Here’s a story which is intended to convey a message, but (as is so often the case) perhaps a different one than that which was intended. And unusually, I don’t know what to think.
A summary: a fellow named Terry is a teacher in Florida. As with most teaching gigs, it’s a nine-month job. At the end of the academic year, Terry files for unemployment until the beginning of the next academic year. This year, Terry decided to take a vacation in the summer and head out to Colorado. Now, I can’t blame him for that, given that Florida is a pretty horrible place, especially in the summer. But… this caused him problems in getting his unemployment. Florida instructed him to file where he is, in Colorado. Colorado won’t help him because he works in Florida and instructed him to file there instead. Terry bounced back and forth between unresponsive agencies until finally contacting someone in the Florida governor’s office. The person they sent him to determined in seconds that, since Terry works in Florida and intended to return there after the summer vacation, he should indeed file there, and straightened out the whole situation is a few seconds.
The author of this article asks (in essence), “Why did this have to be escalated like this? Why couldn’t the bureaucrats have done this right in the first place?” and considers this a question of competence.
It doesn’t look that simple to me. Why is someone eligible for unemployment when they voluntarily work in a seasonal profession? Should their vacations be subsidized? Can they be said to be actively looking for work (a requirement for unemployment) in a state when they are physically several thousand miles away? Is unemployment in a circumstance like this (9 month academic years, characteristic of the profession) an entitlement since you and your employer are forced to pay into the fund?
And most importantly, why is the government involved in compulsory unemployment insurance on their terms in the first place? Is this a legitimate function of state governments and (ultimately) the feds?
I don’t understand how he can file for unemployment; especially when he has the choice to be paid over 12 months instead of just the actual working time.
What incentive does he possibly have to do this, when he can get the same amount of money in 9 months, plus your money for the other 3?
Socialism in any form, even as relatively mild as in the US, breeds greed and cheating.
And the answer to your question is undoubtedly: Public sector unions.
Indeed, this does seem really galling. Although, if this guy’s doing it, wouldn’t most other teachers? It seems unlikely that FL would be okay with most of the state’s teachers collecting unemployment for 3 months every year. Maybe this guy is in some kind of contract/special arrangement.
If I understand correctly, he’s working as an adjunct, so taking a series of 9 month contracts (unspecified if they’re at the same place each year or if he moves from school to school there).
Ok, so he is actually unemployed for about 3 months every year. It seems like he’s not guaranteed to have a job at the end of the summer. Basically, the colleges are hiring him for 9 months and then saying “we’ll see” before the next semester rolls around. That is a tenuous employment situation to be in, rather than the secure employment a K-12 permanent teacher or tenured professor would enjoy. Although, this guy doesn’t seem too broken up over being insecurely employed (perhaps because of UE, perhaps because it’s a second-hand story without all the details). I’m guessing the colleges just accept the UE insurance premiums as the cost of doing business. Honestly, while I disagree with mandatory UE insurance on principle, I can’t work up too much lather about this guy.
But, this does grate on my nerves:
This guy is not a serf. He has a choice, and he gets paid. And the whole “skills” courses bullshit is a reflection of the increasing shittiness of our high schools. The only reason he has a job is because of shit like “multimillion-dollar rec centers” which drive student loan dollars into his school. Most of those kids don’t really belong in college, which means his job is just a make-work project in the first place.
You son of a bitch, of course he is! He’s not in the tenured professor position he fantasised about getting during his PhD.
Terminology can also be a problem. We have 9 month appointments where the person is salaried and has a contract to teach a certain number of classes. Those 9 month appointments can be renewed for a second year. They get paid less than tenure-track faculty but it’s not a pittance. Then there are people who have long-term positions who are not tenured. That’s less common but does happen.
At my school, adjuncts are paid per course taught and I/we hire them based on our semester-to-semester needs. They get paid shit and it is certainly not enough for most people to live on. But adjuncting is not supposed to be a long-term career path.
The adjuncts who worked in the relevent industry related to the course were the instructors I sought out – because they had a clue. I avoided full professors like the plague, because they ended up reducing your actual understanding – if they remembered they had class that day. Associate professors were a toss-up.
In our department (History), our adjuncts basically teach intro survey courses: World Civ I & II, US History I & II.
The sort of adjuncts you seem to be describing are often moonlighting for extra scratch, but are otherwise gainfully employed in an industry job.
I have a computer degree. So yes, the Adjuncts were padding their bank accounts with a second job. And with the profs it was really a case of “those who can’t, teach”. I wouldn’t know about a liberal arts department, because ours was (quite literally) a joke. (As in we’d joke about ‘the person who went to RIT for a Liberal Arts Degree’)
You get more of what you reward.
seems like there is a heavy law about that.
I honestly had no idea that teachers can file for unemployment during the summer break.
I didn’t know that either. Maube only some states. I know my mom has been a teacher for decades and I’m pretty sure she has never filed for unemployment in the summer.
Not in Ohio
The vast majority can’t, because they don’t stop being employees over the summer.
Is this a legitimate function of state governments and (ultimately) the feds?
No.
This was my first question.
I’d would say that anytime there is a system in place, people will find ways to game it. It’s a good argument against systems.
I agree. One-up-man-ship is real. Every time someone creates a system designed for xyz, there will inevitably be people who find ways around it.
