And here it is again:
"It’s March again . . . or was it always March? As the pandemic closes in on grim one-year anniversary, people feel stuck in time; “We never left March, we’ve been here the whole time”" by Steve Annear Globe Staff, March 1, 2021
It’s March again! Spring is right around the corner; summer, hot on its tail. Better days beckon.
Or was it ever not March? Sometimes it’s hard to tell.
So much has happened in the year of the pandemic — most everything was canceled, a new president was elected, Tom Brady left but won another championship, and three highly effective vaccines emerged to one day restore normalcy, but in some ways, it feels like time hasn’t budged a bit.
For many of us, the past 12 months have been somewhat of a blur, the days mixing together like paints on a palette. We are Phil Connors from “Groundhog Day” — trapped in a maddening loop and searching for signs that it will be over eventually.
Sure, things seem to be heading in the right direction, but as March 1 landed on our doorsteps on a raw, rainy Monday morning, it was easy to feel like we’d never truly moved beyond the bleak chaos of March 2020.....
I don't need to relive it and lend annear to an a$$hole.
At least there is March Madness this year, yaaaaaaay!
I'll bet the TV ratings are down from their historic highs a few years ago, just like all the other $ucky $port$ I will never care about again.
Related:
"Massachusetts is in the midst of a high-stakes campaign to vaccinate 4.1 million adults in an effort to bring an end to a pandemic that has sickened hundreds of thousands and caused more than 15,000 deaths in the state. The state’s second surge has been subsiding, but public officials are concerned about a possible resurgence due to new coronavirus variants, and they’re asking people to continue taking precautions and to get vaccinated when it’s their turn....."
Also see:
"Massachusetts is in the midst of a high-stakes campaign to vaccinate 4.1 million adults in an effort to bring an end to a pandemic that has sickened hundreds of thousands and caused more than 15,000 deaths in the state. The state’s second surge appears to be on the wane, but public officials are concerned about a possible resurgence due to new coronavirus variants, and they’re asking people to continue taking precautions and to get vaccinated when it’s their turn....."
"Massachusetts is in the midst of a high-stakes campaign to vaccinate 4.1 million adults in an effort to bring an end to a pandemic that has sickened hundreds of thousands and caused more than 15,000 deaths in the state. The state’s second surge appears to be on the wane, but public health officials are keeping a watchful eye out for a possible resurgence due to new coronavirus variants, and they’re asking people to continue taking precautions and to get vaccinated when it’s their turn....."
"Massachusetts is in the midst of a high-stakes campaign to vaccinate 4.1 million adults in an effort to bring an end to a pandemic that has sickened hundreds of thousands and caused more than 15,000 deaths in the state. The state’s second surge appears to be on the decline, but public officials are concerned about a possible resurgence due to new coronavirus variants, and they’re asking people to continue taking precautions and to get vaccinated when it’s their turn....."
"Massachusetts is in the midst of a high-stakes campaign to vaccinate 4.1 million adults in an effort to bring an end to a pandemic that has sickened hundreds of thousands and caused more than 15,000 deaths in the state. The numbers have been trending downward, but public officials are concerned about a possible resurgence due to new coronavirus variants, and they’re asking people to continue taking precautions and to get vaccinated when it’s their turn....."
How many times do they have to repeat it?
Real hard work, isn't it, be a Globe paster, 'er, journali$t?
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"As bills pile up for many jobless workers, state’s ‘dinosaur’ benefits system provides only frustration" by Katie Johnston Globe Staff, March 1, 2021
For many Massachusetts workers who lost their jobs during the pandemic, the stress of being laid off has been magnified by the Sisyphean effort to navigate a balky unemployment system that has been hammered by more than 2.7 million new claims filed since mid-March of last year.
Some unemployed workers have gone months without benefits, due in part to a large number of fraudulent claims, many filed by foreign criminal organizations. This has created huge delays as officials work to verify the identities of filers. Between April and January, the Department of Unemployment Assistance issued $687 million in payments that were either confirmed or potentially fraudulent and recovered $252 million, according to the latest data, released last week. Meanwhile, the state says it has prevented $19.2 billion worth of fraudulent payments from being disbursed.
Do like the latest list of excuses for withholding the money you need to survive as they loot it?
I mean, listen to them! They FINALLY CARE about FRAUD!!
