War on Workers

Republicans have taken control of state governments in more states than I like to think about. Since this is a census year, they will get to gerrymander with impunity. Idiot working class voters who supported them will get it up the ass. Probably, they deserve it for being so stupid, but you really can't blame people for being so stupid when government has taken so many actions to keep them stupid for so many years.

Those Republican state victories, however, are likely to do more damage to working people than most of us "liberals" are likely to consider. As many as ten previously Democratic or divided states, now controlled by Republicans, are enthusiastically embracing "right to work" laws.

"Right to work" may have been the first seizure of terminology by Republicans that made Democrats look like they were the enemies of workers. Completing the phrase brings us to "right to work with full union benefits without paying union dues." Democrats ought to call them "free rider" laws — but they don't.

Right now, only about seven percent of private sector employees are union members. For the public sector, the percentage is somewhere in the thirties. The targets of the new "free rider" laws, needless to say, are the unions that still have some power — the state and local employees who still earn decent incomes while workers in the private sector continue to fall behind.

If the oligarchy is to continue leaching wealth from the middle class, the only place from which to suck it is the public sector. While the public sector unions might do more to contain the oligarchy, they are not looking ahead in any significant way. Most of them are entangled with the Obama-Clintonista crew, who continue to bend over and offer their well-used rosebuds to Wall Street and the megacorps.

Nobody is on our side. Nobody at all.