Infighting, divisiveness may kill the 99er movement

Infighting and divisiveness may kill the 99er movement before Washington indifference starves them all. There is a disturbing trend within the 99er community that may be even more destructive than Washington withholding a Tier 5. Certain groups on Facebook and other sites designed to unite the millions of 99ers in America, are actually banning people who post informative articles about the cause and attacking those who have lead the charge over the past 12 months.

Useless bickering about how many 99ers there really are in America and trivial infighting over who speaks for them is more the clash of petty egos and small-minded megalomaniacs seeking more attention than they themselves have been able to generate for the cause. Jealousy is a vicious, unproductive trait.

Results speak for themselves. The 99er Nation needs to remember who it was that helped them break into the mainstream media, who successfully delivered the 99er letter into the hands of President Obama, who organized the fax-email-call campaigns that forced Washington to finally write/introduce two Tier 5 bills this month and put the 99er cause on the map across America.

It has been the relentles s work of 99er Media (Rob C.), Cindy Paoletti (who wrote the Obama letter), the weekly BlogTalkRadio shows like Mr. G’s Unemployment Roundtable, Paladinette’s Jobless Talk, Monica Ross-Williams’ Reach Out Job Search, the highly organized leadership of U-Cubed, the dedicated members of PalTalk’s Tier 5 to Survive-unemployed unite plus the daily reporting on our movement by a handful of reporters from MSNBC (Ed Schultz), PBS, ABC, RTTV, Huffington Post (Arthur Delaney, Arianna Huffington) and Examiner.com reporters Detroit Job Search Examiner-Monica Ross-Williams and Rochester Unemployment Examiner-Michael Thornton (to name a few) that have placed us upon the precipice of realizing our Tier 5 unemployment insurance benefits.

The 99er community is not as few as 1.4 million strong, like the DOL would have you believe. The San Diego Unemployment Examiner called the DOL using credentials of Examiner.com and asked them point blank how many Americans have exhausted all UI benefits. They said (back when nobody knew who the 99ers where) that they do not keep data on "UI Exhaustees". Now, when everybody knows about our movement, the DOL releases that bogus 1.4 million number? It simply does not pass the laugh test.

The figure quoted of 1.4 million workers is NOT accurate. Even NELP said earlier last month that of the 15 million people on UI benefits 56% of them have been unemployed longer than 6 months. If you believe the figure that 2.5 million of those were cut off by Congress' failure to extend UI benefits for those who would otherwise be eligible (in June), that still leaves 5.9 million unaccounted for before Congress passed the latest extension.

If you do the math, you see that 3.8 to 4 million 99ers is a very conservative number, especially when we are growing by 50,000 per day. The new extension, being back dated to June 2nd has created many more 99ers just in the past month, as those who were prevented from advancing to tier 4 (only 6 weeks long) have been sent their final retro money for the 6 weeks and are now done with all tiers. Those who only qualify for the Tier 3 will join the ranks of the exhaustees by the end of this month.

Last September, when Congress was working to pass Tiers 3 & 4, they openly debated on the House and Senate floors using the phrase "over 3 million people would be helped" by that legislation. (That has to be available somewhere in those transcripts) This was 11 months ago. Most of the original UI exhaustees who fought for tiers 3 & 4 last fall, ran out of benefits in Feb/March this year. Every month since, this number snowballs.

There is a counter on the Jobless Unite website that does not include the 50,000 new 99ers per day. The counter has been up for several weeks and if that 50K daily number is correct (which also came from the DOL), we are now well over 5 million. Though the counter says 4.3 million at present.

I am not a statistician, but anyway you look at that 1.4 number, it makes about as much sense as the 9.5% US unemployment rate. It doesn't pass muster.

It is far less significant quibbling over the exact number of 99ers and far more important that every UI “exhaustee” unite in one loud voice to force Washington to pass the Tier 5 legislation for all states as soon as Congress reconvenes in mid-September.

If you or any victim of unemployment should be banned from the blogs and Facebook groups without cause, or if you are just sick and tired of the negative garbage some of these groups allow on their sites, you are welcome to join good, positive groups that post important information and filter the petty bickering or Troll activity that only detracts from our plight. Here are a few good ones:

EXTEND UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS

Now: JOBLESS / Next: HOMELESS

New York State Department of Labor page on Facebook

Tier Five Or Die

UNEMPLOYED AMERICANS

TWITTER MARCH for the UNEMPLOYED