"Come on, team, let's get mean!"
This is not the chant of rabid football fans, egging on their
favorite team to crush the opponents. Rather, it's the raucous war cry
of far-out right-wing ideologues all across the country who're pumping
up Team GOP to pound the bejeezus out of America's millions of
unemployed workers. Far from a game, this is real, and it's a moral
abomination.
I've been unemployed before, and I can tell you it's a misery — all
the more so today, when there are far more people out of work than there
are job openings. This leaves millions of our fellow Americans mired in
the debilitating misery of long-term unemployment.
But that's not miserable enough for a feral breed of Ayn Randian
political zealots who are lobbying Republican governors, legislators and
congress-critters to punish the jobless for ... well, for their
joblessness. In this perverse universe, the conventional wisdom asserts
that unemployment benefits and other poverty-prevention programs are
sapping our nation's vitality by allowing "moochers" to live the Life of
Reilly and avoid work.
The GOP's budget demigod in the U.S. House, Rep. Paul Ryan, expressed
this dogma in a fanciful homily deriding America's safety net as "a
hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and
complacency." This from a guy whose family's wealth was gained from
government contacts and who has spent practically all of his adult life
in the sweet-swaying hammock of congressional privilege, presently
drawing $174,000 a year from Old Uncle Sugar.
As ridiculous and just plain mean as this attitude is, it plays well
in the insanity that now defines "the debate" in Republican primary
elections. So, state-after-state (as well as Congress) are succumbing to
this pound-the-poor, right-wing screed by frenetically slashing
unemployment benefits.
Behind this faux-philosophical push are the smiling barons of
corporate America. Without jobless payments, you see, desperate millions
will be forced to whatever low-wage, no-benefit, dead-end jobs the
barons design.
What's at work here is a profoundly awful ethical phenomenon that has
seeped into the top strata of American society: Our nation's corporate
and political elites have developed an immunity to shame.
It has become morally acceptable in those lofty circles to enrich
themselves while turning their backs on the rest of us. Even more
damning, they feel free to slash America's already tattered safety net,
leaving more holes than net for the workaday majority of Americans
who've been knocked down by an ongoing economic disaster created by
these very elites.
For a look at how shameful these privileged powers have become, turn
to North Carolina. Until recently, this Southern state maintained a
fairly moderate government with a populist streak, taking pride in its
educational system and other public efforts to maintain a middle class.
No more. A shame-resistant political leadership has recently taken hold,
consisting of corporate-funded tea party extremists who loathe the very
idea of a safety net.
The new bunch has been gutting everything from public schools to
health care, and now they've turned on hard-hit citizens who're out of
work. In a state with the fifth-highest jobless rate in the country, and
with no recovery in sight, the right-wing governor and legislature
recently whacked weekly unemployment benefits by a third, leaving
struggling North Carolinians with a meager $350 a week to try to make
ends meet, while simultaneously eliminating millions of consumer dollars
that those families would otherwise be putting into the state's
economy. Then, just to give the jobless another kick, the petty
politicians cut the number of weeks people can receive unemployment aid.
This official minginess automatically disqualified the state from
getting $700 million a year for long-term jobless payments from the
federal government. Yet Gov. Pat McCrory issued a cockamamie, Kafkaesque
claim that the gut-job ensures that "our citizens' unemployment safety
net is secure," while providing "an economic climate that allows job
creators to start hiring again."
Yeah, we'll all hold our breath until those "job creators" get going.
Meanwhile, the GOP wrecking crew doled out a fat tax break for the
corporate elites — for doing nothing. Take from the poor, give to the
rich: backward Robin Hood. If ignorance is bliss, McCrory must be
ecstatic.
Meanwhile, his shameless immorality has unleashed a growing storm of
weekly demonstrations known as "Moral Mondays." For information about
this remarkable citizens' uprising, link to the North Carolina Justice
Center:
www.ncjustice.org.
© 2013 Creators
National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book,
Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow,
Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on
behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families,
environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.
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