Kevin's Comments - Jobs, Jobs, Jobs!

You are extremely employable, you've been working for 40 years... each new job has elevated your income, your self-esteem, your value to your company and your ability to feel successful and be successful.

But something's not right... you completed the 3 month session with a top career advisory firm, your resume is pitch perfect and your business marketing plan is top-notch!

So where are the job offers?

Where are the jobs?

WTF... is going on?

It's an economic recession and it didn't just affect home-buying-selling-building, banking-lending-investment-securities, but jobs-jobs-jobs!

The government made commitments to provide support for our struggling financial system: Money Market funds, Commercial Paper, Federal Home Loan Bank Securities, Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF), Public Private Invest Funds, Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), AIG, Goldman-Sachs, GM, Chrysler, Bank America, Citigroup, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, Bear Sterns, Reserve U.S. Government Fund,

The FDIC expects the cost of resolving failed banks to total around $52 billion from 2010 through 2014. _{^{Read more: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/01/28/2617438/regulators-shut-small-okla-bank.html#ixzz1CU3jNR2Y}}

The support for the struggling middle-class, however, has turned into a war of ideology between Democrats, Republicans and T-Party newcomers.

You have run out of severance and are now living on somewhere between $600 - $1400 a month in unemployment, which has been a battle with Republicans to keep extending because those collecting unemployment are "drug-addicts, hobos, lazy, good for nothing, unincentivized, parasites."

Funny, 10 months ago we were stand-up, tax-paying, contributing, voting, citizens of these United States.

What a difference 10 months can make...

First to go was the second car, which is understandable it's a convenience and you're not going anywhere on a daily basis so you can share one car. Important to sell if you aren't upside/down in the car, or work with your lender if you are. Call them and you may be surprised how helpful they can be... I'm going to give a shout out to Baxter Credit Union because they have been very supportive of our situation.

Options:

• sell vehicle and pay off difference owing, but doing this will most likely require balance be paid in full before a title will be handed over...
  
• voluntarily surrender car to lender... they will have it picked up and auctioned off, money will go to balance of loan and a lender with integrity like BCU will work with you on balance owing...
• we were offered a reduction of a $1000 on balance owing and 24 months, interest free to pay off...

It doesn't get better until you are back to work, but you know a $9.00/hour job won't pay the bills, make the mortgage, or put food on the table... even if you are able to find one, you'd really need three.

You're 59 years old... you do not have a college diploma, you have specialized for 40 years in being a good employee with a great work ethic, flexible multi-tasker, energetic team leader and new project coordinator. When you had that late Friday afternoon meeting, you were told you were making too much money for the position. They were restructuring and might even out-source your job.

You were gracious and thanked them for all they had done for you over the past 13 years while you as a single-parent struggled to raise your sons. They had been a very important part of your financial success in the last few years especially. You handed in your keys to the building... the cleaning lady wouldn't have any company as you were generally the last person in the building most nights working until ten, eleven o'clock.

You had already cleaned up your work desk with piles neatly stacked details of where projects stood duly noted, your personal emails though very few were deleted, your refrigerator emptied and your travel coffee cup packed. You felt a strain, almost animosity lately from your immediate supervisor and this Friday felt likely to be your last day.

You have great insight into people... but being right today about the Vice President of Marketing was no consolation as you slipped quietly out of the building unnoticed. Thirteen years and not a good-by, not a good-luck, not a single OMG!

Driving home that mid-March evening at 4:30pm felt more of a relief than a crushing blow... a personality war between you and a woman you didn't care for or respect honestly was over after three years. If your first boss hadn't retired, you'd still be working and feeling good about your employment.

The panic wouldn't set in for about 6 months... when your severance would run out and you'd still be one of the 9.8% unemployed statistics.

Or is it despair first and then depression...

The one thing you know for sure is that you were three years away from retirement and you are now a few months away from living under a bridge and looking for a really sturdy box!

Although, ever the optimist there may be a new opportunity here... pop-up, sturdy, recycled-corrugate boxes with running water and a mini porta-potty. Needs work, but it is a new distraction. File it with your business plan on how to spend millions when you win the lottery!

