Ok before you begin reading I am legally required to issue this warning:
Surgeon General's WARNING: Reading this blog without an aspirin on hand may be hazardous to your health. Trying to understand the mental backflips needed to understand the reasoning of the people who brought the lawsuit of this blog is about could lead to chronic brain meltage without proper precautions.
Now with that out of the way, lets get started.
Ok so several years ago the Government passed this thing you might of heard of called Obamacare, which requires that everyone have health insurance. And as it turns out the standard insurance package includes covering contraception. Not really shocking since 99% of the country actually uses the stuff.
But of course religious groups object because the bible says you cant use contraception and we can never go against anything in the bible.
(By the way, I was looking up bible passages that banned or suggested contraception was bad, and the one I kept popping across was Genesis 38:8-10, which is all about God telling this dude to nail his sister in law because her husband (the dudes brother) isnt getting the babies made, and then God kills the dude because he jizzed on the ground and not in his sister in law. Just something to keep in mind about how sacred and unchangeable the morality of the bible is and how we should always by biblical standards)
Now the Obama administration actually said "ok fine we will grant an exception for religious groups so that they have access to healthcare that doesnt include contraception". All you have to do is notify the government you want an exception so they can arrange it for you
Well turns out that wasnt good enough for the Catholic Church and they sued on pretty much every possible ground you can think of.
The weirdest of those lawsuits made headlines this week (this part on is where you might need that aspirin)
A group of Catholic nuns sued the government because they object to notifying the government they want an exception, BUT they still want the exception.
To put that another way:
There is a McDonalds across the street from my house, this would be like if I went to the McDonalds and ordered a Big Mac, and then got pissed that they put pickles on it, so I sue them over it.
See I hate pickles. But you dear reader, didnt know that till the last sentence. Nor would the McDonalds worker, since they cant read my mind. And the Big Mac is known to come with pickles. And of course everyone knows how NOT to get pickles on a Big Mac, you order "Big Mac, no pickles", so that they know you dont want pickles and BOOM no pickles. This is pretty much the norm in every aspect of life if you want something that varies slightly from whatever is advertise or sold as the norm.
Yet despite this fairly simple logic, the Church still decided that being asked to request "no pickles" was a bridge too far and sued. Granted they have what they call a logically explanation for why they needed to do this:
These nuns also operate a nursing home, and believe that, should they tell the government they dont want contraception coverage, the government would tell the insurance company about it. Which would then be followed by the government telling the insurance company they were free to offer separate contraception coverage to the nursing home workers.
Now 3 things here:
1) For the first sentence, I think the Nuns are 100% correct. The government WILL ABSOLUTELY inform the insurance companies the Nun's are entitled to a contraception exception.
Again think back to ordering a Big Mac, if the cashier doesnt tell the cook you dont want pickles, guess what? your still getting fucking pickles! Requesting a special order only works if EVERYONE involved in the transaction know about it.
2) For the second sentence. Yes to be fair I suppose the government COULD tell the insurance company that there is this group of people who could use contraception coverage, but they dont actually need to.
See the insurance company has the insurance policies, so has some idea of the coverage they are granting. All they really need to do is read their own internal information to figure out there is a block of people who they could sell contraception to.
It's a bit like that Cashier at McDonald's telling the Cook how many Big Mac's the cook made without pickles that day. Given that the Cook actually made the Big Mac's, its a safe assumption HE ALREADY KNOWS.
And thats the thing, even if the Nuns had sued on the grounds they ONLY wanted to give the exemption information to the insurance company (which they didnt), they would still have this same problem that the company could if they wanted offer contraception coverage separately, because again, they already know what they themselves are and arnt covering.
3) and this is the real kicker. The insurer the Nun's use, itself has a religious exemption so that it can NOT carry contraception coverage. Which means they dont actually have any contraception coverage to offer the nursing home workers if they wanted to in the first place, which they clearly dont.
Basically this is like walking into the McDonald's and seeing a giant sign across counter saying "PICKLES CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE". Guess what? in that situation no matter what you do your not getting a fucking pickle. Which is great, if you hate pickle's, you can just walk in, order "1 Big Mac" and not have to worry about it.
Which means even if the Nun's were right on the assumption the government would need to tell the insurance company that they could offer Birth Control, the insurance company would say "ok, and? what do you expect us to be able to do about it?"
