U.S. Congress - Rep. Jerry Weller, (R)

This is what happens Rep. Weller when the Government cuts off people’s unemployment and when the economy is weak and there are no good paying jobs. Is Illinois next?

L.A. seeing more people living out of their cars

By CHRISTINA HOAG, Associated Press Writer Mon Jun 23, 2:48 PM ET

LOS ANGELES – Having lost her job and her three-bedroom house, Darlene Knoll has joined the legions of downwardly mobile who are four wheels away from homelessness.
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She is living out of her shabby 1978 RV, and every night she has to look for a place to park where she won’t get hassled by the cops or insulted by residents.

“I’m not a piece of trash,” the former home health-care aide said as she stroked one of five dogs in her cramped quarters parked in the waterfront community of Marina del Rey.

Amid the foreclosure crisis and the shaky economy, some California cities are seeing an increase in the number of people living out of their cars, vans or RVs.

Acting on complaints from homeowners, the Los Angeles City Council got tough earlier this year by forbidding nearly all overnight parking in residential neighborhoods such as South Brentwood.

But some people are just crowding into other parts of the city, including the seaside community of Venice, where dozens of rusty, dilapidated campers can be seen lined up outside neat single-family homes. The stench of urine emanates from a few of the vehicles, and some residents say they have seen human waste left behind.

“They’re nasty and gnarly,” said Venice resident Jeff Scharlin. “We’ve heard about drug dealing and prostitution in them. I’ve never seen it, but visually they’re a blight and they take up parking space.”

In Los Angeles, as in many other cities, it is illegal to live in vehicles on public streets. But the law is not easy to enforce. Police have to enter a vehicle to find signs that people are living there, such as cooking or sleeping, and occupants often refuse to answer when cops knock.

An easier way is to restrict overnight parking. In L.A., a first offense carries a $50 fine, and subsequent violations can cost as much as $100.

Parking-enforcement officers often give vehicle owners a warning and tell them to move on before issuing a ticket, and that usually solves the problem, said Alan Willis, a city transportation engineer. But other cities in the area are not as lenient.

“I had my motor home towed in Culver City. It cost me $500 to get it out,” said Desiri Hawkins, who lives in a small RV in Venice. “I got ticketed in Santa Monica and had to go to court.”

Tourist states with temperate climates, such as California and Florida, have long been magnets for the homeless. Los Angeles is the nation’s homelessness capital, with an estimated 73,000 people on the streets. A survey of 3,230 homeless people last year in Los Angeles County found nearly 7 percent living in vehicles, according to the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

“It’s trending toward an increase,” said Michael Stoop, acting executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. “People would rather live in a vehicle than wind up in a shelter, and you can’t stay on a friend’s couch forever.”

People living out of their cars or campers tend to be more well-off than the homeless on the street. They usually have jobs or disability checks that enable them to maintain an old camper but do not allow them to afford rent.

“For more working-class and lower-middle-class people, the car is the first stop of being homeless, and sometimes it turns out to be a long stop,” said Gary Blasi, a University of California, Los Angeles, law professor and activist on homeless issues.

Some Venice residents are clamoring for overnight parking restrictions. But parking limits in oceanfront neighborhoods are problematic because the California Coastal Commission requires communities to accommodate surfers, fishermen and other early-morning beachgoers.

“The complaints are getting louder and louder,” said Los Angeles City Councilman Bill Rosendahl.

For years, some cities such as Santa Barbara, Calif., and Eugene, Ore., have accommodated people who live out of their vehicles. Activists in Venice are looking at some of those ideas. Santa Barbara, for example, allows vehicles to stay from 7 p.m to 7 a.m. in church and city parking lots.

Knoll said she can barely afford to drive around with the rising price of gasoline eating away at the $950 monthly disability check she receives because of mental illness.

She said she is also sick of police waking her up in the wee hours by pounding on her vehicle with their nightsticks, and she is tired of fighting with residents who call her “lowlife scum” and hurl other insults.

