Charlotte Observer Pimps Welfare for Chronically Unemployed

The editors at the Charlotte Observer have bought into this nonsense that unemployment benefits helps the economy. They quote the voodoo economics of the Congressional Budget Office, a supposed non-partisan entity created by Congress in 1974:

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that every $1 spent on jobless benefits generates up to $1.90 in economic growth. Further, the nonpartisan CBO analyzed 11 options for generating short-term growth - including reducing income taxes - and found that extending jobless benefits was the most effective. (Cutting income taxes was least effective.)


So why hasn't the lame-duck Congress gone ahead and extended the benefits, as it has routinely done in the past? Some 2 million Americans face the end of unemployment checks. More people now have been jobless for longer than 26 weeks (when regular unemployment runs out) than any time since at least 1950. That isn't counting the millions whose checks have already ended, which happens in North Carolina after 99 weeks

I would like to know how the $1.00 in jobless benefits generates $1.90 in economic growth. That makes absolutely no sense to me. You have to take away money from those of us who actually work in order to pay these people.  The Disturber continues:

The answer is that Republican leaders need a bargaining chip with which to pressure Democrats to extend the Bush-era tax cuts permanently, for all income levels, even the wealthiest. Never mind that doing so is expected to add $3.7 trillion to the deficit over 10 years.


Yes, the same deficit hawks who don't want the government to spend $56 billion through 2011 for the unemployed are happy to pile trillions onto the long-term deficit. Apparently not all deficit-creating measures are created equal.

The Charlotte Observer believes that taxing the rich is the answer to all our problems. They fail to see the outrageous spending by the Federal Government coupled with burdensome regulations as the real culprit to our economic woes. No they would rather attack the people who actually create jobs. I’ve never been employed by a poor person; nor have I heard of industries forged by government bureaucrats.

The Republicans are willing to extend unemployment benefits as long as there are cuts somewhere else in the budget. The editors at this august paper fail to mention that; instead they parade out a “victim” to demonstrate the callousness of the GOP. I personally do not trust the main stream media. ABC was just busted for lying about just such a victim, when in fact she is an activist:

Good Morning America's Claire Shipman on Thursday tried to disguise a Democratic activist as just a jobless American who would be hurt by Republican failure to extend unemployment benefits. Shipman sympathetically recounted that Edrie Irvine, who she didn't explain spoke at a Nancy Pelosi press conference on Wednesday, "never thought her very livelihood would depend on a political debate in Congress."


A graphic reading "unemployed" appeared onscreen as Irvine complained, "They are talking about tax cuts for the rich and are holding people like me hostage." Who is Ms. Irvine? According to her bio on the leftist Democracy For America web page, she's a "tree-hugging, bleeding-heart, ACLU-card-t progressive liberal and damn proud of it!"





The Observer ends it pity piece with this rhetorical flourish:

Extend the unemployment checks. All this dithering over whether they should be linked to a permanent tax cut for millionaires is unseemly.


The nation's jobless rate remains painfully high at 9.6 percent. Joblessness in the Charlotte region is even higher: 10.2 percent, highest among the state's large metro areas and higher than the 9.1 percent N.C. rate. For anyone to hint that most jobless workers don't want gainful employment is unconscionable.


Extending the jobless benefits will boost the economy and help 2 million suffering households. Congressional leaders have no credible case for not doing so.

I’ve got news for you Observer; there are people who would rather game the system than have a regular job. What is unseemly is that we have people like you that want to create a perpetual underclass dependent upon government largess. Let's call the extension of unemployment benefits for what it really is:  welfare.

Source: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/scott-whitlock/2010/12/02/abc-disguises-democratic-activist-victim-mean-spirited-gop#ixzz173m44F8P

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/12/02/1879756/help-the-economy-by-extending.html#ixzz173fU76DL