This is disingenuous at best.
Of course, the failure, corruption, and bankruptcy of local and state governments is intentional to get you to beg for a higher authority.
The situation got worse in late December, after unemployment benefits lapsed the day before then-President Trump signed a bill extending them. The bill included new programs and employment verifications that states had to implement immediately, often using antiquated systems. These additional hurdles have added to the raft of legitimate claims being denied or delayed or cut off, with little notice or help from the DUA. Some people are even erroneously being told they have to pay back what they have already received.
It doesn’t appear the crisis will end any time soon. By the end of November, the state had recovered less than half of the jobs lost since April, and as of early February, more than 605,000 people had continuing unemployment claims in Massachusetts. If unemployment benefits are extended again when they expire in mid-March, claimants still will be dealing with a difficult, debilitated system — referred to as a “dinosaur” in a January report by the state House Committee on Post Audit and Oversight — for months to come.
I thought it was updated and repaired a few years ago.
“They weren’t prepared to address unemployment in regular times,” said Rory MacAneny, an employment attorney at Community Legal Aid in Worcester, which has opened more than 500 unemployment cases since March 17 of last year. “When the system became strained, it was straining an already ineffective and inefficient system.”
As with the state’s much-maligned vaccine website, people trying to collect unemployment are up in arms about the system’s many failings.
So what?
Nothing is ever fucking done and the rot continues.
One furloughed technology worker’s payments stopped abruptly for no known reason when he was officially laid off at the end of November. He was out more than $10,000 by the time he got his state senator’s office involved. A roofing company payroll employee drained her 401(k) and incurred significant credit card debt after her payments suddenly ended and she was asked to repay more than $6,000 after questions were raised about her eligibility; following a hearing almost four months later, her benefits were reinstated.
Now about those PPP and SBA loan programs that amounted to trillions in bribes, 'er, stolen loot?
Hello?
Marie Justice-Hughes, a 62-year-old pediatric home-care nurse, has been trying to get back to work full time since spending eight days in the hospital with COVID last spring, but her symptoms have persisted, leaving her short of breath, exhausted, and suffering from PTSD. She had been relying on unemployment to support herself and her disabled husband since May, but at the end of December, her payments stopped. Due to the lapse of pandemic benefits, her employer had to send in paperwork in early January to renew her claim, but the agency told her there isn’t enough staff to deal with her case.
Paperwork?
In the work from home, forever lockdown world?
“They make you feel like you’re begging them to do what they’re supposed to do,” Justice-Hughes said. In the meantime, her hospital bills are still unpaid and the money she saved to buy a car is gone — the last one was repossessed — making it difficult to get to her part-time job in southern Massachusetts.
They mean to humiliate you, for then you may give up and not take it, leaving more loot for them to steal.
With nearly one of every eight workers nationwide currently collecting benefits, state unemployment systems have been overwhelmed around the country, but problems have been particularly acute in Massachusetts, which a recent report by the Century Foundation think tank found was one of 13 states that didn’t resume providing federal pandemic aid for at least a month after lapsed benefits were extended.
See, that is what I like about the Globe: they really make you think with unbiased, objective sources and experts (did you $ee the li$t of $cum donor organi$ations?).
It’s unclear how many of the valid claims are not being paid, but according to state data, only about a third of first-time payments were made within 21 days in November, and the average duration of initial appeals was 88 days, more than quadruple the time in April.
Often, problems start the moment people attempt to file a claim. The online system will deny a claim if an image of a document is blurry, without saying why, and won’t let claimants enter “zero” for the number of hours worked the previous week. Those who try getting through to the call center, which handles about 16,000 calls a day, might wait on hold for hours, and then get hung up on; if they do reach an actual employee, there’s a good chance that person can’t help. A musician whose claim was suspended out of the blue got a message at 4:59 p.m. one day from the DUA worker who had been helping him via text: “Time to go,” it said. “Shift over. Try again tomorrow.”
It's intentional and it is to discourage you from applying.
Throw in fraud and software glitches and new requirements, and a fresh batch of problems seems to crop up every week.
Imagine!
No problem handing out trillions to banks and filling their coffers with an electronic transaction, though. That's all smooth as $hit!
