Filed under: News, Race and Civil Rights
If you need proof that this country's economic woes are having a severe toll on families all across this country, look no further than South Carolina, where a Mother suffocated her two children and then lied to police and said they drowned when her car skidded in to a river.
Police say 29-year-old Shaquan Duley confessed to suffocating her two children after she had an argument with her mother. Duley allegedly placed her hand over their mouths. She then strapped the children into a car and drove it in to the river to fake the cause of their deaths.
And what would cause a young Mother to commit such a horrible act? Police say Duley was distraught over money troubles and unemployment.
"This was a young lady that was in trouble, in trouble in more ways than she realized," Sheriff Larry Williams told the AP. "She was in trouble and she didn't know where to turn."
Dead are 2-year-old Devean C. Duley and 18-month-old Ja'van T. Duley.
It's incredibly sad that this woman could not find someone to turn to for support and instead resorted to taking the life of her children. Who knows what psychological factors were at play in Duley's morbid decision to murder her children, but it's clear that help with money and jobs should be readily available to every citizen in this country.
"She was a Mother that was unemployed. She had no way of taking care of her children," Williams told the New York Times.
That's why its so discouraging to hear people like former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay say that unemployment benefits should not be extended because it makes people not want to work.
"You know," Delay said on CNN, "there is an argument to be made that these extensions, the unemployment benefits, keeps people from going and finding jobs. In fact, there are some studies that have been done that show people stay on unemployment compensation and they don't look for a job until two or three weeks before they know the benefits are going to run out."
Republican Senator Jon Kyl is also on the same unemployment benefits equal laziness argument.
[Unemployment] doesn't create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work," Kyl said
Others such as Ben Stein and Glenn Beck (surprise, surprise) have chimed in with similar sentiments.
Far from making people lazy, unemployment benefits keep families afloat until they can find work. No one is going to be partying it up with the small amount of money the benefits provide. Plus, it's called unemployment insurance because Americans pay in to the system while they are working just in case they need it at a later date.
In addition, the jobs just are not there. Even adults are lining up for low-wage fast food jobs that used to be filled by teenagers, and for African Americans like Duley, the national unemployment rate is higher than the general unemployment rate.
People need to be trained in jobs that are available. I worry for young people coming out of college with liberal arts degrees and tens of thousands of dollars of student loan debt.
No one should feel guilty about accessing the help that is available to them. Maybe if this Mother had more assistance, she would have made a different choice. I guess closing the deficit is more important than saving lives.