Internet security, drug testing, and more! All are subject to gaming.
-Rick Cook
But you wouldn’t know anything about gaming either one of those systems, would you?
Of course not!
Why, the very idea!
But without systems and experts running those systems, who will tell us what to do?!?
or people
I was going to say its because they still have to contribute to the unemployment system, but I was overcome with the urge to scream “Fuck This Guy!”
The teacher equivalent to the surfer douche who buys lobster and sushi with food stamps.
Yep – Zero sympathy here that FL isn’t funding his CO vacation.
The Big 3 automakers used to exploit unemployment laws this was. “Lay-off” everyone in a factory for a month while they retooled for the new model year – let the state pat them for a vacation – then “rehire” them all when the plant re-starts.
Actually, if you rtfa, FL is paying for his CO vacation, he just had to spend 10 excruciating hours calling them and whining to get it.
At that point I was thinking he could have landed a summer with that kind of time commitment.
I thought a stipulation of unemployment was that you had to be constantly attempting to get gainful employment in the interim…how can he do that while in CO?
Assuming the UE people are even bothering to follow up on that, he can submit a couple of applications electronically to jobs in FL over the course of the summer, with no expectation of accepting any offers he might get. Then, when he starts work again at the end of the summer, the UE program can declare him a success because he found a job.
It’s a win-win for everybody except the taxpayers.
Although, see above. The story isn’t about a permanent teacher, and it isn’t about K-12. This guy is more like a long-term substitute.
The rules from my hazy memory is you had to document two to three job seeking activities a week. Didn’t even have to be submitting an application, although that counted and so did going to an interview. One such approved activity was contacting employers to ask if they’re hiring. So this guy could call a different couple of school districts every week and be done with it. Or not. How many recipients gets audited?
If he wasnt, I believe there’s some sort of cross accounting between states when the employment credit (and associated unemployment insurance) is earned in one state and uninsurance is claimed in another.
I remember a newish teacher back in school mentioning that when he first started his first checks were larger than expected and thought it was great until he figured out he had selected (or failed to not select) the 9 month payment vs 12 month payments. Nowadays he should have left at 9 and then filed for unemployment for the other 3 .
I remember, during a summer break in middle school, seeing my 6th grade math teacher working the t-shirt booth at Kings Dominion. That was weird.
I used to go to the casino in Marksville for their all you can eat seafood buffet once a month or so. A few years out of HS I noticed my HS trig teacher working one of the tables as a dealer. I went over, said hello and asked her why she was there. I was afraid she had been canned by the school.
“Do you have any idea how much they pay me?”
I am sure not having to put up with smartass kids like me was no small part of it either.
Many years ago, my dad and a guy he knew from work (who turned out to be a fucking snake who screwed my dad, but that’s another story) bought a company together when their company was moving to Cleveland and they decided no job was worth moving their families to Cleveland (god bless ya for that one, Dad!). The company was based in Las Vegas and made various electronic systems – hotel climate control systems for one, although being in Vegas their steadiest sales came from keno boards. Anyway, the biggest problem they had was hiring and keeping skilled laborers, because in Vegas one could make more money as a parking valet than their company could pay.
“back in the day” most of my teachers had summer jobs – like one did pool installations, while another did farm work.
This should be a requirement for any taxpayer funded job with a lot of down time. Like Congress.
Fail to find a job with an employer you have no connection to in your district during that time, and you have to sit the next legislative session out, with no pay.
What if you were self-employed before going into Congress?
How would that preclude being able to find a job during your lavish 3 month summer vacations?
One of my friends is a high school principal who makes enough to take the three month vacation, but has a landscape business instead. There are workers and there are mooches.
high school econ teacher sold rugs at the flea market
3 or 4 years out of high school, I was at a party that was largely people a lot older me. I ended up smoking pot wit my 10th grade history teacher. That was kinda wierd.
I had a similar sort of experience in the Marines – I ended up running into one of my drill instructors at a bar in Okinawa, and we got hammered together. Of course, he was only a couple of years older than me so it was a bit different.
My high school calculus teacher’s other job was running a liquor store.
Those who can, do
Those who can’t, teach
and get free summer vacations,
I guess
Those who can, do.
Those who can’t, teach.
Those who can’t teach, teach Education.
and those who can’t teach education go into politics.
and whose who can’t go into politics become writers for Salon.
And those who can’t write for Salon become homeless drug addicts. Though to be fair, a lot people seem to just skip the Salon step despite being qualified.
Considering the quality of some of the writing at Salon, I wouldn’t be surprised if the homeless drug addict step comes before the Salon step.
No, teachers should not be collecting unemployment during summer vacations.
I’d rather make the school districts pay them that money directly so a full accounting of the cost to retain them is available. As it is, the state is hiding the costs of providing public education thru the unemployment system.
I hate that I’ve paid into unemployment for 20+ years and will not see a penny of it unless I’m fired and I would still have to fight tooth and nail to get it.
Romania’s Medieval Marital Prison
http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20170707-a-medieval-remedy-for-divorce
There were no divorces because one of them would end up murdering the other one, driven mad by being locked in a room together for weeks.
They’re like look nether of us want to be locked up together for 6 weeks so let’s just agree to let each other screw whoever we want and pretend we’re still married.
