We are not the only ones who are fed up

How many lazy deadbeats does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

I know I haven’t been writing much lately, but there has been a medical crisis that has been happening with my Father-in-Law that has taken precidence over everything else. But now the situation has somewhat stabalized so now I can get back to the business at hand – and yes I will tell you all about it soon, which includes why I think that the people who are against health care reform are against health care…

While surfing the web in another fruitless job search I came across a Newsweek article entitled Are Fed-Up American Workers Getting Their Gumption Back? The article describes how the people who still have jobs are getting fed up with being taken advantage of by their employers. They are getting pissed that their bosses are getting bonuses and all of the perks like vacation and stock options, while they have to fight just to get some time off to take a child to a Doctor if they are sick, or get a fantastic performance review – yet have to endure a salary cut instead of a raise. Now I can understand how they can be miffed at their bosses. They have been made to feel afraid to speak up for themselves for fear of suddenly being out of a job. In this economy that is a reasonable fear.

However it looks as if the peasents are beginning to get angry enough to storm the bastile, as there are more and more grumblings coming from the rank-and-file that they are not happy. I read the article in full and I can understand why they are getting pissed at their bosses. After all their bosses are going on “junkets” to spas in California and calling it a “business expense” while the workers are searching their couch cushions for change to afford some Ramin Noodles until payday. I also read some of the comments made on the article, and there was one comment (isn’t there always just one with me) that got me going that was written by someone who identified himself as “William”:

As a small businessman I can tell you that Yes we are getting ready to vote back in Republicans. I have gone from 3 employees to 17 now. I did so because first the Reagan and then the Bush tax cuts allowed me to have enough profit left over after expenses for the banks to be willing to loan me money to expand.  
 
The ‘Risk’ I take is that if my business fails everything I own is attached to it. My employees walk away and on to a new job. That risk is only worth it if I get a decent return after taxes. What really burns me is the premise that the tax rates were fair before the tax cuts. They were never fair to begin with. Now they are at least tolerable. I pay half of my employees contributions for social security and medicare. I pay for their workmans comp and state unemployment, both of which I am ineligible for. I pay both halves of my social security and medicare. Obama’s people are now floating the idea of taking the cap off of wages that pay social security and medicare…AND doing a needs assessment for the benefits. If you took the risks and built a business, established a 401K, invested wisely, stayed married, and enter retirement with assests you may not get any social security or a limited amount. That is just another tax. Federal, State and payroll taxes are close to 50% now. If Obama and the Dems in California have thier way I will pay nearly 60% of my income in taxes.  
 
Screw that. I will cut back, meaning reduce jobs, create unemployment, before I pay over half my income in taxes. Same thing with Corporations, or should I say Co-operations. They are owned by the shareholders. They do what the shareholders say. Some if the biggest Shareholders are CalPers and the public employees unions. CalPers expects an 8.5% return on their investments. They tell management what they want. Management is given a bonus for getting it. If they told them to create as many jobs with as many benefits as possible, that is what they would do. 50% of American households are invested in mutual funds. Half this country expects a nice return on their investments. Than means The evil corporations are really just doing what your parents and grandparents and police, fire, and teachers want them to do: be profitable.  
 
Want them to invest their cash horde? Give them reason to believe the government will support new investment. Give them an investment tax credit. It really encourages us to invest our own retirement money in this country. When will you dems get that? Investing money borrowed by the feds is not healthy and does not accomplish what you think it will. There is 2 trillion dollars in cash being held by Corps. Give them an incentive to invest and you will see new jobs, new goods and services being created…

Obviously I had to respond to this guy, and here was my response…

“Screw that. I will cut back, meaning reduce jobs, create unemployment, before I pay over half my income in taxes.”

William…

As someone who is one of the long term unemployed and not one of the “99ers”, you sound like the last boss that a person in my situation would want to work for.

You say that you would screw over your workforce if the Bush tax cuts go away like they’re supposed to. Well how does that make you any better than all of the larger corporations that have sent our jobs overseas and left us and our families high and dry?

