annual interruptus

Jeez, Jay, if I had your face, I'd shave my ass and walk backwards.

{;-)

You forgot the part about learning to walk on my hands...

;-)

On a more serious note, some of the part time faculty at the college feel
the same way about applying for unemployment over the summer break. The
other side of that coin says that if the college paid the premiums for
unemployment insurance directly to the faculty, or offered the faculty a
full year contract, or loaded up the schedule so that everybody could teach
in the summer, then there wouldn't be the need for those $$ to fill a three
month gap of no income. Hell, after 30 years at this gig I've got a $25K
credit in my "account" with the State of Californicate that I'll never see.
When I quit, it gets dumped into the general fund, lost and gone forever.

One point: You have no "account", and there are far more people
sucking from the teat than are carressing it.

Another point: Your employer has no choice but to pay into it -- they
cannot, by law, give it to you instead. But you know that.

/rant mode on/

In Iowa, unemployment compensation is a blending of two easily-
corrupted groups -- the bureacrats who run the system, and the
recipients of the money. Because of the way "Unemployment" is set
up, these two groups -- which, in the interest of "checks and
balances", should have as semi-adversarial role -- instead work
together hand-in-glove to fleece the system.

Bureacrats love new benefit recipients -- it keeps them busy, and
diverts our elected officials' attention elsewhere when they're
looking for places to cut the budget. More unemployment paid out
justifies their existence, and provides an incentive to build their
department -- two very compelling reasons for them to approve
benefits.

Recipients, of course, are more than happy to take the benefits.
While I might admit, on a good day, that many recipients of
"unemployment" are in need of the money, there are a signficant number
of dastardly and nefarious scumbags who will always try to scam the
system. Those people, combined with the bureaucrats, make for a
system that is full of fluff and waste.

Hapless employers are forced to pay into this corrupt system, and have
virtually no input or control over where the money is spent. In our
10 years in business in Iowa, we have had precisely one (1) employee
claim unemployment compensation. The claim was completely bogus, I
was able to document it six ways to China, but, in the end, it didn't
matter -- the guy (then living in a beach house in Florida) was able
to get paid for six months of sitting on his butt.

Now you might say "Good for him" -- except that because of this, my
overall unemployment insurance rate (or "Workforce Development" rate,
as the State of Iowa sickeningly coins it) went up 400%, and has
stayed at that higher rate for five years.

That extra money -- and we're talking many thousands of dollars -- was
money that could have been used for any number of productive things,
from remodeling the hotel, to giving my night manager a raise.
Instead, it was sucked into the never-satisfied maw of Gummint, never
to be seen again.

Don't talk to me about EVER accepting government welfare money. The
waste and fraud in our government, from Federal to State to Local,
sickens me, and I would rather accept money from organized crime.

/rant mode off/
--
Jay Honeck
Iowa City, IA
Pathfinder N56993
www.AlexisParkInn.com
"Your Aviation Destination"