Topic: CNSNews.com
CNSNews.com has closely following President Trump's rhetoric in playing down the effects of the government shutdown. Now, managing editor Michael W. Chapman is directly attacking the furloughed workers themselves.
Chapman's Jan. 4 blog post first complains that the furloughed workers have jobs to return to, unlike regular folks who get fired or laid off (emphasis in original):
The partial government shutdown, now in its 14th day, affects an estimated 800,000 federal workers, nearly all of whom will receive their back-pay when the shutdown ends. In the private sector, however, more than 1.5 million Americans are laid off or fired every month and most of them do not get to return to their jobs.
Simply, nearly twice as many private sector workers lose their jobs every month compared to the federal workers who are temporarily inconvenienced for a few weeks during the shutdown.
Of course, virtually none of those who were fired or laid off were being used as pawns in a political argument, but Chapman isn't going to mention that inconvenient fact.
Chapman then attacks the furloughed workers -- who, again, are not being allowed to work and earn a paycheck through no fault of their own -- as lazy people who are "essentially on vacation" (with a bonus potshot at Sen. Chuck Schumer for defending federal workers):
To put it in perspective, over the last 12 months, more than 18,000,000 Americans lost their jobs; in the shutdown, 800,000 federal workers either worked without pay temporarily or they stayed home, and they will get paid when the shutdown ends.
Yet the liberals, big government hangers-on, and the leftist media complain because a National Forest worker is essentially on vacation. They rarely ever complain about private sector layoffs. They claim that it's part of the nature of capitalism. But when government employees have to stay home, the sky is falling, according to liberals.
Sen. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said today that "food safety inspectors ... are working without pay ... American farmers can't get loans from the USDA" and "our National Parks are suffering."
Welcome to tightening your belt, Sen. Schumer, regular Americans do it every single day.
(Schumer, incidentally, has worked in government on the taxpayers' dime since he was 25 years old -- 43 years now.)
To drive home the whole "vacation" thing, Chapman includes a stock photo of a beach, despite offering no evidence that any furloughed government worker is vacationing at a beach this very moment.
Chapman sure is judgmental about how others make their money for a guy sponging off wingnut welfare -- that is, other people's money.