The sudden halting of weekly benefits and demands for repayment, without prior notification of a problem or a meaningful way to rectify it, is at the heart of a lawsuit filed against the DUA late last year by Community Legal Aid. The lawsuit claims this practice denies workers benefits without due process, in violation of federal and state law and the DUA’s own regulations, and these holds can’t be appealed, Community Legal Aid said, trapping workers in limbo as their debt mounts.
“They can correct a problem with accuracy later,” Leigh Woodruff, litigation director at Community Legal Aid, said of the state. “They cannot correct a problem with promptness later because after months and months without benefits, those families will already be financially devastated in ways that will potentially harm them for the rest of their lives.”
In a memo submitted in opposition to the lawsuit in Worcester Superior Court, the DUA wrote that it was undergoing “an unprecedented period of strain,” noting that, in August, the caseload was 600 percent higher than the year before.
The state’s unemployment system, built by Deloitte, has been under fire since it launched in 2013 riddled with technical issues. (Other state systems built by Deloitte have also been brought to their knees during the pandemic.) Massachusetts is poised to address the issue, with $165 million approved in August to overhaul the system, but that does little to help people struggling now.
Yeah, but that mess has been flushed down the old memory hole, and I take no delight in having to reach back seven years(!!) to tell you that. Even got a Chri$tma$ bonu$ for it, too!
Oh, yeah, they are also the ones who helped screw up the state's website with the Obummer exchange that Biden is reintroducing, as well as the state DCF (so kids could be kidnapped for sex rings with no trail no doubt).
The widespread technical meltdowns around the country led US Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, to propose spending $500 million to standardize state unemployment systems. The Department of Labor recently announced $100 million in grants to combat unemployment fraud, and the first round of $un million was awarded last month to the first 28 states to apply — though Massachusetts was not among them, yet Massachusetts was one of the states hit the hardest by fraud due to its high benefit payouts, said Andrew Stettner, senior fellow at the Century Foundation. Massachusetts also hasn’t taken actions that other states have to address its “lemon” of a system, he said, such as bringing in private consultants to address the problems. “It is pretty shameful that they can’t get it fixed all these years later,” he said.
They did seven years ago, I'm surprised they haven't blame Russia, and it is BEYOND SHAMEFUL, it is FUCKING CRIMINAL at this STAGE -- as is ALL GOVERNMENT, PRE$$, and $OCIETY for that matter.
The Department of Unemployment Assistance said that identity verification measures to combat fraud may delay payments, but it is finalizing an agreement with a vendor to speed up the process.
OH, GOOD!
State legislators often don’t get calls from their unemployed constituents until they’re desperate.....
Maybe we should flood their f**king offices with calls about everything!
Of course, they record and trace everything so they know who you are.
Better off IGNORING THEM ALTOGETHER!
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Yeah, was a recipe for failure right from the start, but at lea$t $omeone got rich over it despite the lies from the beginning:
"Report: US wasted billions on cars, buildings in Afghanistan" by KATHY GANNON The Associated Press, March 1, 2021
ISLAMABAD — The United States wasted billions of dollars in war-torn Afghanistan on buildings and vehicles that were either abandoned or destroyed, according to a report released Monday by a US government watchdog.
The agency said it reviewed $7.8 billion spent since 2008 on buildings and vehicles. Only $343.2 million worth of buildings and vehicles “were maintained in good condition,” said the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, which oversees American taxpayer money spent on the protracted conflict.
The report said that just $1.2 billion of the $7.8 billion went to pay for buildings and vehicles that were used as intended.
“The fact that so many capital assets wound up not used, deteriorated, or abandoned should have been a major cause of concern for the agencies financing these projects,” John F. Sopko, the special inspector general, said in his report.
Interesting timing, to say the lea$t!
The US public is weary of the nearly 20-year-old war and President Biden is reviewing a peace deal his predecessor, Donald Trump, signed with the Taliban a year ago. He must decide whether to withdraw all troops by May 1, as promised in the deal, or stay and possibly prolong the war. Officials say no decision has been made.
Well, why do you think Biden was "elected?"
We are not leaving, and here is the proof straight from the horse's a$$:
Oh, the Taliban are torturing prisoners now as well as increasing attacks on our way out the door, hmmm!
How does that benefit them, and never mind 20 years of such conduct by "allied" force occupiers. That's all down the AL-CIA-Duh, too! (Al-CIA-Duh literally means toilet hole in Arabic).
