Occupy Mason City

The GOP-sponsored House bill (text) “reforms” [unemployment insurance] by

1. loosening requirements on how states spend federal unemployment funds, which flow through them

I didn’t realize this was a problem, but hay it seams like a good idea.

2. tightening the requirement that all benefit recipients look for work (mandatory job interviews, etc.)

If you haven’t been on unemployment for a while, or ever, you don’t know that you are already required to make contacts each week with employers. Also if you refuse a job offer you are no longer eligible for unemployment… so what’s the point of reinventing the wheel.

3. allowing states to require recipients to pass a drug test

Whoa now this is where I draw the line. I don’t use nor do I endorse drug use, but this is getting out of line. Being unemployed does not indicate your a drug user, and it’s unreasonable to assume that any single person lost their job because of drug use. If you did loose your job because of drug use your employer can challenge your unemployment claim and when the topic of drug use is breached it’s a guarantee that that employee would not receive benefits. So all those folks who lost their job due to reasons beyond their control should not be subjected to this kind of extreme measure.

4. if you lack a high school diploma or GED, enrolling in a GED program (”and making satisfactory progress in classes”).

So what the GOP is saying here is that if you don’t have a diploma or a GED you don’t belong in the work force. Of course they don’t want to help you get an education either… so your screwed.

Representatives John Yarmuth (D-KY) and Walter Jones (R-NC) have introduced legislation today that would overturn key provisions of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision that gutter campaign finance law and opened the flood gates to corporate money and ultimately created corporate owned corrupt politicians.

The legislation would amend the Constitution to state that campaign contributions do not amount to free speech, and would allow Congress the ability to establish a viable public financing system that would be the ONLY source of funding for federal elections.

“Until we get big money out of politics, we will never be able to responsibly address the major issues facing American families,” Yarmuth said in a release. “And that starts by ensuring our elections and elected officials cannot be bought by the well-off and well-connected.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

In a bold move Time Magazine has named us, the protesters, as it’s person of the year. Now I never imagined I would be named one of Times persons of the year, but our time has come! Obviously our efforts have started to work their way into every aspect of the American experience.

Since 1989 the earnest, zany little bimonthly Adbusters — “an ad-free international magazine for activists fighting to change the way information flows and meaning is produced in our society” — had been preaching to its choir. In July the editors ran a full-page photo-illustration of a barefoot ballerina posed atop Wall Street’s Charging Bull statue — in the background were gas-masked insurgents in a tear-gas fog — along with four lines of copy: “What is our one demand? #occupywallstreet September 17th. Bring tent.” Adbusters also sent out an e-mail — “America needs its own Tahrir” — and on Independence Day urged on its smallish cadre of Twitter followers: “Dear Americans, this July 4th dream of insurrection against corporate rule.”

If you tweet it, they will come.

At the end of July, in an office in New York’s financial district, the proto-Occupiers met with some veterans of the protests in Spain, Greece and North Africa. To figure out what “Occupy Wall Street” might mean, they reconvened two days later at a come-one-come-all meeting — outdoors, for hours, in a park near that charging bronze bull, amid the thousands of unwitting passersby on an ordinary Wall Street workday.

So congratulations occupiers you have been named Time’s person of the year!