Are you a politician looking to distract constituents from your votes to kill hundreds of thousands of jobs nationwide? Don’t want your neighbors to notice your support for massive outsourcing of American jobs? If so, you’re in luck; U.S. Senator Scott Brown has a solution for you: host a job fair!
Sure, the few job seekers you might connect with employers won’t hold a candle to the 1.9 million jobs you stamped out by voting against the American Jobs Act – especially when a portion of your guests aren’t currently hiring. But hey, at the very least, you can hand out trips to Afghanistan like candy!
We wish we were kidding, but that’s exactly what Scott Brown did yesterday in Worcester – trotted out a well put together dog-and-pony show at a local campus in the hope of distracting voters from reality. Unfortunately for the Bay State’s junior senator, dozens of unemployed residents gathered both inside and outside the jobs fair to shed a light on Brown’s real anti-jobs record.
The cast of concerned job-seekers fanned out across the campus, ensuring that residents attending the fair knew the truth about Brown’s eight votes to end unemployment benefits. They spread the word about his vote to gut 400,000 jobs for teachers, fire fighters and police officers across the country, along with his vote to keep 11,000 construction workers in the unemployment line. And they were sure to point out that Scott Brown did all that while protecting tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas.
Of course, Brown’s handlers weren’t very fond of the effort to educate the public on their senator’s job-killing agenda. They didn’t waste much time before dispatching security to clear the rabble – but it was too little, too late. The entire Worcester State campus had already heard the news: Scott Brown’s real record on jobs amounts to little more than layoffs, wage cuts, and massive unemployment.
As it turns out, nothing’s less fun – or productive – than a Scott Brown job (killing) fair.
In the empirical world, yes, Senator Brown as a member of the Pain Caucus is eager to bring us heaps more fiscal austerity. Job fairs, after all, don’t create jobs; they merely fill them.
But politically, the symbolism of Mr. Brown holding a job fair is brilliant. It communicates that he ‘cares’ about jobs, that he wants to ‘do something’, that he’s ‘hands on.’ Contrast Senator Kerry — or even candidate Warren. One has to use one’s head to realize that they favor policies that expand employment. Brown’s theatrics require less thinking to be politically effective.