Which means the entire justification for bringing the case int he first place cant possibly happen. There are no god damn pickles, you cant have them even if you want them. So their is no way their employees could get contraception coverage in the first place.
Yet despite ALL of that, this case was not laughed out of court as it rightly should be, its actually made it all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States.
By the way, I guess I should be glad their is literally NOTHING pressing, no major legal issues or disputes, no laws being challenged, or even no more legitimate challenges to the Obamacare contraception mandate and exception, so that the court can spend time on this inane petty conspiratorial hallucination.
Oh and the other day, the Supreme Court issued a temporary order on this case.
They told the Nun's they DO NOT have to fill out the official government form to request an exception.
Instead the Nuns only have to give all the information that would have been on the official form to the government on a non official form.
In otherwords, instead of telling the Cashier they dont want pickles on their Big Mac, the Nun's can now take out their cell phones, call a friend, tell the friend they dont want pickles, then handing the cell phone to the cashier so the friend can tell the cashier about the "no pickles".
After the SCOTUS order the Nus' promptly filled out their information, upsidedown backwards, and in lemon juice, using the Cyrillic alphabet while writing left handed, so that no one could ever possibly read it without knowing the super secret handshake.
I'm kidding of course(At least I think I am, but who knows as crazy as this case is). But the Nun's and the church are treating this like a MAJOR victory.
Which is actually kinda ironic, given what this "victory" did.
Assuming you believe the Church should not have to request an exemption, this ruling still means you have to request an exemption. So its basically a different colored wrapper on your Big Mac.
Not much of a victory, especially for something thats supposed to be a "moral imperative". Your still doing the thing you morally object to doing, it just now looks like your not doing it.
Nor is that the only irony. Most of the other catholic lawsuits revolve around the idea that the exemption isnt large enough, or easy enough to get, especially as it relates to privately owned businesses run by Catholics
This ruling actually makes it HARDER to get an exception. After all, how do you know what information you need to give the government to get an exception, if there is no where to go where the information is all laid out for you in a standard unchanged order?
You dont, unless you copiously double check everything. You cant just fill out every blank on the page, as you could with say your taxes to get your refund, because their is no page.
So I hope you have the time to figure it all out on your own, and the time to get the information together and the resources to figure out if you'd qualify in the first place.
If not, I dont really like your chances if getting that exemption. God help you if you miss something, you wouldnt even know what it was you were missing.
So yea, I dont see this working well for any Catholic small business owners.
BUT if what you wanted was a headline that said "We win" and wanted to win on a issue you claim to believe in, while not actually doing anything that would anger the 99% of your own practitioners that dont agree with you, then this really is the major victory they are acting like.
I mean think about it. The Church won (for the moment), took a stand for their religious convictions, while affecting no actual real change that might show the divide between their convictions and their followers actions.
But no, the church would never be that hypocritical and deceitful. They would never ever turn a blind eye to the morality laid out in the bible, and only pretend to be fore it while actually letting their followers ignoring it in order to survive as an institution and not face mass dissertation. (pun intended)
Which is why we all remember our "uncles" fucking our mothers as children when our "fathers" couldnt get the job done........
Sunday, January 26, 2014
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Meet Regina Egea, the woman who may bring down Chris Christie
So I know, you read the headline and went who the hellis Regina Egea?
Well let me not keep you in the dark for long.
Regina Egea will be the reason Chris Christie may be impeached and/or resigns.
Now I know, none of this is making sense, so let me start from the beginning
Chris Christie's entire defense/denial of knowledge for bridge-gate, rests on the idea that he is basically incompetent.
On September 9, 2013, until September 13 lanes leading off the GW bridge in NJ were closed in what now appears to be an act of political retribution by Chris Christie.
Now according to Gov. Christie he didnt know anything about his administrations involvement Bridge-gate until January 8th. And even after that he doesnt know anything.
This despite having his office issue an official denial of involvement/dismissal of the idea as "Crazy" on September 17th.
Now look that alone actually isnt a problem, Im sure all politicans have to issue "this shit is crazy" disclaimers to a lot of conspiracy theories, and then they forget all about them and move on. It's what happens next that is the problem.
As can be seen in the video above, on December 2nd Christ Christie is forced to directly address and deny the controversy.
