The State of the Union & the Economic Stimulus Package

I didn't listen to last night's State of the Union address. I'm job-hunting, and I can tell you the state of the union: it's sucky. It seems that when things are iffy, there are fewer mid-level professional jobs posted online -- what there is instead, is a lot of contract positions. It's much easier to let a contractor go if your department's budget tanks than to let an employee go, even in a "right to work" state like Florida. Or so they tell me.

The idea of the tax credit check sounds good -- who doesn't like getting a check in the mail? I could use the $300 to $600 myself, but not really to stimulate the economy. I need it to pay for COBRA insurance coverage, which is $400 a month for me. Just me, I might add. Someone is making some dough off COBRA, somehow. I know that my former employer wasn't paying $250 a month for the employer's share of my insurance -- they're a huge company, and I'm sure they were getting a much better rate than that.

But more about COBRA later. It's really worthy of its own entry.

I stopped watching State of the Union speeches ages ago. They never contain anything new or different, and they always remind me of a pep rally for the country. I didn't like pep rallies in high school, and I'm not interested in one now.

Besides, no matter who gives the speech, no one is going to say what I want to hear: we've got the health care crisis fixed and everyone has insurance; and we're also bringing the troops home tomorrow.