But WHY are there no workhouses??

Whenever I think of Sen. Joni Ernst, I think of how she tried to pretend she had been a folksy, humble farm girl by completely fucking up an anecdote involving bread bags during her SOTU rebuttal. And incidentally, implied that Iowa moms regularly tried to get their kids maimed every time it rained.

So color me unshocked that she seems very concerned that employers have to actually work to attract employees, rather than go out and dragoon them.

“‘Help wanted.’ I see the signs in nearly every county I visit in Iowa on my 99-county tour,” said Ernst, flanked by a giant ‘HELP WANTED’ sign on an easel for those somehow incapable of imagining such a placard.

Problems Ernst identified included more than 100 vacancies in the Iowa school system. The state is offering $50,000 retention bonuses to convince school teachers, administrators and nurses to stick around so unvaccinated right wing fuckloons can scream at them about critical race theory and grooming and whatever else is rattling around in their sick little noggins.

Really, I can’t imagine why public schools in a state that made it illegal to require face masks or require proof of vaccination might be experiencing a teacher shortage. Such a mystery it is. Must be the socialism. Or REALLY late term abortions are picking off school staff.

“America is facing a shortage of teachers, doctors, nurses, child care providers, construction workers, truck drivers, pilots, and even accountants.”

Those were all the jobs she could think of that weren’t political hack, bread bag forger or farm subsidy recipient. So what’s her solution to the problem? (??Of low unemployment??)

Ha ha, trick question! She’s a Republican. Republicans don’t solve problems. They either make them or make them up.

She went on to slam the Democrats’ plan to bolster enforcement of the tax code by hiring more IRS agents.

Uh-huh. Republicans seem really unsettled by any suggestion that the IRS would increase its workforce. Wonder why?

Anyway, I’ve often thought the only thing that stops the right wing from pushing for a return of chattel slavery is they begrudge the tiny bit of expense that owning slaves might create. Plus, slave owners in the US usually lived in close proximity to their victims and their spiritual descendants sure as fuck don’t want that.

However, I’m sure some group of weirdo sadists is trying to figure out how to get a wider range of labor out of the country’s bloated prison population. Not only would that allow prison owners to increase the size of the labor force that the state pays for, it would drive up unemployment for citizens who haven’t been imprisoned yet, creating more exploitation (and prisoners). Planning probably involves beefed up versions of the shock collars they use on their dogs or insta-decapitation torcs.