4 days later, Christie appointed official, David Wildstien, who ordered the lanes closed, resigns because of the controversy.
Now for most people, when someone resigns over a scandal you've been asked about for 2 /2 months and just had to personally deny, you'd probably want to look into that. But then again, your competent and Gov. Christie wants you to believe he's not.
Which is why, as shown on the Video, on December 12th Christie responds to being asked if he's looking for any evidence of a crime or cover-up with "why would I"?
And lets be honest, thats a reasonable question. I mean why would you care that a person you gave power too used that power to abuse the people you work for? clearly not a problem....*sarcasm*
But even if Christie did actually think the scandal was over and that was it, you'd think he'd want to make sure or know why?
Especially considering that the next day he personally announcing the resignation of Bill Baroni, Wildstein's boss and also directly involved in the lane closing and currently (at that time) under investigation.
But hey again, why ask questions? its only two people who have resigned. I mean everyone just sees a resignation letter and tells the person. "hey have a nice life" and never asks why they are leaving.
Well clearly at some point, Christie changed his mind, because at the end of that video, December 23rd 203, Christie says "I asked my staff to give me a full briefing"
Which is kinda weird because 16 days later, when firing his deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly for sending the email telling Wildstein and Baroni to close the lanes, Christie claims he didnt know anything about it until then.
Even weirder though in that same press conference, he claims he asked his staff about it 1 month ago. That would make it approximately December 8th, a good 4 days before he told a reporter he wasnt and wouldnt be looking into it. Also did he forget he already knew when he fired Kelly and only remembered later? whats up with that???
And again, its kinda odd you ask your staff about their involvement in something you say you had no reason to think they were involved in until a month after you asked them. Just saying.
By the way, when asked why Kelly did it, Christie says:
"I have -- I have not had any conversation with Bridget Kelly since the email came out. And so she was not given the opportunity to explain to me why she lied because it was so obvious that she had. And I'm, quite frankly, not interested in the explanation at the moment."
So we wind up back at square one, just like with Wildstein, you see absolutely no reason to look into anything because its not remotely possible anyone else could have been involved, the thing MUST be over.
Oh by the way did I mention in the same speech, Christie also removed his support from a former aide, and campaign manager Bill Stepien who had left to take over the state GOP because that guy was involved in it too?
So thats his second "one staff member who lied to him." Must suck to work with so many untrustworthy people.........
And it turns out not the last. Hang on we are almost back to Regina Egea.
See after he took office the second time a lot of his senior staff left to do other things (quite normal) including the aforementioned almost head of the state GOP. Another staffer who left was Chief of Staff Kevin O'Dowd, Christie's pick to be the states new Attorney General, and the person therefore who would investigate Bridge Gate. Well assuming he gets confirmed, because as of now Mr. O'Dowd's confirmation has been delayed due to his name showing up in some of the Bridge Gate emails. OOPS, that's awkward......
Anyways Mr. O'Dowd's move created a vacancy for Chief of Staff, a vacancy that was filled by Regina Egea.
Which is kinda awkward given what happened yesterday.
See by Saturday it was discovered that WAAAAY back on September the 13th, the New York appointed head of the Port Authority, the organization that oversees the GW bridge and employed Wildstein and Baroni, and also the man who had lifted the lane closures, had sent an email about the closures, calling them possibly illegal and mentioning an investigation would be starting to Gov. Chris Christie's office.
Now you will remember that on September 18th, Christies office dismissed the claims of an intentional closure as crazy....even though it turns out they had been notified 5 days prior to that claim.
or at least he sent it to Christie's Director of the Authorities Unit of the Governor's Office, Regina Egea.
Now unlike many other Christie staffers connected to this, who all CC'ed, forwarded or emailed each other, there is no other evidence that Egea had anything to do with Bridge Gate.
Which means she likely did her job as passed the email along to her boss, Governor Chris Christie.
Which is kinda a big problem for the governor seeing as how he's on record repeatedly saying he didnt know anything about it until at least December, and also telling people their was no need to investigate.
And that ignores the optics of the one person who knew about this and wasnt connected to the scandal getting a MASSIVE promotion (maybe to buy silence?).
