The Silent Terror Gripping America

It's the terror of losing one's job, which means losing one's paycheck, medical benefits and for some, their sense of purpose. Or it's being jobless and facing constant rejection as one's resume piles on to the resumes of many other despairing job seekers. It often leads to losing one's home and being overwhelmed by car payments, credit card bills and other debts. This is America today.

We see businesses closing, people being laid off and in some cases, unions being broken and working class people left to fend for themselves. Most people have little or no savings and live paycheck to paycheck. As for retirement accounts, those that have 401-k plans are watching the stock market wildly gyrate up and down risking their financial future. But for most people, Social Security and Medicare are what they will be counting on. Yet both of those vital programs are facing major cuts and are now comprised of government IOU's.

A friend of mine, a former executive, just turned 69 years old and has been out of work for two years. To the Dept. of Labor, he is not unemployed, he is "discouraged" and no longer counted because he has been out of work for over 99 weeks. His savings are gone. His and his wife's home, purchased about 3 years ago is worth much less than what they paid for it and for the first time in his life, he can't make the mortgage, property tax and insurance payments and is facing foreclosure. This will damage his credit score making it harder to rent an apartment. He like most of us pursued the American dream and played by society's rules. Now he is confronted by a nightmare, a nightmare faced by many millions of other Americans.

President Obama says the government's No. 1 task is creating jobs. But he is not specific on how and when it will do that. Yet the people of our nation desperately need work. It makes one wonder how the President and Congress can continue even one more day of wars and massive military spending when the need for financial resources and a helping hand is so great here.

posted with permission from: http://sane-ramblings.blogspot.com/2011/08/silent-terror-gripping-america.html

And why there is no real concern about creating jobs. It's by design, and it will transform the landscape dramatically.

...even $1,000 dollars set aside for an emergency.

getting hard to describe without writing paragraphs.

I've been thinking about this lately, and reading what you posted inspired me to write this:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x621224

This is the same President who said that he did NOT believe that the government should be in the business of creating jobs; he said that that should be left up to the private sector.

via both parties running for prez.

and we will all get nothing after the are elected.

same old story, mentally challenged political kabuki theater.

difficult time thinking of anything that works well in this country anymore. The list is endless and we all know the things. I find it difficult moving into old age wondering if the country will even outlast me, and what will become of SS and Medicare. I have savings and a house, but getting secure returns on savings today is a joke, and I have no idea where the real estate taxes here might be headed.

And what happens if one becomes incapacitated. Safety nets are being actively destroyed. I contributed a lot to this county, an awful lot, and now I feel I'm being set up to be screwed along with millions of Americans who also did all the right things.

I also think eventually what we saw in the UK will be happening in the US. We lavish money on wall street, banksters and corporations, fund inane wars that should have ended years ago, allow corruption to run wild, and we're supposed to think, ain't the US great.

The new mantra for the US is fuck the citizens, go wall street, banksters, corporations and inane wars. Need some more money, sure, fuck the majority of the citizens.

It's an absolute bucket(s) of bullshit.

My husband lost his job at the age of 55. He tried for two years to find another with no success. Who wants to hire a 55,56, 57 year old. He lost all hope and descended into abysmal depression, and after two years had a massive heart attack. The heart attack didn't kill him right away, but without much will to live, he died within the year. I'll just mention that he loved his job; it was his whole life and had the same job for 26 years. He essentially died of a broken heart.

His early death is tragic enough, but that his last years were so painful for him, and for you... it must have been an excruciating experience. I am truly sorry. :cry: :hug:

He had been employed as a mining engineer in the small town of Frisco, Colorado, about 50 miles straight up, West of Denver. He was laid off and had been living well, except that he had developed a breathing problem because of the 2 mile altitude. He survived about a year, after losing his job, and in September of 1994 he walked up into the hills, and shot himself. My brothers and I didn't find out until February of 1995, when they located him, by the oxygen bottles hanging in the trees.I went to his condo to settle his estate shortly after. Jobs are so critical to our lives and unemployment can be a killer.

