An out-of-work visitor to Capitol Hill gets a glimpse of how the world looks from inside the conservative mind

Tom Toles, in the Washington Post

"This visit actually opened my eyes to how Congress thinks -- they live in a different reality. I didn’t expect to hear that they think of the unemployed as people just looking for a handout. It was shocking."

-- Janalee Filer, an unemployed worker from Pueblo, CO,
after an encounter with a staffer in her congressman's office

by Ken

Every now and then we get glimpses of what's going on in the minds, such as they are, of right-wingers. You remember the corporate solon who defended 1% privilegedness on the grounds he and his brethren are a class of Steve Jobses. It's possible that he was identifying with the Steve Jobs who eagerly exploited cheap Asian labor and in various other ways ran his business like a garden-variety corporate predator, but I have a feeling not.

IN CASE YOU WERE UNSURE, NO, THE .1% ARE NOT
JOB CREATORS, OR STEVE JOBS-TYPE INNOVATORS

From Paul Krugman's Nov. 25 NYT column, "We Are the 99.9%":

"Don't some of the very rich get that way by producing innovations that are worth far more to the world than the income they receive? Sure, but if you look at who really makes up the 0.1 percent, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that, by and large, the members of the super-elite are overpaid, not underpaid, for what they do.

"For who are the 0.1 percent? Very few of them are Steve Jobs-type innovators; most of them are corporate bigwigs and financial wheeler-dealers. One recent analysis found that 43 percent of the super-elite are executives at nonfinancial companies, 18 percent are in finance and another 12 percent are lawyers or in real estate. And these are not, to put it mildly, professions in which there is a clear relationship between someone’s income and his economic contribution."

Or there was that surreal moment when New York City's own personal Mayor Mike actually said out loud that he thinks of the NYPD as "my own army." You'd like to think he had the presence of mind afterward to ask, "Was that out loud?"

Today we get a glimpse into the mind of a Republican congressional staffer, courtesy of Coloradan Janalee Filer, whom I encountered in a post today by our "Suburban Guerrilla" colleague Susie, "Hill staffer explains to the unemployed that they're lazy." Janalee was visiting Washington "with a group of fellow Coloradans to tell our Congressman, Representative Scott Tipton, to create jobs and put Colorado back to work," and had her eyes opened in ways she hadn't imagined.

Of her own situation Janalee explains:

As a construction worker for 26 years, I moved up through the ranks, saw my wages improve over the years and really enjoyed my job. But over the past 10 years my wages steadily declined. In 2008, my wages fell to $10 an hour, that’s $2 less than what I made in 1985!

I decided to leave work and take care of my ailing grandparents for a time, trusting that I’d have a job when I was ready to return. Well, here I am trying to get a construction job now for 2 years without any luck. My unemployment insurance has run out, and I am desperate for a job.

Unfortunately, my story isn’t unique. Pueblo, where I’m from, is experiencing an unemployment rate above 10%. Every family is affected. I believe in extending unemployment insurance for other people who still qualify, who are still struggling just to get by, who are still searching high and low for work.

Which is why, Janalee says, she "marched into Rep. Tipton's office today and demanded a meeting," to try to persuade him to deal with the "crisis in Pueblo -- and across the country." Surprisingly, her group actually got a meeting with the congressman," at least "for a few minutes in the lobby." And then things started to get crazy.

When we asked [Rep. Tipton] if he would vote to extend unemployment insurance, what I heard is that he is “pondering” it. I don’t understand how there is even a question about it!

One of his aides met with us in the lobby as well. When we asked him again about if Rep. Tipton would vote to extend the unemployment insurance, he told us he had to listen to both sides and then he told us a strange story. He heard about a disheveled guy going in for an interview and purposefully not getting hired just to get an unemployment check. We all sat there for a minute in disbelief. When I realized that he was saying that my representative was considering not voting for unemployment insurance because he thinks there are lazy people milking the system, I was compelled to act.

I jumped out of my chair and told the aide that there are a lot more unemployed, hard working, good valued people in Pueblo and across Colorado who are looking for jobs than a handful who may not want work. I said, “I’ve worked for 26 years in road construction and paid into the system. Here I am, without a job for 2 years and my unemployment insurance has run out. I can’t milk the system. I want to work. What will you do for people like me?”

It was so offensive to hear him say he thought the unemployed were largely a lazy group looking for a handout. I am looking for work every day.

This visit actually opened my eyes to how Congress thinks -- they live in a different reality. I didn’t expect to hear that they think of the unemployed as people just looking for a handout. It was shocking.

Shocking indeed, but not really, you know, surprising.

#