It is time to set the record straight about the unemployment benefits and cut through all the misconceptions about what this truly is. The misinformation that rains down in the press adds to the confusion and does the government’s bid to hide what is truly going on.

Let us start from the beginning. They don’t want people to track this scenario from the beginning, believe me. The starting point for all of this is November 2008.We know this is the starting point because that month, nearly eight hundred thousand people lost their jobs. It was the highest in jobless claims in twenty-seven years. That month gives us a clear starting point of the decimation of over eleven million jobs.

The politicians and the press will always refer to the economic collapse as September 2008. However, the massive job collapse started in November. That month before Thanksgiving and the holidays nearly a million souls were put out of their job. It did not stop there. Since then and for the last fifteen months straight, the whole thing snowballed and swept over eleven million people out of work. It still is not over.

Last month “February 2010″ the snowball is still rolling and another thirty plus thousand people joined the carnival of destruction. I want to make that point clear. Every month since November 2008 Americans are being put out of work. It has not stopped for a single month. The snowball is still rolling despite the absolute scam of the national unemployment number that is fed to you each and every day since the economic collapse began.

Understand the press is telling you from time to time how things are getting better or are not as bad, but remember the snowball still rolls and thousands are “still” being put out of work today, due to no fault of their own. Now in the beginning the government told the people that they were going to have emergency federal benefits that were going to give people up to 99 weeks of unemployment. That was the beginning of never-ending lies that have come out of the mouths of politicians. The problem was that it just was not true. It was not true for the people who were a part of the collapse beginning in November 2008.

Everyone believed it and even most politicians who were not involved in the crafting of the system believed it. However, what the authors of this did, was to create a system of eligibility dates and things called “tiers” that made the whole thing a slumgullion. They created a mouse maze of regulations that sent eleven million souls into a house of mirrors. People qualified, didn’t qualify or were cut off straight out. Of course later they were able to reapply, only to find themselves so far behind in their bills, that many of them lost their homes.

The home foreclosure problem is also directly related to this unemployment problem in America. There are many rippling effects, but let me not digress. The inability of Congress not to apperceive that this is a long term problem added to the disaster and has left all fifty state’s unemployment offices in absolute chaos. The creation of an untraceable unemployment process is done by design and allows Washington to play with the national unemployment rate.

It got so bad that not even the news will hold the water for the lie of a ten percent unemployment rate and now always adds that it is not the real number. The entire thing has become a cartoon, but not for the desperate people trying to pay their bills. I want you to think about what I’m about to tell you, because this thing has gotten so unrecognizable, it is hard to see.

Let me bring you back to the beginning and use that as a measuring stick. Of the nearly eight hundred thousand Americans that were a part of the “first” month of the job crash, most of them are still out of work. Do you hear what I’m saying? The first group dragged under in this tsunami is still out of work for the most part and will have all their benefits run out “June” of this year (2010). In a few months that first group of people will be put on the streets. There is nothing “at all” in the mouse maze of eligibility dates and tiers for all those people.

Now because there were eleven million jobs that went up in smoke, there are not enough positions available in the job market to even fill the spots for the people who are from the first month of the collapse. It doesn’t matter that thousands of jobs have been created each month when you juxtapose it to eleven million freaking people out of work!

Those of you folks who keep towing the conservative talking points of saying “go get a job” apparently never went to a single day of Math class, because there are no freaking jobs! Why you folks with a damn job can not understand that is so far beyond me.

Example: Forget about all of the eleven million people put out of work for a minute. Let us just look at the eight hundred thousand folks who were put out of work the first month of this storm. Let us just look at that group. Unless there have been eight hundred thousand  “real” jobs created [not saved jobs] where does that first group go, let alone the other ten million plus people? Can you see the Math here? The people who were the very first victims of Wall Street and Washington are being cut off in less than 90 days, so you tell me, are all of these people lazy bastards who just love living on the crumbs of the government dole?  Are they desperate souls who can’t find a job because the “MATH” tells us, there are no jobs for them?

The only way not to get lost in the government mirage of where the jobless stand in all this, is to just track the people from November 2008 and see what happens to them. The other ten million plus people will face their reality soon after. Just follow the first eight hundred thousand people of this eleven million and see where that heads, not the people who were on unemployment before the crash. Those people are being used to fudge the government numbers.

As of today, not a single one of them [the first victims from November] are eligible for the very “first” governmental promise, which was 99 weeks of unemployment. Until we face the fact that this is a long term problem and realize that our economy shrank so drastically, that it is time to rethink the way America handles unemployment. It is time to have serious retraining programs and put people back to school. It is time for unemployment reform not health insurance mandates! It is time for the real story to be told about this!

C. Rich

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