites, pop culture blogs, and SEO companies. He is available for freelance work through FaceBook.
March 28th, 2011, Michael Danielson  How many times have you seen someone talk earnestly about America’s need to avoid too strong of an unemployment benefit safety net? It’s as though, because the news media never really reported on it (and has stopped what little reported they did do), the fact that there are still four or five applicants, on average, for every job — and that number quintuples for low-level positions — it’s suddenly not relevant. The blogosphere was once inundated with posts and letters from 99ers who laid out their circumstances in simple and heart-wrenching terms. Many of them described being worried that they would never have a job again, because they were simply too old to rehire. But the message never caught on, because the message from the most popular news network in the country was that 99ers should be ashamed of themselves for becoming hooked on unemployment and failing to get a job. → Read More March 24th, 2011, Michael Danielson  We all know that it’s been bad — very bad — for the 99ers over this winter as they continue to scan the horizon for signs that a Tier 5 unemployment extension might be on the way down the pipeline. But as the beginning of Spring starts to make life at least a little easier on the 99ers, new challenges approach like irascible dragons of old(e). For quite some time, many of the nation’s 99ers have been barely scraping by on some combination of under-the-table employment, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan (SNAP) funds. Like unemployment money, those programs are jointly administered — which means costs are shared — between the State and Federal governments. And as we’ve all been told again and again, State governments are going broke. → Read More March 14th, 2011, Michael Danielson  The fight for the Tier 5 unemployment extension soldiers on across Capitol Hill as Representatives Barbara Lee (D, CA) and Bobby Scott (D, VA) continue to search for a compromise that will get HR 589 — the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Act of 2011 — a vote on the House floor. Still planning on adding a retroactive amount to Tier 2 of the EUC rather than create a Tier 5, the Representatives have reduced the amount from it’s initial 20 weeks to only 14, but that’s only the first of a two major concessions they are making in order to get the bill a chance. The second major change they’re offering is to eliminate the “emergency” designation they initially tried to pass the bill under, and instead allow the bill to be subject to House rules that require spending cuts elsewhere to offset the cost of the new bill. → Read More March 7th, 2011, Michael Danielson  A long, long time ago, an ancient Greek man named Plutarch warned us, unwittingly of course, that the failure of the Tier 5 unemployment extension would be but one sign of a deeper and utterly destructive problem plaguing our country. “An imbalance between rich and poor,” Plutarch warned, “is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.” An imbalance between the rich and the poor happens to be the single root behind nearly all of America’s economic woes. The poor folks across America don’t deny that we need a Tier 5 unemployment extension. → Read More March 3rd, 2011, Michael Danielson  The Tier 5 unemployment extension, as every 99er knows, is being ignored in favor of a gambit by Capitol Hill to simply create enough jobs to get the 99ers working again. Of course, the gambit is failing because even the Democrats have somehow bought into the proposition that the private sector is better at creating jobs than the public sector — or, even worse, that somehow public sector jobs don’t count toward reducing unemployment. It’s hard to tell which, but both notions are provably false. The GOP and other conservatives like to trot out the notion that the private sector is always more efficient than the public sector because of a concept called “deadweight loss”. → Read More February 28th, 2011, Michael Danielson  The Tea Party changed the face of American politics last year, and it’s a tragedy that they were politically bent against the Tier 5 unemployment extension, because they represented – at least until they were co-opted by the Republicans — a rare phenomenon in American politics: something new. Of course, the GOP did quickly and decisively take over the Tea Party, and reduced them to the ‘ultraconservative branch’ of the Republican party and little else. On the other hand, we have the Democratic party, which was at one point the party that supported the common worker. But as a long and very powerfully insightful article from Mother Jones points out, all of that ended decades ago when the unions lost power. → Read More February 25th, 2011, Michael Danielson  In a phenomenon noticed by everyone from New York Times columnist Paul Krugman to this writer a few months ago, it seems that President Obama — and with him, many of the lead Democrats in Congress — have bought into the conservative storyline regarding everything from the Tier 5 unemployment extension to the Bush tax cuts. In this article by George Lakoff of the Huffington Post, the effects of that buy-in are laid out profoundly: Budget deficits are convenient ruses for destroying American democracy and replacing it with conservative rule in all areas of life. → Read More February 24th, 2011, Michael Danielson  In what has been the most viral piece of political audio to hit the Internet in years, Ian Murphy of The Buffalo Beast recently called Wisconson’s Republican Governor, Scott Walker, and posed as David Koch. Mr. Koch is one of the infamous Koch Bothers, the owners of the largest corporation in the world, and one of the world’s single largest spenders on conservative politics. The two talked for more than twenty minutes, with Murphy trying to draw Walker into making some outlandish statements, and Walker being, all told, surprisingly canny even when talking to a supposed supporter. Before we all get into talking about how cool Murphy is, his previous record [warning: vuglarity] should be noted. → Read More | Listen to Mike Colliss Interviews |
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