Robert Paterson's Weblog

14 States have run out of unemployment insurance

I read with amazement today that the market is recovering because the banks are making money again. Large companies are not - but it's ok that the banks are fine. I don't understand.

I read also today that 14 of the states have run out of funds to pay benefits to the unemployed. They are looking to Washington for borrowing.

KERA’s Shelley Kofler broke a story last week that Texas would have to borrow money from the federal government to help  pay for rising unemployment benefits this month.

Today, Dallas Morning News reporter Robert T. Garrett writes that the Texas Workforce Commission confirmed that the unemployment trust fund would run out of money early next week and the state will have to borrow $643 million to cover claims through Oct. 1.

In addition, Robert writes that some 82,000 unemployed Texans scheduled to exhaust their benefits this week would not receive immediate 13-week extensions as expected.

A TWC spokeswoman blamed the delay – which could be at least a couple months – on stringent federal rules for accessing the benefits and state computer problems.

The news comes at a time when unemployment levels are rising. The DMN story notes that about 285,000 Texans were on unemployment compensation in the six weeks ending June 27 – nearly triple the number from a year earlier.

As of early June, 14 states had run out of money to pay for unemployment benefits and were forced to borrow from the federal government. Source KERA

Don't you feel concerned as well when you read this? What is going to happen?

Unemployment the new cancer

When the mortgage crisis began it was linked to the predatory lending and the bubble. But now it's all about whether you can keep your job.

So now it's people who were not taken in - now it's about the solid middle class - people who did everything right are being thrown out on the street.

Here is how it looks in Texas.

Pub Media - Is the audience really "The Public"?

When you think of the typical listener/viewer of public radio/TV what do you see in your mind's eye?

Someone like me I bet taken here by Doc Searls at NPR's head office pre-beard.

But I am only a small part of the "Public"

Can Public Radio  and TV really have a future if they don't include ALL the public?

I don't think so. One of the wonderful things about the Facing the Mortgage Crisis Project is that our 76 stations are making real progress in expanding their reach. Not by the old "Let's do a Spanish Program" but by reaching authentically into the larger community and offering a real hand of frienship and support while also asking for their help too.

Here are a couples of stories that make this more clear:

Mortgage Crisis Loss - Things or People?

Many people will lose everything - how do you cope with that? Here is an inspiring answer to that question

Mortgage Crisis - Action and Hope

So what happens if you have lost your job and your house? How can you be "helped"?

An answer is that you need to find "Hope".

What is Hope when you have lost everything?

In some cases it is in seeing others like you take action - reinvent themselves and the community.

Here is Ian's story

The Mortgage Crisis - Shame and Fear

Many caught up in losing their homes - lost them not only because they had missed payments but that they had frozen and done nothing. They froze because of shame and fear.

They could have saved their home but they felt that they did deserve too and so froze.

Here is how some of our 76 stations are helping change the Story so that they have a chance.

Public Media - The Little Engine that can!

What and who is really helping right now the millions of Americans who are caught up in the financial crisis?

Who is helping people to keep their homes? Who is helping people get through losing their homes and their jobs?

View bradley airport to greenfield in a larger map

76 Public Radio and TV stations in 32 of the worst hit markets - that is part of the who?

In each of these communities, you will find a unique collaboration of public radio and TV working together to:

• Offer people easy and trusted access to help such as highlighting hotlines such as the Colorado Hotline in Denver or 211 in Cleveland or Connecticut who can connect people immediately to help.

• Build coalitions of resources in the city as WOSU is doing in Columbus

• Bring the facts and ideas to the public as is being done in Cincinnati 

• Bring hope and honor where all may seem lost as in Las Vegas

• Give voice to those that are taking back their power as in Detroit

• Bust through the bureaucracy as is being done in Vegas

Our mission is to use the Trust in public radio and TV to enable people and communities to take back their power and start to help each other. To reveal the depth and power that lives latently in the community.

Our hope is that if we can bring this power into the light, that it will grow over time. That a good shared experience with helping each other in our cities and across the country will prepare us for the larger work ahead of re-imagining America.

CPB funded this project after a beta test with KETC last year in St Louis. We know that acting as the convener works in one market.

I wonder what will be the impact when we try this in 32 markets. If we do what we hope, we will be close to the Tipping Point.

I will be posting regular reports here and on the national blog for the project that you can find here.

On the project Blog - you will also find links to the stations as their sites come online. You may live in one of these cities. Plus we will be experimenting with how the national work of Public TV and Radio can add more.

This is surely a work in progress. We don't know if this will work - it did work in one city.

Please join in and help with your comments and ideas. The bigger the conversation, the more chance we have of being successful.

Time to Reinvent Ourselves and our Economy?

If you are a laid of car-worker, journalist, forest worker, mass media marketer it is surely a bit like being the proverbial "Buggy Whip Maker" in 1905.

But we have a big advantage over those living in 1905. Today we can try our new things in public. We can talk about new ideas in public. By having this huge public conversation, we can find the now unknowable future much more quickly. In so doing we can limit the pain.

No city could be more in the fog than Detroit itself - the city that can look back at 1905 and see how it was the primary beneficiary of the end of horse power.

So today I called my new friend Luther Keith, the GM of Arise Detroit, and asked him to tell me how he was seeing things.

Few are as well connected with issues. I asked him if he was seeing any signs of the stimulus getting through to the community groups. So far he had seen none.

But what he was seeing signs of the growing understanding that what was really needed was a "Reinvention" What does that mean - for it is question that applies to all of us - Detroit is just the first mover?

Here is his view.

What do you think?