Author: SeniorWomenWeb

You Know You’re Getting Old When …

By Rose Madeline Mula*

You know you’re getting old …

…When you don’t want to drive at night — in fact, when you don’t want to be out at night even if someone else is driving.

…When you’d rather be home in your bathrobe in front of the TV instead of all dressed up and in a front-row seat of a Broadway show because slippers and snuggies are so much more comfortable than stilettos and Spandex.

…When you keep complaining that the music is too loud — and that that the noise that passes for music these days is just, in fact, noise.

…When everyone mumbles so badly, you can’t hear them, and even if they do speak up, you have no idea what they’re talking about. What the heck are “friends with benefits”? What’s a DVR or a TIVO? And how could Ellen have married Portia? Aren’t they both women?

…When you bite into that spicy pepperoni pizza you’ve enjoyed all your life, and it bites back.

…When your mirror starts lying to you and insists you don’t really look like the eighteen-year-old beauty who lives in your head.

…When a friend gives you a box of chocolates, and they have “soft and creamy” centers.

…When your younger companions become very solicitous and take your arm to help you negotiate a three-inch curbstone.

…When your children decree you are no longer allowed to drive on highways.

…When they take away your stepstool and put everything on lower cabinets that you can reach from terra firma.

And there’s no denying that you’ve crossed the threshold into senior citizenhood when you get on a crowded bus or subway and a middle-aged man or woman (with crutches!) gets up to offer you a seat.

Illustration of wedding cake topper sculpture by Michael Leavitt.

July 27, 2013
Showcasing Former Royal Babies Clothing: City of London Museum

A Royal Arrival delves deep into the Museum of London’s collection to showcase baby clothes and memorabilia worn by former royal babies, from Charles I to George III and Edward VII to link the latest royal arrival to over 400 years of UK history.

Objects on show include a delicately embroidered skullcap worn by an infant Charles I. Other pieces include a tiny linen vest embroidered with a crown and a small lace mitten belonging to George III. A nursing robe thought to have been used by Queen Victoria, shoes and booties worn by her many children including Princess Beatrice, Princess Alice and Prince Leopold. There is also a dress blazoned with the three feather insignia belonging to her eldest son, Prince Albert Edward (later Edward VII) which is also on show until October 27, 2013.

Timothy Long, exhibition curator says:

“All of us at the Museum of London are so excited about welcoming HRH Prince of Cambridge to the world. And most of all, welcoming the newest member of the Royal Family to London

Our archive at the Museum of London is rich with objects related to the royal family, tracing back centuries. From garments worn by the new baby’s Great-Great-Great-Great-Great Grandmother, Queen Victoria, to souvenirs commemorating the Coronation of Great Grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II. Through exploring these objects belonging to former royal babies, we are not only able to bring to life a very personal family story, yet we are also able to connect the newest generation of the royal family to over 400 years of UK history.”

Don’t forget to view the Museum of London shop for treats most British including a Gentleman’s Elixir Jar and a perfumes wash bag featuring hand printed images of antique lady’s perfume bottles, including Lady Faye’s rose water.

July 26, 2013
Nurse Practitioners Slowly Gain Autonomy

By Christine Vestal, Staff Writer, Stateline*

In Portland, Oregon, nurse practitioner Kirsten Roberts exams a newborn. Oregon is one of the 17 states that allow nurse practitioners to work without a doctor’s supervision, and more states are considering it. (AP)

When the federal health law takes effect in January, some 30 million more Americans are expected to have health insurance, many for the first time. An already critical shortage of primary care providers may make a doctor’s appointment hard to come by. Increasingly, you might hear, “The nurse will see you now.”

Some states are trying to fill the primary care physician shortage with nurses who have advanced degrees in family medicine. That requires relaxing decades-old medical licensing restrictions, known as “scope of practice” laws that prevent these nurse practitioners from playing the lead role in providing basic health services. At least 17 states now allow them to work without a supervising physician, and lawmakers in five big states are considering similar measures.

Advocates for patients, hospitals and insurers agree that allowing nurse practitioners (NPs) to fill in for doctors makes sense when it comes to basic services. But physician groups vigorously oppose the changes, arguing that nurses lack the training to safely diagnose, treat, refer to specialists, admit to hospitals and prescribe medications for patients, without a doctor’s oversight.

