Jobs Saved or Created: Armed Security to Guard Unemployment Offices

Here is a must-read for naysayers ready to indict current regulatory policies’ ability to create or save jobs!

With December looms the deadline for folks on federal unemployment benefits for 99 weeks. Desperate “ninety-niners” have demanded extension after extension. Early December means the really-real end to this income stream. And the 99-ers aren’t happy.

Indiana state officials have hired armed security guards to protect 36 unemployment agencies around the state.

Now: These are positions that the government will certainly count as “created” new jobs. Yet these are guards hired to protect state agents against citizens so far down on their luck that they are desperate.

No violent incident spurred this measure of protection; this is merely the method governments choose to cover their own backs with regard to a desperate citizenry:

Lotter said the agency is merely being cautious with the approach of an early-December deadline when thousands of Indiana residents could see their unemployment benefits end after exhausting the maximum 99 weeks provided through multiple federal extension periods.

“Given the upcoming expiration of the federal extensions and the increased stress on some of the unemployed, we thought added security would provide an extra level of protection for our employees and clients,” he said.

Put another way: Here are security guards armed, state-backed, and ready to shoot should their less-employed neighbors storm the unemployment offices demanding further help.

What caused the job gap in the first place was an attitude of excessive regulation, overprotection, and the promise to back up private businesses no matter what they do.

When in the course of human events it becomes clear that the government has failed, it is the duty of the people to demand a change. This election Tuesday the American people made perfectly clear their frustration with failed government policies.

Perhaps these unemployment offices in Indiana should find a better way to counsel job seekers, rather than wrap themselves in further state protection, not blind but tangibly uninterested in what the people have to say.