I am so sorry.

and it's people slide farther and farther into debt, depressin, disgust and despair.

We are in an emergency situation as far as I'm concerned but the D.C. crowd and their rich friends just go on... business as usual.

We need to vote out every ineffective, bribe taking, pasty-faced, bloated Congressperson who has made a career out of living off the government via our votes.

I can't think of any other way to make a bold statement about OUR power anymore.

beyond thoughts of sadness, is not to waste your death. If you are determined to go out, then go out in a blaze of glory and take some of the bastards with you as your honor guard in hell.

I wouldn't do this, but I think that it would be more evocative to take a few insurance execs, for example, with me should I change my mind.

Mostly I am sad that others are driven (yes, driven) to this. It's heartbreaking.

Taking others with you is cruel. Months before my brother shot himself, his depression had caused him to threaten his brothers in the Northwest, in the Seattle area, with going there to shoot a few. That is why I lost contact with him, before his suicide, because he was obsessed with threatening damage to others.

And I've seen enough of mans inhumanity to man (from insurance companies that have literally sentenced people to long painful and entirely preventable deaths) in the past 2 years to lose any perspective I once had.

I now understand the impulse to strap a bomb on ones butt. And I still don't condone it, but I do understand it. What I'm trying to express, in a ham handed way, is that when there is no justice that the only option that someone in that situation might see is to end it. And with some of our cancer patients who were died because the screening test that would have caught it early enough to make a difference was denied, they have very little to lose.

And perhaps, in order to get their voices heard, it might be more effective to go out with a bang rather than a whimper. No matter my personal feelings on this matter, I get the urge to be heard. I get it all too well. There are days when I leave my office at night and just scream until my voice gives out. And then I weep for the loss...

I hope I didn't come across as callous.

is that scene in SiCKO, when the woman stood in front of the medical board as they looked her in the eye and sentenced her husband to death.

His brother, IIRC, was a perfect match for a life-saving- but technically experimental- transfusion procedure. Although experimental, the procedure had already been used to great success on others.

Had I been that man, sentenced to die by a heartless, soulless, amoral corporation, I would have attended the final hearing armed and I most definitely would have blown away as many of them as I could. I would have then claimed justifiable homicide at trial and I would have done so with a clean soul and my head held high, with not one stain of remorse or regret on my conscience and a "they deserved to die" to their families, to boot.

And for the record, no, I don't see one single wrong with that response.

It was the only movie I ever saw that had a packed house were everyone was crying at that scene. I looked around and every single person in the theatre I was in was sobbing.

And I deal with shit like this daily. I see insurance companies make decisions that murder people. Not kill - MURDER. and they get away with it daily. And if they did it to me then I would take the assholes out. I used to believe that there were innocents working for these companies doing their best in a bad situation but I used to work for BCBS and I know several people in these companies from the low to the high offices and to a person they feel justified.

I would have a lot more sympathy if they weren't all too much like good germans figuratively shoving folks into the oven and shrugging their shoulders when asked why....


I need a drink....





Thanks for your feedback. I appreciated it.

He should be getting a persion, social security and cashing in his IRA.

Also, that he bought a house at age 64 seems strange, and apparently it was an expensive house to have decline so much in value.

And a person is not classified as "discouraged" just because they have been unemployed for over 99 weeks. If they are still actively looking for work, then they are counted as unemployed, not matter how long they have been unemployed.

If Tahitinut was here, he'd tell ya, in no uncertain terms.

Finally, Obama has been specific on how he's gonna create jobs, he's gonna use trickle down and free trade.

and it is how they keep control. A large part of the population lives in fear of personal financial disaster. Many people are at their wit's end trying to keep it all together. I see it all the time, the disastrous effects on mental and physical health. ;(

This is a stupid way to run a country.

Except my heart goes out to all of you.