After six years of legislative debate, Nevada became the most recent state to allow NPs to practice independently. Signed by Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval in June, the new law allows nurse practitioners with at least two years of experience to set up practice. They can open their own autonomous health clinics and provide the same range of primary care services as physicians do.

The hope is that the state, which ranks fifth from the bottom in doctors per capita, will prompt more nurse practitioners to offer primary care services to more patients, particularly in remote areas.

The need for the law, advocates say, was urgent, particularly because Sandoval welcomed the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion in his state, one of only six Republican governors to do so. Starting Jan. 1, an estimated 300,000 currently uninsured adults will get a new Medicaid card in Nevada, and many will want to see a primary care provider.

Incremental Change

Alaska, New Hampshire, Oregon and Washington were the first states to adopt broader licensing authority for nurses in the 1980s to increase the supply of primary care providers, especially in remote areas. A handful of other largely rural states, many with severe doctor shortages, followed in the 1990s.

A few more states joined them after passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, but this year, five big states — California, Massachusetts, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey — are considering laws giving NPs total independence. If they are successful, the number of patients in the US with greater access to primary care will increase substantially.

The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that state legislatures considered 349 measures aimed at loosening NP licensing restrictions in 2011 and 2012. So far this year, 178 proposals have been considered. Several states that require physician supervision expanded the types of services that NPs can offer, such as prescribing certain drugs and signing death certificates and other official health records.

But for the nursing profession, the gold standard is full independence. That is the only way, advocates argue, that NPs will be able to make a dent in patients’ access to care.

According to the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 17 states allow NPs full autonomy (see list). Other organizations, including the national Institute of Medicine, include two other states in that category: Maryland and Utah. (The discrepancy hinges on the precise language in the laws describing an NP’s ties to a doctor.)

July 26, 2013
The Blues and Red Blues

Does anyone out there share my distress over the media’s continuing use of those maps of red and blue states? While the red/blue map thought up by some television news person a few years back was intended only as a visual lesson to explain quickly and simply how an election was shaping up, the graphic has begun to assume a rather frightening life of its own.

Coloring states either red or blue is supposed to tell us how a majority of votes were cast in those states, but these days more and more media pundits seem to refer to “red states” or “blue states” (equating red to conservative and blue to liberal) as if every living soul within those borders were in agreement.

The attitude amounts to a kind of Balkanizing of America. The different colors on the red/blue map remind one of Europe, where crossing from one country into another means that the natives owe allegiance to a different government, often speak a different language, and maintain separate legal systems.

Why do we, who have managed to live with our internal differences for two hundred-plus years, and who ought to have learned a hard lesson from our very uncivil Civil War, accept so quietly someone’s idea of dividing us into red and blue? If the Europeans have decided, after centuries of border wars, to reconcile their differences and create a Common Market, doesn’t it seem self-defeating for America now to be voluntarily dividing itself into an us-versus-us mentality?

Read the rest of the article at: http://www.seniorwomen.com/articles/julia/articlesJulia012605.html

July 24, 2013
Literature and Sport: Crack of the Bat, Roar of the Crowd and Herculean Feats

“The game doesn’t change the way you vote or comb your hair or raise your children. It changes nothing but your life.”

— Don DeLillo, early draft of Underworld

Sport holds a sacred place in western culture and literature. Writers as diverse as Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, Norman Mailer, Don DeLillo, Tom Stoppard, Joyce Carol Oates, and David Foster Wallace have written about sport. But their works are no mere play-by-play accounts of a ball game or tennis match or prizefight. The competition, spectacle, personal struggle, and exaggerated personalities so characteristic of sport offer writers the perfect backdrop upon which to look deeply into human nature and create literature that transcends sport itself.

This Harry Ransome Center exhibition, Literature and Sport, showcases the literature of sport through fiction, essays, poetry, and plays. Organized by sport, the exhibition highlights some of the finest examples of literary writing about baseball, football, boxing, tennis, cricket, bullfighting, and other sports. Corrected drafts, handwritten manuscripts, letters, photographs, books, art, and other items — all drawn from the Ransom Center’s diverse collections — offer visitors a unique, rarely seen view of these works and their authors’ creative processes.

