The last unemployment extension is about to go into effect for millions of peoples, some of them have been out of work for up to two years.  The idiot republicans in congress have been saying since the plan was announced that this is the last time they are going to allow the government to pick up the tab on these slackers.  This is really laughable and quite frankly going to shoot themselves in the foot when it comes right down to it.  It doesn’t matter whether the person in question is trying hard to find a job or if they are doing the bare minimum to get their check, or whether they are skating by not even doing that much, the fact is they are unemployed and that money for the most part is paid directly to the companies who donate the most to the Republican Party.  When Walmart figures out figures out which loudmouths are trying to cull their cash cows things might just get a bit uncomfortable behind closed doors.

Rather than changing the rules that would put people who have been out of work the longest back to work the fastest these men and women who have run as as often as not as good Christians have decided not to punish the goodly corporations that line their pockets and fill their election coffers.  These people should get someone without a vested interest in their reelection to read and explain James 2: 1-3 to them.  I know there are those idiots even among the common folk who will swear up and down that there is absolutely no reason in the world that someone go two years without a job, you too would be wrong.  Finding a job isn’t as easy as it sounds, even in retail or fast food. It could be made much easier though.

The first thing they would need to do is give incentives to employers to hire adult unemployed workers.  Too often over the last two years that I have been watching the local unemployment situation I have seen numerous retailers and fast food chains say they weren’t hiring only to have a crop of high school girls show up as new employees the next week.  While I don’t mind looking at or flirting with pretty young girls at the checkout when I am forced to wait, I would much prefer to get through the damn line with everything I put on the belt to start with, it is a checkout line and not Hooters for Underage Girls.  Since the companies care not about the hiring practices on the grounds of aesthetics the parent companies should be questioning the business practice of financially alienating the adults in theses communities.

The second would be to speed up the welfare system by hiring the unemployed workers.  During the time that my wife has been unemployed we spent countless hours in lines, on hold or waiting for approval for this or that from the local welfare office.  All the workers and the supervisors say the wait  many that it isn’t their fault because there applicants.  At one point in time we sat in a waiting room of nineteen people almost everyone had a bachelors degree, several had masters degrees, and two had PhD’s.  We were all waiting to see a intake worker. The only requirement for this job was an associates degree and to pass a background check the pay was $22,000 $26,000 a year and all the benefits of every other county employee.  Once you give all the paperwork to this person who makes sure it is all filled out correctly her supervisor who only has to have a bachelor’s degree and gets paid a minimum of $30,000 a year will sometime in the next thirty days push a button that approves your case. Assuming you need to ask a generic question a generic question about your case you call the help line and will get a call back within two business days.  If they can’t help you, they will refer it to your case worker who you can’t call directly, this will take between two and three days more.  If you don’t get an answer from them after two days you can call the original help line back leaving a message that you have not had a reply from your caseworker and within two days of that message a supervisor is supposed to call you for a follow up.  With all the crap about getting workers back to work it would seem prudent the first place the government might want to spend money hiring enough qualified people to staff its own welfare agencies.

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