{"id":5879,"date":"2011-09-18T00:16:08","date_gmt":"2011-09-18T07:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=5879"},"modified":"2011-09-18T00:16:08","modified_gmt":"2011-09-18T07:16:08","slug":"are-only-the-lazy-unemployed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2011\/09\/18\/are-only-the-lazy-unemployed\/","title":{"rendered":"Are only the lazy unemployed?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As absurd as this notion may sound, it is actually the latest Republican myth used to justify cutting benefits to the unemployed.  Here in Portland, a fast food franchise advertised thirty job openings to staff a new restaurant.  I happened to be in the area the day of the interviews, and saw a line of people over four blocks long.  Out of curiosity, I asked people in the line what was going on, and they told me about the openings.  There were old and young, and male and female.  All races were there.  What they all had in common, is that none were too lazy to wait for hours in that line for even a very small chance to get a low end crappy job.  So when Republican liars tell you they are lazy, don\u2019t you believe it!<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"18king\"It probably seems like we spend an inordinate amount of time talking about what Iowa Republican and generic crazy person Steve King has to say about particular issues.  It is not because Steve King is particularly crazy compared to other Republican politicians, but because he is a remarkably unfiltered one: What comes out of Steve King’s mouth is no different from what a great many other conservative congresscritters think, but they are willing to be more subtle in how they phrase it, and Steve King, well … lacks that ability. <\/font><\/p>\n

The newest case in point: he thinks the problem with unemployment in America today is that we are "a nation of slackers"<\/a><\/font>:<\/font><\/p>\n

REP. STEVE KING: United States of America borrows money and hands it to people and tells them, you don’t have to work for this. You don’t have to produce anything for this. We just want you to spend it. That’s your patriotic duty, to take the money that we borrowed from the Chinese, and the debt burden we put on our grandchildren, and put it in people’s hands and say it’s a patriotic thing, take your food stamps and take your rent subsidy and heat subsidy and your unemployment check, and go engage in commerce, that’s patriotic. Um, no? […] <\/font><\/p>\n

The former speaker of the House, Speaker Pelosi, has consistently said that unemployment checks are one of those reliable and immediate forms of economy recovery, that you get a lot of bang for your buck when you pay people not to work, and they will go out and spend that money immediately, therefore we should pass out unemployment checks and stimulate the economy. That statement is ridiculous where I come from, Mr. Speaker. To pay people not to work, and somehow in that formula it stimulates the economy. […]<\/font><\/p>\n

The 80 million Americans that are of working age but are simply not in the workforce need to be put to work. We can’t have a nation of slackers and then have me have to sit in the Judiciary Committee listening to them argue that there’s work that Americans won’t do, so we have to import people to do the work that Americans won’t do, and borrow money to pay the welfare of people that won’t work. That is a foolish thing for a nation to do. We’ve gotta get this country back to work and get those people out of the slacker rolls and onto the employed rolls.<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

So the reason we have all these unemployed people, or poor people, or hungry people is not a lack of decent jobs, but apparently just that Americans are lazy slobs, and if they would only get off their asses and work the problem would be solved\u2026 [emphasis original<\/em><\/span>]<\/font><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Daily Kos<\/a>><\/p>\n

Republicans want all the relief to go to people who made their money the old fashioned way: they inherited it.  Here we have a classic case, in which a criminal commits a crime and blames the victims.  People are unemployed because of the Republican recession.  The recession occurred, because Republicans allowed Banksters to run wild in an orgy of greed.  While Obama has saved more jobs than were created in the eight years of the Bush Regime, we need more, and we don\u2019t have them because Republicans have blocked virtually everything Democrats have tried to do for the poor and middle classes.  Republicans are banking on America to fail, so they can regain power.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As absurd as this notion may sound, it is actually the latest Republican myth used to justify cutting benefits to the unemployed.  Here in Portland, a fast food franchise advertised thirty job openings to staff a new restaurant.  I happened to be in the area the day of the interviews, and saw a line of […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}