I’ve always understood teachers were technically employed year round but just didn’t have work during the summer (hence the option for the 12 month salary) so they could take on a second job if needed. It seems clear that this leech is gaming they system but, for this to be possible, wouldn’t the school have to terminate every single teacher at the end of each school year and then rehire all teachers for the next school year? Kind of like automakers in Drake’s example.
I’m not in HR but surely the school would have to post open positions for each one of those spots and screen potential candidates even if just for show. That’s a lot of work for utterly worthless school admin so maybe there’s some laws being broken here by either this guy or the school?
See mine below for more details, but full-time academics hold “continuous appointment” which means, even though we’re not technically paid for the summer, we’re still considered to be employed.
Thanks for the details. That’s kind of what I’m saying. I would think then in order to be eligible for unemployment, the school would have to terminate and rehire all positions every year which doesn’t seem likely.
Usually you don’t have to terminate employment. A reduction in hours/wages below a certain amount can be enough to trigger unemployment.
In 2009 the plant in was working at cut production down to 24 hours a week. All the production employees filed unemployment on the missing 16 hours and we’re paid. I think they had to be laid off for a total of 40 hours before the unemployment insurance started paying. We ran like that for several months before we rebounded enough to fill the schedules back full.
From the college rather than high school perspective: most full-time academics work 9 month contracts. I work for a state university and our pay system is called “9 over 12.” Essentially, since I’m salaried, the state takes my annual salary and divides it by 12 instead of by 9 so I get a check every month instead of having to hold back savings to cover me over the summer. When I was in grad school in KS in the late 1990s, I know the profs there only got 9 checks so they had to budget for the summer. Not a big deal, obviously, but easier to be in the system I’m in now.
I don’t have to teach in the summer but I can if I want to, and I get paid extra to teach that summer class (since my full-time contract is only for 9 months) – assuming the summer budget allocated to my department is enough to cover everyone who wants to teach. I think I’m allowed to take other employment over the summer – since I’m out of contract – but I know I can’t get unemployment (a side effect of the monthly pay checks).
:: knowingly grins at OMWC and tips hat ::
/tips yarmulke
“This story has no moral, this story has no end, this story only goes to show, that there ain’t no good in men…”?
Don’t you have to apply for jobs (in FL) to remain on unemployment?
I thought you had to be fired for that, too.
Why would FL say “yeah, travel around CO for the summer, man. No sweat. You want us to just direct deposit your checks?”
And most importantly, why is the government involved in compulsory education in the first place?
FTFY
it’s college, not K-12, although given enough time it too might become compulsory.
The idiot legislature here, especially including the supposed small government RINOs, are increasingly talking about K-16, although I guess it really should be preK-16 since universal preschool is only a matter of time. Kindergarten is now full day. Morons.
I am increasingly of the opinion that mandatory education* should be K-8/9** with the last 3/4 years being:
a) voluntary
b) either job training or additional schooling
c) only open to those who can pass an entrance exam
* = SLD: it shouldn’t even exist
** = You should be fairly literate and numerate by the end of 8th grade. If you can’t read literature, write an essay, do simple arithmetic in your head, or understand algebra, then you’re not ready to start high school, never mind get a HS diploma.
The fact that everybody has a high school deploma makes a high school essentially worthless.
Indeed. Bush gets a lot of shit for “No Child Left Behind” but mostly for the wrong reasons. And NCLB hardly started the trend of giving everybody a HS diploma whether they earned it or not. But nobody really wants to question the common “wisdom” that everybody “deserves” an education.
Most academics will declare, as if it were holy write, that NCLB destroyed secondary education in the US.
It is a convenient scapegoat for the structural problems that were in place long before it. It is also a prime example for future conservative and libertarian reformers on the risks of minor, incremental improvements in the context of an entrenched bureaucratic culture.
Further thoughts: people have bought into the “everybody should be on the college track” bullshit which is why this will never get off the ground. But, it’s utter nonsense. My grandfather went to a high school for the mechanic arts and learned machining. His parents didn’t even speak English (they were born in Italy). His first job was working on a factory floor. He joined the Army Air Corps and dropped bombs on Germany. At no point in his teen years or early 20s did anyone expect of him that he would go to college, never mind thought of him as an academic. After the war, he went to college under the G.I. Bill, but he also worked odd jobs to support his wife and kids. He later went on to get a PhD in Economics and became a tenured professor. If you talk to him now, you’d never think of him as the kind of guy who started off as a factory drone machining parts. He’s the absent-minded professor to a tee. But, he did what he could at the time, what paid the bills, and what gave him a work ethic. Nobody put him on the college track, and yet he was still able to get an advanced degree.
Of course, he also become a dyed-in-the-wool Keynesian, but you can’t win ’em all.
My grandfather had a similar background to yours – son of Italian immigrants, trained as a mechanic before WWII. Became a P-47 crew chief in the Army Air Corps. Unlike your grandfather, he never went to college, but he started working as a mechanic for a company with a fleet of delivery trucks. From there he worked his way up to fleet leasing management, and eventually retired from Avis as a vice president in the early ’90s. Frankly, I’m almost ashamed to admit I’m his grandson given how much more he accomplished in his life than me despite my fancy piece of paper on the wall.
