Veterans Crisis Line Seeks To Help Those Struggling With Civilian Life, Unemployment, Post-Combat Stress

Veterans Crisis Line Seeks To Help Those Struggling With Civilian Life, Unemployment, Post-Combat Stress:

'via Blog this'

This is a great article. Good on Huff Post for posting it. Someone is doing something good.

The statistics on suicide among our military are appalling. And they are just a part of the detritus that making war on Iraq has cost us as a society.

Our success in managing physical battlefield casualties is truly amazing. I understand that we have about six survivors for every death now. So with 4,500 deaths in Iraq that would mean about 27,000 physically maimed... blinded, legless, burned... but still alive. One has to guess that there are at least twice that many... or maybe three, or four, or even five times as many... veterans that escaped physical maiming and just came home totally fucked up.

They saw things they never expected to see. They did things they never imagined doing. They lived for months in an environment where friends and enemies all looked the same... where their lives were in danger 24/7 because you couldn't tell the difference. And so on and so on... they would have to tell us, because I wasn't there and I can't even imagine all the fear and horror they lived with for months. And then they got to go back and do it all again!

So they come home looking pretty normal but suffering from those long periods of stress... of constant fear and loathing, of seeing and even participating in horrors they never imagined in their real lives. Traumatized!

They come home to a country that really doesn't want to hear about it. Their parents may care deeply about them but they really don't want to hear about the horrors. Nor do their siblings. Nor do their friends and drinking buddies... not really, and certainly not for very long. Their wives might take on the burden of listening... some do. But...

And they've come home to an economy that can't provide jobs. And remember that we fought this war with a reserve army. Many of these soldiers had good jobs or owned small businesses. They expected society to stand behind them during their tour of duty... to protect those jobs and businesses. Unfortunately tour became tours, and time marched on, and society forgot those promises.

So now they are home, feeling fucked up, fucked with and fucked over. No job, no help and no hope! And there's not a lot of hope on the near horizon... that's for sure. Our very form of government is broken... it simply no longer functions. Is this what they sacrificed to protect from imaginary atom bombs?

It must really be painful to realize that their war need never have been fought. They made all these sacrifices to satisfy some little twist in George Bush's brain. Family dynamics? What else? It's really impossible to find a plausible reason for America's having made all of this sacrifice of blood and treasure... except for the singular pleasure of hanging Saddam Hussein. WOW!

And our "victory" in Iraq... the imagined "victory" defined and redefined by Bush and Cheney and now declared by President Obama? It has been a bit transitory. We left them this wonderful thing called a democracy only weeks ago. Our gift. Their civil war is already under way. The killing has begun in earnest. And the major beneficiary of that war will very like be our current arch enemy Iran.

I'm just say'n... Thank you George Bush.

Employers Moving From Furloughs To Outright Pay Cuts

Employers Moving From Furloughs To Outright Pay Cuts

In the short term salary compression is just the result of our current economic situation. American workers need jobs desperately and they are not in a position to demand the same wages and benefits they had before catastrophe of the Bush/Cheney years. Employers know this and can offer less for more... less pay, more work. In the longer term I suspect Americans will need to get used to much less... in terms of wages and benefits... than we are used to getting.

In the 65 years since WW2 we Americans have had a wonderful run. We've lived high on the hog and we've done wonderful things. We won the cold war, went to the moon, invented the personal computer, all that! Now we've exhausted the legacy that the "the greatest generation" bequeathed us. We've just had a lot of fun spending other people's money... our inheritance, our grand children's future, and China's labor.

In the broader sense, we Americans, at less than 5 per cent of the world’s population, can't continue to consume in excess of 30 to 40 per cent of the world's production of resources, goods and services. Not forever... and not even for much longer. Eventually the workers of other nations will demand a bigger piece of the pie. After all, they're the ones actually making most of the pie now.

So we need to start getting used to less pay for more work. Less pay may be direct... as reported in the article... or it may come as inflation or a weaker dollar. They're really the same... it's just a question of whose ox gets gored. And I'll bet the ox belonging to the wealthy oligarchy that now owns our government will not be the ox that gets gored... but then I'm just a cynic.

I don't believe our real wages will rise again unless we invent another new technological miracle as revolutionary as the PC. I don't mean just a better telephone... I mean a game changer... robot factories, nuclear fusion, genetically altered food. Personally, I don't think marketing fraudulent securities made up of worthless "assets" will do the job for us.

Well, we're still the the 600 pound gorilla in the room, but at the end of the Clinton/Gore years we weighed in at a solid 1200 pounds! Even 18 months ago we were probably still at 900. I hope we're not down to 300 pounds 18 months from now.

Of course, we are still the world's only military superpower. We could try “conquer and pillage” as an economic system. It kept the Romans in bread and circuses for centuries!