What makes you think that if your business were to fail that your employees would be able to move on to other jobs? Businesses are making profits again, yet they are not creating jobs as they are supposed to since it would cut into their profit margin, keeping us “lazy deadbeats” out of work and hungry. If you think that the people who have jobs are pissed at their employers, that’s nothing compared to how we unemployed job seekers feel about buisness owners like you right now. We want to work, we want to support our families so that we can afford food. Yet the same Republicans that you want to vote back into office say that we are “a bunch of lazy deadbeats who don’t really want to work, who only want to sit around collecting unemployment and let the Government take care of them for the rest of their lives.”

Small problem with that…many of us have applied for work with these same people who have this opinion of us, only to be rejected by them one minuite and then insulted by them the next. Myself? It has been 2,797 days since I last held what a Tea-Partying Republican told me was a “real job”, in other words – a job that was not a comission-based sales job. In that time I have contacted 1,090 companies and small business owners such as yourself in an attempt to secure myself a steady job so that I can put food on my family’s table. Only 52 of you have brought me in for interviews, and none of you has offered me a job. So why don’t you explain to me how lazy I am?

If the Republicans are voted back in things are only going to get worse – not better. Jobs will again be cut and sent overseas, we will have more unemployment – not less, and Congressional Republicans, Tea Partiers and business owners like you will continue to write off the unemployed as absolutly and totally worthless, and not deserving of employment or assistance as the middle-class is disenfranchised.

So remind me not to waste my valuable time by applying to work for someone like you.You’re the last person that I or any of my unemployed friends should be wasting our time on.

Guys like this just make my blood boil…and my blood pressure is high enough, thank you. Just when I think that guys like this cannot surprise me anymore – they do. It’s bad enough that they tell us that we don’t want to work, but what makes it even worse is when they come out and say that they dojn’t want us to work – even if it is in a roundabout way.

It might be this way for a long time now, and that is not only going to suck for us but it will come back and bite them in the ass in the end.

Just watch and wait long enough – it will happen.

Until next time…

I enjoy your comments, but…

We have spam with porn, spam with viagra, spam with Nigerian Millionaires...

Ok, over the past few days I have been getting a lot of people leaving comments on a lot of my past posts. Unfortunately the majority of these posts have been nothing but spam and the way I can tell is that they are left by someone who gives a product as their name, their English isn’t very good, or they make comments on several posts and they all say the same thing. I was going to leave off the more restrictive commenting system as a test to see if some of you out there could behave yourselves.

Apparently, you can’t.

Soooooo guess what? That’s riiiiight, the more restrictive system is back. You know, the one I had before my last host decided to take a powder? The one that worked on my previous theme? Well, it’s back, and that’s bad news for all of you spammers out there. Now instead of having to wade through 80 comments and have 79 of them be nothing but Spam, now only the serious commenters will be able to leave messages on what I write.

The commenting system is run by Echo which allows for real-time tracking of comments that are left. It also allows for people to sign into this board using their accounts on other websites. If you have an account for Facebook, Google, Twitter, FriendFeed, Yahoo, Blogger, JS-Kit, Haloscan or OpenID then you can sign in using that account to comment here. Also, the system is enabled to detect spam so if any of you are looking to advertise something here, contact me first, and if I think that what you are selling is worth buying then I will tell people about it. But if you are coming here to try to take advantage of me or anyone else here…move on.

Look, most of us are out of work right now and we are trying to get jobs for ourselves so that we can put food on the table. We don’t have a lot of money (if any) to spend on Porn (we can get that for free elsewhere – no, I won’t say where), Viagra (even though I have no doubt there are Teabaggers out there who might want to take advantage of it), or the next Nigerian Scam that will make us instant millionaires. We don’t have time to sift through all of the useless spam that you want to throw at us.

If you want to come here and comment on what I write about then please – be my guest. I don’t care if you agree with me or not, I would just like to keep the debate civil and not make things personal. This isn’t Newsvine and I’m not looking to be it’s smaller cousin. I just want to be able to express my views on the events of the day, particularly where they apply to the employment situation in this country, have you come here to give your points of view and then we go from there. Right now no one is banned from the site so the door is open for anyone to come on in and express their own pointy of view.

Just don’t do it with a mouthful of spam, will ya?

