A Letter to Congressman John Boehner

Dear Congressman Boehner:

My name is Paul Hallasy. My unemployment benefits are due to expire next week and my extended unemployment benefits are due to expire at the end of this year thanks to a law passed by Congressional Republicans (led by you, as Speaker of the House) to cut both the amount of extended unemployment benefits as well as their duration.

I am looking at the very real possibility of becoming homeless or, at the very least, being forced to apply for welfare and food stamps (which you have also cut) for the first time in my life (in the middle of the holiday season, no less).

Rather than passing legislation to create jobs, you and other Congressional Republicans have done nothing but cut benefits for the weakest segment of our society, benefits that would not only prevent people like myself from falling more deeply into poverty but would actually improve the economy, since they would be spent immediately, rather than hoarded like the tax cuts you passed for corporations and wealthy individuals.

For your information, Mr. Speaker, people who can’t find jobs in this economy are not “lazy” and people who rely on benefits to survive are not “takers” (as Mitt Romney famously put it). They are veterans, children, senior citizens and people like myself who have struggled mightily to find a job but still been unsuccessful.

I have spent every day of the last five months actively looking for work, answering want ads, networking on LinkedIn, and attending networking events and seminars. I’ve had seven in-person interviews so far, but no job offers yet. Clearly this is not a matter of my being “lazy.” It’s more a matter of our economy still being weak five years after the financial collapse of 2008 (which Congressional Republicans also exacerbated by weakening regulation of financial institutions), as well as a vicious cycle where companies keep cutting jobs to improve their profits because nobody has any disposable income to buy anything.

Just before writing this letter, I called your office and your representative had the audacity to suggest that it was Senator Harry Reid’s fault that unemployment benefits were not being extended, when it’s Congressional Republicans who have stonewalled every piece of legislation or nominee President Obama has put forth since he took office, to the point where Congress had to finally (thank God!) overturn the filibuster on executive and judicial nominees.

I hope that, as you’re gathered with your family this Thanksgiving and over the holidays that follow, you reflect on the untold pain and suffering you and your fellow Congressional Republicans have caused millions of Americans like myself.

Sincerely,

Paul Hallasy

P.S. I filmed an interview with CBS News on this subject this week and took that opportunity to (correctly) point out that Congressional Republicans are the ones responsible for unemployment benefits not being extended.

When Harry Met Sally = Annie Hall + Manhattan

Having recently read Billy Crystal’s memoir (Still Foolin’ ’Em) and never having seen When Harry Met Sally, I finally watched it on cable last night. (I’m gay, what can I tell you. Maybe if it had been called When Harry Met Barry.) I was struck by its similarity to Annie Hall and Manhattan. Now, Annie Hall and Manhattan are two of my favorite films of all time, so it’s understandable why even someone as talented as Rob Reiner would want to copy them, but still… So I decided to come up with this handy chart:

	When Harry Met Sally	Annie Hall	Manhattan
New York City setting	X	X	X
Gershwin songs	X		X
Nebbishy, funny Jew meets emotionally unavailable shiksa	X	X	X
Characters talk directly to camera	X	X
Scene in deli	X		X
Male romantic lead goes to apartment of female romantic lead to comfort her when she’s crying	X	X
Male romantic lead runs to reunite with female romantic lead at end of movie	X		X
Montage sequence at end of movie encapsulating course of relationship	X	X
Male romantic lead winds up with female romantic lead at end of movie	X

Significantly, When Harry Met Sally is the only one of the three where the male romantic lead winds up with the female romantic lead at the end of the movie. And that’s why Annie Hall and Manhattan were critically-lauded films and When Harry Met Sally was just an entertaining movie.

Rudeness is the New Normal

 As the traffic backs up outside my apartment window (a daily occurrence at rush hour), complete with drivers honking their horns and yelling at each other (along with no cops in sight to enforce existing traffic laws), it occurs to me once again that rudeness is the new normal.

But it’s not just traffic. Rudeness is now an accepted fact of daily life, whether it’s driving, the subway, going to the gym, social media, political discourse, you name it.

How did things get to be this way? When did we go from being a society that at least paid lip service to civilized behavior and the idea of community, that “we’re all in this together,” to the dog-eat-dog world we live in now?

I blame a lot of things, beginning with the economy.

As I enter my fifth month of unemployment (the second longest stretch I’ve ever been unemployed), I think we need to admit that we’ve been in a recession now since at least 2008, despite protestations to the contrary. The number of jobs has declined, along with salaries and benefits, so that what’s left is being fought over like a piece of meat in a lion cage.

Of course, a big reason for the sorry state of our economy is the sorry state of our government. Where Democrats and Republicans once used to work together in order to pass legislation, the political process has come to a standstill, with Republicans literally bringing government to a halt because they didn’t get their way with Obamacare.

And why are we fighting over Obamacare, or other social programs like food stamps, unemployment, etc.? Because we’ve gotten to the point where certain people would rather see someone literally starve to death than give them anything that could be considered a “handout,” never mind that a lot of these same people are themselves receiving public assistance. Meanwhile, those in top 1% of our society continue to make record profits.

And why are we so polarized as a society? Blame social media.

We can now “block” anyone who doesn’t agree with us (and frequently do), so that we live in an echo chamber where we only hear our own opinions repeated back to us. We’ve taken “preaching to the choir” to a whole new level!

I also blame parents for not doing their job as parents, but what do you expect when it now takes two people working full time just to pay the bills, where a generation ago one person’s income (usually the father’s) could support a middle-class existence, allowing someone else (usually the mother) to devote all her time to child-rearing. Nowadays, we plunk our children in front of a TV set or computer, give them a TV dinner and call it a day (if we even do that much).

Sometimes I think that the only thing that will bring things back to “normal” would be a full-scale revolution. But how are you supposed to have a revolution when people are working 80 hours a week? They’re too tired to revolt!

I hope that when Bill deBlasio is elected mayor of New York City on Tuesday (as seems likely) that he’ll be able to start to turn things around, at least in New York City. I hope that the moneyed business interests that run this city haven’t already sunk their talons into him.

But I said the same thing about Barack Obama and look how that turned out.