Need Help Finding a Job in KY? Gov. Billionaire Says Fuck You

Here's the trick:  Bevin is technically keeping them employed by just closing their satellite offices and transferring them to headquarters.  But that means either moving their families hundreds of miles away or enduring a two-  three-hour commute each way to work.

 

The ones who can't move or commute are thus unemployed "voluntarily" and ineligible for unemployment benefits.  Bevin ass-fucks them both ways. 

And that's before thousands of unemployed Kentuckians are suddenly unable to get job help in their communities.

 

Daniel Desrochers at the Herald:

The Education and Workforce Development Cabinet is pulling its employees out of 31 unemployment centers across Kentucky in an effort to save millions of dollars.

Workers with the Office of Employment and Training throughout the state received a notice Tuesday that the cabinet was making drastic changes, shifting its focus to 12 “hubs” in Bowling Green, Covington, Elizabethtown, Hazard, Hopkinsville, Lexington, Louisville, Morehead, Owensboro, Paducah, Prestonsburg and Somerset.

The change means 95 employees will be transferred to other positions within the cabinet or elsewhere in state government. There are now 51 Kentucky Career Centers in the state. That number is being reduced to the 12 hubs and eight existing satellite offices.

The 31 affected unemployment offices — including locations in Richmond, Danville, Winchester, Georgetown and Frankfort — won’t be closing entirely, but will be supported by “community partners,” said Kim Brannock, a spokeswoman for the Education and Workforce Development Cabinet.

When asked if that meant people would be able to obtain face-to-face help with unemployment issues, Brannock said services would be decided on a case-by-case basis.

Whatever Happened to the Liberal Hellhole that Higher Taxes Were Supposed to Create? Well, Funny Story ....

How many years is it now that conservatives have an unbroken streak of being dead-fucking-wrong about abso-fucking-lutely everything?  30? 100? 5,000?

 

Paul Krugman:

Needless to say, conservatives predicted doom. A representative reaction: Daniel J. Mitchell of the Cato Institute declared that by voting for Proposition 30, which authorized those tax increases, “the looters and moochers of the Golden State” (yes, they really do think they’re living in an Ayn Rand novel) were committing “economic suicide.” Meanwhile, Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute and Forbes claimed that California residents were about to face a “rate shock” that would more than double health insurance premiums.

What has actually happened? There is, I’m sorry to say, no sign of the promised catastrophe.

If tax increases are causing a major flight of jobs from California, you can’t see it in the job numbers. Employment is up 3.6 percent in the past 18 months, compared with a national average of 2.8 percent; at this point, California’s share of national employment, which was hit hard by the bursting of the state’s enormous housing bubble, is back to pre-recession levels.

On health care, some people — basically healthy young men who were getting inexpensive insurance on the individual market and were too affluent to receive subsidies — did face premium increases, which we always knew would happen. Over all, however, the costs of health reform came in below expectations, while enrollment came in well above — more than triple initial predictions in the San Francisco area. A recent survey by the Commonwealth Fund suggests that California has already cut the percentage of its residents without health insurance in half. What’s more, all indications are that further progress is in the pipeline, with more insurance companies entering the marketplace for next year.

And, yes, the budget is back in surplus.

Repugs Ass-Rape Dems, Nation in Budget Bill - Again

But Kentucky's champion sucker of coal-industry cock got a big fat subsidy for his walking dead patrons, so the unemployed cut off from their earned benefits should shut the fuck up.

Rude Pundit:

So House and Senate negotiators came up with an omnibus budget that will prevent the nation from looking out at a field of land mines and saying, "Hey, that looks like fun," for at least another year or two. House Republicans come away from the deal without any of their larger goals of, as they like to put it, "fucking shit up but good." No, they have to put the defunding Obamacare boner back in their pants and sit around with blue balls until Fantasy President Ted Cruz jacks them off.