You’re not done yet. 😉
Meh. The economy is very different. My father graduated U of M, Rolla with a degree in metallurgical engineering in the mid 60’s. He had a wife and two kids. We lived like fucking royalty with him right out f school. I looked at his transcripts once and compared them to requirements now. He has what would amount to a Phd today.
My brother and I did the same about 20 – 25 years later. Wife and two kids, different but similar degrees. It was tough getting off of the ground.
Back then there was still lots of illiteracy and not very many college degrees. Truly skilled labor was in short supply also. In the post war economy if you had skill, knowledge, a good work ethic and some ambition the sky was the limit. Now, not so much.
I agree with you. My grandfather was a very successful dude who always downplayed it. He claimed that post -WW2 anyone with a pulse and a work ethic could make a lot of money. People could literally hang out a shingle and go.
Different times.
I think we have been over this before, I feel that “Duke Power vs. Griggs”, and the other cases like it have pushed the issue. The college credential is/was an expensive sorting device which has replaced the cheaper sorting criteria that have been outlawed. Expanding the BA/BS to everyone has just moved the sorting to other levels (Masters, PHD, select schools). etc.
For a while the colleges & universities were allowed to be selective in a way that businesses were not. The college could require an SAT of 1000+ to enter. The business could accept only a college degree, but the business couldn’t ask for a 1000 SAT to apply.
Griggs v. Duke Power is an interesting case because the stated intentions of the judges and the practical effect of the ruling seem to be at odds. Burger specifically called out degrees as well as diplomas as being unsuited for judging employee qualifications*. It is actually the lower courts that have subsequently modified the decision and led us to the exact place he wanted to avoid going:
Also, Ricci v. DeStefano in theory makes it clear that Duke allows job-relevant testing regardless of racial outcomes. It says that tests which are directly related to the job are not only perfectly legal but, if administered, cannot be discarded just because of a racially disparate impact. In other words, it says basically the opposite of what most companies actually do. Although, the I don’t see too many companies availing themselves of this ruling, and no doubt the issue is considerably muddier at the state level and among the lower courts. We seem to be stuck with college degrees (and resume buzzword bingo) as the de facto manner of employment selection even though the highest court hasn’t forced anyone into that box.
The missing asterisk:
* = How kind of him to make a decision on what is fit for every business in this country. Nobody knows the details of running a business quite like someone ensconsed in the cloistered halls of the Supreme Court.
We can look at the disparate impact part of the decision. Proving disparate impact requires you to have a hiring pattern that does not match your applicant pool composition. If you are allowed to select from an applicant pool that has already self selected for discrimination, then that disparate impact isn’t your fault.
Yes, Duke Power allowed specific testing in theory, but it is a defense, if you have disparate impact you need to prove your tests are “I won’t say perfect, but the bar seems to be quite high” What does the average employer want to screen for?… Intelligent, won’t steal, drive, does well when unsupervised?,
The degree is a proxy for that. Union membership, guild membership, the employer wants at least some way to screen out the chaff. Getting references that mean something has been neutered.
I just see it as a reason for the explosion of degrees for plenty of jobs where they were not required before (HS diploma was enough) and that people clearly state “I don’t need my degree to do this”
I suppose you could also blame the expansion of discrimination litigation for wrongful termination. That has discouraged effective trial employment, and hence the reliance on the selection proxies
When Mrs. G was teaching, her contract was for the school year, but the salary was paid out over the course of the calendar year. So, technically, she was unemployed for the summer (sort of). It never would have occurred to her to apply for unemployment for the summer months — even if she hadn’t been doing the 12-month payout.
My brother does asphalt( not for the state, driveways and such) and they are “laid off” every winter.
He collects UE and pretends to look for work, just waiting for the weather to warm up.
Drives me nuts, but the company has that built into their business plan.
I really can’t fault people for accepting government money that they are willingly giving away, especially if those people are taxpayers.
When I was going to school I used the shit out of obamacare as long and hard as I could. At least I’d pay back my share eventually, if I hadn’t already from previous employment.
I get that part of it, he works his ass off and feels he deserves the paid vacation.
I’m sure if there wasn’t such a huge incentive to do nothing he would work year round.
I really can’t fault people for accepting government money that they are willingly giving away
This was my rationale for taking grant money for research- I can believe that the government shouldn’t be in the research grant business but if the money is being given away regardless, hell, I’ll take it.
I can think that you tossing hundred dollar bills around while yelling, “Come and get it!” is a bad idea, and I’ll tell you that, but if you’re doing it, I’ll scoop ’em up.
I really can’t fault people for accepting government money that they are willingly giving away, especially if those people are taxpayers.
Yes, but that’s how governments go broke. A single person accepting government money causes little harm, but as the mentality metastasizes that this is acceptable and more and more people do it, it becomes less and less possible to get people to stop. The problem of a profligate government in a republican state is entirely the fault of said state’s culture: if the people think it is acceptable to live at the expense of others, than that is how their government will be run. Socialism is primarily a cultural problem, not an economic one.
Well the obvious answer is to make government stop giving money away. If all the principled people say ‘nope not gonna take that free cash’ then the real parasites are just going to suck harder, and you know that the government isn’t going to simply stop moving money around without an official mandate. The only way to stop it is to force them to stop it, but in the meantime I would rather have taxpayers taking their own money back over freeloaders that will never contribute.
