99er NOVO member Mignon Veasley-Fields renders Ed Schultz speechless

99er NOVO member Mignon Veasley-Fields rendered Ed Schultz speechless yesterday, blaming both the Democrats as well as the Republicans for the mess the 99ers find themselves in today.

In recent weeks, a group of the longest term unemployed has emerged called the 99er NOVOs, who are so angered by Washington inaction on a Tier 5 that they were refusing to vote at all in the upcoming elections, unless S3706 (The Americans Want to Work Act) was brought to the Senate floor for a vote first.

Mignon Veasley-Fields is a 61-year-old Los Angeles grandmother who has been out of work since June 2008. Her unemployment benefits ran out over three months ago.

On Thursday's "Ed Show," Schultz did his best to get Veasley-Fields to encourage the NOVOs to cast ballots for Democrats in November despite their economic woes. Since the NOVO agreement was to halt their plans not to vote, if the bill was brought to the floor, Mignon assured Ed that the NOVOs would indeed keep their word. Unfortunately, the 99ers are not all on board with this decision.

"Well Ed, yes, we have committed that we are going to encourage our fellow 99ers to vote for either party that their choice. However, 

Ed, yesterday was very disappointing for us. And even though we are trying to tell them to vote, many of them are not going to vote even though the No NOVO says to go ahead and do this. They were disillusioned by what they saw on the Senate floor yesterday. We were grateful for Senator Stabenow for her effort, but we thought it was just sort of put together really quickly like a dog and pony show in order to get us to vote for them. This is a sentiment across this nation." Ms. Fields told Ed.

Schultz countered: "But if the Republicans, but Mignon, if the Republican Senator had not stood up, this would have gone through, and you would have had the votes, and you would have gotten an extension. It's the Republicans. Why take it out on the Democrats, the majority Party that time and time again has been there for the unemployed?"

To which Mignon replied: "Well you know, Ed, we have gone back in the history of the tiers. We as 99ers have tried to figure this out ourselves. What has happened is we can remember the time in which the Republicans said, "Sure, get another tier. Use the stimulus funds. And the Democrats said, 'No, we need to find sourcing for unemployment.' So now we're thinking back on that, and we're realizing it's not the Republicans. It was the Democrats that caused us to be in the situation that we're in. We want the Democrats to come back before this election, and we want them to come back and rectify this, Ed."

Of course, Veasley-Fields was right. The Republicans for over three months have stubbornly insisted that any additional tier be paid for either with stimulus money or some other part of the budget rather than just added to the growing deficit. Even while they demand the extension of the Tax cuts for the very rich, which would not be paid for and would add trillions to the deficit over the next 10 years.

So even as the Democrats are surely the lesser of the two evil choices Americans have this election day, it is very difficult for millions to get excited about voting when going hungry and homeless in droves every day.

Earlier in the video segment below, Ed calls upon President Obama to talk directly to the 99ers, saying: "Mr. President, you've got to speak directly to the unemployed. Directly to the unemployed. The people that don't have a job. the people that don't have benefits. the people that have been shafted by the republicans in recent weeks.” Shultz also pointed out: "I think if the Democrats, the majority party, think that 15 million unemployed voters can't make a difference in November, i think you've got another thing coming."

You can watch the full segment in the video below.