But, hey, buck up there, sad conservatives. You still got a number of totally dickish things into the budget. For instance:

1. No, you didn't get new anti-choice regulations. But you did get to get to cut Title X family planning funding by $10 million because nothing says you care about fetuses like slashing money for poor women to get some of the only health care they might receive. And nothing says you want to end abortions like making sure fewer women have access to contraception. Oh, and a bonus $5 million is going to abstinence education programs that are complete and utter bullshit.

2. No, you didn't get to defund the Affordable Care Act. But you did cut $1 billion from the Prevention and Public Health Fund because evil Kathleen Sebelius might use it for Obamacare, and you got a $10 million cut to the Independent Payment Advisory Board of the ACA. That'd be the "death panels" that aren't actually death panels.

SNIP

6. Apparently, Benghazi means shit except as a political bludgeon because the House GOP got a quarter-billion dollar cut in embassy security, maintenance, and construction. Oh, and no funds to UNESCO because fuck those kids.

SNIP

But don't worry. About half of all the appropriations goes to defense spending. Contractors ain't gonna pay themselves.

Conservatives can go home and rest easy that they made life a little harder for women, the poor, the disempowered, and anyone who likes drinking water and breathing. All in a day's work.

Repugs Still Sabotaging the Economy for Fun and Profit

A: Unemployment insurance benefits are neither an entitlement nor a handout. Workers pay unemployment insurance premiums out of their checks, just like home or car insurance. Cutting off those benefits is like the insurance company refusing to pay when a tornado destroys your home.

Just like repug Chris Christie is doing to thousands of homeowners still homeless after Superstorm Sandy

B. You cannot receive your unemployment insurance benefits unless you prove you have been searching for a job.  Every two weeks you have to provide proof that you are sltill applying for jobs.

C: Cutting unemployment insurance benefits, like cutting food stamps and welfare and housing aid, harms the economy by taking money away from people who would spend it immediately on rent, mortgage, utilities, food and transportation right in their own neighborhoods.

D. So vicious morons like Rand Paul are lying about the facts, lying about the policy, and lying about their own motivations for refusing to extend unemployment insurance benefits.

From the Courier:

At least 37,000 out-of-work Kentuckians and Hoosiers will see their unemployment payments end today after Congress did not extend long-term emergency benefits before heading home for the holidays.

While lawmakers likely will take up the issue when they return to Washington next month, political lines already are being drawn over whether the government should continue to provide help to Americans who have been without work for at least half a year.


“This is not the time to take it out on the Americans who are suffering the most,” Rep. John Yarmuth, D-3rd District, said in an interview.

But Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a potential 2016 presidential candidate, said on “Fox News Sunday” that extending unemployment benefits would be “a disservice to these workers.”

“You are causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy,” he said.

SNIP

Among those losing benefits is Melanie Howard, 57, of Louisville, who discovered her unemployment was exhausted Thursday. She checked her bank balance online and saw the automatic deposit of her check was $318, half the biweekly benefit she has received since being laid off in September 2012.

“I was surprised, because the unemployment office previously told me they expected the benefits to be extended,” said Howard, who said she has had difficulty finding work to replace her $20-an-hour job as an office manager.


“I am trying to find something that is reasonable,” Howard said, adding she needs medical coverage. “I have been out there looking.”

Coal Kills Jobs

Funny how the tighter the stranglehold coal has on communities, the fewer jobs there are.


John Cheves at the Herald:

Kentucky's unemployment rate fell slightly in November to 7.7 percent, compared to 8 percent in October, according to data released Thursday by the Kentucky Office of Employment and Training. The national unemployment rate for November was 6.6 percent.

However, the statewide jobless rate was worse than the 7.4 percent seen a year ago in November 2012, the agency said. Over the past year, unemployment rates rose in 96 of Kentucky's counties, fell in 16 and stayed the same in eight.

SNIP

The Eastern Kentucky coal fields, plagued for the last two years by mine closures and layoffs, dominated the lowest-performing counties.

