Extend Federal Unemployment Benefits NOW!!!!!!!!

Federal Unemployment Extension Benefits are necessary and needed by millions of workers as this rotten capitalist system continues to crumble.

I was part of the organization which launched the fight for these Federal Extensions back in the early 1970's.

Getting then Congressman Republican Gerald R. Ford to support this legislation was key since he was the leading Republican in the House. I led three delegations of unemployed people, rank-and-file labor activists and several elected union leaders to.

The Kent County Labor Council hired me to launch the fight to get Ford to support this legislation. In the end, Ford ended up backing our initiative as a result of a deal we made with him.

We never fought for the extension of unemployment benefits under the guise of keeping people out of poverty because we knew that unemployment benefits amounted to workers living in poverty. But, the extensions still help workers.

Today when the Democrats and the AFL-CIO leaders say they are fighting to extend unemployment benefits because it will "lift 1.7 million people out of poverty" this is an outright lie.

If they wanted to really "lift people out of poverty" with unemployment benefits they would have to launch a struggle for unemployment benefits to be based on all cost of living factors and just mentioning "cost-of-living" is something these millionaire labor leaders refuse to do because this would require a real working class struggle. it would take a struggle amounting to a lot more than a series of press conferences.

We are hearing all these properly framed progressive policy directives coming from the mouths of these millionaire labor leaders... words put into their mouths by self-serving Democrats.

These nice sounding phrases are:

"Lifting people out of poverty."

"We are for living wages."

"Jobs, Jobs, Jobs."

"We are for universal health care."

In the end what is the result?

The working class gets pushed and shoved deeper into poverty.

It is all about "bait and switch" politics.

Unemployed people will end up worse off then they were; instead of the Minimum Wage becoming a living wage it will remain a poverty wage; and the only jobs workers will get will be poverty wage jobs if they get any jobs at all; and Obamacare is all about enabling the insurance companies to pick the pockets of working people.

How much more are you willing to put up with?

Extend federal unemployment benefits now but stop playing games with words. Unemployment benefits as they are calculated now don't lift anyone out of poverty.