You’d think what with gold being over $1,000 an ounce, the Euro being worth at least twice as much as the USA dollar (the IMF world standard, mind you), kiting of every kind of tax there is, pay cuts, and so on, there’d be no way a slacker could possibly get their mitts on easy Federal money what with the newest unemployment insurance extension, right?

Whoops! Nope, and by slackers I don’t mean the megaton of folks who, they say, “miss hearings”, “don’t co-operate with investigators”, and such; to me, a slacker is someone largely disinterested in participating in society at-large as most of us know it. Of course, high taxes and job losses and pay cuts to eke out livings while the USA gives hundreds of billions to Laden coddlers denotes payoff to only a rarified type of slacker, because in a standards-rejecting mindset, Laden is just doing what’s “his way”…the only similarity with slackers whom are relevant. Hey religion-free positivists: such “this way/that way” itself is a standard, you know, just not one making logical or exact physical scientific sense.

Bear with me: what may sound like a spat actually offers germane data from personal observation and comparative experience.

Just yesterday, my brother-in-law received a letter from the Oregon Employment Department, telling him he’s eligible for about $500 PER WEEK in unemployment insurance for not less than the next six months (and they’ll obviously believe his “tried to find work hard but couldn’t” say-so certifications each week), off the only real job he had recently…which ended YEARS ago! Now, in between, for HIM, Oregon deigned to give him alone as much in food stamps per month as the average married couple sans dependents EARNING less would get together (maybe because he is obese?); this would continue during any new UI; Oregon also gave him stipend unemployment yearly off two to three months per Summer closed-shop cannery work even though it’s temp seasonal by nature (gone are the days of the 1990 Census, when GW Bush said scum like me weren’t eligible for UI given its temporary nature of six months to two years…and I was an EDP super in an Oregon office!).

I know oh so many people don’t have the easy luck with unemployment, 911-based TEUC forward, that folks like my brother- and sister-in-law do; their secret? These two have some of the most unusual personality quirks well of Oregon record. No, not disability, not diminished mental capacity…adult life-long drug/alcohol habituation (he at 55 and she at 42), and a penchant for avoiding public interactions, living in mounds of trash and filth, sob-storying family/neighbors/et al for cash and lack of re-payments, and being somewhat violent. 

The only jobs my sister-in-law has had in the last decade are those involved with “community service” and crime-to-work schemes; once she “earns” expungement of even felony raps, she quits; she then goes back to forgery, beating, blackmailing, you name it…and see, as she’s a regurgitator, all is wiped away by Oregon authorities (don’t let her near any real weapons folks…who knows WHAT she’s allowed to do simply as like Laden it’s just “her way”). Police, local Church goers, and neighbors will smash down any family’s doors wanting to know why my wife and I won’t support “the poor thing” who does as she pleases without fear of law, should she take notion to “bleed” us in dry spells. She’s violently attacked so many over the years, maybe like Obama with Laden many have craven admiration for her. But SHE gets whatever Oregon aid is out there, and wouldn’t you know she too never “misses” important interviews (usually as same of her are never required or penalized)?

My brother-in-law is equally “erstwhile”. My mother-in-law died at age 78 last year of acute renal failure; want to know the state of affairs not long before her death? B-I-L was living as he does now in the basement; S-I-L came up and so viciously beat M-I-L with hands and objects for failure to give her money (while B-I-L just listened) that M-I-L had to go hospital for stitches/checkout, and get restraining order against S-I-L; police later ignored all this and found not even technical elder abuse going on. At the same time, B-I-L “looked for work” amid toking pot, snorting blow, and drinking either downstairs or at his friend’s house just a few doors over the hill…S-I-L has longtime AA crowd types bringing her 100 proof Vodka in innumerable plastic bottles meantime. M-I-L dies months later, “kids” go on as usual, Mom is to this day still in the box the unpaid crematory sent her ashes back in; May 2009 (nine months post M-I-L death) my wife and I first relevantly arrive in Oregon to help clean/landscape estate trying to sell the house on reverse mortgage now in foreclosure; S-I-L takes off to Portland, B-I-L does nothing to help re house/grounds, my wife and I clean junk pit and tame dazzlingly over-grown grounds, the other two say they resent me and tolerate me only because of my wife’s one-third interest (in dust, it seems).

B-I-L likes to fall back on his triple bypass a few years ago, but again, he won’t even apply for disability, won’t get cheap FireMed insurance re health, won’t stop smoking/toking/drinking/eating opulently; when he wants to check his fireplace chimney, he lopes easily on his own onto the roof; when getting satellite TV, he easily lopes onto the roof again and does wiring work the system rep should be doing! Then, apart from a 10 week stint at the cannery this summer, he spends almost all of his time alone in the basement or his nearby friend’s house.

Contrast these two with say ME. I have no real or expunged record(s) of any nature(s); I will be 50 in two months; I have always cared about not just appearing to be but being a productive citizen and good neighbor; let’s see what Oregon thinks. Well, in August, a Salem security outfit had an OED ad promising all sorts of pay, training, hours, and requirement of DPSST license; I responded, was given copies of DPSST docs, card-printed, assigned to work, asked then to work armed on non-armed app, refused, was fired, turned in everything; DPSST says no app ever submitted by employer for me, so I must not engage in security work in Oregon, but employer commits no fouls by false advertising of jobs or conduct thereafter. Since the emp didn’t pay for training time or anywhere near hourly rate, for same I filed wage claim with Oregon BOLI; they tell me I’ll pend forever because in undisclosed nature they allege I “won’t cooperate with BOLI investigators”. Oddly, six weeks ago a Vancouver/Portland lawyer via USPS sent me an ad for representation offer based on obtaining my name from a public BOLI claimant list; but when offering contract he said if respondent in Court raise ANY defense he quits and socks fees to me; I asked first how wage assignment in toto to BOLI Commissioner (routine) in unsettled BOLI action isn’t cause to quash re abuse of process; lawyer withdraws offer, Oregon State Bar says can’t see how biting such line would have hurt me but won’t say why. I hear others, having been good workers and suckered into the employer’s hiring scam, themselves weren’t paid, some even told their card prints went for no DPSST check but were rolled by cops “who nabbed them” and now have CRA type blips because of it…oh well, at least I myself haven’t yet experienced THAT (have I?). All I have to do is now listen to my B-I-L crow about his “more manly, breadwinning” nature in comparison to me and my human/familial/marital worth…hey, if one consciously detesting his lot wants to slap at me, I understand his pathetic need to transfer angst over being a kept State pet, or to drive others from him, or both.

And at least the Oregon Attorney General consumer division appears to have at least notified me they find the relevant lawyer-BOLI practice something to note and form file upon.

In summation, the common point is: Can we be sure that taxes, pay cuts, socialized health care, and credit crimps will actually jump-start mass personal economies or result in physical/economic security, or will they be micro-managed to mint political coin on officials’ swag hikes on grounds they’re “keeping us safe by using compassionate funding of those for whom anti-social behavior is a lifelong, not brief or one-shot, way”…at the gross expense of the vast inter-ethnic/racial majority of people NOT being such pikers?

After all, comrades, we can’t ALL get $500 or more in government love on anything, let alone on stanky old work history, can we? As Obama reminded us back in March, we know what WE’RE doing when WE get mortgages based on jobs which then get cut…bad us, and no jobs/aid until we learn by whatever DHS thinks through its April 2009 reports on us all as “alienated unemployed”…those who get UI/any aid asked no matter what obviously not very alienated and welcome by DSH/social workers/law enforcement….at least until THAT bubble runs dry.