Sadistic beyond words

The American ruling class “experiments” with eliminating unemployment benefits for millions of workers

Governors in 25 US states have already eliminated or will soon begin eliminating pandemic related supplemental unemployment benefits, depriving some four million jobless workers of $22 billion in additional assistance according to the Century Foundation.

The elimination of the $300 a week federal unemployment benefits began this past Saturday in Mississippi, Missouri, Iowa and Alaska. The other 21 states are set to remove the assistance by July 10. Twenty-one out of the 25 states, including Maryland, Texas and Tennessee, will be ending all pandemic related program, such as Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (for “gig workers”) and the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation program.

The states taking these drastic actions are led by Republican governors. The policy, however, is bipartisan. Last month, President Joe Biden signaled his support for the ending of benefits by allowing the resumption of work-search related requirements. He also stated his support for letting federal unemployment benefits expire for the entire country on September 6, in less than three months.

This was followed by a statement from White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on June 4 in which she stated that Republican governors “have every right” to “not accept” the federal benefit, adding, “That’s OK.”

In the capitalist press, the move to eliminate unemployment support for millions of workers and their families has been described as an “experiment.” NBC News declared on June 11: “It’s the beginning of a bold, mass, social and economic experiment to see if turning off federal unemployment benefits early for half the country will prod people in those states back to work.”

This “bold experiment” will mean, in practice, throwing millions of people into poverty and destitution while facilitating the further spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

There are two, interrelated motivations driving the cutoff of unemployment benefits.

First, there is the imperative of the ruling class to get workers back on the job, even as the pandemic continues to claim hundreds of lives every day and dangerous new strains, such as the Delta variant, are spreading rapidly. The ruling class, with the Biden administration at its head, has proclaimed the pandemic “over.”

Supplemental federal unemployment benefits of $600 a week were included in the CARES Act, which was passed in late March 2020. The temporary assistance provided to those devastated by the economic impact of the pandemic was intended as a stopgap measure and a cover for the act’s main purpose: the multitrillion bailout of Wall Street.

The decision by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to eliminate mask mandates and reduced social distancing guidelines last month has been followed by the release of the Labor Department’s workplace safety guidelines that only apply to health care facilities. The rest of the working class will be left defenseless at workplaces that will not be obligated by law to enact basic safety measures, such as mandatory mask-wearing, social distancing or requirements to inform workers when they may have been exposed to the virus.

Second, the ruling class is concerned that the relative shortage of labor in some industries is contributing to rising wages. “The Fed could be facing a jobs headache in its inflation fight,” wrote CNBC last week. “The longer it takes to get people back to work,” it declared, “the more employers will have to pay.”

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I hope you read the whole article. Remember too that Trump had agreed to more money for workers and longer unemployment benefits time, but Pelosi said that she didn’t want to give Trump a push just before the election so she didn’t and got in that huge fight with Wolfe about not passing it and she insisted that she feeds them! After Biden got coronated she cut it in half and said everything had changed with Biden. Soon after the Covid case numbers dropped as did media coverage of it anymore. Project Veritas got a guy from CNN on tape admitting that was what they were going to do.

Trump and all of congress stayed silent after they got briefed in February on Covid. In March Trump met with governors, all I think or maybe just republicans to decide when they would open up their states. Again I remember Utah’s saying that only when the numbers were down below….but they were twice that high when he started relaxing the rules. Not as bad as others did. Then all states saw a massive increase in numbers and we know that over 600,000 people are dead because the lower working class was sacrificed for business while most upper class people were allowed to work from home. Proper protective gear never really was a priority for businesses in factories that hire mostly immigrants and minorities.

Now they are doing it all over again and I’m not sure if the people that democrats drove crazy are seeing that this is just what Trump did and those republican governors they love to ridicule. But hey the media ain’t covering it so it’s not happening. Did you hear how Psaki put some Fox News reporter down? Good times.

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Raggedy Ann's picture

Americans will take being relegated to serfdom. Will the populace rise up? Maybe in a couple of years. Pleasantry

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

@Raggedy Ann
More interested in Football/baseball/Basketball and who is sleeping with who,

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Raggedy Ann's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness
It will come. People will finally have enough. You'll see. It will come.

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"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11

snoopydawg's picture

@Raggedy Ann

People have been pushed beyond tolerance and it's obvious that the PTB see what is coming. That is one reason for the push for 'domestic terrorism' being the #1 threat to government. It's well know that when a group is target for rights reductions the ones most hated get to go first, but eventually it will sweep them up too. And because of the total corruption and capture by the media we don't, or I do not know what the truth was of the BLM protests that saw lots of property destruction and police over responses to their protests while joining and yukking it up with the proud boys type groups that went to help the police.

