This Bud's For You, Sen. Berger!

The MillerCoors announcement that it would be closing its brewery in Eden, NC, by next September has caused some acid reflux for NC Senate Bossman Phil Berger, in whose district there will be 520 additional unemployed voters.

Pundits are wondering what those voters will think of Sen. Berger when it finally dawns on them that he's responsible for knocking the sides out of the state's unemployment safety net.

Berger's all upset. He spearheaded a call to the U.S. Congress to investigate MillerCoors and stop the plant closure. He signed a letter in which he emotes like a Broadway star: “This decision could have a devastating impact on our community and raises troubling questions that we hope you ... will investigate and demand answers to. While these giant beer conglomerates are looking out for their own interests, the hardworking people of Rockingham County are legitimately concerned.”

This sudden, public worriment on the part of Phil Berger, Man of the People, caught the attention of Tim White of the Fayetteville Observer:

...where did this new Berger come from? Where was his deep concern when he was chasing the film industry out of Wilmington and the rest of the state? Where was his concern when we exported thousands of television and motion picture jobs to surrounding states, most notably Georgia, which boosted its film tax incentives just as Berger was killing ours? Just two years ago, North Carolina was Hollywood East. Now, Atlanta owns that title.

The hypocrisy gets worse, and Tim White is on the case:

Berger and his colleagues slashed all of those [unemployment] benefits, suggesting they only inspired laziness. Sorry, folks, but it was the right thing to do for the state. So get out there and hustle for those jobs — which, unfortunately, may not even exist.

And if they want to sign up for Medicaid, so they can continue to provide health care for their families while they’re jobhunting, or making do with something that barely pays minimum wage? Well, that might not work out either.

Thanks in large part to Phil Berger, this state hasn’t expanded its Medicaid program to cover low-wage workers — which is what many of his constituents will become when their unemployment benefits run out. The feds would pick up almost all of the cost of Medicaid expansion, but Berger, ever the ideologue, refused to cooperate with the evil Obamacare program....

Those chickens are coming home to roost, Senator Berger.