I imagine we will be sending troops back into Somalia, a place where Obummer dropped three bombs per hour, every day, day after day, in 2016, after Trump withdrew them to Kenya (he did leave covert forces behind but they met an unfortunate end at the hands of a Somali strongman). That's behind the complaints regarding Ethiopia, I'm sure. Then it will be, Lord willing, on to Tunisia and Nigeria to save the women (that's the same stunt they pulled under Obummer, and it was a complete lie) while Zimbabwe is also a lost cause, as is Burundi, so cue the taps on their way to Spain (or rap, if you prefer).
It's enough to make you scream, and that is not all. The u$ual $u$pects are pushing another war on the US despite the claim of neutrality, as Biden sets up a potential false flag by warning Iran to "be careful."
Meanwhile in neighboring Iraq, the administration is considering returning hundreds of diplomats, security personnel and contractors to the embassy in Baghdad.
Maybe the Saudi prince, huh?
That would clean things up a bit even if he has to step on some toes, right?
Same with taking out Syria and Iran, which they seem well on their way to doing, what with the war-criminal bombing a little over a month in to the new regime.
Then they will turn to China and the supply chain, with the first gambit being regime change in Myanmar. That is what the Globe is calling for -- which is why there is so much noise in my pre$$ day after day, but I digre$$.....
Meanwhile, Taliban insurgents and the Afghan government have been holding on-again-off-again talks in the Gulf Arab state of Qatar but a deal that could bring peace to Afghanistan after 40 years of relentless war seems far off.
Peace talks in a war pre$$, I love it.
I've stopped taking such things seriously years ago.
Analyst Bill Roggio of the Long War Journal said the findings by SIGAR are not surprising. The reasons for the financial losses include Taliban attacks, corruption, and “throwing money at the problem without considering the implications,” he said.
“It is one thing to build a clinic and school, it is another to operate, maintain, and in many cases defend this infrastructure from Taliban attacks,” said Roggio. "Additionally, the West has wildly underestimated the impact of Afghan corruption and in many cases incompetence. It was always a recipe for failure.”
US agencies responsible for construction didn’t even ask the Afghans if they wanted or needed the buildings they ordered built, or if they had the technical ability to keep them running, Sopko said in his report.
Just get them built so the contract can be awarded!
The waste occurred in violation of “multiple laws stating that US agencies should not construct or procure capital assets until they can show that the benefiting country has the financial and technical resources and capability to use and maintain those assets effectively,” he said.
Torek Farhadi, a former adviser to the Afghan government, said a "donor-knows-best” mentality often prevailed and it routinely meant little to no consultation with the Afghan government on projects.
That would be the puppet government, too.
He said a lack of coordination among the many international donors aided the wastefulness. For example, he said schools were on occasion built alongside other newly constructed schools financed by other donors. The construction went ahead because once the decision was made — contract awarded and money allocated — the school was built regardless of the need, said Farhadi.
The injection of billions of dollars, largely unmonitored, fueled runaway corruption among both Afghans and international contractors, but experts say that despite the waste, the need for assistance is real, given the Afghan governments heavy dependence on international money.
Yeah, let's pour MORE MONEY down a RATHOLE now that those billions have gone into who knows what $wi$$ bank accounts, right?
This is LITERALLY INSANITY over a fucking damnable lie!
The worsening security situation in Afghanistan also greatly impeded the monitoring of projects, with shoddy construction going undetected, said Farhadi, the former Afghan government adviser.
Yup, gotta stay!
“Consult with the locals about their needs and sustainability of the project once the project is complete,” he urged US funding agencies looking to future projects. “Supervise, supervise, supervise project progress and implementation and audit every single layer of expenditure.”
Our country is falling apart, a$$holes!
WTF?!!
Going forward, Roggio said smaller, more manageable projects should be the order of the day. To build big unmanageable projects that Afghanistan has neither the capacity nor technical expertise for after 40 years of relentless war “feeds into the Taliban narrative that the government is corrupt, incompetent, and incapable of providing for the Afghan people,” he said.
Yeah, it doesn't feed the Zioni$t War Pre$$'s narrative so....
turns out all governments are $hit!
Time to light a SIGAR, if you know what I mean.