“We need somewhere we can have a safe haven, where we won’t be harassed,” Knoll said as the wind from a passing car rocked her RV. “I never thought I’d be living like this, but I’m stuck. This is it for me.”

Weller is a jack-ass. We all had him pegged from day 1. He is a heart-less, ignorant SOB not to mention breaking the law with his extra-curricular activities.

Hey Weller we in Michigan now at 8.5 unemployment Thank You for your ignorance and selfishness. You are a real piece of work are you not. Your State will surely be embarassed to think you have such an important job. Is your head title….screw ball?

Hope you get a Target bill for ue extensions going soon. Have you seen the unemployment numbers for Illinois? 6.4%. That means the rate was going up a lot as you argued against HR5749. And now we get a whopping 13 weeks? Great job. Get some jobs in Illinois instead of fighting unemployment Weller.

You signing the war bill now Jerry? Or are you going to keep trying to screw the working people of Illinois?

Congressman Weller,

Please live with the Senate compromise of reinstating the 20 week rule and forget your target provision in the unemployment extensions bill. Illinois really needs it. And with all the bad weather you know our state will get a lot worse as lot of more jobs have been lost. Stand up for the people in Illinois who are not lazy but are just having some really bad luck and need this bill to help keep their families together and are praying for better times ahead.

weller is getting hammered on the hr5749 log

Jerry Weller has not had a good reputation in Illinois for a long time. That is why he is not running again and why he openly argued against HR5749. He is done politically and the Republicans hung him out to dry on this vote.

Here is the real story about this sheister:

http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/wellerbeach/

What a crook! He needs to resign quickly!

Wellers new address:

Statesville prison in Joliet, IL
Center Maximum Security Prison Route 53
P.O. Box 112
Joliet, IL 60434

Is Jerry Weller’s Beach an Ethics Breach?

Jerry Weller

Jerry Weller
AP Photo
The Republican from Illinois, one of the most powerful men in Congress when it comes to Latin America, appears to have unreported assets in Nicaragua.

By Frank Smyth
October 25, 2006

[Ed. note: The author has posted the documents mentioned in this story here.

JERRY WELLER, THE 11th District representative who’s up for reelection in November, has some explaining to do. As I wrote in an August 25 cover story, “The Congressman and the Dictator’s Daughter,” he’s already raised questions about whether he has a conflict of interest because he’s refused to step down from the House of Representative’s influential Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere even though he’s married to Zury Rios Sosa, a third-term legislator in Guatemala. Since then I’ve discovered that the congressman, a Republican whose district encompasses parts of the south suburbs, hasn’t revealed the value of any of the wedding gifts he and Sosa received when they were married two years ago in Guatemala. Such gifts are supposed to be listed on the publicly available financial disclosure forms congressmen file every year, but the House ethics committee routinely grants waivers, and Weller got one. Still, his request raises questions, because Sosa is the daughter of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt and the second most powerful person in the party he heads, so lots of people may have wanted to give the couple something very nice.

More troubling, I’ve also learned that Weller owns several pieces of property in Nicaragua, some of which he’s disclosed to Congress as required by its rules—and some of which he apparently hasn’t.

Weller seems to have bought his first Nicaraguan lot four years ago, somewhere in the coastal township of San Juan del Sur, a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Managua. Then a fifth-term congressman, he went to Nicaragua in January 2002 with other members of the House Ways and Means Committee to attend a presidential inauguration, and he seems to have bought the property sometime afterward. At the time land was still relatively cheap—Nicaragua’s the poorest nation in the hemisphere after Haiti. But cruise ships were already docking nearby, and investors had started buying up beachfront property. It’s not clear how much Weller paid for the undeveloped lot, but on his financial disclosure form, which congressmen are required to file by the Ethics in Government Act, he listed it in the assets section and checked the box indicating that it was worth $50,000 to $100,000.
Jerry Weller and Zury Rios Sosa

Weller is a crook , he has big bank accounts in Gautamala

I agree with your 20 weeks, but over 5% Target bill, I do not agree. I worked and pay into unemployment benefits for over 30 years and have never been unemployed until 2007. Being a single person, I exhausted my benefits in March and can not find a job. I am sinking more and more each day. Under your Target bill I would not qualified for an extension my state has an unemployment rate at 5% IS THIS FAIR……..

how did you get here?

