State Senator Michael Baumgartner (R-Dickensian England) has filed a bill that would require the unemployed to perform community service as a condition of receiving unemployment benefits.

An unemployed individual shall be eligible to receive waiting period credits or benefits with respect to any week in his or her eligibility period only if the commissioner finds that ... he or she performs at least eight hours of community service for every four weeks of unemployment benefits received....

Community service can be an honorable thing, but not when it is imposed by the state. Under those conditions it is a punishment—something judges sentence people to do when they are convicted of crimes. And that's how Baumgartner and the nine House Republicans who have co-sponsored a companion bill obviously view the unemployed: as criminals.

Hell, by that logic, why give these lazy, worthless scum unemployment benefits at all? Why not just herd them into poor houses and work gangs? I mean, what have these parasites ever given back to the state (other than, you know, the average 2 percent payroll tax their employers paid into the state's unemployment compensation insurance fund—a fund that fully pays for state unemployment benefits—money that might otherwise been used to pay higher wages)?