And keep telling yourself... it could happen!

This is when you used to tell yourself don't quite your day job!

You're hooked up with every internet job marketing group, Linked-In, networking daily, resume is posted with every university, college, business of interest, media group and newspaper. You have a dozen different versions of your resume for each of the potential job opportunities that may present themselves and a couple hundred introduction letters personalized for each job application sent out.

You're beginning to feel a bit schizophrenic or at least suffer from multiple-personality disorder. Didn't know you'd be remaking yourself three years before retirement... and didn't imagine the new debate would be to move the age of retirement to 65 - 70. Now there's a bright idea... the older we get the harder it is to find work so let's make it harder to survive unemployment by extending the age of eligibility. Yes, I realize it would not affect the elderly unemployed immediately, but do we really think it's going to be easier down the road?

Do we really think 9% isn't the new 7.5%?

So when does depression turn into despair... right about now!

Double up on your meds by month ten and start looking for a manager's position at the local Dunkin' Donuts. You're too old and they can't afford to pay $10 an hour. Which is a mute point because you lose your home at that pay scale anyway and then you might as well join the Red Cross and head to Haiti or Philippines and make yourself useful if they will have you.

But you haven't had a complete physical in over two years and you have no medical insurance so if you can't pass the physical you now have a pre-existing condition and can't continue to live in the 'blissful ignorance' of not knowing you are not well.

Despair sets in and you are now drinking six cups of coffee every morning to motivate you through the job search discipline... and you think it's giving you an ulcer. Mornings also begin later and later every day as your depression has you sleeping 12 hours a night.

You know the saying, "it hurts when I do this?" and the response is, "don't do that!"

Well, the rejections hurt, the lack of response hurts, the collection letters hurt, losing your home hurts, losing yourself hurts. Not doing that is not an option, so you keep banging your head against the doors blocking you, the walls confining you, the mirror that does not reflect that other you.

How many times in your life have you been told this or told yourself this... not very comforting. Even less comforting is "misery loves company"... really and truly this is absurd! What kind of thoughtless, heartless, apathetic person would give this advice to someone in the throes of losing everything beginning with their jobs, medical insurance, life savings, home and inevitably their self-respect, humor and too often their will live to live.

Unemployed people are your constituents even though we can't afford to contribute to your re-election campaigns. We are not a blight on society like the lepers that were once quarantined in leper colonies. We are your brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, cousins, uncles, aunts, grandchildren, neighbors, friends, the worker who once stood on a production line or sat in the next cubicle from someone you know.

We are not a pawn in a game of GOP holding Democratic legislation hostage!

We are not a pawn in the balance the budget debate!

We are not the reason the economy was driven off the cliff!

We are the back-bone of America... we are the middle-class!

We watched as our jobs moved 17K miles away... watched as our production lines stopped... manufacturing plants closed... innovation and technology expanded in countries like China, India, Korea, the Philippines... we watch as neighbors and families are evicted and homes are short-saled... cars are repossessed... belongings are tossed into the street or dumpsters before they can be claimed and we respectfully move out.

You are either watching this and are ineffective at proposing remedies... unsupportive of job creating legislation... prefer to hold our peril hostage while you negotiate for yourselves... or just don't care!

How evil, hateful, apathetic, indifferent, complacent, disinterested, insensible, insouciant, perfunctory, pococurante, unconcerned, disinterested can a fellow human being be toward so many of his or her fellow Americans?

It's despicable at the very least... borders on social neglect... willful indifference and intolerance... especially for an elected official who took an oath to support the Constitution of our United States of America. Not just for the wealthy, working, financially contributing constituents, but for all Americans !

The disappointment is overwhelming and unjustifiable... it is debilitating and toxic to the welfare of so many Americans, but also to the construct of the principles of America!

Shame on all of you for not working for all the people of these United States ... shame on you for your perfunctory and undisciplined performance as leaders of our great nation... shame on you for not caring!

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

Actions have consequences... inaction has consequences... the consent of the governed is required to serve... voting is the 'Right of the People to alter or to abolish".