Compassion or just higher taxes?

This week the Nebraska Legislature saw fit to accept federal money to pay unemployment benefits. It seems like a "no brainer" to accept the largess but I wonder if accepting the "free" money is prudent. In the first place unemployment insurance (?) has traditionally been a state managed program and secondly when Congress voted to extend unemployment benefits, providing the money along with the requirement to pay it out, should have been part of the deal. I also notice that there is no mention in the legislation about what strings were attached for Nebraska to accept what is obviously borrowed money.

During my tenure as a County Commissioner I learned that Nebraska's administration of the unemployment insurance program was, in a word, poor. It worked this way. The county budget annually sent a levy, based on what we paid to our county employees, to the state who in turn administered the program. Then the state paid out those monies, according to state rules, to the unfortunate persons who had lost jobs. The program was probably intended to be little different in concept from any commercial insurance enterprise. Sadly the state made different rules.

One of my motor grader operators spotted an opportunity to operate big earthmoving machinery for a private contractor in the eastern part of the state. He resigned from the county and moved east one spring. Note he voluntarily resigned and headed for greener pastures all on his own initiative.

Early the following spring I received a notice from the state that my unemployment account funds were drawing low and they needed more money. Investigating further I learned that my ex-county employee had been laid off by his new contractor employer, a normal wintertime practice for that company, and that he had been collecting his unemployment benefits all winter long. His new boss's unemployment insurance account had run empty months prior because nearly all his employees had been laid off for the winter. The state then simply dipped into our unused county funds to cover their losses. No matter that none of my county employees had been laid off and had not collected a penny of unemployment benefits and no matter that my road grader man had voluntarily resigned which would prudently have made him ineligible for unemployment benefits. Like I say -- different rules!

I had no recourse other than to dip into Red Willow County funds to pay the additional assessment no matter how I argued otherwise to the state bureaucrat in charge. Now under our present Congress, the federal government has seen fit to stick their finger into the program not to improve its administration but to demand that even more monies be paid out whether deserved or not.

Where is Sen. Ben Nelson when we need him? Oh yes, indeed he voted for extending unemployment benefits, H.R. 4699 on a roll call vote of the Senate, on March 2. Unfortunately Senator Ben has been in the Senate long enough to be part of problem rather the solution. Too many of his votes have contributed to the unemployment that is endemic in the USofA today. Sadly his compassionate solution to all problems seems to involve raising more taxes for his government to spend. I see trouble ahead.

Now a simple question. In an attempt to keep politics out of the court our founding fathers set up the Supreme Court Justices to be appointed for life. Why then does Justice John Paul Stevens, the most liberal, constitution-bending, legislate-from-the-bench, member of the court at present is timing his resignation so that our most left-leaning president ever will be able to appoint an equally liberal justice to replace him on the bench? Non-political my eye!

That is the way I see it.