Home > Uncategorized > Stunning hypocrisy

Stunning hypocrisy

Post on February 6, 2013 by 6 Comments »

Here’s another one from the “You can’t make this stuff up” Department at the North Carolina General Assembly. Today, at 10:00 am in the Legislative Press Conference Room, the N.C. Retail Merchants Association will kick off a canned food drive to help feed the state’s poor and hungry citizens.

“What’s so strange about that?” you might ask.

Here’s what: 

The N.C. Retail Merchants Association is the exact same lobby group that is helping to spearhead the legislature’s mean-spirited and unprecendented attack on the state’s already inadequate unemployment insurance benefits program!

You got that? Last week, a lobbyist for the group was a featured speaker at an employer-sponsored press conference to tout the legislation and characterize the state’s workers as lazy and undeserving of benefits — even though the jobless outnumber the stock of available jobs three-to-one. Today, the same group will issue a plea for average citizens to cough up some canned food to throw at those same out-of-work families (and then stand by and bask in the glow of the positive P.R. the event will produce).

Truly amazing.

 

Possibly related posts:

  1. Prosperity Watch: Unemployed workers outnumber available job openings by 3 to 1
  2. The right’s astounding hypocrisy on unemployment
  3. “Petty, hurtful and unnecessary….”
  4. A challenge for NC’s Governor: Try living on $350 a week (Audio)

This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Comments (Closed):6

  1. Jack
    February 6, 2013 at 9:34 am

    What news outlets should do, but won’t, is ask questions, on camera, confronting the issue. Such reporting isn’t part of the process now days because it could jeopardize media’s access to the news makers. Therefore, the public receives poor to mediocre news and remains ignorant of what is happening on Jones Street.

  2. Leigh
    February 6, 2013 at 9:46 am

    Jack, you are right. If we had REAL JOURNALISM instead of reading prepared talking points, the people of NC might find out that we have been HAD by this General Assembly and our newly Elected Governor. He was bought and paid for by Duke Energy, ALEC, the Koch Brothers and so is most of our General Assembly. This is another example of why the poor get poorer because we are being governed by the ‘gentry class’ of NC.

  3. JeffS
    February 6, 2013 at 10:25 am

    Nice how that works isn’t it. Free advertising, positive PR and the most important part – increased sales.

  4. Elaine Pischke
    February 6, 2013 at 12:28 pm

    I knew it! I’ve been pondering why Republicans are making cutting unemployment benefits one of the very first priorities they tackle as they come into session in the General Assembly. It is certainly not going to help the economy. If anything, taking that money out of circulation is going to hurt North Carolina. It’s not going to do a thing to balance the state budget, since it is federal money we are talking about. Clearly, the GOP cares nothing for these families who are already hanging on by a thread, but it seems even beyond their usual level of callousness to take away from those who already have so little just for the fun of it. Then it hit me. There are a lot of businesses out there who hire minimum wage workers (not naming names, but a name or two does come to mind). Now, someone who had a decent paying job and lost it due to the bad economy is not going to jump right on one of these minimum wage jobs when unemployment pays almost twice as much. People have mortgages and car payments and other bills to pay, and a minimum wage job doesn’t come close to meeting these obligations. So someone who had a $60,000 a year job isn’t going to take a job at $7.75/hour until they are forced to do so. Meanwhile, some employers can’t keep employees at minimum wage. So what’s the solution? Force people off of unemployment, or give them so little that even minimum wage starts to look acceptable. Of course, you can’t actually support a family on that, but the people behind this don’t care one bit about that. All they care about is not being forced to raise their employees’ salaries to a living wage. Let the taxpayers pick up the difference when these people are forced to apply for food stamps to survive. This has nothing to do with getting North Carolina ‘back on track’, as some Republicans have stated, and everything to do with keeping certain big campaign contributors happy.

  5. david esmay
    February 6, 2013 at 12:43 pm

    Nothing like guaranteed profits and free reign to rig the system.

  6. jlp75
    February 6, 2013 at 12:43 pm

    Perhaps they should have a cake drive instead.