H |
ow to Increase Security in
America
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I'm calculating now, trying to subtract my nothing income from the money that I'll have to pay for rent, heat, phones, food, and health insurance. My bills can easily total more that, twenty-five thousand if I add up the cost of things that make a basic life possible. Rent alone is twelve thousand a year. I can't find work. Thank God I don't have a family to support anymore, or we'd have to abandon the area in search of safe haven that provides means to keep us all afloat.
Just before I peeled off sleep and lay staring at the ceiling, I dreamed I frantically tried to go somewhere in one of my recurrent car dreams. I had to drive hard, to keep pushing. I wasn't sitting in the driver's seat. I had to steer from the passenger seat, straining for the gas pedal with my left foot. The car was small. I crowded into a left turn lane full of big trucks, stared straight ahead, and braced myself for a hit from some trucker I pissed off. The line of traffic funneled into one lane that was blocked by a huge mountain of dirt. Vehicles dug a rutted path up the dark, loose soil. A bicyclist ahead of me was on foot, shoving his bike up hill, his feet sinking backward in the crumbling ruts. I thanked my stars I wasn't reduced to that state of misery. I reved my car, pushed hard on the accelerator, and braced myself for the sound of the engine's death. My car strained, ground its wheels, pressed up the narrowing route through the mountain of tailings. The sky darkened and merged with the dirty incline. Gloom swallowed the top of the mountain. I locked my knees pushing on the gas. I swerved to avoid running over the man struggling to the top.
The Association of Bay Area Governments, ABAG, predicted no economic recovery for the Bay Area this year. Industry isn't sure if the threat of war will ruin investment. What can we make happen? How can we get over the hill?
Lots to do today and this whole week. Lists. If I make lists I can organize eveything, be efficient, get done, get ready. Something could break. The phone call, the letter, the summons to work on something. A break. Where can I put the tip of a wedge and strike? Where can I open an opportunity? Surely somebody wants what I can do. Doesn't anyone need me to help make it happen? I can do it. I've been working for forty years. Is there no one who needs that kind of experience?
First on my list; I must get through to the unemployment office this morning. I found work only six out of the last ten months. I know things are worse for many other people, but the last of my unemployment money ran out January 11th and that's bad for me. The State hasn't automatically sent me an application for an extension of unemployment benefits. The California State web site instructed, "If you haven't received notice of your extension by January Thirtieth, please contact the Unemployment Department." I'm trying, I'm trying. But their line is always blocked. The recorded message says, "The maximum number of callers has been exceeded. Please try again." What is a depression if not the desperate need of a mob for jobs?
After thirty minutes of redialing the the California Employment Development Department, the EDD, and hearing an recorded voice telling me to call back later, I'm finally greeted by a different recorded voice and a choice of buttons to push. I reach the bottom of a phone tree that advises me to contact the EDD and concludes, "Goodbye." The line goes dead. For three and a half hours I repeat my attempt to phone a real person in the unemployment office, listening to the same message, the same "Goodbye" over and over again.
Near mid-day a call finally succeeds in connecting me to a man with an Indian accent. I explain I haven't received notice from the EDD, that I should have been notified if I qualified for an extension of benefits. I ask if he can help. He searches the computer system but can't find the application I filed electronically three days ago. Anyway, he checks my eligibility. He approves me for an additional 13 weeks of $330 a week. Hurrah.
But, he cautions, my current year-long unemployment claim will end sooner, interrupting my extension. I'll have to file a new claim. That might grant me more money. If I don't qualify, the EDD might continue the extension just granted. I'll have to call back in eight weeks and sort it out. I thank him for his help.
In the meantime, I'll have to wait until the end of this month for the first check. It will cover part of my rent. At least my savings, my retirement, won't be evaporating so fast. I relax enough to make myself a sandwich from tuna I bought at a discount store. Some days you get a break.
Today King George proposed a huge increase in the United States military budget. Such spending by the U.S. will reach $500 billion a year by the end of the decade if he gets his way. His weapons of mass distraction will cost the government forty-five million dollars an hour by this time next year. That estimate doesn't include the cost of a possible war the U.S. may launch against Iraq. We already have a $300 billion deficit as George lobbies to make tax cuts for the rich permanent. If Federal borrowing forces interest rates back up, the edgy housing market based on cheap loans will collapse. That granddaddy speculative bubble will burst and kick the slats out from under every other get-rich scheme, most of American enterprise these days. Only military production may survive. Stories in today's BBC Business Section linked to the news about the military budget read, "US defence giant predicts profits boom" and "US defence firms revel in spending spree."
I take a bite out of my tuna sandwich and try to estimate how many weeks at $330 per week I could milk out of one hour of military shopping; $45,000,000 divided by $330 is -- wait, let me get my calculator -- that's 136,363 weeks or 2,622 years. I'd be willing to share. After all, look how secure I'd be even if I never found another job.
What if the military shared?
Two million unemployed times $330 a week add up to $660 million a week to ensure them against hard times. That's a lot more than the $45 million Bush will spend in one hour on military items next year. One week's worth of unemployment checks to two million workers would soak up about more than 14 hours of military money laundering. Should that be given to workers? I guess budget planners should be careful about such thoughts. A few hundred million here, a few there, pretty soon you're talking real money.
What if we go the opposite way? What if all the unemployed give up all their benefits and donate that total amount to the military? That way we could add days worth of spending to the budget binge. That would really increase security. I guess the Military Industrial complex would be more secure. Is that an idea?
Now that I think of it, who is more secure as a result of all our money going down a military gullet? When I read the story about the defense giant lauding the U.S. military spending boom, I discovered the giant is named Northrup Grumman. Maybe they would know who will be more secure.
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