Thursday, January 31, 2013

The Beat(ing) Goes On

The incredibly generous, benevolent, and gracious grandees of the NC House Finance Committee allowed four minutes of public comment today before ramming through on a party-line vote a law to cut the maximum weekly unemployment benefit from $535 to $350 and replace 26 weeks of state-paid benefits with a sliding cap of 12 to 20 weeks, depending on how Gov. McCrory Squishy's economy is going.

Meanwhile and elsewhere in the legislative building, and to show that they've got their priorities straight and the best interests of children in mind, the Honorables introduced legislation to allow "certain teachers and other volunteers" to carry firearms as "school safety marshals."

And a female member of the General Assembly introduced a bill to make it illegal to display in public a "nipple, or any portion of the areola, of the human female breast."

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Every dollar of unemployment returns almost twice the investment to the community!
Almost all businesses suffer down times and layoffs. Will a business relocate to NC knowing that their employees won't be taken care of during lay off periods?
This is a dumb move, it's Federal money the Republicans are denying and it will cost the state jobs.
But who's interested in jobs when right-wing Republican ideology trumps everything, even good sense?

Anonymous said...

All those poor people forced out into the cold might have penises standing at attention...OMG! Then they can throw them in prison for breaking the law boosting that private industry. Always about money, their God.

They are all idiots and the only consolation is that they'll be stupid enough for the electorate to oust them next time. If we have to wait 10 years until redistricting is redone, we're doomed!

Anonymous said...

Anonymous, where does federal money come from? Have you ever heard of federal taxes? Most of us that are not entitlement funded voters and those of us that pay these taxes know about them.

It is amazing how many people find some kind of work after their unemployment runs out.

Opinionated said...

My personal fave has to be the Nipple Law. Since a nipple MIGHT be visible for a nano-second to anyone lying on a floor next to a woman about to nurse an infant, this would outlaw breast-feeding in public, except in a stall in a bathroom - a notoriously filthy and impossible place to feed a baby. (The areola and nipple are fully covered by the infant's face DURING what shall hereinafter be termed "The Act". The rest of the breast during "The Act" is covered by the mother's shirt and by the infant's body, which is generally fully clothed.)

I'm so please the NC leg (i.e. Clown Car) is poised to protect us all from the scurrilous, and potentially traumatizing, procedure known as "The Act". I gather the purpose is either to ensure that new moms are kept at home (where they belong), or that new moms who wish to go out in public with their children during the first year of life should have to rely on corporate products to feed their children rather than something that provides nutrition for free, or that - having ensured the birth of said infants through limiting access to birth control and/or abortion - the state will have made life much more difficult for both mother and child.

You can't make this stuff up.

Anonymous said...

Well, that's no problem for Helicopter Ben. Bennie's been printing money like it's going out of style, which is more true than we think.

So if the banksters are getting many, many trillions, what's a few billion for the unemployed, since China has the jobs and now owns the country?

Anonymous said...

How much public comment did the Town of Boone allow when it slipped in the ordinance banning concealed carry in every park where it had the OPTION to do so? It didn't have to ban it anywhere.