Except it’s not a prisoner’s dilemma: if you don’t take it, someone else will, but if you do take it, someone else will too, and then that’s twice as much money that’s gone out the door. From an individual perspective, it makes sense that if you are getting fleeced that you’d want to recover as much of that as possible, but on a societal scale such a mindset literally results in everyone trying to live at everyone else’s expense. It’s impossible for taxpayers to take their own money back by taking government benefits: their money is gone, it’s been spent, any money they get must be taken from someone else. The welfare state is not going away, but I do think it is possible for a culture to develop where people view it as something shameful, as a last resort, not as a case of “I gotta get mine”. Maybe that’s a lost cause, but accepting that taxpayers should take as much as they can from government in an attempt to recoup their losses is a sure path to bankruptcy.
This guy should have just moved to Illinois for a few years, then retired like a king.
Holy shit
that’s more than my father makes after a 30 year career saving people’s lives.
Is there any way we can trick Canada into taking illinois back? Cover it with maple syrup or put a decent hockey team there or something?
I vote we just offer them a 6-pack of Molson and agree to give Rob Ford American Citizenship.
RIP in peace, Rob Ford. We hardly knew ye.
Take it back?
WOW. that’s unbelievable. No wonder Illinois is broken.
His fucking pension from a state he wasn’t even working in is over a quarter-mil?
Why don’t we tar and feather anyone anymore?
What in the fuck? That’s the multi-megaton H-bomb of fiscal disasters. Anyone in Illinois should sell their property there right now for whatever they can get for it and flee as fast as possible.
Good. We’ll see what “warnings” do
http://hotair.com/archives/2017/07/12/evergreen-president-weve-seen-slight-decline-enrollment-since-protests/
I hope that the warning are written and mailed, so that all the students that get them can build a big bonfire with them, preferably in his office.
So why is he confused about this? Every good leftist knows what to do when something isn’t working. You double down on the same.
His picture is exactly what I imagined a liberal career administrator should look like.
Reposting this from the AM linx just because:
Tim Berners-Lee apparently believes that “Net Neutrality” already existed before he invented the Internet.
https://twitter.com/timberners_lee/status/885100007749287936
Berners-Lee did not invent the Internet, he invented the world-wide web, which is built on top of the Internet*. That’s an important point because it makes what he said less stupid. The Internet existed for over a decade before the web did. But, what he said is still pretty stupid. When he started out building the web, the Internet looked nothing like it does today. It was a collection of universities and research institutions (like CERN, where he worked), with some DoD participants as well. The open Internet that we have today, where anyone can connect directly to, and be a part of, the Internet from their home or mobile device via an ISP did not exist. Nobody was streaming media across it. It had ridiculously small bandwidth by modern standards, far less geographic reach (in terms of depth if not breadth), and it had gatekeepers.
Basically, Tim is talking about an Internet that doesn’t exist any more and whose details he has forgotten.
* = The Internet is physical infrastructure and network-layer protocols, like TCP and IP. The Web is software built with application-layer protocols like HTTP and data formats like HTML. The latter inherently depends on the former (or at least, something like it).
Nothing says liberty like using Thomas Paine to support government regulation.
I was expecting him to be conflating net neutrality with a neutrality law that was on the books way back when that applied to radio. Yes, the progs have been up the same ol’ tricks forever. But no, that isnt it.
I have enraged my progressive friends by saying a Hilary presidency would likely be accomplishing he same things as Trump with the same congress.
Not sure if you’re just trying to be nice to them or not, but Hillary would be 1000x worse than Trump. And she sure wouldn’t be accomplishing anything towards rolling back the regulatory state, she’d be piling on.
After watching you two interact, I think we all need tophats on our avatars.
I will not, herder of scruffy Nerfs.
Wuss
Wuss
Man that’s a weird word. Just like America.
King Missile sucks in concert. I couldn’t drink fast enough to make it tolerable.
It’s not really a good band. Their recordings are amusing. However, Detachable Penis lost its novelty because popularity.
Who… who refuses to wear the tophat!?
Uh-oh, Bob and Cedric aren’t going to like that.
I guess we’re just going to have to teach him to wear the tophat!
Maybe a battered one…
I suppose that is me trying to be nice.
I was told that I am short-sighted for thinking that because our day to day lives have not changed, that the ripples won’t be felt.
I asked what ripples I should be expecting in the near future.
I got a peace sign emoji.
In their fever dreams we are on the cusp of a glorious socialist revolution. Its going to happen any day now. Trump will be deposed and All top hat wearers will be sent to the camps. That is probably what they have in mind…anti-gun effeminate genderfluids rounding up all of the deplorables.
I remember reading a short story about the free states seceding after Hillary’s election and what’s left of the military trying to take them back. It was rather humorous and generally echoed the gist of your last line.
And a hearty “molon labe” to you as well, sir!
I imagined saying that in an upper crust late 19th Century British accent, by the way. Just for context and all.. Why am I posting thing?
I always tell them to quit bitching. They had a choice of two morally bankrupt, NY Democrats for president. Either way, they won.
*sigh*
When people think New York, they think “Corrupt Democrat Politicians”. They never think stately woodland mountains, Wine, Cheese, salt potatos… some might remember the Erie Canal – put in by a D-R Governer with two last names (DeWitt Clinton).
I typically think of spiedies and annoying accents.
I disown lawn guyland and the city.