Until next time…

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The biggest crybaby in Cleveland.

Now I am going to start out this post by making an admission – I am not really a basketball fan. I haven’t really been a basketball fan even growing up in SoCal during the heyday of the Showtime Lakers. I had grown up more of a fan of the Los Angeles Rams, Los Angeles Dodgers, hell even the Los Angeles Kings had my loyalty more then the Lakers ever did – especially after Gretzky came to town.

That being said I can’t help myself but comment on the reaction that Cleveland is having right now because LeBron James has decided to “take his talent to South Beach”. I know that I might shock some of my readers in Cleveland, but I really feel that I need to impart some old school advice to the city and to its fans:

GET OVER IT!!!!!!!!!

Right now Cleveland, you are starting to sound and act like a bunch of Tea Partying yayhoos who crash a Town Hall meeting so that they can organize a lynch mob to go after those of us who want Health Care. Yeah I get that you are in serious grudge mode right now, but you have just proven to everyone else in the rest of the country why you are thought of as “The Mistake by the Lake”. There is a reason why the entire country thinks of you as nothing more than a town full of losers – its because you act like a bunch of losers!!!!

Winners do not whine!!! Winners do not vilify someone for taking a chance at success by going elsewhere!!! Winners do not immediately send out a poison e-mail calling a departing player/employee a “coward” or a “traitor”!!! Winners do not then immediately start burning said player/employee in effigy and start dressing up dummies in his gear and hang them from the end of ropes.

Only racist idiots lynch a young black man in effigy.

And speaking of which, that is pretty much what Cleveland Crybabies owner Dan Gilbert has practically called for in Cleveland. His e-mail was so incendiary that people were taking to the streets in order to demonstrate their displeasure. Now we have all seen this scene before in relation to sports events, and usually with tragic results. We’ve seen people take to the streets and loot local businesses, start fires, and engage in violent acts against innocent bystanders because their team either won or lost a championship game or series. We know how bad that makes the fans in that city look, and we all know how much that hurts local businesses.

Not that Dan Gilbert gives a rats ass about the local businesses he might have endangered. He might not even care about how his behavior makes the city of Cleveland look. It looks like we are seeing the true nature of the relationship between LeBron James and Dan Gilbert. And that begs the question, if Gilbert hated Lebron James this much while James was playing for him, why did he try to keep him, or did he even make an effort to keep him? Did he make any kind of effort to keep a player who has been an economic and jobs boon for Cleveland, or did he just say “good riddance” and then dynamite the bridge as soon as the words “South Florida” were out of Lebron’s mouth?

And he’s not the only crybaby out there by the way. Keven Hench got into the act over at FoxSports.com along with Jason Whitlock who refered to LeBron as a “clown” and a “villain”. Engaging in this kind of behavior is dangerous as we have seen this same type of incitement practised by Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Riley, Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachman and Sarah Palin when it comes to vilifying another successful African-American – namely President Obama. We’ve all seen how well that has worked out. We’ve all seen how that has inspired some crazies out there to take up arms and brandish them at Town Hall meetings to try to intimidate and terrorize those who would disagree with them. So now FOXSports is taking a page out of the book of FOXNews?!?!?

So tell me something Mr. Gilbert, how are you going to feel if someone tries to firebomb the house that LeBron James’ mother currently resides in in Akron, Ohio? Would you feel bad if someone assaulted her because of all of this, or would you take a page out of the abusers playbook and say that it’s all LeBron’s fault, and that if he really loved his mother he never would have put her in that position by leaving Cleveland?

If you choose the latter sir, then not only does your team deserve to lose, but you would deserve to lose your stake in the franchise that you now own. Look, David Stern has slapped Mark Cuban around for the things that he has said. So you should expect to get a call from the Commissioner’s office any day now. If I were David Stern I would tell you that if any harm comes to LeBron James or any member of his family, then I as Commissioner will be holding you personally responsible for it – and you should expect punishment up to and including the loss of ownership in the Cleveland franchise.