REJECT REPUBLICANS 11/4/08

VOTE OUT THE GOP

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80_1ap6tPh4

Middle class America wake up! A vote for a Republican is a vote for your own demise. Is war moral or do the Republicans just use religion to sell out the well meaning and good folks of America? Remember in November!!!!!!

Veterans are coming back from Iraq with a shrinking job market and inflation. Jerry Weller lead the opposition and voted no on HR5749 and in turn shut many veterans out of the American dream they have just defended for all of us. Don’t let him forget how wrong he was and how unemployment extensions should have been passed in the original economic stimulus plan. Let him know this issue is an emergency and that Washington needs to pass legislation to help the hard hit American worker and Iraq veteran NOW!!!

Wellers new address:

Statesville prison in Joliet, IL
Center Maximum Security Prison Route 53
P.O. Box 112
Joliet, IL 60434

To be fair Jerry Weller never did call unemployed people lazy and losers. That just was the implication never explicitly said. Weller you are a rotten bastard and were probably born with a silver spoon in your mouth. To ignore loads of evidence for unemployment extensions is either incompetence or criminal . You should leave Illinois everyone knows you now and no one wants you back here!!!!!!!

I live in Illinois Rep Weller and you should be ashamed of yourself! Your district is mostly working class people working in middle class jobs and I can’t believe you would call unemployed people across America lazy and losers because of this economic crisis this country is facing. Most of the people supporting HR.5749 came from the original senate Kennedy proposal S.2544. Both of these bills work and the people supporting these 2 bills have lost their jobs in this ecenomy through no fault of their own. After all if it was their fault they would be ineligible according to federal and state guidelines to even collect unemployment benefits in the first place. I have no faith in the GOP or President Bush when it comes to understanding the concerns of the middle class people. We are done with this lame duck presidency and are looking forward to more prosperous days under a democratic leadership.

I can’t believe you would discount so many hard working middle class unemployed Americans with your so called Target bill that only Targets states that meet a certain threshold. The economic problems this country is facing has no boundries and does not discriminate who falls victim within this country and I don’t know how you would sleep at night knowing someone might become homeless because of your bill’s limitations. There has never been a time that unemployment benefits have been extended in this countries history in which only certain states would qualify.

Also I have lived in Illinois all my life and I have never heard of this minimum 2 week working criteria in which someone could collect $51 dollars of unemployment and milk the system. For you and your GOP friends who are holding this bill hostage because of this lame ass reason is pathetic. If it bothers you that much then why haven’t you or your lame contituents gotten off your lazy asses and changed the policy for those states. Isn’t that your job rep Weller. I have never seen more incompetence in a state House representative. Your performance and behavior is disturbing and embarrassing to the people of Illinois. I have alot of friends in your district and I will be sure to pass along my concerns to them to help them in their decision come the November Election.

OUR VOICES WILL BE HEARD AND WE WILL PREVAIL!!!!

The performance on CSPAN over the last two days has just cost your party a lot of votes this fall. You are a coward and a liar!

Does it feel good to bully the poor. What kind of human being are you?

You piece of shit. Illinois is going to get you removed now! You are beyond sleazy. Your next life won’t be so prosperous. I promise you

We know Weller! Now there is proof you sold us out!!! Burn in the hell you deserve to be in!!!

Here is a link for a transcript of testimony back in April urging unemployment extension then. Weller is addressed by name. This shows the information he has known about and why his opposition to HR5749 is borderline criminal.

http://www.epi.org/content.cfm/webfeatures_viewpoints_unemp_ins_Shierholz

JERRY WELLER IS ALSO A PART OF SHADY LAND DEALS. JUST LIKE THE REPUBLICANS ARE CLAIMING ABOUT OBAMA. BUT JERRY WELLER’S DEAL IS EVEN WORSE. DON’T BELIEVE THE LIES. VOTE FOR CHANGE IN NOVEMBER.