"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?”

by run 75441

“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

“That’s Baloney” stated Rep. Micky Hammon, R-Decatur, Alabama; the immigration bill cosponsor, told the Huntsville Times.

“It’s clear the study over estimates the negative and under estimates the positive to skew the result toward an agenda,” Hammon said. “If 40,000 illegal workers leave the state, they free up jobs that homegrown Alabamians are happy to have.”
 The Cost of Alabama Immigration Law (H.B. 56) Disputed.

“Alabama has the lowest unemployment rate among seven southeastern states,” the spokeswoman for Governor Robert Bentley said.

I recently completed a quip to Senator Levin of Michigan who was commenting on the fall of the unemployment rate in Michigan and his plan to jump on the deficit reduction bandwagon at the same time. I thought by now most states and the relative “pols” would know a drop in U3 state wide or nationally does not necessarily mean an increase in employment. If the Civilian Labor Force drops in numbers because people give up looking for work, than it is possible for U3 to decrease. This is precisely what has happened in Alabama.

“People are dropping off unemployment rolls because they’ve become discouraged by not being able to find a job and have stopped looking, according to an analysis by Arise Citizens’ Policy Project. Alabama’s labor force shrank by more than 6,000 workers in October, and the labor force has been shrinking since June. Economists say a shrinking labor force makes it easier for a state to post an unemployment rate decline, even if job growth is small.” …“Analysis shows a steep drop in the state’s unemployment rate isn’t because of Alabama’s overreaching immigration law”
Birmingham News

It appears kicking the illegal immigrants out of Alabama doesn’t do much for getting people back to work. Maybe those UAW jobs which did not require more than a high school education and a good work ethic were not as bad as some Senators made them out to be?

“Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

It appears those students who went to Law School, shelled out $100,000 or more to get the exclusive Juris Doctorate, and as a result expected to make the big bucks. They were sadly disappointed when they could not find a job even with the best of credentials. So what does a newly minted attorney to do? Of course, sue the School of Law which they attended for false advertising.

“Adam Bevelacqua graduated from Brooklyn Law School last year with $100,000 in debt but high hopes for his future. He passed the bar on his first try in New York and had internships to highlight on his resume. And, according to his research, the school’s job placement rate for new graduates was between 90 to 95 percent. But Bevelacqua, 29, is no longer as optimistic.

“I’ve been looking for work ever since,” Bevelacqua told msnbc.com. “The jobs aren’t really there.”
On Wednesday, Bevelacqua joined 50 other law school graduates from across the country who sued their alma maters, alleging they were misled about job prospects and burdened with huge amounts of student debt.”
MSNCB News Law schools face lawsuits over job-placement claims

The state of Alabama and Jefferson County are in need of good and cheap attorneys to defend the H.B. 56 law and to process Jefferson County’s bankruptcy. The going rate right now is $1 million per month or enough to fund a few attorneys. Maybe the law labour has to relocate and go to where the demand is? Any takers???

“Please Sir, I want some more.” Oliver,” Charles Dickens

The Center for Progressive Studies Looks at  “Immigrants and the Child Tax Credit”
In order to fund the Payroll Tax Credit and instead of whacking the 1% of the taxpayers making > $500,000 annually; Congress has decided to whack the children of immigrants. Parents claiming a tax credit using the ITIN must now provide a Social Security number. Most likely, they do not have a legitimate SS number. Isn’t this like the feudal wars? Knights on horseback slaughtering the serfs and the peasants (Bruce?).

Benefits of the Child Tax Credit

2.3 million: The number of people, including 1.3 million children, who were kept out of poverty by the child tax credit in 2009.

$1,800: The average amount claimed in child tax credits by ITIN filers in 2010.

3: The number of months for which a family of four with two children could put food on the table using the average child tax credit refund under the Department of Agriculture’s “Thrifty Food Plan.”

$1.38: The amount of economic growth that results from every $1 spent on child tax credits. Not all tax cuts are created equal, though. The payroll tax holiday results in $1.25 of economic growth for every $1 spent, while making the Bush tax cuts permanent would result in $0.35 per dollar.

4 million: The number of U.S.-born children whose families would be affected by the proposed offset.

20 percent: The amount of the payroll tax holiday extension that would be offset by raising taxes on lower-income immigrant parents of American children. The payroll tax holiday extension is worth $120 billion. The proposed legislation to offset the tax cut, however, will, by conservatives’ own calculations, save a total of only $24 billion over 10 years.

About $100 billion: The amount of payroll taxes that will be contributed by ITIN filers over the next 10 years. These taxes contribute to the trust funds for Medicare and Social Security—programs from which immigrants will never recoup benefits because of their status.

$21,240: The average household income for ITIN filers claiming additional child tax credit refunds in 2010. This is less than half of the 2010 median household income in the United States of $49,445, and would mean that a family of four with two children was living below the poverty line. Latino children are more likely to be living in poverty than any other racial or ethnic group in the United States.

“But injustice breeds injustice; the fighting with shadows and being defeated by them necessitates the setting up of substances to combat.” Bleak House, Charles Dickens; February 7th . . . belated Happy Birthday!