Senator Gregg's "Modest Proposal"

Blue Hampshire: Politics ::: Gregg: Cut off extended unemployment NOW

I really hate to agree with Senator Gregg and his crowd on any economic policy affecting my fellow Americans… but maybe he has a point.

I don’t think the dole can support our unemployed millions for very much longer. Well, not without higher taxes on somebody. God forbid the wealthy of America should suffer any more predation by the useless unemployed.

The politicians of the free market crowd don't really want to talk about the basic problem with American unemployment, because American voters don’t want to hear about it. We just can’t tolerate the most basic free market fact... that you can't have a world wide "free" market economic system and expect that the jobs supporting that economy won't migrate to those nations with the cheapest wages, if they can do the work. They can do the work!

Maybe our politicians don't understand this basic fact, but I think many do... they just don't want to talk about it with the voter. Our response would probably be about the same as that of the Greeks.

Of course I mean a "real" free market system, which we do not currently have. In our current world wide marketplace some nations are allowed to have tariffs on imports and other nations are not. Some nations are allowed to manipulate their currencies and others are not. And some nations are allowed to join price fixing cartels and others are not. I guess it's a "sort of, kind of" free market, but these distortions of “free” market just exacerbate the unemployment problem for we Americans.

And “our” government… America’s government, nominally… just goes along with the selling out of American interests. Why? Well, some nations are allowed, even encouraged, to buy our politicians, our regulators, our negotiators, our regulatory commissions, even whole branches of government if they want. On a shared basis, you understand, sort of like a time share condo. It really is a free market... open to all… nations, industries & corporations, individuals… domestic and foreign… ya’ll come. Maybe that’s why!

And I also mean real jobs... where workers take something, do something useful to it, and produce something else that is worth more in the market place. And the workers get at least a portion of that added value to build a life on. Value added can also consist of ideas and inventions, designs and applications of new technologies, and services, and all of the other wonderfulness of third wave economics. Even fraudulent securities apparently.

But I don't believe we Americans can have an economy based solely on ideas and services, or fraudulent securities. For one thing many of our workers are not equipped to participate in that economy. What shall we do for them? The dole maybe? And for another, many workers in other nations are so equipped. Americans are not the only smart, creative… and educated… people in the world!

Of course most American workers are not married to a free market system. We just want our toys cheap and now! But in the broader sense, we Americans, at less than 5 per cent of the world’s population, can't continue to consume in excess of 30 per cent of the world's production of resources, goods and services. Not forever and not even for much longer. Eventually the workers of other nations will come to understand that they deserve a bigger piece of the pie. After all, they're the ones actually making most of the pie now. Actually, I think they have already come to understand that!

Well, we’ve had our century of economic dominance. It's probably over. We are no longer the 800 pound gorilla in the room… probably only a 400 pounder now… and likely to lose a lot more weight soon! Not because of intrinsic weaknesses of our system, but because of carelessness and stupidity on our part. We stood by and watched as our industrial base was sold out from under us. We believed what we read about the peerless CEOs saving our corporations… by terminating their research arms, firing all those costly experienced workers and outsourcing their jobs, and selling off any left over profit making elements piecemeal.

It’s called “being on a going out of business curve". But it makes the stock market happy... temporarily… and that leads to gigantic executive pay packages and parachutes.

We have allowed our leaders, including our labor union leaders, to convince us that we could continue to have more and more goods for less and less effort. We bought into that lie because we wanted to.

Worst of all, we have allowed our government to be purchased pretty much outright, selling "we the people" out for a song.

The Judd Gregg crowd of congressmen and senators (republican and democrat) believe that the free market will solve our unemployment problem if we’ll just let it work. They don’t know how… they just know it will. Third wave economics or some other magic maybe! What other hope have they?

Of course the free market could solve this problem. We just have to accept that working 10 or 12 hour days, for $10 or $12 a day, is a solution. That’s the competition! That’s the free market.

Many of the currently unemployed will never again attain the wages and benefits they held before the Bush/Cheney economic collapse… if they ever get a new job at all. We are going to have to accept lower wages and benefits if we want jobs in the new world economy. Or run-away inflation which will amount to the same thing... a lower standard of living!

We need to create some 20 to 40 million new jobs over the next few years to solve this problem. It depends on what you mean by "solve"? Like maybe a return to the Clinton/Gore years? Forty million new jobs is just not credible. Hell, 20 million is pretty far fetched.

So maybe the republicans are right with their modest proposal… we should just shut off unemployment benefits right now and let the free market do its job. Make those lazy unemployed folk cut bait or die. Otherwise, living on the dole is going to be "life as we know it" for a lot of Americans for a long time to come.

We have pissed away our inheritance from our forefathers. Get used to it!

Of course, we are still the world's only military superpower. We could try “conquer and pillage” as an economic system. It kept the Romans in bread and circuses for centuries!