It is unfair and hypocritical for a person who has a job but refuses
work to attribute laziness to a person who wants to work but cannot
find a job …
Indolence is a person’s disinclination to physical
activity or exertion despite having no infirmity or disability, and when
applied to a person who refuses to regularly labor or perform a task to
earn money, indolence is sheer laziness. The concept of work relates to
a regular daily activity someone performs to produce something of value
whether it is a service or product that warrants remuneration to
sustain one’s life. It is unfair and hypocritical for a person who has a
job but refuses work to attribute laziness to a person who wants to
work but cannot find employment, but that has been a defining
characteristic of repugicans in Congress over the past four years.
It is completely fair, and damn high time, for all Americans to wake up and finally admit that there are a “number of Americans not working”
when they have no infirmity or disability, and work together as a
nation to find a solution to this serious problem. These lazy Americans
need to be “brought into the mainstream of American society” and be forced to abandon their thinking “that I really don’t have to work. I don’t really want to do this; I’d just rather sit around.”
Those were Speaker of the House John Boehner’s words during an American
Enterprise Institute speech and as he elucidated so clearly; it is “a very sick idea for our country” that any American would “just rather sit around” because they believe they “really don’t have to work.”
Boehner is not alone in shining a spotlight on the
terrible problem of Americans who refuse to work. A man who has spent
nearly all of his life on government pay, Paul Ryan, said last March
that he will end poverty in America by focusing on creating work
requirements for people living off the government. Ryan claims he and he
alone has the answer to deal with the “real culture problem of men not working or even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.” Like Boehner’s assertion, Ryan is absolutely correct that repugicans in Congress are steeped in “a real culture problem that has to be dealt with;”
their refusal to work for the people when they do show up for work and
their practice of not showing up for weeks on end. All the while they
draw government welfare in the form of bloated salaries and excellent
employment benefits.
It is bad enough that Boehner, Ryan, and repugicans
in general have the temerity to criticize unemployed Americans as being
lazy, but it is beyond the pale that they have spent the past six years
deliberately preventing millions of Americans who want desperately to
work from finding employment. The repugicans began President Obama’s first
term fighting ferociously to obstruct his recovery and job-saving
attempts to thwart any attempt to save the economy repugicans decimated
with unfunded wars, tax cuts for the rich, and banking deregulation. In
fact, within weeks of taking control of the House after the 2010
midterm elections when Boehner was informed repugican cabal budget cuts would kill
well over a million jobs he said, “so be it.” Were those million-plus Americans who lost their jobs saying “I really don’t have to work. I’d just rather sit around” as Boehner contends, or were they victims of “the
real culture problem of Republicans not working or even thinking about
working or learning the value and the culture of work” according to
their jobs as legislators?
It takes a special kind of cretin to spend nearly
four straight years deliberately killing millions of jobs either by
cutting spending or giving tax breaks to corporations that ship American
jobs overseas, and then have the audacity to claim unemployed Americans
are lazy and a “real problem for not even thinking about working.” And,
speaking of working, what exactly is the work repugicans in Congress,
particularly in the House, have focused on since January 2011? It
certainly has not been “laying and collecting taxes” and “passing legislation for the general welfare of the people”
according to their Constitutional job description. Instead, when they
have shown up to “work,” they either take things away from Americans to
give to the rich, or waste taxpayer’s hard-earned dollars on fabricated
scandals. Remember, the definition of work is a “regular daily
activity someone performs to produce something of value whether it is a
service or product that warrants remuneration;” not playing Robin
Hood in reverse, not going on witch-hunts, not dismantling the
government, and not taking six or seven week paid vacations every couple
of months. The repugicans have not produced anything of value for the
American people and yet they draw inordinately high salaries and go on
extended vacations several times a year.
What is stunning is that while repugicans cannot be
bothered to do any work for the American people or stop taking
several-week paid vacations, they are suing the President for picking up
the slack due to their “problem of not even thinking about working.”
It is not that House repugicans have lacked work to do; the Senate has
passed several pieces of bipartisan legislation an overwhelming
majority of Americans support that Speaker Boehner lets languish on his
desk. Boehner is so lazy he cannot put forth the effort or exert himself
to as much as call for a vote or, dog forbid, allow a floor debate on
the legislation. However, he did muster enough energy to allow a vote to
shut down the government, repeal the ACA forty-plus times, give tax
breaks to the rich, and eliminate overtime pay. And it is worth
reiterating that no, tax breaks for the rich, defunding the EPA and IRS,
cutting education, and suing the President are not jobs bills. However,
when repugicans are incapable of understanding the “value and culture of work,” one begins to comprehend why they are clueless on what creating real jobs entails.
One would think, errantly, that repugican voters
would be enraged that their heroes in the House label them as lazy and
then take inordinately long and frequent paid vacations. A survey of repugican voters a couple of weeks ago revealed that conservatives are
not the least bit concerned their representatives in Congress are doing
absolutely nothing and still getting outlandish salaries. However, that
should not surprise anyone because those same repugican voters, cheer wildly when their representatives are too lazy
to vote for job-creating infrastructure legislation or Veterans’ jobs
bills; but they find enough energy to vote to sue the President for
doing the work lazy repugicans refuse to do.
The repugican hypocrisy has become so normal that
hardly anything they say is surprising any more, but the audacity to
label unemployed Americans as lazy when it is the repugican cabal that has either
killed or obstructed creation of millions of jobs as part of their
part-time employment is beyond belief. One hopes the millions of
Americans who are unemployed take heed that repugicans who consider
them inherently lazy and “a real problem” have killed, sent
overseas, or obstructed millions of jobs when they aren’t on lengthy
paid vacations. They should also take note that John Boehner was really
describing repugicans who believe that they “really don’t have to work and would just rather sit around” and make speeches about their tendency of “not even thinking about working” because an African American man is the President.
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