Most of my time in New York has been in the Binghamton area, since I was just over the state line down 81 in northern PA.
New York the state and New York the city are separate in my mind, and I generally assume people are talking about the former outside of news stories.
My first thought was “hey I remember there, that was the town directly south of us I never visited growing up”.
My second thought was “but I all too often run into those people who think NYC whenever someone mentioned ‘New York'”
When I was a kid on Long Island, there was “New York”, which was us and the city, and then everything north of Yonkers was just “Upstate”.
Wait, are you trying to convince us that there’s more to New York than NYC?
Inconceivable.
When it comes to political consequences there certainly isn’t.
Here’s a story with a moral.
Ex president Lula sentenced to 9.5 years for corruption
When can we send our leftist crooks to prison?
When the Libertarian reconquista finally happens.
I think to have a reconquista, we needed to at some point have a conquista.
The company i work for is Headquartered in Brazil. A little over a year ago they got into tax trouble down there. Apparently they had been bribing officials instead of paying taxes. We got hit with several hundred million dollar bill. From what i understand of brazil though, they weren’t doing anything out of the norm as far as corruption goes.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-brazil-corruption-gerdau-br-idUSKCN0VZ09X
That’s normal. My son-in-law works for the Brazilian version of the IRS. He’s pretty high up and people are always trying to lavish all these gifts on him. He gives them back and it surprises people because they’re used to everyone being on the take.
While i’m mildly enthused by that news, i suspect there’s a beachfront resort “Jail” somewhere in brazil where they lock up very high-powered people.
the country is so corrupt, that even when they bust people for corruption, i doubt its for more than show. call me cynical, but i went to college with the son of a Brazilian govt minister, and the way he described it, anyone who held elected office effectively had a carte blanche license to rob.
So, not Carandiru then. :’-(
The little fish that swims up the urethra?
A film depiction of some time at a famous prison
I’m not too sure about that. I asked my wife that very question and she said he’s actually going to a real jail. Maybe wishful thinking on her part.
Holy shit, amazing.
Pretty cool, but this:
That’s the best you can do? A badass corruption purge and you call it ‘Carwash’?
I do hope, though, that this was playing as the prisoner was led from the courtroom.
Indeed
Lava jato (money laundering)
Gee, imagine that. AT&T and Verizon are supporting net neutrality.
http://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/at-t-verizon-get-behind-net-neutrality-protest-but-maintain-stance-title-ii
All the more reason for me to oppose it.
Socialist schemes are always regulatory capture for the right people cloaked in the language of equality.
Yes, and your government relations VP’s don’t work for you really and have no personal interest in actually reducing government oversight. After the current gig, they’ll move to a competitor, industry trade group, the regulator, or a legislator.
Goddammit. If they like it so much, then they can make it their own corporate policy.
Why does every idea have to be forced on everyone else?
What if the other guy doesn’t???/?/?/????///
Then he might run a more efficient network that more effectively delivers what customers actually want.
The horror…
I’m with everyone here in that as soon as I started reading this article, my initial reaction was “why in the hell is he applying for unemployment when he is voluntarily on a 9 month contract?” The fact that pjmedia prints this so unquestioningly makes me a little puzzled. It seems to me they completely missed the point.
I think that’s the big problem with unemployment. Technically he is unemployed right now, so he can file. Doesn’t matter that it was part of the plan from day one. I wonder if ski instructors and chairlift operators do the same thing in the summer.
In New York at least, there is a process specifically for “sesonal employment” people who apply. I think they don’t even have to show the attempts at employer contact.
It sickened me at the time, and I am still disgusted at it.
I was a liftie. I had about 2 weeks between summer and winter jobs. The golf course opened about 3 weeks after I was let go from the mountain, I was a week earlier than the last of the lifties.
The next year, It was about 9 days till I was painting. man that job was nice. 15 an hour, under the table. with bonuses for finishing jobs early.
Made a lot that summer.
I was always of the mind that “there are summer seasonal jobs and there are winter seasonal jobs, so isn’t it natural that seasonally employed people would flip between the two?” The state apparently did not agree.
When I was on it in VT, I got fired from a job that had originally promised me at least a year. I only went on it to make sure I could get rent covered.
There was no way I was going to be able to go on vacation. You had to apply a bunch of places every week, in person. They followed up, they needed a name of who said ‘no’. I can’t imagine it would be easy to scam for long.
I would not have been eligible if I had quit or I knew I would be out of a job in month 3.
Here’s the thing: “unemployment” isn’t exactly welfare in the unusual sense. Your employer pays for it, or — in reality — you pay for it. When you collect your “unemployment”, you are really just getting the money back that originally came out of your salary.
It’s hard to say that any individual is wrong for collecting the money originally set aside from them.
Naturally, you could argue with the system: what it means, what it promotes, etc.
But I have a hard time blaming the individual.
In my mind, unemployment should be used for surprising layoffs, after months or years of working at a place. not the teachers summer funtime trip.
but I do get that. same as SS. We aren’t hypocrites for taking our money back.
And unemployment has been demonstrated pretty clearly to cause exactly what you would expect — people remaining unemployed for longer.
But it’s one of those weird things where I can hardly blame people for taking money back from the government… heh. 😉
You are misinformed about this point – unemployment is an employer-paid insurance program.
