DeLay: "It's the truth" that people are unemployed because they want to be
March 07, 2010 5:36 pm ET
From the March 7 edition of CNN's State of the Union:
Please upgrade your flash player. The video for this item requires a newer version of Flash Player. If you are unable to install flash you can download a QuickTime version of the video.
Previously:
Huffington Post: Tom Delay: People Are Unemployed Because They Want To Be
Didn't Delay have to step down in shame due to ethics charges? Why is anyone even listening to him?
Oh, yeah - silly me for even asking.
Up is down, heartless is compassionate, dumb is smart, crookedness is heroism, and trying desperately to save capitalism from itself is being a communist. The right gets closer and closer to turning all of reality on its head in the minds of many--maybe most--Americans. You have to hand it to them--it's a hell of an accomplishment.
Personally, I'd prefer that we all just try to be rational and be satisfied with reality the way it really is, but I guess living inside the right wing's mythology is more fun for some people.
I knew we were all moving in a bad direction when it became unacceptable to say that Ronald Reagan was a bad president and a criminal, even thought the first claim is easy to argue for and the second is undeniably true. There's no better example of mythologizing reality than the myth of Reagan's greatness.
He is the gift that just keeps on giving.
Wait? All that pant wetting over Reid's comments were just a political show?...NAH, couldn't be!
DeLay could NEVER be wrong. I'm sure those 36,000 walked off and quit their jobs because collecting unemployment is just so great and they WANTED to be out of work.
Because FOX News has told its mindless, sheep-like viewers over and over again that Tom DeLay is some sort of American hero. Details and historical facts are unimportant to them...
Are you so sure it's a stereotype anymore, Kikabi?...
-------------------------------
Visit my new political blog, Liberty In Progress
This is exactly why the Republicans lost the 2006, 2008, and will loose the 2010 elections. They really are clueless.
I think your bluffing flatfoot
BANG!, Ohhh.
No you weren't bluffing.
TROLL!!!!!
TROLL!!!!!
A person on unemployment is ASKED to do a set number of job searches per week. It can be just a couple or it can be 5, but they don't have to necessarily turn anything in unless they are selected to be one of the very few whose job searches are monitored or randomly verified. Most of them don't have to turn anything in to verify their job searches.
It's only an answer to a question for most people - they have to claim that they've made at least the minimum number of job searches. It's pretty easy to cheat if you aren't one of the people who get their job searches randomly verified. A person willing to be lazy and lie about their job searches doesn't have any problem saying that they've done the required searches.
And it's $400 a week - that's $1600 a month. For many people, that's more than their expenses, but a lot of people can survive on $1600 a month, especially if there's another wage earner in the household. Additionally, if they have children, they can get food stamps and other financial assistance.
And the issue is NOT that people can't cheat on unemployment, anyway. As I have explained repeatedly whenever a troll comes here and complains about lazy people filling the unemployment rolls, if that lazy person gets busy and takes an open job, then it means someone else is still unemployed and doesn't get that open job.
When I lost my job, my full-time job became finding ANOTHER job. I posted my resume everywhere I could on the internet adn registered with every employment agency in the DFW Metroplex.And that's how it's been with everyone else I know who has ever lost a job. They don't just sit around collecting unemployment - they get out there and FIND A JOB.
Which only works as a whole if there are enough jobs to go around. Right now there is ONE job for every SIX applicants. There are simply not enough jobs to go around.
But you would never be convinced of it because you are SOOOOOOOOO invested in your ill-advised and RIDICULOUS troll patrol. Lecture someone who gives a sh*t.
Do you live in Texas? If not, you should repost and say that it's different where you live, and admit that bintx is correct about Texas.
As you say, $1,600 a month is enough to survive on for some people, but for most, it's not. It might pay the rent but isn't enough to pay utilities or to buy food or to pay for continuing health insurance under COBRA.
Very true King. One of my BIL was out of work last year for about 6mos. The max here in Massachusetts is I think $600 a week. No spot checks as far as I know. You just call each week & tell an automated operator that you've applied for work & that's pretty much it.
I doubt DellDolly will be back & apologize to Bintx. Admitting she's wrong, & God forbid offering an apology, is not her M.O.
If she does, that means hell has frozen over ;-)
\We're talking about facts here, OTB, not your paranoid hallucinations...
This is SOP for most radio station, BTW.
And it doesn't matter if one person is a little lazy - it just means that the open position doesn't go to them, but there is someone else who DOES get the job! If the unemployed person who is 'lazy' gets active, applies for the job, and gets it, then someone else DOESN'T get the job! There are still the same number of unemployed people, since there aren't jobs out there staying vacant for any length of time!
This is a ridiculous accusation that's shot down with a tiny amount of common sense!
