MORNING CALL: Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Corbett came under fire Friday when he said some jobless Pennsylvanians would rather collect unemployment than return to work. During a campaign appearance in Elizabethtown, Lancaster County, Corbett told a reporter from Pennsylvania Public Radio that “the jobs are there,” but he’d been told by business owners that, “one of the issues, and I hear it repeatedly – one of the individuals said, ‘I can’t get workers. People don’t want to come back to work while they still have unemployment.’ ” Corbett told the radio outlet that a business owner had “literally” told him that job-seekers were saying they’d “‘come back to work when unemployment runs out. That’s becoming a problem,” Corbett said. Corbett added, “The jobs are there. But if we keep extending unemployment, people are going to sit there … I’ve literally had construction companies tell me, ‘I can’t get people to come back to work until … they say, I’ll come back to work when unemployment runs out.’ ” […]A state resident receiving benefits gets an average weekly payment of about $310, said Troy Thompson, a spokesman for the state Department of Labor & 
Industry. “The way it’s set up, a person collects roughly half of their former wage,” Thompson said. “It’s not set up for individuals to get a living income off of.” About 100,000 state residents were dropped from the unemployment rolls when their benefits expired in June. A further 100,000 are expected to lose their benefits in July. And by year’s end, about 492,000 people are expected to lose coverage, Thompson said. MORE
RELATED: The race to be Pennsylvania’s next governor is the closest it’s been to date, but Republican State Attorney General Tom Corbett still holds a 10-point lead over his Democratic opponent, Allegheny County Chief Executive Dan Onorato. A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in the state finds Corbett earning 49% of the vote to Onorato’s 39%, his best showing so far this year. Four percent (4%) prefer some other candidate, while eight percent (8%) are not sure. A month ago, Corbett was ahead 49% to 33%. MORE
WIKIPEDIA: A welfare queen is a pejorative phrase used in the United States to describe people who are accused of collecting excessive welfare payments through fraud or manipulation. Sensational reporting on welfare fraud began during the early-1960s, appearing in general interest magazines such as Readers Digest. The term entered the American lexicon during Ronald Reagan’s 1976 presidential campaign when he described a “welfare queen” from Chicago’s South Side.[1] Since then, it has become a stigmatizing label placed on recidivist poor mothers, with studies showing that it often carries gendered and racial connotations.[2][3] Although American women can no longer stay on welfare indefinitely, the term continues to shape American dialogue on poverty. MORE