FOCUS SHOULD BE ON JOB CREATION

I think Sen. David Thomas' proposal to drug-test
people in South Carolina before they can receive
unemployment benefits is one of the most asinine
ideas that I have ever heard of in my lifetime.

I am a native Greenvillian and graduate of Wade
Hampton High School and Furman University. As of
January 2009 I was employed with a global
engineering company in Greenville =AD until major
contracts were canceled by customers and all
contract and many direct employees (like me) were
laid off, placed on =93leave of absence=94 or our
jobs were cut. With all of this going on, just
exactly how do you think that I have felt this
past year without a job? And it is not because I
have not tried to find a job that I am still
unemployed, as I have sent literally hundreds of
resumes locally and all over the country. My only
prospect was going to work as a contractor and
then deploy to Afghanistan in order to have a
job. Although to some, this prospect would be
fabulous, it was not an opportunity that I wanted
to explore and therefore I still find myself
unemployed. So on top of all of this, then I had
the pleasure of reading about Thomas' drug testing proposal.

Do you think that all people who are unemployed
are functional illiterates who stay at home and
smoke crack all day? I do not even drink alcohol!
Why don't Thomas and his fellow S.C. politicians
focus on job creation and education as top
priorities for South Carolina instead of some cry
for attention and other grandstanding techniques
such as this drug testing proposal for the unemployed?

S. E. Frazier
Greenville