Now I suppose its possible Egea will fall on the sword, and have some way to prove that she was in on it from the beginning and therefore had been warned by Kelly or O'Dowd, or Stepien not to forward those messages to the Governor, but if she cant, Christie better buckle up cause its going to be a bumpy ride, especially since the incoming speaker of the State Assembly has said he would be open to impeaching the Governor if it can be proven he lied in the cover-up.
Some people never learn, the cover up can be as bad as the crime........
Well let me not keep you in the dark for long.
Regina Egea will be the reason Chris Christie may be impeached and/or resigns.
Now I know, none of this is making sense, so let me start from the beginning
Chris Christie's entire defense/denial of knowledge for bridge-gate, rests on the idea that he is basically incompetent.
On September 9, 2013, until September 13 lanes leading off the GW bridge in NJ were closed in what now appears to be an act of political retribution by Chris Christie.
Now according to Gov. Christie he didnt know anything about his administrations involvement Bridge-gate until January 8th. And even after that he doesnt know anything.
This despite having his office issue an official denial of involvement/dismissal of the idea as "Crazy" on September 17th.
Now look that alone actually isnt a problem, Im sure all politicans have to issue "this shit is crazy" disclaimers to a lot of conspiracy theories, and then they forget all about them and move on. It's what happens next that is the problem.
As can be seen in the video above, on December 2nd Christ Christie is forced to directly address and deny the controversy.
4 days later, Christie appointed official, David Wildstien, who ordered the lanes closed, resigns because of the controversy.
Now for most people, when someone resigns over a scandal you've been asked about for 2 /2 months and just had to personally deny, you'd probably want to look into that. But then again, your competent and Gov. Christie wants you to believe he's not.
Which is why, as shown on the Video, on December 12th Christie responds to being asked if he's looking for any evidence of a crime or cover-up with "why would I"?
And lets be honest, thats a reasonable question. I mean why would you care that a person you gave power too used that power to abuse the people you work for? clearly not a problem....*sarcasm*
But even if Christie did actually think the scandal was over and that was it, you'd think he'd want to make sure or know why?
Especially considering that the next day he personally announcing the resignation of Bill Baroni, Wildstein's boss and also directly involved in the lane closing and currently (at that time) under investigation.
But hey again, why ask questions? its only two people who have resigned. I mean everyone just sees a resignation letter and tells the person. "hey have a nice life" and never asks why they are leaving.
Well clearly at some point, Christie changed his mind, because at the end of that video, December 23rd 203, Christie says "I asked my staff to give me a full briefing"
Which is kinda weird because 16 days later, when firing his deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly for sending the email telling Wildstein and Baroni to close the lanes, Christie claims he didnt know anything about it until then.
Even weirder though in that same press conference, he claims he asked his staff about it 1 month ago. That would make it approximately December 8th, a good 4 days before he told a reporter he wasnt and wouldnt be looking into it. Also did he forget he already knew when he fired Kelly and only remembered later? whats up with that???
And again, its kinda odd you ask your staff about their involvement in something you say you had no reason to think they were involved in until a month after you asked them. Just saying.
By the way, when asked why Kelly did it, Christie says:
"I have -- I have not had any conversation with Bridget Kelly since the email came out. And so she was not given the opportunity to explain to me why she lied because it was so obvious that she had. And I'm, quite frankly, not interested in the explanation at the moment."
So we wind up back at square one, just like with Wildstein, you see absolutely no reason to look into anything because its not remotely possible anyone else could have been involved, the thing MUST be over.
Oh by the way did I mention in the same speech, Christie also removed his support from a former aide, and campaign manager Bill Stepien who had left to take over the state GOP because that guy was involved in it too?
So thats his second "one staff member who lied to him." Must suck to work with so many untrustworthy people.........
And it turns out not the last. Hang on we are almost back to Regina Egea.
See after he took office the second time a lot of his senior staff left to do other things (quite normal) including the aforementioned almost head of the state GOP. Another staffer who left was Chief of Staff Kevin O'Dowd, Christie's pick to be the states new Attorney General, and the person therefore who would investigate Bridge Gate. Well assuming he gets confirmed, because as of now Mr. O'Dowd's confirmation has been delayed due to his name showing up in some of the Bridge Gate emails. OOPS, that's awkward......
Anyways Mr. O'Dowd's move created a vacancy for Chief of Staff, a vacancy that was filled by Regina Egea.
