Our community is full of unemployed folks. We have, or I guess, used to have a large group of oil field workers here. Until March of 2009 when the oil companies decided that if the State of Colorado wanted to tax their business, then they would just go play somewhere else.
For the most part, this is a good thing. About every 7-10 years this happens and those of us who have been around for a while have seen them come and seen them go.
But the one problem that they left behind (if you dont count the destroyed land and polluting the water and killing the wildlife) anyway, one of the problems they left behind is a horde of unemployed individuals with huge unemployment checks!
I spoke to a guy who came into our ER who was an unemployed "rig worker". He shared with me that he was bringing home $1500/week on unemployment because of the job that he once held with the oil company. Now, this guy was clearly not a rocket scientist. In fact, it is probably safe to say that he was lucky to graduate from high school. He and his wife had moved here from Michigan to "get in on the big money" and because of the dangerous job he held with the oil company he made the "big money", and now the big unemployment check!
These people are now going on two years unemployed. They have exhausted the original unemployment period, they have exhausted TWO extensions applied by the state of Colorado and now they are waiting to see if Congress is going to give them 90+ more weeks of unemployment!!!
I say, enough is enough. We have 10% unemployment here in our valley, but that doesn't mean there aren't jobs. After looking at the want ads in our local paper, I can pick out several jobs that are available for people to do. How long are we, as taxpaying Americans supposed to sit back and fork out checks to these people???
What do you think?
Also, if you are having problems commenting on this blog, please email me. (veetach@bresnan.net) I cant figure out why this is happening, if it is still happening.
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