Now I hear you working it Cleveland. Your saying that “hey come on BigDaddy, that’s going too far!!!” Uh, no it’s not going far enough. If any of you Cleveland Crybaby fans payed Mrs. James and her family a “visit” in Akron, then I would say that not only do you derserve to go to jail, but Dan Gilbert would deserve to go with you. I’m pretty sure that the state of Ohio has anti-lynching laws still on the books, so don’t do anything that would associate you with the Tea Party or The Klan. Remember that this country has a dark history when it comes to lynching and race in this country. You really want to become part of that history by going after a young black man and his family?

And speaking of which, where are Jessie Jackson and Al Sharpton during all of this? Why are they not expressing their outrage at Dan Gilbert for practically inciting not just a riot, but what amounts to a lynch mob? Where is the NAACP? Why are they not demanding that David Stern bring them Dan Gilbert’s head on a silver platter? This is not just about who wins the NBA Championship any more, as you can see. This has so much potential to be a really bad episode when it comes to not only sports, but also how we think of employees doing what’s right for not only themselves, but also their families.

Would we even be having this discussion if LeBron James were not a basketball player? Would Cleveland be this bent if he were some minimum-wage clerk who left his job in Cleveland for a higher-paying gig in Miami? How many of us have ever left a job for one where there were better working conditions, better pay, etc? And now you are going to fault LeBron James for doing the same thing? Would we even be having this discussion if Lebron James were white? It’s worth thinking about Cleveland. There is a reason why you have a bad reputation as being a bunch of losers – it’s because you act like losers, and you are just showing the rest of us that nothing has changed!!!!!!!

What championships have you won lately Cleveland?!?!? Seriously, since when have you ever had a reputation for being anything but a town full of losers dressed up like Dogs throwing dog biscuits at opposing players? Your baseball team hasn’t won a World Series since 1948! Your original football team hadn’t won an Championship since 1964 and then they got smart and moved to B-more!! Now the expansion team that replaced them has done nothing but lose – they’ve lost on the field and they’ve lost on draft day!!! I mean Tim Couch, Brady Quinn?!?!? Come on!!!!!!! You only ever had one NHL team, and they merged with the Minnesota North Stars after two seasons, and the closest the Crybabies will ever get to the NBA Finals is if they buy a ticket!!!!!!!!

Look, LeBron knew that he was not going to win a ring as long as he was in Cleveland. Now that he is in Miami he has the best shot to win a ring that he is ever going to have. Like I said before Cleveland, winners don’t whine. Winners pick themselves up from a setback like this, dust themselves off, take a look around them and say “okay, what have we got left to work with, how can we add to it to replace what we lost, how can we then win with this new lineup?” But that is not what you are doing right now. You are looking around, trying to blame losses that haven’t happened yet on a player that is no longer wearing your uniform, and trying to blame your future failure on him.

Cleveland, have you even given any thought as to who you could try to go after now that LeBron is no longer in your locker room? Have you thought about who to go after to try to take his spot. Have you thought about how you can win without him, or are you talking smack and saying that you are going to win before him because you know in your heart that you are not as good as the Miami Heat are now, and you’re just trying to cover up for the fact that you’re scared right now?

Dan Gilbert has talked smack, but I honestly don’t think that he has given one thought to the possibility of going out of the free agent market and trying to replace Lebron in the lineup. He’s too busy organizing the lynch mob to take down to South Florida to concentrate on that.

Look Cleveland, loyalty is a two-way street. You demanded that Lebron remain loyal to you no matter what, yet it is clear by your words and actions that you would never be loyal to him. So many companies these days cut their employees loose, showing that they have no loyalty to them, yet they can’t understand why their ex-employees would betray them by applying for unemployment benefits. This is the type of business world that we have right now, there is no such thing as loyalty anymore. Not when good-paying jobs are being shipped off to China or India in favor of paying slave wages to children, and not when ownership of a sports franchise thinks that the way to win is to call departing players “traitors”.

Maybe LeBron James and Art Modell knew something that the rest of us are now finding out…

…no one wants to play for a bunch of losers.

I don’t blame LeBron for leaving Cleveland – I blame you for losing him Cleveland. Just one more loss in a long history of losing.

And it doesn’t look like things are ever going to change.

Until next time…

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