Which is kinda awkward given what happened yesterday.
See by Saturday it was discovered that WAAAAY back on September the 13th, the New York appointed head of the Port Authority, the organization that oversees the GW bridge and employed Wildstein and Baroni, and also the man who had lifted the lane closures, had sent an email about the closures, calling them possibly illegal and mentioning an investigation would be starting to Gov. Chris Christie's office.
Now you will remember that on September 18th, Christies office dismissed the claims of an intentional closure as crazy....even though it turns out they had been notified 5 days prior to that claim.
or at least he sent it to Christie's Director of the Authorities Unit of the Governor's Office, Regina Egea.
Now unlike many other Christie staffers connected to this, who all CC'ed, forwarded or emailed each other, there is no other evidence that Egea had anything to do with Bridge Gate.
Which means she likely did her job as passed the email along to her boss, Governor Chris Christie.
Which is kinda a big problem for the governor seeing as how he's on record repeatedly saying he didnt know anything about it until at least December, and also telling people their was no need to investigate.
And that ignores the optics of the one person who knew about this and wasnt connected to the scandal getting a MASSIVE promotion (maybe to buy silence?).
Now I suppose its possible Egea will fall on the sword, and have some way to prove that she was in on it from the beginning and therefore had been warned by Kelly or O'Dowd, or Stepien not to forward those messages to the Governor, but if she cant, Christie better buckle up cause its going to be a bumpy ride, especially since the incoming speaker of the State Assembly has said he would be open to impeaching the Governor if it can be proven he lied in the cover-up.
Some people never learn, the cover up can be as bad as the crime........
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Rand Paul is a trained monkey (AKA yet another thing Rand Paul doesnt understand)
So I'm half tempted to invent an excuse as to why this is so late. Something like "Well I wanted to wait to do a Stupidest comment of the year blog" or something like that, and while this comment would qualify the honest truth is I'm late on this because I've been busy (read lazy).
Anyways as long time readers, or anyone who follows me on Facebook will know, I've long been collecting a list of things US Senator Rand Paul doesnt understand, and to be honest its an ever growing list.
Well the latest entry on the list of things from Senator Paul came late last year (or early last month if you prefer), when the federal budget deal was signed without an extension of unemployment benefits, which a lot of people were not happy about, given the still incredibly high number of people out of work.
Rand Paul however defended his vote as follows when asked by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday:
"I do support unemployment benefits for the 26 weeks that they're paid for. If you extend it beyond that, you do a disservice to these workers."
Now the thing you have to understand about Rand Paul is that he is a trained monkey. See you can train a monkey to throw darts at signs on a wall (by the way they have a stock market fund run on that very idea), but the Monkey doesnt actually understand what its doing, doesnt understand WHY it needs to do it, it just knows that if it throws the dart, it gets a banana. And see thats basically what Rand Paul is doing here, except that in his case, there is also a group who will give him a banana if he doesnt throw the dart.
Which is why in the space of two sentences he comes out for AND against unemployment insurance, he just wants both banana's for saying what both sets of people want to hear.
Now maybe you think I'm being a bit harsh, I mean Rand Paul does distinguish between unemployment before and after 26 weeks, by pointing out that unemployment is only paid for for up to 26 weeks. So presumably the disservice he's talking about is financial right? has something to do with increasing the debt now to fund unemployment isnt good, or something around those lines. Well you might think so, but you'd be WRONG. in his very next sentence Senator Paul says this:
"There was a study that came out a few months ago, and it said, if you have a worker that's been unemployed for four weeks and on unemployment insurance and one that's on 99 weeks, which would you hire? Every employer, nearly 100 percent, said they will always hire the person who's been out of work four weeks.
When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you're causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy. And it really -- while it seems good, it actually does a disservice to the people you're trying to help." "
And here's where it becomes clear Rand Paul is really just reaching for as many banana's (read: Support, campaign donations, votes) as possible and lacks the skill to decide which banana is bigger, which one he wants more, which would be more long term benefit to him or any other skill most people use when trying to decide their own self interest.
Now you note in the first two sentences Rand Paul is taking about <26 weeks vs >26 weeks, but from that point on out he's talking about 4 weeks vs 99 weeks.
