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Officials Say "Capes For the Unemployed" Plan Not Super
After what must have been an epic marketing meeting, a Florida unemployment agency decided to give 6,000 red capes to the jobless as part of its "Cape-A-Bility Challenge" public relations campaign. The capes cost $14,000 (not a bad price for 6k capes actually) and featured a cartoon character named "Dr. Evil Unemployment." As one might imagine, officials are calling for an investigation to be launched. It's a good thing there are an abundance of caped do-gooders without jobs in the area who should be able to help.
Only in Florida. I can say that cause I live in the crazy-ass state.
There is a war going on for your mind.
I'm not opposed to the price tag. I think that's reasonable if spent on something motivational. What they did however, was in my opinion, demeaning to the unemployed. It's akin to your boss walking around the office and passing out candy bars for effort. Treating adults like little children is ridiculous. Lift them up, don't hold them down. The last thing these people needed while down on their luck and possibly in dire straits was for some jackass marketing person dressing them up like super heroes and playing fucking games with their self esteem. The people who thought this up should be fired in my opinion.
a Florida unemployment agency decided to give 6,000 red capes to the jobless
To simplify the task of acquiring targets to point and laugh at? This is as brilliant as having children at school that can't afford lunch stand in a line to get lunch tickets/vouchers so the other kids know who the poor ones are to ridicule.
Putting a story about the unemployed on "Idle"...
I wonder if the capes were made in China.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
I'm surprised they went public with this. Usually, these things are cloaked in secrecy.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
I wish desperately I could say I was making this up, but I am not.
Did you RTFA? They are already under investigation for using $250,000 of government money to provide "company cars" to employees and had to repay over $3M to the Federal government after they were found to have mismanaged federal unemployment funds. Something tells me this isn't just a marketing campaign. They were doing someone a favor.
Maybe but its not Government's job to make you feel empowered. The Government should not be in the business of self esteem you precious little snowflake.
Someones tax dollars however few went to buy what are basically tchotchkes for the unemployed and not even good ones like a paper weight or something most recipients could make use of. Its simply irresponsible. If that tax (read other peoples hard earned money) money was going to be allocated to the unemployed it should been something useful like a card with some interview tips on it in their mailbox, or at the very worst an extra few dollars on their unemployment checks.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
...someone might make them wear some idiotic cape!
The conservative preference for letting private agencies compete to provide such services is such because that way idiotic contractors like this bunch can get thrown out, and the contracting agency can choose from others that will compete to show they're more serious about how they put taxpayers' money to work. If this had been a government agency, the people in it couldn't be fired, and would have little to no incentive for doing a better job.
Except that in practice, that doesn't happen - governments are consistently really bad at choosing competent private contractors, signing sensible contracts with them, holding them to account when they screw up, and kicking them out to replace them with a more competent contractor when it turns out the original couldn't run a piss-up in a brewery. Conservative governments are if anything slightly worse at this. Meanwhile, actual government employees are often far more competent.