2010 Unemployment Extensions - Millions Without UI Benefits for the Fourth of July

On Thursday, July 1, the House passed their version of the unemployment benefits extension. A hopeful sign, yet this bill would still have to go to the Senate for their vote.

But by Thursday, the Senate had already adjourned. While most if not all of the Senators were likely still in town for the memorial of the late Senator Robert Byrd (D-W. Virg.) and while an emergency vote would have, technically, been possible, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) chose not to call the Senate back into emergency session. Painful as it is, I cannot entirely fault him for that decision. The House version of the unemployment extension bill was no more likely to have succeeded in the Senate than the Senate's own version which had failed the day before.

But anyway you slice it, Congress adjourned entirely on July 1 and went off for their Fourth of July, Independence Day recess - without passing unemployment benefits extensions.

So now, nearly two million of us - the jobless in America through no fault of our own - have lost or are about to lose the only thing keeping us afloat - our unemployment benefits. While most of America will be celebrating our nation's birth and Independence today, so many of us are despairing. For it's hard to feel like celebrating, hard to see any reason to do so, when we may be loosing everything we have worked for; when we don't know where we may end up sleeping; when we don't know how we will feed our children; when we can't see any way, under the current economic circumstances and our own ever worsening fate, that we will ever be able to get back on our feet again.

I am so very attuned to the despair and the fear and I fully understand the anger with our government. I, too, am unemployed and have already seen my unemployment benefits cut off. I cashed my last UI benefits check on June 23 and don't expect to see another at least until August - and then only if the Senate finally passes some version of an unemployment extension bill quickly when they reconvene on July 12. I have already lost much. I have already been living in poverty on the little bit that UI benefits provides. Trying to hang on much longer without them will now be the ultimate challenge for me. Even worse, though, I know so many of you are already farther down this road than I. For so many, there is nothing at all left to hang on to.

Still, in spite of the failure to pass unemployment extensions in the Senate, I have hung my American flag proudly by my front door today. And I will for as long as I have a front door - or a tent or a shopping cart - to hang it on. While some in our government have failed us, it is not America, it is not the Constitution, it is not the vision of the Founding Fathers that has done us this grievous harm.

On the contrary, it is those in our government and in our institutions that have intentionally worked against this, the greatest, free-est and most prosperous and benevolent nation in the history of the world, that have brought us to this point. Those who, slowly but surely - and now rapidly and blatantly - seek to undermine our freedoms and tear down our prosperity and who have thrown off our Constitution. It has been this creeping tyranny which, now apparently feeling it the time to pounce, has cost us our jobs, our homes, our security and our dignity. It is NOT America and all she stands for that has caused this. The blame for the suffering of the unemployed lies squarely on the shoulders of those in our government who seek to dismantle what the Founding Fathers so providentially provided.

This is not the first time, however, that this great nation has found herself on such a precipice. Indeed, our Founding Fathers first encountered the economic (and other) tyranny of the British government under King George nearly three hundred years ago. Then the Crown's tyrannical policies also sought to take and reallocate the fruits of the labor of the American colonists and to tax and regulate them into poverty for the benefit of the King and those on the British Isles.

So it was, after years of trying to reason with those tyrants who apparently cared nothing for the welfare of their citizens living and working on this side of the Atlantic ocean, that brave and determined men and women declared their independence from Britain and claimed their status as a separate and equal nation.

In crafting and signing the Declaration of Independence, these brave individuals pledged their honor, their possessions and their lives to fight for freedom from oppression. But they also laid a foundation so profound, that it should continue to give us hope today.

While often mis-stated and usurped, our Constitution still stands as the governing document of our great land. And with that most brilliant of governing documents comes our opportunity to redeem our nation, our prosperity and our freedoms. We still have the opportunity to vote and to "Throw the Bums Out". We still have the opportunity to speak out. We still have the opportunity to protest - "civil disobedience" as it is called. And, if need be, we will still have the right - no, the duty, as our forefather's both articulated and demonstrated - to fight if this increasingly tyrannical government continues to refuse to listen.

That time is not now. Our Founding Fathers went to incredible lengths to avoid bloodshed and the War for Independence that ultimately became necessary. But ours is a nation which, more so than any other people, understands and cherishes freedom. And we have been given the blueprint and the Constitution, like none other ever created, to either keep or regain our liberty and prosperity, either peacefully or, as a last resort, at the end of a sword. That choice lies with the tyrants.

For those of you who may have forgotten, or perhaps never really knew, what the Declaration of Independence was all about, I have included a portion of it here for you. I hope you will read it and cherish every profound word of it, as I do. In our founding documents lies our hope - and our reason to celebrate our nation's Independence Day, whether we are working and comfortable, or unemployed and suffering. Because of this day, the Fourth of July, and the magnificent country our Founding Father's established, we have greater chance than any other people on earth to get our lives and our great nation back.

So here is an excerpt of the Declaration of Independence. I have highlighted or capitalized parts for you and have laid it out in a certain way to emphasize certain points. It is not the way the founders initially laid it out. I must apologize, too, for any errors in the exact text or punctuation as I am writing it from memory. I will include a link so you can read the document in its entirety. I hope you will do so. You may be surprised at how many "injuries and usurpations" the founders listed against the Crown that we are now beginning to experience from our increasingly rogue government today.

Here, then, is an excerpt from the Declaration of Independence:

"When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident -

-That all men are created equal.

-That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.

-That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

-That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, DERIVING THEIR JUST POWERS FROM THE CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED.

-That whenever any form of government becomes DESTRUCTIVE OF THESE ENDS ... IT IS THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE TO ALTER OR ABOLISH IT and to establish a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to secure their safety and happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, IT IS THEIR RIGHT, IT IS THEIR DUTY, to throw off such Government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of REPEATED INJURIES AND USURPATIONS, ALL HAVING IN DIRECT OBJECT THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AN ABSOLUTE TYRANNY OVER THESE STATES. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world ... "

From here, our Founding Fathers listed the offenses that their current government in Great Britain was committing against them, many not at all unlike what we are experiencing in America today.

I hope this document touches your heart and your soul as it does mine. I pray, too, that you are able to make it through this very, very difficult time. I hope you are able to find and celebrate the blessings in your life, in spite of the pain, on this Fourth of July - the celebration of Independence for this great nation. And I hope you will continue to search and learn more about what is really going on and who is really harming us and keeping us unemployed so you can be a part of the solution - as provided to us in our founding documents.

Many blessings to you and may you have a Happy Fourth of July.

Link to Declaration of Independence

(One other note - When Thomas Jefferson initially drafted the Declaration of Independence, instead of the word "happiness" ("...life, liberty and the pursuit of "happiness""), it is said that he wrote "property". By that he meant, not just our homes or land and our possessions, but our wages - the fruit of our labor. Having the freedom to do with the fruit of our own labor what we will, in the eyes of the founders, promoted not only industriousness and ingenuity, but happiness. Taxation, therefore, was antithetical to happiness. While "money cannot buy happiness", those of us who have had our unemployment benefits and extensions cut off can certainly attest that the lack of it can certainly insure a lot of misery.)

Sources:

http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=25685