Now for one of our regular features, the Clown Award. given for meritorious stupidityFirst, though, I have an update on a previous award. On what you might call my Christmas show a few weeks ago, I dubbed Rep. Jack Kingston, a GOPper from Georgia as the Grinch because he was just so morally offended by the fact that some poor kids could get free lunches at school and how they should have to sweep the floor or something to earn that lunch because there's no such thing as a free lunch, you grade-school moochers!
Well, it turns out that there is such a thing as a free lunch - if you're Jack Kingston.
An investigation by WSAV-TV in Savannah, Georgia, found that over a three-year period, Kingston and his staff charged nearly $4,200 in meals to his congressional office. He didn't pay for those meals, the taxpayers did.
Mr. Kingrinch also racked up nearly $4,300 of free meals paid for by third-party groups and over $24,000 in total expenses on Congressional junkets in that time besides expensing over $145,000 worth of meals for campaign events. I wonder how many of the attendees at campaign those events had to sweep the floor.
But getting to this week's Clown, this too is a repeat offender. It's Wisconsin Governor Scott Walkalloveryou, who double-dipped in the stupid.
On MSNBC last Monday, he declared his opposition to raising the minimum wage - something favored by 2/3 of Americans, including even half of GOPpers and 46% of "strong conservatives" - but he's against it because, quoting him,Jobs that involve the minimum wage are overwhelmingly jobs for young people starting out in the workforce. The last thing you want to do is have fewer young people (working) at a time when unemployment rates are still way too high for teenagers going into their 20s.In other words, minimum wage jobs are filled mostly by teenagers taking their first job at a McDonald's or something.
Bzzzt! According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, teenagers only make up a quarter of those making no more than minimum wage. Even giving him every benefit of the doubt and including everyone up to age 24 (and assuming all those people are at their first job) still brings the figure to just over 50%. Meanwhile, those aged 25-64 make up 47% of minimum wage workers.
Oh, but he wasn't done. On Sunday, on CNN, he said
I don't know about you, but if I was out of work, I'd be looking more than twice a week for a job. I'd be looking for work every day except maybe today. I take Sunday off to go to church and pray that I could find a job on Monday.Yeah, if only all those unemployed people, all those struggling people draining their savings, emptying their bank accounts, relying on food kitchens to feed their families, losing their homes, if only they would just actually try to get a job, if only they'd just pray to get a job, they'd be fine. So if they're out of work, well, it's obviously their own fault and so why should we care.
As a quick footnote, he talks a lot about job retraining to deal with unemployment - despite have cut state aid to technical colleges in Wisconsin by 30%.
Scott Walkalloveryou is such a clown.
Sources:
http://whoviating.blogspot.com/2013/12/1393-grinch-story-gopper-and-free-lunch.html
http://www.wsav.com/story/24411962/congressional-free-lunch
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/georgia-senate-candidate-expensed-thousands-in-free-lunches
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/12/most-back-minimum-wage-hike-policies-to-address-the-wealth-gap/
http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2014/jan/13/scott-walker/scott-walker-says-minimum-wage-jobs-are-overwhelmi/
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1401/05/sotu.01.html
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/132130383.html?page=1
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