This is a f***ed up country where a comment like DeLay's doesn't draw universal condemnation.
Glad to see he still has his finger on the pulse of the nation.
Well, wk, he's certainly got his finger somewhere... :o)
We'd be better off if he stuck his finger in a light socket....
(Only kidding!!)
-------------------------------
Visit my new political blog, Liberty In Progress.
-------------------------------
Visit my new political blog, Liberty In Progress.
Anyway, how does it make sense for people wanting to be employed? Is this going to be the new Republican talking point? I think the last thing they want to do is get talking points from Tom DeLay.
Oh really? People want to be unemployed and exhaust their savings and retirement and lose there homes for the $264 a week they collect from unemployment?
How much farther from reality can this corporate leech be?
Nothing would have happened if the dems payed for it like lets say pay go which bunning voted against...
FAIL - Delay. HUGE FAIL!! This is "the truth" - on faux noise. And the people that know "the truth" are those making hundreds of thousands annually.
Delay is as clueless and detchaed from the recession and economics in general as bunning. Such misguided fools.
Has anyone else noticed that these talking points get repeated nearly verbatim? I saw it in a conversation on health care, elsewhere this week, and now here. Makes me think all they can do is parrot back what they have heard, they can't even seem to paraphrase them (which seems to imply that they don't understand them.)
FIXED
But you wingnuts can never resist opening your mouths and removing all doubt.
~
TRANSLATION: All conservative white men are innocent, all the time.
One job I had was driving a local cab, 12 hour shift, take home per day $40, after paying off the owner for the car, $35 for gas, $10 dent fee, and all of this before taxes.
How can anyone who's not independantly weathly or on the RW media payroll seriously vote for these pieces of excrement?
Is he really this stupid, or does he just assume we are?
And let's not forget: It was their TRUE constituency (that would be corporate exec's and board memebrs) who laid everyone off in the first place, and who continue to not hire now! And that's putting aside that it was those some people, with a complicit, lessie-faire congress, that shipped most of our manufacturing base off to China in the first place!
And these people blame UNIONS?! The only difference, had their been no Unions, is that those jobs would have been shipped out 10 or 20 years sooner.
----------------------------------------------------------
But I already know the answer: They use social issues (aka: Religion) to get poor white folks to vote against their economic interests. I guess THOSE people DO want to unemployed. After all, THEY keep voting REPUBLICAN.
You may not remember this, but at one point they had a bit more clout than they do now and could make certain demands regarding plant location as well as lobby politicans against the free trade agreements and elimination of tarifs that REALLY made those overseas manufactures a viable option.
And I don't see why it's "greedy" to want to make enough $$$ to live a working/middle class lifestyle in this country. It's not their fault things cost what they do. Try living in this country on what they make in China. I love how management, who as a matter of course make several time what the unions workers ever do, gets off calling the UNIONS "greedy."
------------------------------------------------------------
The gap between rich and poor has only grown, exponentially as the Unions' power has waned. There's plenty of money left to pay decent wages, but why do that when you can KEEP it and pay your top exec's $20 Million a year instead?
I disagree. You may think factory jobs are easy - but try standing there for 8 or 10 hours doing the same repetitive thing over and over and over. The ability to do that and remain observant is a skill in and of itself.
And everyone deserves a livable wage for full time work. Everyone. Why is 8 hours of a CEOs time worth more than 8 hours of mine?
And what about those who go "straight to the factory" in order to EARN MONEY TO FURTHER THEIR EDUCATION??
Or someone who had to go "straight to the factory" due to a family member being ill and unable to support the rest?
Lowlighter's statement is more proof of how idiocy reigns supreme among today's "compassionate conservatives" . . .
What about them they don’t want to stay in the unskilled field so they are bettering themselves that still doesn’t mean they deserve they same wages a skilled professionals. This is what I did as I worked my way through college while working at McDonald and as a member of the National Guard.
Such is life. They still wouldn’t deserve more money because they have an ill family member. Furthermore this is not a realistic senior. I’m sure it does happen but they vast majority 99.9 don’t fall into this category.
.
Are wages supposed to based off your life story or your skill set.
I am surprised you manage to go an entire post without playing a race card. Bravo!
***STRAWMAN ALERT*** (watch out for hay-fever!)
NOONE IS SAYING THEY SHOULD. You're the only one using that point.
And no, wages are not based on your 'life's story' (unless that story involves connections to powerful people) but they SHOULD be based, at least somewhat, on what it costs to live in this country. (Cost of living adjustement? Ever heard of it?)
Thinking like you are here is what leads to revolutions, my friend. We're trying to PREVENT THAT. A bit of INCOME (not wealth!) redistribuition could push it back indefinitely. Because there's just no such thing as "trickle down" economics. That's just the ghost of Ronald Reagan peeing on your back. Rich people didn;'t get rich by giving money away. Obama (and Keynes) had it right: A country prospers from the BOTTOM UP.