Some would make the case that the employer passes the costs along at least in part, like many other regulatory interventions.
I’m pretty sure the UE benefit term extensions that were mandated by the states did not come out of the employer paid funds, at least not in whole. I would be very surprised if there were many states whose UE insurance programs never got a dime from the state.
That is 100% correct. The employer pays an Federal and State unemployment insurance premium. I was specifically responding to the comment that employees are “taking money back” that they originally paid-in.
I would argue that the worker really pays for it.
When you collect your “unemployment”, you are really just getting the money back that originally came out of your salary.
Not really, since it is set up like insurance, which means the people who actually draw from it are taking far more out than they ever put in. If more people use it, or abuse it, the tax to fund it will have to go up, since everyone who uses it is being paid not with their own money but with other people’s money.
Good point.
Was this covered yet? Morning Joke to leave Republican Party, make usual this isn’t the party of St. Ronnie (even though Reagan was despised and ridiculed almost as much as Trump is).
Where’s my shocked face? I could of sworn I left it around here somewhere…
Yep, discussed in the morning links. Also discussed was Joe’s new Eraserhead hairstyle.
Geezus, Mika is downright scary. I blame Jimmy Carter for her being on TV.
She apparently lacquers her shins.
Maybe they’re wooden? Paul McCartney was into that, iirc.
There’s that old comment – banging Ann Coulter must be like fucking a bag of spanners (wrenches) – can’t say Mika would be any better. A sack of utility knives, maybe.
If he long for Reagan, why wasn’t he leaving the Republicans during either Bush administration? Trump is certainly more conservative than either of the Bushes, except maybe on social stuff. Unless of course maybe he wants more gay-bashing in the GOP?
OK, how about this: Work for a school which takes breaks in winter instead of summer, then when winter arrives get a job as off-season caretaker at a vacation resort in Colorado. That would give him time to work on his novel.
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+1 REDRUM
You see, I could have solved this dilemma if they’d axed me in the first place.
Boo!!!
j/k
redrum?
Why are you axing me?
That’s, like, when you screw up during the recording and have to play a completely new take.
Oh, and Needs Moar Citations!
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Don’t mind if I do!
That was a remake of a Simpson’s episode, wasn’t it?
“That’s funny, the blood usually gets off on the second floor.”
Willie: “That boy’s got the shinnin’!”
Bart: “Don’t you mean ‘shining'”?
Willie: “SHHHHHH! Do ye wanna get SUED?”
You’ve always been the caretaker.
I can totally see a Hair and Hat episode where one of them is Grady and one is Jack.
One exercise I like going through involves how a Stephen King scenario from one of his novels would have worked with modern technology.
“Oh, no, a rabid dog has us trapped in a car and I have no way to call for help!”
“Oh, no, he cut the telephone wires and we can’t call for help!”
“OMG it’s like 300 pages with the same sentence repeated over and over! He must have spent all winter doing this – he must be mad!”
“Hey, honey, what say you and me take my demon-possessed car and go to the drive-through?”
Darn…I mean the drive-in movie theater.
The textile mill is haunted? Well, duh, any textile mill surviving in New England must have something special going for it.
I’ll just mention how the part in The Stand where they figure out a way to speed up the death penalty, and actually achieve this just *before* the end of the world, sounds implausible.
This somehow made me think of Misery, and then this video.
You’ve never seen Misery?!
+1 Light of my life….i’m just gonna bash your brains in.
OT: Probably should be an article.
In a recent conversation I was asked why, as bad as our pols are, why are they so much worse everywhere else. My answer was “They aren’t. I will get back to you on that.”
Now I have thought it through. Tyrants and the people they oppress are constantly doing cost/benefit analysis. For the oppressed the cost is always the danger posed by deposing the tyrant opposed to what they will gain from it. If the tyrant hasn’t pushed things over the line then people tolerate a certain amount of oppression. It is only when they go over the line that people decide it is worth it to risk life, limb and property.
Where that line lies depends entirely on the culture of the people, their values and what they hold dear, not on the tyrant. Here in the US those values are largely represented by our bill of rights, especially the second amendment. There are a few things that would set the country on fire and mass seizure of firearms is definitely at the top of that list. What tyrants get away with in other countries the people here would never put up with.
Tyrants are all the same. They will push the line as far as they can get away with but they must always be cognizant of where the people draw that line lest they push things too far and end up in a gibbet. That is why I worry so much about the liberal bubble. It is dangerous for tyrants to get too far out of touch with the people.
Lefties have to fly to W V to learn how to talk to people? They cant understand why anyone voted Trump? They cant understand why people would celebrate increased employment opportunities in oil/gas because global warming? The utter tone deafness with regards to that that Obama and Clinton displayed and that so many in the liberal bubble display is dangerous and frightening.
– Iowahawk
Truer words have never been spoken.
I believe machiavelli touched on the first part.
“Niccolo, as a leader, is it better to be loved or feared?”
“Neither. Go for the money every time. Try for a side-order of venal if you can while you’re doing it. Keep a pair of running shoes on hand
I see little or no difference between American and Canadian liberals or conservatives.
Libertarians on the other hand….
As for lefties looking at the rest of the country as if they’re playing the part of Spock is appalling.
