Shortly after posting an earlier query regarding how the AP reporter, Christina Silva, dug up Tera Burbank from among all of Nevada’s unemployed, Christina advised me via Twitter that she found Tera at the same place I did – at a dog-and-pony-show-disguised-as-a-town-hall-meeting put on a few weeks ago at the Grant Sawyer Building.
Indeed, as it turns out, I had blogged about Tera’s testimony at that meeting way back on February 2nd and had completely forgotten about it until Christina reminded me. The name just didn’t ring a bell and I hadn’t put the two together. Not that it changes anything; my opinion of Tera back then was pretty much the same as it is now. Here’s what I wrote:
Forget installing metal detectors in government buildings; what we really need are truth detectors. Had they been in place at the Grant Sawyer Building last weekend, perhaps we’d have been spared the sob story from one Tara Burbank, an unemployed construction worker who thinks Nevada taxpayers should be footing the bill for her retraining for a new career in accounting.
If you believe Mrs. Burbank – but why would you? – despite unemployment benefits and food stamp programs, if tuition is raised to offset Gov. Sandoval’s proposed budget cuts to the university system, she claims she and her unemployed husband “will have to choose between paying for their classes and feeding their children something besides Ramen noodles.”
“We’re talking about, literally, choosing between tuition and groceries,” Burbank whined. Sorry, but I gotta call “bullsh*t” on this one. And besides, there’s nothing wrong with Ramen noodles. Been there, done that.
In any event, let me acknowledge that it was entirely reasonable and appropriate for Christina Silva to have found Tera Burbank thanks to Tera’s outspokenness at the town hall meeting which, apparently, was more important than, you know, spending that same time looking for a job.
I still think Christina should have noted Tera’s obvious liberal political activism in her story; as that’s how she found Tera in the first place. And I also think that if poor widdle Tera has to choose between Ramen noodles or tuition (bullsh*t!), she should at least be buying her Ramen noodles at Food4Less instead of the higher-priced Smith’s.