Why the switch? well turns out Rand Paul pulled the 26 week number out of his ass....but its not an entirely random number. See turns out there are actually TWO types of unemployment, and the time you can stay on either varies from state to state. Now as it turns out in Kentucky the number of weeks you can stay on STATE based unemployment insurance is 26 weeks (the number of weeks you could hypothetically stay on any kind of unemployment in Kentucky is 63 weeks, every after week 26 is federal insurance). Take any other state and both of those numbers can change.
So basically in order to get the home state banana, Rand Paul gave the home state number.....even though his next sentence actually suggested 26 weeks would be bad.
See according to the study Paul cited he claims, the less time you collect unemployment the better, 4 weeks for example is better than 99. So by the same logic, 4 weeks is better that 26 so Kentucky should cut back on unemployment benefits.
In fact nothing Rand Paul has suggested does anything to defend the idea of 26 weeks being ideal, except that they are all ready paid for, which is his attempt to get the fiscal conservatives banana, since we cant fund things beyond the date they are already paid for. Granted the X number (depending on state) of weeks after state insurance runs out are also already paid for, but he cant acknowledge that, since doing so would cost him the banana's of the small government libertarian crowd who dont believe the government can or should do anything, paid for or not.
So in order to get all four of those banana's he has to take a random position he cant actually defend, and that his defense pokes holes in. The worst part about all of it though, is he has NO IDEA that is actually the case, he actually thinks he found a "legitimate" way to get all those banana's. Because he doesnt actually understand what his own information is telling him.
Maybe you caught it a few paragraphs up when I said "See according to the study Paul cited he claims, the less time you collect unemployment the better", but that's not actually correct. What the study actually says, is the less time your UNEMPLOYED the better. Collecting unemployment is used only as a way to measure how long the person has been unemployed.
By the same token the reason the 4 week person looks better than the 99 week person is because its believed the 99 week person has lost a much greater amount of their job skills, may need to be retrained, may not be as up to date as the 4 week person.
No employer looks at how long you took unemployment on your resume.....they look at how long you were out of work. In fact, in all the interviews I have ever had for any job ever, I've never once been asked how long I have been on or was on unemployment. I have however had to convince several people that the 4 year gap in my work record (from when I went to college) wasnt a real gap (because of college)....some werent convinced, and clearly since I was in college I wasnt getting unemployment.
But that simple fact is beyond Rand Paul, he seems to think based on the end his own statement ("When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you're causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy" )that if we take away people's unemployment at a number he randomly made up [26 weeks] people would be better off based on that fact alone on week 27 than if we didnt. Because in Rand Paul world, the only thing sitting between you and a magically created job is the fact that you have on your resume that you were on unemployment insurance over an arbitrarily picked length of time.
Now I will give Rand Paul credit for one thing, he is right, being unemployed for 99 weeks, heck being unemployed for 26 weeks is a problem we need to fix. But heck probability demands that even a monkey with a dart is right on occasion, MonkeyDex (the stock fund I mentioned earlier) massively outperformed the market in its first year of existence. But being right doesnt change the fact that its still a monkey with a dart, with no actual understanding of what its actually doing, and no real way to learn or change anything.
Anyways as long time readers, or anyone who follows me on Facebook will know, I've long been collecting a list of things US Senator Rand Paul doesnt understand, and to be honest its an ever growing list.
Well the latest entry on the list of things from Senator Paul came late last year (or early last month if you prefer), when the federal budget deal was signed without an extension of unemployment benefits, which a lot of people were not happy about, given the still incredibly high number of people out of work.
Rand Paul however defended his vote as follows when asked by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday:
"I do support unemployment benefits for the 26 weeks that they're paid for. If you extend it beyond that, you do a disservice to these workers."
Now the thing you have to understand about Rand Paul is that he is a trained monkey. See you can train a monkey to throw darts at signs on a wall (by the way they have a stock market fund run on that very idea), but the Monkey doesnt actually understand what its doing, doesnt understand WHY it needs to do it, it just knows that if it throws the dart, it gets a banana. And see thats basically what Rand Paul is doing here, except that in his case, there is also a group who will give him a banana if he doesnt throw the dart.
Which is why in the space of two sentences he comes out for AND against unemployment insurance, he just wants both banana's for saying what both sets of people want to hear.
