US Politics May 2021: Joe Manchin's Choose-Your-Adventure Book

Alfred is the power behind the throne (throne not included).

Soto-San!

extremely strong vibes in this photo from Alfred

Crist don't kill my vibe

.@POTUS: "We're going to make it clear that anyone collecting unemployment who is offered a suitable job must take the job or lose their unemployment benefits."

Full speech here: https://t.co/zOJnXufl9Y pic.twitter.com/4B9lKPJWxY

— CSPAN (@cspan) May 10, 2021

fuck this guy

anyone collecting unemployment who is offered a suitable job must take the job or lose their unemployment benefits.

Afaik, unemployment benefits in the USA have always carried this stipulation and still do. The intent of this requirement is fucked up and weights power toward employers, but this is how it has always been structured and it's not about to change any time soon.

why even validate that stupid fox talking point?

It's like he can only go so long without slipping back into stern grandpa mode and hectoring about idleness or weed or something.

I remember years ago I when I was on unemployment, I had to show my 'work search' and where I had gone to look for work (this in CA).. I would just use the phone book and put some random places from the yellow pages. AFAIK, they never checked up on me, or if they did it didn't affect my payments.

Yeah, in NJ you have to answer a questionnaire every week asking if you've been looking for work, if you refused any work, blah blah blah, and they always hang it over your head that they can ask to see your job search notes at any time...

in MN it's just going through the motions, click no on two questions before you put in for the week's payment online.. never heard of it being followed up on

Yeah, when I was on unemployment about a decade ago, I had to list a certain number of places I had reached out to each week. I was super paranoid and kept a massive list and copies of all my cover letters I sent out, just in case, but it didn't seem like they did a lot of validating/checking up on them.

i can say with certainly that FL DEO is too overwhelmed and incompetent to do any following up

We are working to change that!

i mean they can try, my mom (whose name is Bernicia Filibusterstein for anybody surveilling this forum) was filling in any five jobs for a while as she outright can't work right now.

well actually she hasn't had to YET since the requirements were suspended til now but she had done that in the past apparently, lol.

Has anyone tried with the FL DIO though

Holy diver, Batman!

Afaik, unemployment benefits in the USA have always carried this stipulation and still do. The intent of this requirement is fucked up and weights power toward employers, but this is how it has always been structured and it's not about to change any time soon.

― sharpening the contraindications (Aimless), Monday, May 10, 2021 4:44 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

"suitable job" allows a lot of wiggle room that meant that many (most?) states didn't in practice enforce this even before covid. see https://www.thebalancecareers.com/unemployment-refuse-job-offer-2064181.

biden's statement is shitty but changes nothing. if the administration does something to make the definition more explicit (e.g. stops california ignoring it with a definition of "suitable employment" that is essentially "a job i want") then that will not be a return to pre-pandemic status quo ante. it will be *worse* than things were under trump.

I applied to be CEO of Amazon, starting pitcher for the Yankees, and lead singer of the Rolling Stones.

Me too. I didn't get a single callback.

I don't know if Biden's statement is the right move, but the goal of it is to preserve the $300 payment for people. Lots of states including mine are talking about opting out of it. I think the White House strategy is aimed at blunting the shiftless-idle narrative. I don't know about where you all live, but the political narrative here is 100 percent that you can't a damn burger at McDonald's in under 10 minutes because Joe Biden is paying all them line cooks to sit home smoking blunts.

To put it bluntly.

traditionally this is known as 'The Servant Problem'

paying all them line cooks to sit home smoking blunts.

lol fuckin' seriously, everybody smoked weed at the restaurants I worked at. I smoked with my kitchen manager in his truck after Cinco De Mayo once.

there was also fucking going on, on the expo table, so...

I think it's less the blunt-smoking than the non-making-me-a-burger part that the right finds so infuriating. The notion that no one wants to work their shitty jobs for shit pay is enraging.

But anyway that's what Biden is trying to respond to, to keep the payments available. Which probably won't work here, at least. They already slashed the max unemployment period in half. (On top of also refusing to expand Medicaid, of course. Our state has kept billions of dollars of assistance from poor people out of sheer contempt for them.)

"closely watched" VA Gub "race" pace does have *some* inneresting assspecks, esp if you're into a truer/already bluer Southern state, and for inst:Virginia Republicans eschewed holding a state-run primary and instead opted for what organizers described as an “unassembled convention,” with about 30,000 pre-registered Republicans voting at nearly 40 sites across the commonwealth on Saturday. Is this or will this be a thing, where you guarantee honest voting process by running and rolling yr own? And can Democrats do it too, or is that sure sign of sketch?
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/05/10/youngkin-virginia-gop-nomination-governor-486854
(Also, as you maybe more likely saw, Newsom recall is going nowhere in polls)

Yeah the VA GOP thing was meticulously engineered to exclude Ms. Trump-in-Heels, and it succeeded. Cute how they had to institute ranked-choice just for this purpose and this purpose along.

Democrats hereabouts have no interest in that process, nor do they have a need to.

I can't speak for other states. Perhaps there are state races where there's a fear of, e.g., a Berniecrat winning vs. an establishment candidate? These things seem highly situational.

* along = alone

The NV Democrats fiasco probably has some establishment people looking to ensure that doesn’t happen elsewhere.

fwiw I did have several friends who in 2009 who spent an entire year gaming the unemployment system so they could smoke weed and play video games all day. obviously I was cheering them on with every check they received but these people do exist

where do I sign up for that

in FL you'd be homeless doing that real fast, considering up until recently, it was capped at $275/week. and very few people get that maximum!

the one time I was on it, I got $68 a week lol

guess that settles that!

Dr. Fauci rejects Rand Paul's claims: "Senator Paul, with all due respect, you are entirely, entirely and completely incorrect that the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute."

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 11, 2021

leave out the 'due respect' part next time, and replace it with "you little bitch"

In 'shockingly old when you learned' crossover I was least in my 20s when I realized that you can provide someone with the amount of respect they are due and that amount can be zero.

in FL you'd be homeless doing that real fast, considering up until recently, it was capped at $275/week. and very few people get that maximum!

I think these guys got $200 a week which is plenty in Manitowoc. my rent was $100 a month!

anyway tbf there really weren't a whole lot of jobs; occasionally they'd land shitty 3rd shift factory jobs that they'd actively try to get fired from

Great Recession was my last time on unemployment... good times, even without the extra covid booster

Wow. Just...wow.

Gayle King, CBS news anchor: "Tell us about your dating situation."

Stacey Abrams, Nobel Peace Prize nominee: "I haven't been focused on that this month. I've been focused on saving democracy."

— Victoria Brownworth (@VABVOX) May 11, 2021

If you listen closely when she's on the air you can hear the wind whistling through Gayle King's empty skull.

NEW: Biden will nominate Rahm Emanuel as U.S. ambassador to Japan https://t.co/E36sTDHiWa

— Axios (@axios) May 11, 2021

Obviously this could be much worse, but just how does this guy do it?

King's question is terrible, but also, come on, anybody can be a Nobel Peace Prize nominee

There are about 150 more impressive ways to characterize Stacey Abrams

Rahm must have inherited Epstein's little black book.

"How far away can we ship this motherfucker?"

that occurred to me too, but that's got to be a desirable gig for the professional unelectable politician class