Great literary works capture the broad appeal of sport and its ability to transform individuals and society. Through sport, writers explore the complexities of life, from its challenges and disappointments to its great pleasures. Prominent themes in many of the featured works relate to friendship, aggression, failure, honor, humiliation, pride, loss, and hope. Powerful passages are highlighted throughout the exhibition and demonstrate how writers — through their verbal craftsmanship and dexterity — elevate language to literature.

The exhibition celebrates the crack of the bat, the roar of the crowd, the crushing blow, the herculean feat, the triumph, and the thrill of literature and sport. It demonstrates the breadth of the Ransom Center’s collections and features the following works among many others:

Baseball

You Know Me Al by Ring Lardner
The Natural by Bernard Malamud
Bang the Drum Slowly by Mark Harris
“Baseball and Writing” by Marianne Moore
Cobb by Lee Blessing
Underworld by Don DeLillo

Boxing

“Fifty Grand” by Ernest Hemingway
Raging Bull by Jake La Motta
The Fight by Norman Mailer
On Boxing by Joyce Carol Oates

Bullfighting

Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway
“Bullfights and Democracy” by Aldous Huxley
Brave Bulls by Tom Lea
The Corrida at San Feliu by Paul Scott

Cricket

Cricket Country by Edmund Blunden
“Making a Pitch for Cricket” by John Fowles
The Real Thing by Tom Stoppard
“Catch-52” by J. M. Coetzee

Football

“The Fear that Walks by Noonday” by Willa Cather
“The Eighty-Yard Run” by Irwin Shaw
End Zone by Don DeLillo
“56–0” by T. C. Boyle

Tennis

“The Tennis Game” by James Jones
Levels of the Game by John McPhee
Sudden Death by Rita Mae Brown
Infinite Jest and essays by David Foster Wallace

July 23, 2013
“An Invitation to an Expensive Court Battle”: Making Your Own Reproductive Health Care Decisions

Federal Judge in ND Blocks the Nation’s Earliest and Most Extreme Abortion Ban

A federal judge ruled today that North Dakota’s law banning abortion as early as six weeks of pregnancy— before many women even know they are pregnant — cannot take effect while the legal challenge brought by the Center for Reproductive Rights, on behalf of the state’s only abortion clinic, is ongoing.

According to US District Judge Daniel L. Hovland’s ruling today:

“The State has extended an invitation to an expensive court battle over a law restricting abortions that is a blatant violation of the constitutional guarantees afforded to all women. The United States Supreme Court has unequivocally said that no state may deprive a woman of the choice to terminate her pregnancy at a point prior to viability. North Dakota House Bill 1456 is clearly unconstitutional under an unbroken stream of United States Supreme Court authority.”

Said Bebe Anderson, director of the US Legal Program at the Center for Reproductive Rights:

“The nation’s most extreme abortion ban has been blocked, and the message to hostile politicians could not be clearer: the rights of women guaranteed under the US Constitution and protected by 40 years of Supreme Court precedent cannot be legislated away.

“Today’s decision ensures for the moment that the women of North Dakota won’t need to worry whether they will still have the same constitutionally protected rights as women living in other parts of the United States.”

“For the last four decades, the US Supreme Court has consistently recognized a woman’s right under the US Constitution to make her own reproductive health care decisions, and we are confident that the courts will continue to affirm that fundamental right as this legal battle continues.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights filed the lawsuit, MKB Management, Inc. v. Burdick, in federal court in June 2013 on behalf of the Red River Women’s Clinic — North Dakota’s only abortion clinic — and its medical director. Red River Women’s Clinic provides a range of reproductive health services to women in North Dakota, as well as to women who travel from neighboring states like South Dakota and Minnesota.

The Center also took legal action in May 2013 to block North Dakota Senate Bill 2305, a 2013 bill designed to shut down Red River Women’s Clinic and effectively end safe and legal abortion in the state by imposing medically unwarranted requirements that any physician performing abortions in the state must have admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles.

July 22, 2013
Funny? Really? Underrage Female Characters on TV in Sexually Exploitative Scenes

New research from the Parents Television Council’s 4 Every Girl Campaign found that underage female characters on primetime broadcast television are more likely to be presented in sexually exploitative scenes than adult women, and the appearance of underage female characters in a sexually exploitative scene increased the probability that the scene would be presented as humorous.