Dumb f'cks who's soul purpose was to be ready for when the government took their rights. Well that's water under the bridge since Bush the Lesser and Biden's patriot act. Where were they then? I guess since the military was over the pond they weren't here to protect them even though that was why they were sent over the pond right? TO PROTECT OUR FREEDOMS?

People are seeing thru the BS and with half the country questioning the election of Joe Biden well I think things are brewing somewhere. Love that dems are saying that Trump is making people question our elections. WTF did they do the last 5 years saying that Trump was installed by Putin? DOH!!! I could have filled gjohnsit's essay on DK with so many funny sayings. The current one is that when Biden meets Putin he won't be playing 11th dimensional chess, but just checkers. I have a fun graphic I'll post later.

Checkers with a chess master. Should be fun to watch. Oh wait.......

I don't remember what happened after Obama won. Did everyone keep writing about him and his actions keeping them in the news? (look at the wreck list) or did he just slip away and we waited for Obama to deal with him in vain? The media is still pushing all Trump was bad all the time and I'm having fun watching to see where it is leading. Or is it a ploy to keep the focus off the fact that Biden floundered during his current trip? It is embarrassing and if you want to see it check out the right media for the videos. Ouch.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

snoopydawg's picture

@snoopydawg

More than anything else that might have tipped the scales in an extremely close election decided by less than 100,000 votes spread out over three swing states. And it canceled out the scandal over Trump’s sexist comments on the “Access Hollywood” tape.

Just ignore that they had been subpoenaed by congress and yet she deleted 30,000 of them because she said they were....

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7 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@Raggedy Ann The dirty little secret of any good "democracy" is that it's always an oligarchy - it's just a question of whether it's an oligarchy of and for the good and intelligent or the evil and stupid. Most people, for whatever reason, are of no account and cannot be counted on.

This, I think, is one of our big failings: We go too far in sustaining the hope that most humans care as much as we do, rather than being mere vessels for Dawkinsian selfish genes. As I saw on somebody's signature back on DailyKos(!) "not all people are human, and not all humans are people". It is an awkward and hazardous reality, and is the mother of all foils for liberal democracy. People (for want of a better word) are not inherently equal, but we need liberal democracy and equality of opportunity because the mysterious, ineffable spark of quality, that defies ALL categorization and ready definition, can be found anywhere, and the aristocratic ideal of selectively breeding (by nature OR nurture) a hereditary system where everybody is born into the place they can be counted on to happily and justly belong...I can see the appeal, actually, but it clearly doesn't work; Marcus Aurelius begat Commodus. As I've said before, the ruling class are stuck in the Iron Age and have no vision for the future. Is it even an accident that there's been this weird and upsetting sidecircus of crypto-McCarthyist warfare against, of all people, sci-fi and fantasy geeks?

The problem is not "waiting for Superman": It is BEING Superman (or maybe the X-Men would be more apropos), and refusing to act the part until the hoi palloi catch up to us. Perhaps the greatest tragedy of my lifetime (in terms of being especially characteristic of this moment in history rather than a repeat of the past) is attempts at "uplift" turning into disastrous "pulldowns".

As for the macro-mediocrities mentioned above? I hope every one of the states where this shit gets pulled sees a riot on their respective capitols that makes whatever the hell happened on 1/6 look more like this:

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

gives the impression the political class is somehow distinct from the ruling class. That somehow, they're going to "fight for us", "feel our pain" and "work for all Americans". So much horse shit, so few brooms. Time to trade in that broom for a pitchfork.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Snode

gives the impression the political class is somehow distinct from the ruling class.

Since Reagan and the DLC sellout to the Kochs both parties have been in bed with their donors who hire lobbyists who pay huge sums of money after writing new legislation for congress to pass and often without even reading it first. Grassley, Schumer, Biden, McConnell and Pelosi have been there 30-50 years and every year we saw the quality of life for Americans to slip a bit and a bit more and looking back we can see how everything has been rigged for the parasite class to take as much $$$$ from as they can. 50 Trillion in a few decades was removed from the lower classes and transfered to the parasites. Congress isn't even bothering to hide its corruption anymore either. Just look at that $10 billion gift Bezos got from them for his space agency that has received a lot of the R&D that NASA did thru its time as being the one involved in getting us to space. Nice that it was privatized under ZERO'S tenure. The gig economy has transferred benefits to people instead of companies being the ones to help out. Switzerland is working with the auto unions to destroy union rights. And getting away with it. WSWS.org has lots of stories on strikes that the media won't cover. Status Coup has been. I posted a tweet from them interviewing people in CTMS' essay yesterday. It is heartbreaking what is happening. See the graphic. How many times has this happened thru the years?

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg That's where the true bipartisanship lies, writing favorable tax laws for the wealthy, and themselves, (but I repeat myself) and pissing on the left.

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