I'm really trying to understand what Nevada Tea Party Senate hopeful Sharron Angle thinks her job as US Senator should be. According to her remarks on this video, it's not the job of a United States Senator to be involved in job creation. Further, evidently job creation isn't something that's really a problem. No, the problem is that those unemployed people just think they're too good to scoop garbage out of the gutters as long as they collect the fat unemployment check every couple of weeks. Really? The "unemployed as deadbeats" theme has been around for years. It's not new and it's not unusual from the right, though it usually doesn't come from candidates running for the Senate in a state where unemployment is at one of the highest rates in the country.
What resonates with me here (besides her amazing whiny-toned voice) is how utterly craven she is about slapping down people who have lost their jobs for no reason other than to bolster the bottom line.
I had a job from the time I was 15 to the time I was 51. Always full-time, and I was always self- sufficient. When I was laid off and had to apply for unemployment, it was a low day for me, and it's because of people like Sharron Angle who blame us for being in need while they do every thing in their power to make sure that need goes deeper and lasts longer than the last time someone was in need.
And no, we don't "make more" by collecting unemployment than by working.
Here's a little factoid for Sharron Angle: 51-year old workers don't get hired at McDonald's or elsewhere at minimum wage, even. They don't because we either don't fit the optics (young, up-and-coming staff), or we cost too much. We didn't ask to be laid off and we're not asking for a handout.
Angle's remarks about it not being her job as a Senator to create jobs or anything else, it seems, are a huge gift to Harry Reid. If ever there was a definition of 'workfare', it's Angle's idea about what it means to earn around $174,000 a year of taxpayers' money to NOT represent constituents.
Back in the days when I was in management, you know what I used to do with employees who said it wasn't their job to do whatever I'd just told them to do?
I fired them. When Angle is fired, she'll take comfort in knowing that unemployment benefits are not available to employees fired for cause, rendering her ineligible to apply for an unemployment claim.
How ironic. In Angle's case, losing an election will be truer to her values than winning it. No welfare queen, she.
(h/t Steve Sibelius)
Update: Rand Paul concurs. The chorus grows louder. And Rand Paul is even more egregious than Angle, because he advocates the unemployed taking pay cuts so the bottom lines of corporate America can be enhanced even more on the backs of American workers. Nice folks, these teabaggers.