I could almost forgive them or laugh it off if they were saying anything coherent, but it is all freedom is slavery gibberish. Every part of their agenda is designed to move that line. Environmentalism is designed to destroy our ability to create wealth. Taxes are about destroying our ability to retain wealth. Gun control is about destroying our ability to defend ourselves. The LGBT rights movement is about destroying the family. Policing speech is about destroying our ability to think and speak for ourselves. Race baiting is about destroying our ability to unite. It goes on and on…everything they do is designed to make people smaller and weaker, to push that line as far as they can so that our cost/benefit analysis is always changing.
They read Animal Farm and thought it was an instruction manual. It’s also as close to a farm as they ever got.
I believe political leaders will always amass as much power as they can. It’s what they do. America is different in that we have a constitution that was written to restrain government more than it was to enable it. We still, sort of, have the constitution. Without it, we would be just another country with even more oppressive stuff going on than we have now.
The 2A may he the most important piece of the whole document. America is armed. Americans, at least a lot of us, love our country and constitution and the politicians in charge know this. A politicians main goal in life is to acquire power and then maintain it. Getting shot by your constituents is not a good way to maintain your power.
FWIW, most constitutions were meant to restrain government.
The key difference, I think, between the U.S. Constitution and other constitutions (on paper, at least) is that it was written by people where as skeptical of democracy as they were of monarchy. Many other countries’ constitutions were written by people too focused on rejecting monarchy to see the problems of democracy.
Ugh, should be “… written by people who were as skeptical of …”
Basically, my point is that the U.S. Constitution was written to limit the government it was going to create while other constitutions were were written to limit the governments that preceded them.
I am trying to say that one tyrant is like another and that our constitution doesnt matter. It’s us that matter. We set the limits and where those are set depends on culture. I think Pie in the Sky talked about this in his article on the state of liberty in Romania. Whatever is written on paper the society there practices what their culture dictates in spite of it. Our bill of rights is a condensation of our culture. If the culture changes too much the bill of rights wont matter. Keeping our guns keeps the 2nd amendment alive.
Ugh. connection problems here due to weather. I left off: “Keeping our guns keeps the second amendment alive, not the other way around.”
I once worked for a particular federal agency with a large seasonal workforce. We were actually taught how to apply for UE during training and were given paperwork for filling for UE as soon as we were cut for the season. Many (most) of my coworkers planned their entire lives based on recurring seasonal work and recurring seasonal unemployment. It was disgusting. I was actively discouraged from working so I wouldn’t screw up the production statistics and cause a quota change. They literally paid me to read books at my desk. Thank God those days are long behind me. The experience helped make me virulently ancap though. Maybe I should refer to my political beliefs as Fedgov employment PTSD.
You could probably get disability for that.
So wait, can Professional Athletes file for unemployment during the offseason?
Depends on if they made the playoffs.
The more interesting one would be if they get worksmans comp when they get tackled and tear a shoulder.
Actually, yes. The Bears (along with the other Illinois professional teams) were backing a bill to tweak that and the NFLPA went as far to threaten to warn players not to sign as Free Agents in Chicago as a result. http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/breaking/ct-bears-workers-comp-spt-0204-20170203-story.html
In the 40’s and 50’s, all but the very best professional athletes had to work jobs in the off season to make ends meet.
That was true into the early 70s, I believe.
Maybe even beyond that. I know a dude who was an offensive lineman for the Vikings in the early ’80s. Pretty sure he worked off season, as well.
or even 2015…
http://nypost.com/2015/06/09/nfl-player-keeps-40-per-hour-day-job-driving-for-uber/
Here they spread the pay across 12 months.
Do they use that funny-colored money?
Cause ours don’t look like monopoly money
If you are going down that road then go all the way. Every Costa Rican bill is a work of art.
Yes. They’re magically useful too!
Well, sure, if .79 of a real dollar can be considered ‘magical’.
LOL
I didn’t get much out of Twitter in my first go-round; perhaps I should try it again.
OK, it seems David Brooks is deploring the effect of zoning restrictions on the poor…have I reached the punch-line yet?
Oh, wait…
“I was braced by Reeves’s book, but after speaking with him a few times about it, I’ve come to think the structural barriers he emphasizes are less important than the informal social barriers that segregate the lower 80 percent.
“Recently I took a friend with only a high school degree to lunch. Insensitively, I led her into a gourmet sandwich shop. Suddenly I saw her face freeze up as she was confronted with sandwiches named “Padrino” and “Pomodoro” and ingredients like soppressata, capicollo and a striata baguette. I quickly asked her if she wanted to go somewhere else and she anxiously nodded yes and we ate Mexican.”
I’m guessing Brooksie didn’t score?
Maybe she froze up because Brooks was going Dutch and she didn’t want to pay through the nose for food with fancy names?
Uh-oh, I just got a cease-and-desist letter – I picked the wrong day to piss off the Dutch anti-Defamation League.
Gee – back in the 90s when I routinely visited my best friend in Chicago, we would hit the local ethnic restaurants. Once ::hands shaking as I recall the horror:: we ate Ethiopian food. After that fateful day I was never the same. In fact I wanted to eat at the same restaurant again the next time I visited.
Ethopian food?
/Begins looking up tasteless jokes from the Eighties
Florida Woman. Car, Basketball Bowtie
(Sore-y – that was meant for the A.M. linx)
This person must be to Twitter what Quixote is to HnR comments.