Frank Luntz really is great at conning the American public with words. He's the king of conservative catch phrases which are most excellent when you try to fool swaths of people with false narratives.You've probably heard the term "right to work" state. To the ordinary person it might sound like a participating state is guarantying their constituents cushy jobs with pensions, health care benefits, free barbecue and two weeks of vacation time to start. They also might think it's the 28th amendment to the Constitution of the United States.
Anyway, all the braggadocio you hear on Fox and Fox Business about how totally awesome it is if you reside in a "right to work" state because you'll be gainfully employed and then those nasty unions can't destroy your lives and corrupt your children's morals. So how's that working out for them now?
One of the favored conservative talking points during this prolonged recession (and yes, it is one long continuous downturn for most Americans, regardless of how GDP-obsessed economists cook the growth numbers) has been that unemployment in mostly Southern, so-called "right to work" states has been stronger, while unemployment in more progressive states has been higher. These talking points, of course, have totally ignored the myriad factors involved in creating those statistics, including that most of those jobs tend to be near minimum wage; that low real estate prices, not business-friendly and jobs-friendly policies, are often driving growth in those areas; that many of the gains in these states are due to energy-related booms rather than core economic successes; and that the comparative lack of social safety nets in many of those states often makes life more difficult even for those who have been lucky enough duckies to get one of those low-wage jobs.
But even with those advantages, it looks like the "economic miracle" in the right-to-work states won't be a conservative talking point much longer:
When the unemployment rate rose in most states last month, it underscored the extent to which the deep recession, the anemic recovery and the lingering crisis of joblessness are beginning to reshape the nation’s economic map.
The once-booming South, which entered the recession with the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, is now struggling with some of the highest rates, recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show.
Several Southern states — including South Carolina, whose 11.1 percent unemployment rate is the fourth highest in the nation — have higher unemployment rates than they did a year ago. Unemployment in the South is now higher than it is in the Northeast and the Midwest, which include Rust Belt states that were struggling even before the recession.
For decades, the nation’s economic landscape consisted of a prospering Sun Belt and a struggling Rust Belt. Since the recession hit, though, that is no longer the case. Unemployment remains high across much of the country — the national rate is 9.1 percent — but the regions have recovered at different speeds.
Now, with the concentration of the highest unemployment rates in the South and the West, some economists and researchers wonder if it is an anomaly of the uneven recovery or a harbinger of things to come...read on
Unfortunately, truth doesn't matter to conservative operatives, he beltway media and Roger Ailes so you won't hear anything about the struggles of these "right to work" states in context with their policies of banning unions which creates lower paying jobs. Bill O'Reilly has been opining this sentiment all year long:
'Even though the country is in dire economic trouble, largely because of liberal policies, they simply will not acknowledge that.'
See, it's our fault even when it isn't. We can't handle the truth. In Conservative-ville, Ronald Regan never tripled the federal debt, George Bush left America with a surplus, Obama raised federal taxes to historic levels and Al Gore attacked Iraq.
