Right to Loony Left: Hold My Beer

Thanks to Donald Trump and his coalition of power-hungry cranks, the days when the Republican Party was the "sane party" are over.

(For the benefit of all the tribalists out there who will assume that this makes me a woke, commie, far-left Democrat: There is no sane party. Two "alternatives" can suck at the same time. Both parties are in the death-grip of their worst elements.)

The ridiculous, Orwellian proposals are flying at us so fast and thick that one could say that there is no need to look for them any more. Merely opening a web browser is enough, now.

That's how I learned about a Republican proposal in Ohio to start tracking job applicants who no-show for job interviews: I was looking at Ask a Manager, an advice site for people curious about workplace issues.

Alison Green, who describes herself as a progressive, gives the kind of answer I am old enough to remember being what most Republicans would have thought -- or pretended to think -- about such a ridiculous idea:

[T]o be clear, this proposal isn't confined to people receiving unemployment benefits -- they note that would be part of it, but they're proposing it would cover all job-seekers. Why? Once you take unemployment benefits recipients out of this, what part of it is the government's business? [formatting removed]

This is on top of all kinds of practical objections.

While this is hardly libertarian -- It's not the government's job to provide unemployment insurance, either. -- it's at least sane.

Green's full reply is nevertheless worth a read. Here's a part:

Then, of course, there's the obvious elephant in the room, which is that employers ghost candidates far more often than candidates ghost employers. Orders of magnitude more. The numbers of each side are so disproportionately out of whack that, again, you have to ask: how is this a problem that needs a government solution? If they want to do a public service, they'd be helping more people if they tracked employers that mistreated candidates, not the other way around -- not something that will ever happen, of course, but come on... [links and formatting removed]

Again, the government's job isn't to do anything other than protect individual rights, but even considering the proposal as Alison does -- on the premise of a benevolent nanny state -- tells you something.

Thanks to Trump's horrible example and precedents, all kinds of little dictators are crawling out of the woodwork.

-- CAV