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The Over-Employed and the Mal-Employed
By Janet M. LaRue
6/24/2011 

Roughly 14 million people are formally labeled as unemployed, but “there’s probably 22 million to 23 million people who are unemployed, mal-employed or under-employed,” said Andrew Sum, an economics professor at Northeastern University in Boston, as reported by DailyCaller.com.

The professor didn’t define “mal-employed,” but I’m thinking it includes the over-employed—those in full-time jobs way over their heads who screw up life for the rest of us. 

Consider Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, who’s blown through nearly $2 trillion taxpayer dollars trying to fix the economy. He admitted Wednesday that he’s clueless about why the economy has a “soft patch,” and insists that Congress increase the debt ceiling. He said that “the Fed still had several tools at its disposal to pump up the economy.” 

Can somebody get word to him that a monkey wrench isn’t a fiscal tool? 

Next are members of the House of Representatives who supposedly have the expertise on gainful employment—but not so much in their own houses. 

Rep. John F. Tierney (D-Mass.) sits on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. He also tinkers at reforming the tax code. His wife Patrice, a jewelry designer, can’t attend his “Women Taking the Lead for Tierney” fundraiser because she’s under house arrest after pleading guilty to “aiding and abetting the filing of false tax returns by her brother,” according to Redstate.com. 

Maybe her failed venture as a tax-preparer will revive her career as a jewelry designer. There’s a huge underserved market for designer GPS ankle bracelets. 

Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) is understandably “committed to a full employment economy.” His wife will increase Detroit’s 11.1 percent unemployment rate when she completes her three-year federal prison sentence for bribery and corruption during her tenure on the Detroit City Council. 

Conyers could create jobs by hiring a crew to mow his grass and paint his dilapidated house. Better still, he could stay home and do it himself. Instead, he’s in the People’s House pushing his 22-year-old reparations bill, “H.R. 3745, “Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act,” and trying to increase taxes on the rest of us. 

Despite being kicked off the federal bench by the Senate following his impeachment by the House for bribery, Democrat Alcee Hastings got himself another federal job in 1992 representing Florida’s 23rd District in Congress. The Office of Congressional Ethics is investigating Hastings on a charge of sexually harassing a woman on his staff. 

Rest assured. Hastings says he’s “committed to improving women’s lives, empowering them in the workforce, and ending gender inequality.” 

Over in the taxpayer-funded “private” sector, Al Gore, CEO of Greening Gore, announced his latest theory on what’s overheating the planet—Women are stupid. 

The Goracle said in a New York appearance Monday that we have to “stabilize the population. … You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children [they] have, the spacing of the children,” according to The DailyCaller.com. 

The father of four is channeling the infamous population control eugenicist Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. Gore wants girls and women educated about where babies come and where to go to get rid of them. 

The average number of children under 18 per family household in the United States is .94. The peoples of Europe are dying in the literal sense of the word. In Germany and Italy the annual number of deaths exceeds the number of births. Gore should stop spreading his gasbag global warming theories and start funding rehab facilities for sexually harassed massage therapists. 

“We now have more idle men and women than at any time since the Great Depression,” according to Mort Zuckerman, editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report. As the adage warns, however, some of the “idle” are busy in the “Devil’s workshop.” 

New York Atheists President Ken Bronstein is hell bent on renaming a street that was named in honor of seven Brooklyn firefighters killed on 9/11. Bronstein claims that changing Richard Street to “Seven in Heaven Way” violates the “separation of church and state,” according to Fox News. He says that atheists have concluded “there’s no heaven and there’s no hell.” David Silverman, president of American Atheists, also wants the city to remove the sign. “It implies that heaven actually exists,” Silverman told Fox News Radio. 

You can tell they’ve never been in a falling building, which is a lot like a foxhole.

Some over-employed lawyers on the Supreme Court, past and present, share the blame for opening the door to absurd “separation of church and state” claims such as Bronstein’s. The Court’s Establishment Clause jurisprudence is convoluted and virtually incomprehensible. 

Lastly, we have a poster boy for Prof. Sum’s “mal-employed.” 

A 65-year-old cross-dressing business consultant clad in women’s blue underwear, black stockings and spike heels boarded a US Airways flight from Ft. Lauderdale to Phoenix on June 9. I’m guessing he chose the TSA grope instead of the scan. One of several objecting passengers snapped his picture, a striking pose, indeed. 

He doesn’t want his name published, according to the San Francisco Chronicle: “I have a lot at stake here. I’m a business consultant and would be extremely vulnerable to being discredited.” Yes, especially if his client is the Men’s Wearhouse. 

It’s probably better if he stays employed. The last thing the jobless need is seeing this guy in line at the unemployment office. 

And about that monumental mal-employment problem on Pennsylvania Avenue, don’t get me started. 

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