April 30th, 2011, Denis Blesford  While other states are cutting back on unemployment payments, on Wednesday Oregon passed two bills that will extend federal and state unemployment benefits. Senate Bill 637, which authorizes the state to keep on drawing emergency unemployment benefits under a recent Federal offer on changing the “look-back” rules, was passed by an unanimous vote in the House. Additionally, the House also passed Senate Bill 638, which offers Oregonian 99’ers a further 6 weeks of state unemployment benefits. 99’ers are classed as those jobless workers who have been unemployed for 99 weeks and have exhausted all unemployment benefits, state and federal. Officials say that more than 17,000 of the states unemployed will be eligible for the 6 week emergency extension. They expect the money for the program to last until July 2nd. History: Oregon Emergency Benefits-3 (OEB-3) is an unemployment extension paid for solely by state funds. OEB is only available when the Oregon Legislature passes specific legislation which specifies when such benefits are available. During the 2011 legislative session, the Oregon legislature passed Senate Bill 638, authorizing the payment of OEB. OEB-3 provides 23% of your regular claim’s maximum benefit amount. The weekly benefit amount is the same as your regular claim. OEB-3 starts with the week of April 17-23, 2011, and ends July 2, 2011, or when the money allocated to the program runs out.
→ Read More 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 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 11th, 2011, Michael Danielson  The Tier 5 unemployment extension may not look like it’s all that necessary anymore, what with unemployment apparently plummeting — from 9.8% to 9.4% to 9.0% in the past three months. Why, at this rate, it’ll be only a year and we’ll have an unemployment rate of 5.2% and we’ll be back on business! Of course, everyone knows that it’s not going to happen, and there’s been quite a bit of talk about the shenanigans that have led us to the lowballed unemployment rate of 9.0% The best visual about the truth behind the numbers comes, as often, from Clusterstock’s Chart of the Day. → Read More February 10th, 2011, Michael Danielson  The Tier 5 unemployment extension fight is not going to see any progress in the near future; the Representatives supporting it have doomed it to fail before it ever sees the light of day. HR 6556, the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Expansion Act, is already dead in the water. There are a few rules about news writing that are universal; one of them is to never write a sentence that is in the first person. But this has me so incredibly livid that I’m breaking that sacrosanct rule to say this: I am appalled — I am appalled, because they should know better. → Read More February 4th, 2011, Michael Danielson  Representatives Barbara Lee (D, CA) and Bobby Scott (D, VA) are on the House floor, seeking co-sponsors for the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Expansion Act, which is NOT, as previously reported, a Tier 5 unemployment extension — it’s even better. The EUCE would not create a 5th tier of unemployment benefits, but rather it would add 14 weeks onto Tier 2 — retroactively. In other words, every 99er in the country would immediately qualify, regardless of the current unemployment rate in their state. Similarly, every unemployed person in the country would have 14 more weeks of benefits, no matter where in the Tier structure you currently are. It would a profound victory for everyone who has suffered at the hands of Wall Street’s financial insanity over the last three years. → Read More February 2nd, 2011, Michael Danielson  In a rare face-to-face meeting with President Obama’s Chief Economic Advisor, Austan Goolsbee, Jay Keller of Examiner.com had the chance to ask the nation’s Economist In Chief about the Tier 5 unemployment extension. His answers were more than a little bit disappointing for 99ers everywhere. “We’re doing everything we can to get the job engine going and giving them incentives to hire the 99ers. I haven’t seen the sentiment in Congress to extend benefits pas the 99 weeks, unfortunately,” Goolsbee said. Of course, passing the buck onto Congress is just that — passing the buck. It’s plain to all watching that the White House, Goolsbee included, has no intention of doing anything to help the 99ers, either. “The things we have done to try and address this, you got to get the job engine running. That’s the only way to try and solve this problem,” Goolsbee said. → Read More |
