If This Is In the Jobs Speech, Let's Just Cancel It

Of all the dumb ideas...

President Obama said during a Tuesday radio show that hiring discrimination against the jobless "makes absolutely no sense" and that he supports legislation to ban the practice.

Sybil Wilkes, a co-host of the "Tom Joyner Morning Show," asked the president about long-term unemployment and businesses that tell applicants, "If you're unemployed, we don't want to hear from you."

Obama noted that the long-term unemployed have a tougher time landing jobs and said a stronger overall economy would make employers less choosy. "But we have seen instances in which employers are explicitly saying we don't want to take a look at folks who've been unemployed," the president said.

"Well, that makes absolutely no sense, and I know there's legislation that I'm supportive of that says you cannot discriminate against folks because they've been unemployed, particularly when you've seen so many folks who, through no fault of their own, ended up being laid off because of the difficulty of this recession."

I give up.  I frigging give up.  Probably the worst part of this pandering statement is that Obama actually gets it right that the way to make employers less choosy would be to have them hiring in a stronger overall economy.  But instead of actually pursuing that goal, he'd rather try to impose a solution that forces them to hire one group of people over another.  Government picking winners and losers instead of the marketplace, again.

There is a decent chance that the President was merely saying something to soothe his progressive base.  If so, it's still stupid, but it's understandable.  But if he's honestly going to support creating a protected class consisting of long-term unemployed people, he's officially validating the view point that says he's clueless on business issues because he's never worked in the private sector.