HUFFINGTON
10.07.12
ANGER MANAGEMENT
state, county and nation are in a
crisis situation, economically,”
Lenoir County Commissioner
Oscar Herring, a Democrat, told
the reporter in 2002. “We’ve got
to do something about it, and
Stephen was a man with ideas.
He impressed me.”
In January 2003, disaster
struck LaRoque’s district again
when an explosion destroyed a
pharmaceutical plant, killing six
people and injuring 36 in the
town of Kinston. That February, LaRoque championed a bill
to make sure surviving workers
would receive unemployment
compensation because their jobs
had been lost.
“The folks in Kinston really
need this,” LaRoque told reporters, according to the Associated
Press. “They’ve got rent to pay
the 1st of March and they’ve
got grocery bills.”
By 2011, however, well into
the most severe economic downturn since the Great Depression,
many Republicans at the state and
federal levels had grown tired of
treating unemployment as a disaster. In North Carolina, when
it came time to pass a law so the
state’s long-term jobless could
continue receiving federal unem-
ployment insurance, Republicans
there saw an opportunity.
They tried to use the benefits
as leverage to extract major budget cuts from Democratic Gov. Bev
Perdue. But Perdue didn’t give in,
and tens of thousands of jobless
workers became collateral damage
as Republicans held up their benefits in a legislative standoff that
dragged on for weeks. Treadway
claimed in her email to LaRoque
that her family had lost its home
to foreclosure during the impasse.
Perdue eventually defied Republicans with an executive order that unilaterally reinstated
the benefits. She cited unnecessary eviction notices in her order. “The people I hear from say
they can’t keep the lights on,”
Perdue said. “Banks are ready
to foreclose.”
For Republicans like LaRoque,
the issue was a philosophical one.
Unemployment was at least partly
a failure of personal responsibility, rather than solely an economic
problem beyond the control of
individual workers.
But for North Carolina’s longterm unemployed, the battle over
jobless benefits was personal.
“You and your party promised
to represent us when we needed
you and you have failed miserably,” Treadway said to LaRoque
in their email exchange. “I sin-