Study results revealed that out of 238 scripted episodes which aired during the study period, 150 episodes (63%) contained sexual content in scenes that were associated with females and 33% of the episodes contained sexual content that rose to the level of sexual exploitation.

The likelihood that sexual exploitation would be considered humorous increased to 43% when the sexual exploitation involved underage female characters. Topics that targeted underage girls and were presented as humorous included: sexual violence, sex trafficking, sexual harassment, pornography, and stripping.

“Our study exposes a very real problem of teen girls being shown in sexually exploitative situations on TV, and that these situations are being presented as humorous. Sexually exploiting minors on TV – especially for laughs – is grotesquely irresponsible and must end,” said PTC President Tim Winter.

Findings from this report reveal that sexual exploitation has become a common topic and a comedic topic on primetime television in shows airing as early as seven o’clock central time. Almost 40% of the content in the present study was intended for purposes of humorous entertainment.

“The frequency with which viewers are able to watch and laugh at these sexually exploitative situations supports the notion that entertainment media is creating an environment that encourages and even facilitates the sexualization of women. When we laugh about dead hookers, it becomes increasingly difficult to see the mistreatment of sex workers as a national civil and human rights issue. The same can be said for child molestation or sex trafficking,” Winter said.

The prevalence of images that trivialize sexual exploitation can be interpreted as sanctioning the sexualization of women. When these messages, images and ideologies are delivered via mass media, the definition of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors are communicated both implicitly and explicitly to viewers. Similarly, when the media associates humor with sexual exploitation they are sending a strong message that these issues are harmless and require neither urgency nor a strong response.

“We hope that these disturbing findings will spur concern, increased dialogue, and a collective responsibility to find answers that will result in a qualitative difference in the lives of young girls and women everywhere,” Winter added.

Holly Austin Smith, child trafficking survivor, advocate, author, and speaker, stressed the importance of this research. “Negative messages in the media, including the sexual objectification of women, create a climate which supports the tactics of sexual predators,” stated Ms. Smith, “Sex traffickers understand how these messages influence vulnerable children, and they are using it to their advantage.”

Major Findings:

The study, “TV’s Newest Target: Teen Sexual Exploitation,” includes programming that aired during the first two weeks of the November 2011 sweeps period [October 27 – November 9, 2011], as well as during the first two weeks of the May 2012 sweeps period [April 26 – May 9, 2012]. Only scripted original programs that aired during primetime on broadcast television were examined. Collectively, PTC analysts viewed a total of 238 episodes for a total of 194.5 hours of programming. The following types of sexually exploitative content served as the primary focus of the study: sexual violence, sexual harassment, prostitution, sex trafficking, stripping, and pornography.

· Although adult female character were more likely to have sexualizing dialogue or depictions in their scenes, the likelihood that a scene would include sexual exploitation was higher if the female characters were young adults or younger.

· The likelihood that a scene would include sexual exploitation was highest when the female characters were underage (23.33%).

· Sexually exploitative topics targeting underage girls were more likely to be humorous (42.85%) compared to adult women (33.02%).

· Topics that targeted underage girls and were presented as jokes included: Sexual violence (child molestation), sex trafficking, sexual harassment, pornography, and stripping.

· Thirty seven percent of all sexual exploitation observed during the study period was intended to be humorous.

· The content rose to the level of sexual exploitation in one-third of the shows where females were associated with sexual dialogue and/or depictions.

· Pornography (66%) and stripping (65%) were the two forms of exploitation most likely to be written into the scripts as punch lines.

· Sexually exploitative content was typically presented in the form of dialogue rather than depictions. However, the dialogue was significantly more crude and explicit than the depictions.

The full study and additional information can be viewed at this link: www.parentstv.org/sexploitation.

