Nina Easton, Ms. Fortune Magazine spokesperson on ClusterFox who I'm quite sure has never had to worry about where her next meal is coming from warned
July 5, 2010

Nina Easton, Ms. Fortune Magazine spokesperson on ClusterFox who I'm quite sure has never had to worry about where her next meal is coming from warned all of us about the dangers of extending unemployment benefits for all of those lucky son of a guns who are living high off the hog from their unemployment benefits. In the world of the Nina Easton's out there, we shouldn't be extending those benefits because those lazy good for nothing workers are just happy to keep collecting their government check rather than, you know, trying to find a job that actually might pay a living wage.

I find it hard to imagine that workers out there who have a chance at making a decent living in another city aren't already moving and that anyone who had a job offer for a wage comparable to what they were making hasn't already moved rather than Easton's scenario of them sitting on their unemployment benefits before doing so. Her ridiculous analogy might be true if there were a lot of jobs to be found out there.

Easton just proves herself to be another heartless Republican that would rather call unemployed Americans lazy and willing to live off of the government rather than to admit that the GOP policies of outsourcing and the refusal of Republicans along with some ConservaDems to properly stimulate the economy have left them unemployed where they're needing the help in the first place.

Easton apparently knew her comments might generate some hate mail and tried to temper that with saying she understood unemployment benefits are "not cushy". Yeah, that makes you accusing people of sitting on their asses with this horrid job market all better Nina. I don't think so. If you get some hate mail for your comments, it's deserved. Most people in this country don't have the benefit of drawing your type of wingnut welfare where standing up for the poor downtrodden rich pays so well.

GARRETT: I want to play for you something that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- kind of topical on our panel today -- said earlier this week about the debate we talked about earlier with Senator DeMint about unemployment compensation and what unemployment benefits actually do in the real American economy. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY PELOSI: This is one of the biggest stimuluses to our economy. The economists will tell you this money is spent quickly. It injects demand into the economy. And it's job- creating. It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GARRETT: It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name.

Nina, does it?

EASTON: Well, that was an interesting look at economic policy. No. It -- I think unemployment -- the dirty little secret about unemployment benefits -- and before I get the hate mail I want to make clear that unemployment benefits are not cushy. They're difficult and there's a lot of pain out there.

GARRETT: And people pay into them...

EASTON: And people pay...

GARRETT: ... to receive them.

EASTON: ... into them to receive them.

GARRETT: I mean, it's part of the insurance that they pay in as part of their...

EASTON: Right, and we're -- but we're coming up on...

GARRETT: ... employment taxes.

EASTON: ... like two years of unemployment benefits provided.

But in the past, what has happened is it actually extends unemployment because people wait till the last minute before their benefits run out to find a job, to relocate to take jobs that they really didn't want to take.

And what happens is the longer you're unemployed, the more difficult it is to find a job. So it doesn't really help people in the long run.

Can you help us out?

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