Along those same numeric lines, the Ostrich opined earlier this week about a Steve Abbott commercial, giving it a big fat down arrow in their “Monday meter.”
While I haven’t seen the ad, the Ostrich editor says the ad states “Maine added a net of 56 jobs during the last 10 year (sic), at the same time the state’s welfare rolls increased by 109,000” and that it “raises some questions.”
Side has no stake in the candidacy of Steve Abbott, but we will go out on a limb and give him the benefit of the doubt on the figures; we believe anyone with his experience in politics knows the importance of using figures from credible, independent sources.
We will point out that the ratio here is 195 new welfare recipients for each net job added, and any way you look at it, that is a very troubling figure at any level. And believable, given the exceptionally perverse economic and regulatory policy our public stewards in Augusta embrace.
We wish here to highlight the Ostrich’s completely predictable attempt to rationalize away the figures, since they could mount no challenge to them.
First, they wondered:
“How many of those new welfare recipients sought public assistance because they lost jobs during the financial meltdown precipitated by the Bush administration’s failed fiscal policy?”
To which we respond how much longer are you going to blame everything and anything on ‘failed Bush policies?’ Especially since job growth during the first seven years of his administration was continuous and sizable? And didn’t you notice how our current potentate is ‘tired of the finger-pointing’ and won’t tolerate it anymore? If this is the best you’ve got, don’t even address the subject; it only shows how bereft you are of critical thinking.
Next:
How many are parents whose jobs were shipped overseas and whose Unemployment Compensation ran out?
I don’t know, but my guess is not too many. And if you want to be our informer and government watchdog, you should have been able to dig into things and come up with an answer, rather than toss out an innuendo.
Now a conversation stopper:
How many are disabled?
Anyone who questions this inference is mean-spirited by definition. Again, the editors probably could have spent a few minutes on research and come up with an answer to their own question. Maybe they did, and it didn’t help, so they went with the charge instead.
My intuition is that while some significant portion may be “disabled,” a goodly portion of those so designated are not ‘disabled’ as reasonable people think of that term. Being declared disabled under current rules and regulations is far different from actually being disabled.
Anyone who’s seen the videos of ‘disabled’ government employees playing golf knows what we mean. Hell….I have no doubt that hundreds in this town consider this correspondent to be mentally deranged.
Here’s another ‘in your face’ conversation stopper:
How many are parents who for religious or moral reasons chose to bear a child that they could not afford without public assistance?
Take that, pro-lifers! It’s your fault we have so many new welfare clients! The other side, of course, is that welfare policy almost always increases benefits for additional children. In other words, most of our policies incentivize having more children.
Looking into such details is a bridge too far for the Ostrich, though. Far better it is to blame the huge growth in government dependency on….wait a minute…..it seems like the issues raised are all functions of government policy!
How could that be? Isn’t the government here to make things better?
And isn’t the free press here to make sure we are better informed, instead of willfully misinformed?
I just wrote my answers on a little piece of paper that I’m hiding in my hand. You show me your answers first, and then I’ll show you mine.
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