If the Republicans were smart they'd...ahh never mind

Demo-Dopes want to extend unemployment to, what, 15,325 weeks or something.  They also want to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour.  They also demand that immigration reform – read amnesty – be accomplished prior to the mid-term election.

If Republi-Rats were smart - something that they clearly are NOT – they’d bundle all of these things up and hammer the Dopes with them in the election.

King Jerkses tells us we have to extend unemployment because it creates jobs.  That is like saying increasing the speed limits across America will reduce accidents because people will get to where they are going faster so there will be less people on the streets.  Ask anyone in the know, speed is the major contributor in most accidents.  Our clueless king also tells us that people going into their 236^th week of unemployment really, really, really, want to work.

Rats ought to test that theory by proposing legislation that requires some kind of real work for any unemployment compensation after the 13th week.  We know the Rats will cave so why not make the point that we all agree that the chronically unemployed really, really, really, want to work by letting them do so.  Require 10 hours of work a week at a soup kitchen, food bank, public park, prison, road crew, trash collection etc. for the benefit.

Ten hours is an arbitrary number.  Seems reasonable enough to allow the beneficiary enough time to look for work - 30 hours supposedly – while performing useful service to the community.  A clever Rat could link the number of hours of public service to the minimum wage.  If a guy makes $120 bucks a week on unemployment and the minimum wage is $10 an hour the recipient owes 12 hours of service a week.

If such a requirement were proposed, I think it would be wildly popular among those paying for what we now call a benefit but before long will be an entitlement and then a right.  I also think suddenly you’d hear the Dopes saying that the chronically unemployed really, really, really, don’t want to work, can’t work and shouldn’t have to because that would be cruel.

And am I the only one who has known hard working people who collect unemployment while working for cash on the side?  I’m old but I recall a friend’s older brother lining up jobs while on unemployment.  His catch line during this phase was, “I’ll see if I can get to it, but my unemployment is going to run out sometime and I’ll need to take a pay cut and get back to work.”

So yeah, I think 13 weeks free and clear is enough.  Then the benefit ought to start coming with strings attached.  The pressure to work ought to become a bit heavier each week until work becomes a more attractive option than unemployment.

Last, there ought to be a way to convey a message that increasing unemployment compensation, the minimum wage and allowing amnesty during a period when we have 7% unemployment are all counter intuitive to getting the unemployment numbers down.

Here’s the bottom line for the Dopes.  They do not give a wit about the unemployed, illegal immigrants and the working poor past the point that they can be used as a heavy stick with which to beat Republicans.

Need proof?  We’ve been fighting LBJ’s war on poverty for nearly 50 years now using mainly the Dope policy of using public funds to buy votes.  The percentage of poor has not declined in spite of TRILLIONS of dollars poured into one mismanaged government program after another.  The argument is always the same.  It would be un-American if we didn’t help these people.  Sadly a bare subsistence reliant on a one BS government program after another has become a way of life for some.  Others combine one “benefit” on top of another adding to 40K in subsides.  What is it going to take for those people to go back to work?

A work requirement for those benefits may lessen the load somewhat.