I hope you're paid well to believe your "the top 1% deserve to keep all the money because they earned it" nonsense. Arguing like you do, if you make less that $250K/year, you're a schmuck.
--------------------------------------------
IMHO
Noone said they had to earn the SAME WAGE. They deserve a DECENT WAGE and a Working/Lower Middle Class to middle-class lifestyle. SKILLED workers derserve a confortable middle to upper-middle class lifestyle. And it's the top 1%, or less, that have largely prevented this, not UNIONS and UNSKILLED LABOR.
Or are you trying to say that some like me should "just squeak by" in the middle class, while an ambitious but unskilled worker should live in poverty, and yet somehow a CEO actually "earns" his Alex Rodriguez-like salary, plus bonuses and stock options? Puh-Lease.
------------------------------------------------------
IMHO
And the problem is not an inflationary one either. The top 1% don't have to grab 80% of the money just to prevent inflation. If you believe that you're either a billionaire or a tool.
You sure are a typical conservtaive though: In your mind the world not only won't change, but can't and even shouldn't, despite any inequity. Let me ask you something...
Why is my desire for more pay, or the "unskilled laborer's" desire for pay, less legit that the CEO's? Seems to me we all want more. Seems to me that we all work hard. Why is that you only feel it's legit to give a raise to the person who already has the most?
The CEO's "skills" are not that exclusive, dude. And they're certainly no more exclusive now than they were 30 years ago when they maid 40x median income as opposed to the 250x median income they made today.
--------------------------------------------
Again, I hope you are well-paid to believe your talking points. I'll say it again: If you make less than 250K, you're a schmuck.
The jobs moved overseas to the cheapest labor market, because that is how you maximize your profit.
They will stay in China, or whereever, until wages rise, then they will move to the next place that has lower wages.
Some unions have made some bad choices, I've seen it happen.
But; if you are trying to blame the unions for jobs goin overseas, you are looking in the wrong place.
Wages in China are not going to rise under communist rule.
It will take some time but; it will happen.
There is always a cheaper labor market somewhere.
Let me remind you that for those 150 jobs there were 900 applicants.
What kind of cold-blooded ass has so little compassion?
Nope, and I'm sure that, just like Delay says, he is really just milking unemployment.
Too bad you don't have a clue.
What BJ Fan truly lacks is a complete human psyche.
The point here, and it's pretty clear to anyone who's not so full of $#!t that theyr eyes are brown, is that NO ONE IS HIRING rigth now, and there ARE NO JOBS just sitting there waiting to be filled.
Thus, DeLay, and you, and every other RW'er spouting that "unemployment is a matter of personal choice" nonsense is either an idiot, a liar and/or an @$$hole.
----------------------------------------------------
It's really unbelieveable the stupid nonsense you people will try to defend. At what point will you just admit that your "leaders" put their foot in it?!
Or to get bitten by a spider -- a little karmic payback . . .
I’ve worked at McDonalds when I couldn’t find anything else why can’t all these 2 year unemployment people have to the same thing!!
For the record, I know people that are unemployed due a a company going bankrupt. Some were on the street immediately and took the first job they could find, others are hoping to find comparable work but; they are all looking. I don't know anyone that is turning down any opportunities for viable work. BTW If you are a degreed engineer, should you immediately start looking for work at McD's or what?
Can you find an example somewhere of someone trying to work the system?
Well, duh!!! There is always someone who is trying to do that.
Don't make broad general statements that are not backed up by the facts. Just because you have a job (paid troll?) doesn't mean everyone has the same opportunity.
"Every person" you know? That can't be very many, stuck as you are on the computer in your Mom's basement . . .
Hm, a money-launderer in line to be Speaker -- this from someone who claims Nancy Pelosi is corrupt . . .
But addressig his point, there are some people who seem to be content to be unemployed and are in no apparent rush to find a job, because they do have unemployment.
I do not mean to make the claim that all who are unemployed take this attitude. Certainly, that is not the case. Anyone who would think so is not thinking through the issue.
Unemployment, I think, should be a fall back position only, not something that people can use first. Unfortunately, there are those that use it as a primary resource and not as the fall back position that I even think was its intended purpose.
It is to this group that I think DeLay was speaking. I also think any conclusion that people make that DeLay was saying every single person unemployed is unemployed because they want to be is making a huge jump in logic. I find it hard to believe that any person subsscribe to such an idea.
I completely agree with this.
That's because you are a Rational Conservative.
Tom "the Anvil" Delay, Piyush Jindal fan, and Lowlighter don't fit in that category . . .