Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Protest Occupy Tim Griffin
Posted by Max Brantley on Tue, Dec 6, 2011 at 1:45 PM
A prayer vigil is scheduled outside U.S. Rep. Tim Griffin's office at 1501 N. University at 4 p.m. Thursday in hopes of encouraging Griffin to vote for extended unemployment insurance. This would require his putting aside partisan gimmickry in backing plans to extend some benefits in return for punishing other workers with federal job layoffs, means tests for benefit programs and other punitive measures.
NEWS RELEASE
Clergy, community leaders, unemployed constituents and concerned working families will hold a press conference and pray for the extension of unemployment insurance outside of Rep. Tim Griffin’s office at 1501 N. University in Little Rock at 4:00 PM on Thursday, December 8. For jobless Arkansans and local communities hit hard by long-term unemployment, extended unemployment insurance is a lifeline that is set to expire at the end of December unless Congress takes action.
Retired Presbyterian minister Howard Gordon, Arkansas AFL-CIO president Alan Hughes and others will lead a prayer and speaking program highlighting the stories of the jobless and calling on Rep. Tim Griffin to put aside politics and vote to reauthorize unemployment insurance.
“Without unemployment insurance, many Arkansans wouldn’t be able to keep food on the table or a roof over their head,” said Alan Hughes, President of the Arkansas AFL-CIO, “and it worries me to think about what would happen to many thousands of Arkansans if Congress doesn’t act now to help struggling families.”
“Our local economy will also suffer if unemployment benefits are not extended because unemployed workers spend all of the money they receive in benefits right here in Arkansas,” added Mr. Hughes.
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Comments (13)
Showing 1-13 of 13
Yawn.
Will Alan Hughes be Occupying his shiny new Cadillac on the way there? He's a real 99%er you know...
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Spanky Griffin sold his soul long ago. Appreciate the effort to influence him, but our next chance to have a congressman who gives a damn about the little guy won't be until 11/06/2012, Election Day.
I am sure Mr. Hughes is indeed a 99%er. 99%ers are those who earn less than $1,000,000.00 per year. Besides, who would begrudge any hard-working American purchasing a luxury car made by an American-owned automobile company? (Well, actually, you would, obviously.) The Occupy movement is not about begrudging success nor eschewing material comforts. It is about fairness, an equal playing field, and opportunity for all living, breathing, flesh-and-blood Americans. (And, specifically, it is about excluding corporate-persons.) Snark is only snarky when it's based in fact.
You're awfully defensive of Alan, Sayno.
Contrary to the garbage you spew, Occupy movement is about class warfare, plain and simple. The dollar figure you reference is wholly irrelevant. Right now its $1,000,000, but what's stopping it from being $250,000 or $150,000? nothing. soon it will be the 95%ers or the 90%ers. Where does it stop?
And yes, GM is an American-owned company - American government owned. your government chose to bailout the unions and screw the shareholders and bondholders in that takeover deal. where were you and your Occupy friends when that happened? do you know how many retirees and pensionholders had stock in GM that became utterly worthless overnight? the 99% got screwed and nobody said a thing because it was Obama and the unions doing the screwing.
hypocrite.
The mindset of Greece was "Why not vote our employees great benefits and shorten their work day and it will all work out in the long run." This type of thinking is bankrupt. Paying the unemployed for two years is stupid too. What does the left brag about? They say that Social Security system is great and those who want to change it are criminal. The truth is far different. The facts are very clear and Social Security is a ponzi scheme. Ken Aden recently proved that he does not have a good grasp on that fact. http://haltingarkansasliberalswithtruth.wo…
Great news for you, Saline, you aren't forced to take Social Security or Medicare so you can just live on all of your savings and investments and the dividends they aren't paying. Have a great life!
SR got it wrong. Reasonable people expect changes to be made in SS. The problem is the only solution Republicans are willing to accept would destroy SS. That would be a disaster. President Obama was well received in Kansas today, speaking in the same town where Republican President T. Roosevelt spoke a century ago. Amazing how the two agree. The party of Abraham Lincoln and TR seems to have lost everything they once stood for.
I'm defensive of Hughes? Hardly. Never met the man. I'm non-union, too. In fact, I've never worked at a union job in my life. (GM is being publicly-traded, once again, BTW.) Of course facts are inconvenient to your type. 99% = earns over $1 million per year. Period. You just don't like it because it doesn't fit your world view as seen through Koch-colored glasses.
@ TheBusDriver - Enron. Can you say "Enron?" That's where the current round of corporate-screwing of pensioners started. The hedge-fund/credit-default-swap creating henchmen of Wall Street - Masters of the Universe, they like to call themselves - started the bleeding of pensioners and the destruction of our economy then. You are the hypocrite. Blaming Obama and unions - which have been losing members and strength for decades - for the bailouts/TARP/etc. which were created while GWB was in office. It is the GOP and their all-powerful, all-ecompassing love of money - even fake, created-out-of-thin-air bubble money - who are the ones to blame. They of the you-should-never-have-to-offset-the-costs-of-giving-taxpayers-their-money-back who now claim the middle class tax cut must be "paid for." As for class warfare...the depths of your willful ignorance is amazing. After decades of wage stagnation while the top income brackets soared, their tax rates dropped and the system was skewed in their favor... NOW it's class warfare? What of the billions in corporate welfare? Are you in favor of the billions in subsidies taxpayer give to highly-profitable corporations? oh, and, BTW - Mr. Best-Paid-Bus-Driver-on-the-Planet-If-You-Are-a-1%er - where are the jobs created by the past 11 years of tax cuts for the top wage earners? Huh? Where are they?
Good grief..... has Mike Masterson taken over the titles of AR blog posts?
What has any of this to do with "occupy"?
sayno2pharma, actually going of the IRS data for 2009, the "1%" is a household who earns $343,927 a year. http://www.bankrate.com/finance/taxes/top-1-percent-earn.aspx. I would suggest in the future that if you are going to demonize a group and claim to use "facts", you research and find the correct data instead of just making a nice clean number up like one million dollars.
Does the use IRS data as a basis for argument validate the miss-statement of the opponent’s position?
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