– See more at: http://w2.parentstv.org/Main/News/Detail.aspx?docID=2851#sthash.8hx4tfD4.dpuf

July 21, 2013
From Selma to Shelby County: Working Together to Restore the Protections of the Voting Rights Act

July 17, 2013

Voting Rights & Elections

Restricting the Vote

Wendy R. Weiser

On behalf of the Brennan Center for Justice, I thank the Senate Judiciary Committee for the opportunity to submit testimony in connection with this important hearing, “From Selma to Shelby County: Working Together to Restore the Protections of the Voting Rights Act.” The Brennan Center is a nonpartisan law and policy institute that focuses on issues of democracy and justice; among other things, we work to ensure fair and accurate voting procedures and systems, and that every eligible American, and only eligible Americans, can participate in elections.[1]

Because of the centrality of voting to our system of democracy, and because of the persistence of racial discrimination in the voting process, we urge Congress to work quickly, and in a bipartisan manner, to restore the protections of the Voting Rights Act that were rendered inoperative by the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Shelby County v. Holder. The purpose of my testimony is to bring to this Committee’s attention recent research by the Brennan Center that underscores the urgency of congressional action now. Specifically, in If Section 5 Falls: New Voting Implications, attached to this testimony, Myrna Pérez and Vishal Agraharkar catalog, quantify, and describe some of the substantial number of discriminatory voting changes that officials in covered jurisdictions have previously sought to put in place and may now attempt to put in place in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County.

I. The Supreme Court’s Decision in Shelby County

The Supreme Court in Shelby County effectively eviscerated the core provision of the Voting Rights Act, leaving millions of voters without the protection of the most effective tool in American law to combat racial discrimination in voting. The Voting Rights Act is widely acknowledged as the most effective piece of civil rights legislation, a cornerstone of American law guaranteeing political equality. As political leaders on both sides of the aisle recognized when Congress overwhelmingly reauthorized the law just seven years ago, Section 5 is a critical and necessary element of that Act.[2]

A robust Voting Rights Act — with a reinvigorated Section 5 at its core — continues to be necessary to secure the equal voting rights promised to all citizens by the Constitution. “[N]o one doubts,” as Chief Justice Roberts declared, that the problem of “voting discrimination still exists” in America,[3] especially in places with a history of such discrimination. Congress made substantial findings on this point in 2006, and we expect the evidence before this Committee to further demonstrate the unfortunate persistence of racial discrimination in voting. Although the country has made substantial progress since 1965, the work of the Voting Rights Act is unfinished. Until last month, Section 5 was a critical engine for this progress and a critical deterrent for discriminatory voting practices. Existing laws are simply insufficient to fill the void left by the Supreme Court’s decision.

In Shelby County, the Supreme Court expressly left the door open for Congress to restore or replace Section 5.[4] Although the real-world effect of the Court’s decision was sweeping, the legal ruling was actually relatively narrow. The Court invalidated Section 4 of the Voting Rights, the coverage formula that determined which states were subject to the requirements of Section 5, on the basis of its finding that the formula was outdated and had not been tailored to “current conditions.”[5] The Court thus rendered Section 5 inoperative in practice, but, for the second time since 2006, it expressly declined to strike down Section 5. The Court expressly acknowledged that the problem of race discrimination in voting has not been eradicated and that Congress may act to remedy that problem.[6] Indeed, the decision in no way undermined Congress’s express powers, under both the Fourteenth and Fifteen Amendments to the US Constitution, to combat racial discrimination in voting through appropriate legislation. Moreover, in another case this Term, the Court reaffirmed Congress’s “broad” and “paramount” powers to regulate how federal elections are conducted.[7] Congress thus has an extremely strong basis to pursue much-needed legislative efforts to protect all Americans against the threat of discrimination in voting.

July 19, 2013
A Cooper Hewitt Object of the Day: Inspired by the Opera

Subscribe to the Object of the Day and enjoy decorative creations while the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt Museum is in the process of renovation.

The Scout Report* noted: ‘The Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum is closed for renovation until 2014. Until then, visit this website to “Discover a different object from the Museum’s collection every day of the week!” Items range from a 1938 catalog of linoleum and cork flooring, The Armstrong Pattern Book, to scratch and sniff wallpaper designed by Michael Angelo and produced by Flavor Paper in 2007. Information about each object is presented blog-post style, with a short essay, images, and tags that link to related information. For example, the entry for Saturday June 22, 2013, titled Two Rooks, is about a a ceramic tile made at Rookwood Pottery in Cincinnati, Ohio between 1903 and 1913. There a short essay about the tile by Cynthia E. Smith, one of the curators, and clicking the author’s name retrieves all of her posts. Other tags include the subject area Arts and Crafts, the style of the piece, and Cincinnati, where it was made. There’s also a link to click through to the full collection record for the tile, with the object’s location, acquisition information, and color palette.’”

