The Bobbsey Twins, Mussolini Briggs and Clueless Vick, winging it on underemployment.

I'm reminded of asking someone what time it is and getting told how a clock works... without getting the time you asked for.

These questions, which these two utterly failed to answer, are particularly difficult.  For them.

These two prove that beyond question:

"What can be done to help the underemployed in low income families in the 18th District?" were apparently too difficult to figure out a response.



Briggs starts off defining terms that everyone already knows because in reality, he has no clue.

"Okay.  Underemployed…  that means that we have a lot of people out there that uhh… are working, but they're not working to what they are capable of… (Unintelligible) that you said unemployed… and that's a different question."

And who can argue with that?

"But underemployed to me means people that are not working up to their expectations... how do you address that? 

That, that stems from when we were in the recession.  yes, some of the jobs are coming back.  But guess what, they're not the jobs that left.   

There are a lot lower income type jobs.  That's what's been seen almost across the country and here, to.  The jobs that are coming back are paying less than the ones that left.  And that's why frankly, they're looking at raising the unemployment is because, I mean the, uh, minimum wage is because if the bulk of our society, a lot of people in our society are making only minimum wage now."

Actually, efforts to raise the minimum wage are because of the leftist socialist meme, and has absolutely nothing to do with whatever "jobs are coming back."

Further, far from being "the bulk of our population," according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.1 percent of the workforce makes minimum wage.

That's not the "bulk."  That's not "a lot of people in our society."

It's a falsity drummed up by the left in the hopes that their fellow fringe-leftists will be stupid enough to vote democrat without care or concern of the multiple, negative impacts on the economy generally and small business particularly of such a massive increase in the minimum wage.

How do we address that? 

We remember that, particularly in Washington State, leftists like Mussolini have been in charge for decades.

We just say "tough, tough, you know, what good is six dollars an hour and even make less." No, I think if you're going to have people that are fully capable of working, but they can't find a job, you have to sustain them in some way, so they can find a better job… 

What $6 an hour has to do with that is beyond me.

Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.  Washington's minimum wage is $9.32, unless you're 14 or 15, then it's 85% of the state minimum wage (Currently $7.92)

Training and education is one of those ways. 

Seriously?

When I say education, that's not always a four-year institution.  That, that means unions, that have, uh, programs to train people and, and as a training for union jobs.  That means having, going to the skills, skills center and having people with different kinds of skills to find work.  Not just a four year education... so that's what you need to do in my opinion four under, underemployed people is to offer them, uh, livable wages that you can and to encourage education and training."

In other words, Mussolini failed to answer the question.  This is, in fact, what we refer to as a "non-answer," or, in the parlance, "a sincere non-response."

As you might expect, Vick's answer wasn't any better.

In fact, Brandon didn't even try to answer the question. He has mastered the art of talking a lot, and saying absolutely nothing... and what he did say wasn't true, for the most part.

"Ann, thank you for that question, that is a very important question, especially for the 18th district... when you look at trends, you look at math, you look at numbers (unintelligible) it seems to be an upward trend but the 18th District Cowlitz County, a lot of places in our area really still are struggling, um, actually this morning, it's funny you would ask this question, I was sitting down with the director of the, uh, Cowlitz economic development committee, and he was saying (that) for every 10 people that are looking for a job, graduating from high school, what have you, we have one job opening. So people are just graduating high school and moving up, because, is not like they're not finding a family wage job, they can't flip a burger; I mean it's that bad in parts of our county and Southwest Washington and it's something that we need to pay very close attention to.

Let's review the question again, shall we?

"What can be done to help the underemployed in low income families in the 18th District?"

What part of Cowlitz County is in the 18th District, again?

None.

So, once again, Brandon Vick is showing that he's paying more attention to things outside the district than he is inside the district.

Ahh something that I saw happening, uh, and even not as a legislator but as the economy was good we started to move away from our natural resources in our trade and some of those things that really put people to work for a long time and now that, uh, the economy's slowing were trying to build back up those jobs don't exist. We've heard Weyerhaeuser a few weeks ago and, they're, you know, just sittin' there saying, "look, we have the jobs that we have, we are not going to have any more, a. Because the housing market's kinda bumping along, b. because we can't go out there and take more trees, we can go out there make more paper products, we can go out there because a government regulations and if Gov. Inslee has his way with the water quality standards, they're not gonna be in Longview anymore. 

I mean, that place employs 10% of the city of Longview.

Look, I admit it, sometimes these questions really are tough. But it looks an awful lot like Brandon has no idea what the hell he's talking about.

He tells us, simply, that Weyerhaeuser is not going to have any new jobs.

I'm the sort of guy that occasionally checks that sort of thing out.  So what's one of the first things I read when I plug in "weyerhauser employs longview" in the Bing search engine?

1. Weyerhaeuser Co. poised for wave of hiring in Longview

   tdn.com/news/local/weyerhaeuser-co...in-longview/...001a4bcf887a.html

   Nov 13, 2013 · Weyerhaeuser Co. officials said Wednesday they are hiring new employees across all sectors of the company’s Longview operations to meet rising …

excerpt from the story:

By the end of this year, Weyerhaeuser says it will have hired about 150 new workers in Longview during 2013. Next year, officials said, the company expects to hire at least 30 new pulp mill workers and another half dozen on the docks. The company was unable Wednesday to specify the net gain in Longview employment. 

Nationwide housing starts are expected to hit 900,000 this year, nearly triple the 2008 low point during the recession, said Cindy Mitchell of the Washington Forest Protection Association, a timber industry trade group, said during the meeting.

I've got to wonder: who the hell is Brandon talking to?

Are there two different Weyerhaeusers in Longview?

The newspaper reports that all Weyerhaeuser employees for all of Cowlitz County equals 1317.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics indicates that there are approximately 41,000 workers in the Longview workforce. 10% of the workforce would be approximately 4100 workers. Thus to suggest, as Brandon Vick suggested that the 1300 employees at the Longview plant represents 10% of the entire city of Longview is as absurd as it is inaccurate.

Now I get why Brandon said this, because frankly he had to say something. So he put together a series of wild guesses that bore no reflection on reality. This does not make me more likely to vote for him.

I am, in fact, reminded of that old saw: figures don't lie, but liars do figure.

We done a lot of things in the last two years: 

We put up a portal that seems simple;  a portal where a few want to start a business you can go and figure out which licenses you actually get to open your business,  lowered the BNO rate uncertain service industry from 1.8 to 1.5% that's money they can be invested in tools, machinery, employees... uh we need to keep down the track; we found common areas of interest and it is about finding, or creating an environment where businesses a. know what's going to happen and it's predictable, but b. where it makes sense for them to even be here. 

Um, that's a problem we been dealing with, and I'd be happy to keep working on it.

What's problematic with Brandon's response, is it fails by any stretch of the imagination to answer the fricking question.

And this is the skill set that Brandon Vick brings to the table. If he doesn't know… Then he'll just make it up. And that is why, among other reasons, I don't want him anywhere in my government.