Joe Miller’s Wife Collected Unemployment Benefits: The Hypocrisy Of The Republican Tea Party Knows No Bounds

By Yashwanth Manjunath

The hypocrisy of the new Republican Tea Party candidates knows no bounds. First we were graced with the unbelievable hypocrisy of Sharron Angle. Angle wants to dismantle Social Security and Medicare and repeal the new health care law for being a “government takeover of health care.” None of that prevents her from having no job and living off of her husband’s pension while receiving “government-run health care.” As bad as Sharron Angle’s hypocrisy is, her Republican Tea Party comrade Joe Miller might be even worse.

Joe Miller is one of these new “Tenth Amendment” fanatics who thinks that every government aid program ever created is unconstitutional and should be left to the states. If Miller ever opened a legal textbook, or read a few Supreme Court cases, he’d have realized these matters have already been litigated and re-litigated with their constitutionality upheld.  According to him, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and even unemployment benefits are unconstitutional, as he reveals in his interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.

Given his extreme position towards unemployment benefits, you would think that neither Miller nor his wife, nor anyone else in his immediate family has ever collected unemployment benefits, right? Well, think again.  As it turns out, his wife has in fact collected unemployment benefits. Miller recently made the following statement to Alaska blogger and Lisa Murkowski supporter Andrew Halcro:

My wife, Kathleen, did work for me as a magistrate judge clerk/secretary while I was a part-time Federal Magistrate judge from 2002 to 2004. Before 2004 there was a long-standing practice, both in Fairbanks as well as other areas in the United States, that due to the time commitments of being a lawyer and a part-time Federal Magistrate judge the same individuals that worked in your private law offices also worked in your federal magistrate office – many of those being family members. Before even applying for the Fairbanks Magistrate judgeship I spoke with members of the federal court concerning the employment of Kathleen. It was confirmed that she could work for me in my office. After leaving my office Kathleen did receive unemployment benefits for a short period of time.

Say it ain’t so, Joe! Joe’s wife, Kathleen Miller, was in fact terminated because of a violation of nepotism rules. Apparently, it isn’t okay for a judicial magistrate to hire his wife. Like the 15 million or so people currently out of work, Miller went on to collect unemployment benefits after her firing. If this is not enough Joe Miller hypocrisy, it turns out that he’s also received $7,235 in subsidies from the U.S. Department of Agriculture between 1991 and 1997, despite his platform of slashing federal government handouts.

Enough is enough. I do not know about everyone else but I am tired of these loathsome and hypocritical Republican Tea Party candidates who are adamant about slashing government aid programs, while living off of the government dole themselves. If someone wants to run for office and impose their extremist ideology on the rest of us, that’s fine, that’s what elections are for. But enough of the blatant and disgusting hypocrisy.

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