Here is the entry entitled Inspired by the Opera:
Posted by Kimberly Randall on Thursday June 27, 2013

A French embroidered waistcoat dated between 1785-1795 shows Dido and Aeneas in a scene from Didon, a 1783 opera by the Italian composer Niccolò Piccini (1728-1800). The opera’s librettos were composed by Jean-François Marmontel (1723-1799), a highly-respected French historian and writer. Derived from Virgil’s Aeneid, the opera tells a fictional version of the story of Dido, Queen of Carthage, and the Trojan hero, Aeneas, who went on to found the Roman race. The opera had its public premiere in Paris in December 1783 and was an instant success, enjoying more than 200 performances.

Dido, now a widowed queen, falls in love with Aeneas, who has escaped the Greeks at the end of the Trojan War and is shipwrecked at Carthage. As the relationship between Dido and Aeneas intensifies, forces in the form of meddling gods conspire to drive the couple apart. Venus, mother of Aeneas, fears that Dido’s hospitality is deceitful and charges Cupid to fill Dido’s heart with an uncontrollable passion that she hopes will drive Aeneas away. Juno, Dido’s protector, is spurred by jealously of Venus and hatred of the Trojans. She forms a complicated plot to thwart Aeneas from leaving Carthage to fulfill his destiny as the founder of the Roman race. With Mercury’s encouragement, Aeneas finally decides he must depart.

Right: Detail of waistcoat showing Dido.

The scene depicted on the waistcoat is the moment when Aeneas is preparing to leave Dido to sail for Rome. Aeneas is dressed as a soldier while Dido wears a costume of elaborate drapery and a crown that signifies her status as queen. A line of buttons on the center-front of the waistcoat splits the couple apart and renders their separation complete in a physical and narrative sense. In the role of Dido, the great operatic actress Antoinette Cécile de Saint-Huberty (1756-1812) gave one of the finest performances of her career. The costume worn by Saint-Huberty was based on a drawing of Dido by Jean-Michel Moreau-le-Jeune (1741-1814), a French painter and printmaker who was also a royal designer and engraver.

See more at: http://www.cooperhewitt.org/object-of-the-day/2013/06/27/inspired-opera#sthash.LvAxV08Z.dpuf

*From The Scout Report, Copyright Internet Scout 2013. http://scout.wisc.edu/

July 18, 2013
States Make ‘Historic and Disturbing Cuts’ to Unemployment Benefits

By Jake Grovum, Stateline Staff Writer, State and Consumer Initiatives

North Carolina State Legislative Building. Photograh by Jayron32, English Wikipedia

North Carolina drew national attention last week when it dramatically scaled back its unemployment insurance program, ending benefits for tens of thousands and slashing the amount of time that jobless people can collect aid.

But the North Carolina reductions, which drew fierce protests in Raleigh, were just the latest in a string of unprecedented and historic state cuts in unemployment aid. Even as the nation’s unemployment rate remains stubbornly high, other states have cut unemployment benefits to levels not seen since the 1935 Social Security Act created the program.

Since it became the standard decades ago, no state has offered fewer than 26 weeks of benefits — until recently. Georgia’s benefits now run out after 18 weeks, and five other states have set limits of either 19 or 20 weeks. Of the 11.8 million unemployed Americans, 4.3 million have been without work for 27 weeks or longer, according to the most recent federal data.

As the reductions cut more deeply, safety-net advocates worry that state unemployment insurance won’t be sufficient to support jobless workers when the next recession comes.

“These are historic and disturbing cuts,” said Mike Leachman of the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “When the next recession hits, the unemployment system of the country is going to be significantly less effective. And it means the next recession will be deeper than it otherwise would have been.”

Maurice Emsellem of the National Employment Law Project pointed out that unemployment insurance puts money into the hands of people who are sure to spend it, pumping more money into the economy. “One of the core functions of unemployment benefits is to help support a strong recovery,” Emsellem said. “(Cutting so deeply) undermines the recovery.”

Leading up to the recession, many states cut the employment taxes that support the trust funds, leaving them ill-equipped to deal with the growth in joblessness that followed. Many states borrowed money from the federal government to cover the resulting shortfalls. To pay back that money, many of them have raised taxes on employers, trimmed benefits for recipients, or both.

July 16, 2013