The jerks

After reading his morning paper, a deeply concerned Democrat congressman decides to call his boy at the Interior Department. He places the call and a woman answers.

“Good morning,” she says. “You have reached the U.S. Department of Interior, Office of Insolent–I mean, Insular Affairs. How may I direct your call?”

“Hello, this is George. I want to talk to my Danny boy.”

Danny immediately comes on the line. “Hi, George, how are you doing today?”

“Actually, not too good, Danny boy.”

“Oh, and why is that?” asks Danny boy.

“Well,” says George, “I just read my morning paper and I am very unhappy about the latest U.S. unemployment report.”

“I know, I know,” exclaims Danny. “I read about it too. The figure is way too good–the best in 30 years. A four percent unemployment rate–now how can you beat that? It keeps getting better and better, with no economic depression in sight. It’s just so unreasonable. I do wish it would get worse. I do wish we had ten percent unemployment.”

“Gosh, me too,” says George. “We really do look like a couple of dimwits. How can we keep claiming that the CNMI’s garment industry robs hardworking Americans of their manufacturing jobs when our unemployment rate remains so great?”

“Yes,” admits Danny. “Our four percent unemployment rate is even lower than Japan’s rate. In fact, it is lower than virtually every European nation. It is probably the lowest unemployment rate in the entire industrialized world.”

“Yeah,” laments George. “I also understand that 13,000 new American manufacturing jobs were created in the current economic boom–the longest economic expansion in our history.”

“What should we do, George? My good office has been making a big deal about the CNMI’s high unemployment rate. We can’t keep saying that they are taking away American jobs. It’s absurd. Their economy is nothing compared to ours.”

“No, Danny. I want you to keep harping on their high local unemployment rate. I know we can’t keep saying that they are taking away our American jobs. But we can at least say that their imported aliens are taking away their own local jobs. Therefore, we have to protect them from unfair alien worker competition through federalization. Now do you see what we have to do?”

“Yeah, George, but if they have no alien workers, they won’t have enough employees to staff their economy, which means foreign investment will dry up, since there will be no workers to work their capital into profits. And if that happens, there won’t be much tax dollars. Short of total federal funding, how will their local people have any jobs?”

“Danny, don’t be such a jerk.”

“Hey, Ben Fitial just called me that.”