Now maybe you think I'm being a bit harsh, I mean Rand Paul does distinguish between unemployment before and after 26 weeks, by pointing out that unemployment is only paid for for up to 26 weeks. So presumably the disservice he's talking about is financial right? has something to do with increasing the debt now to fund unemployment isnt good, or something around those lines. Well you might think so, but you'd be WRONG. in his very next sentence Senator Paul says this:
"There was a study that came out a few months ago, and it said, if you have a worker that's been unemployed for four weeks and on unemployment insurance and one that's on 99 weeks, which would you hire? Every employer, nearly 100 percent, said they will always hire the person who's been out of work four weeks.
When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you're causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy. And it really -- while it seems good, it actually does a disservice to the people you're trying to help." "
And here's where it becomes clear Rand Paul is really just reaching for as many banana's (read: Support, campaign donations, votes) as possible and lacks the skill to decide which banana is bigger, which one he wants more, which would be more long term benefit to him or any other skill most people use when trying to decide their own self interest.
Now you note in the first two sentences Rand Paul is taking about <26 weeks vs >26 weeks, but from that point on out he's talking about 4 weeks vs 99 weeks.
Why the switch? well turns out Rand Paul pulled the 26 week number out of his ass....but its not an entirely random number. See turns out there are actually TWO types of unemployment, and the time you can stay on either varies from state to state. Now as it turns out in Kentucky the number of weeks you can stay on STATE based unemployment insurance is 26 weeks (the number of weeks you could hypothetically stay on any kind of unemployment in Kentucky is 63 weeks, every after week 26 is federal insurance). Take any other state and both of those numbers can change.
So basically in order to get the home state banana, Rand Paul gave the home state number.....even though his next sentence actually suggested 26 weeks would be bad.
See according to the study Paul cited he claims, the less time you collect unemployment the better, 4 weeks for example is better than 99. So by the same logic, 4 weeks is better that 26 so Kentucky should cut back on unemployment benefits.
In fact nothing Rand Paul has suggested does anything to defend the idea of 26 weeks being ideal, except that they are all ready paid for, which is his attempt to get the fiscal conservatives banana, since we cant fund things beyond the date they are already paid for. Granted the X number (depending on state) of weeks after state insurance runs out are also already paid for, but he cant acknowledge that, since doing so would cost him the banana's of the small government libertarian crowd who dont believe the government can or should do anything, paid for or not.
So in order to get all four of those banana's he has to take a random position he cant actually defend, and that his defense pokes holes in. The worst part about all of it though, is he has NO IDEA that is actually the case, he actually thinks he found a "legitimate" way to get all those banana's. Because he doesnt actually understand what his own information is telling him.
Maybe you caught it a few paragraphs up when I said "See according to the study Paul cited he claims, the less time you collect unemployment the better", but that's not actually correct. What the study actually says, is the less time your UNEMPLOYED the better. Collecting unemployment is used only as a way to measure how long the person has been unemployed.
By the same token the reason the 4 week person looks better than the 99 week person is because its believed the 99 week person has lost a much greater amount of their job skills, may need to be retrained, may not be as up to date as the 4 week person.
No employer looks at how long you took unemployment on your resume.....they look at how long you were out of work. In fact, in all the interviews I have ever had for any job ever, I've never once been asked how long I have been on or was on unemployment. I have however had to convince several people that the 4 year gap in my work record (from when I went to college) wasnt a real gap (because of college)....some werent convinced, and clearly since I was in college I wasnt getting unemployment.
But that simple fact is beyond Rand Paul, he seems to think based on the end his own statement ("When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you're causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy" )that if we take away people's unemployment at a number he randomly made up [26 weeks] people would be better off based on that fact alone on week 27 than if we didnt. Because in Rand Paul world, the only thing sitting between you and a magically created job is the fact that you have on your resume that you were on unemployment insurance over an arbitrarily picked length of time.
Now I will give Rand Paul credit for one thing, he is right, being unemployed for 99 weeks, heck being unemployed for 26 weeks is a problem we need to fix. But heck probability demands that even a monkey with a dart is right on occasion, MonkeyDex (the stock fund I mentioned earlier) massively outperformed the market in its first year of existence. But being right doesnt change the fact that its still a monkey with a dart, with no actual understanding of what its actually doing, and no real way to learn or change anything.
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