Leslie County had the state's highest unemployment rate at 16.4 percent. It was followed by Magoffin County at 15.8 percent; Harlan County at 15.6 percent; Letcher County at 15 percent; Knott County at 14 percent; Bell and McCreary counties at 13.6 percent each; Jackson and Perry counties at 12.8 percent each; and Clay County at 12.2 percent.

One-Fourth of Kentucky's Children Impoverished

Yesterday, the Kentucky Office of Employment and Training announced that the unemployment rate fell in 99 Kentucky counties between November 2011 and November 2012. But parents taking second or third minimum-wage no-benefit part-time jobs isn't solving the real problem.

Laura Ungar at the Courier:

A quarter of Kentucky children live in poverty — more than 240,000 across the commonwealth.

And those numbers are on the rise, according to a new report prepared for release today.


They are among the statistics in the Kentucky Kids Count 2012 County Data Book, a joint project of Kentucky Youth Advocates and the Kentucky State Data Center at the University of Louisville. The annual report examines indicators such as poverty levels, educational performance and child health, and paints a disturbing picture of child welfare in Kentucky.

“Kentucky ranks 35th in the country in the overall well-being of children,” said Terry Brooks, executive director of Kentucky Youth Advocates, referring to the state’s ranking in the national Kids Count report. “With the big game coming up this weekend, I don’t think the fans of the University of Louisville or the University of Kentucky would be satisfied if their team was 35th in national rankings.”

Touche, Terry.  But Kentucky taxpayers put a shitload more money into college sports than we do into eliminating poverty - or even attempting to alleviate it.

When Your Unemployment Runs Out, Thank Mitch and Jimbo

All six of Kentucky's House delegation voted in favor of extending unemployment benefits to people whose benefits are about to expire. The four republicans included, and even Mr. Fiscal Responsibility repug-fellator himself, DINO Ben Chandler.

What could have inspired loyal repugs Davis, Rogers, Guthrie and Whitfield to vote in favor of such a Democratic, ni**er-loving, welfare-promoting, tax-and-spend, dirry-fucking-hippie bill?

Maybe the accelerating unemployment rate in every single one of Kentucky's 120 counties? When the number of unemployed people in your district exceeds the margin of victory in your last election, some things lose their partisan taint.

But now the bill goes to the Senate, where everything good and pure and helpful to non-millionaires and beneficial to the nation goes to die.

So Governor Steve Beshear has publicly announced his plea to Senators Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning that they vote in favor of the bill.

As the Commonwealth faces an 11.1 percent unemployment rate, Gov. Steve Beshear today sent a letter to Kentucky Senators Mitch McConnell and Jim Bunning urging them to back a proposal designed to provide a temporary extension of certain unemployment benefits.

House Resolution (H.R.) 3548, recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, will provide an additional 13 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits to Kentucky’s unemployed workers who qualify. This comes just as jobless rates have again climbed in each of the state’s 120 counties compared to last year.

In little more than a year’s time, nearly 123,000 Kentuckians have claimed emergency unemployment compensation after their regular benefit allowances expired. During this prolonged economic downturn, between 800 and 1,200 Kentuckians each week are now exhausting the emergency unemployment benefits provided by Congress. Additionally, more than 10,000 have been forced to rely further on the extended benefits provided through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Earlier this month, the governor asked Kentucky’s Congressional delegation to support H.R. 3404, a measure that would provide a yearlong extension of unemployment benefits. That proposal is still waiting for consideration.

“While I hold out hope that this longer extension may someday become a reality and provide a much-needed boost to Kentucky’s unemployed,” Gov. Beshear wrote, “your support of H.R. 3548 will certainly go a long way toward helping those Kentuckians who need it most.”

To contact your Senators in support of H.R. 3548, go online here.

Given that neither Mitchie-poo nor Rip Van Winkle giving a flying fuck about Kentucky or Kentuckians, anybody got odds on Steve getting his wish?

Insult to Injury

The day after the state announced that Kentucky's unemployment rate in December hit the highest level in 20 (twenty) years, the same department announced that 19 county unemployment offices - including Louisville - are unable to process claims because of power failures.