The Rand Paul campaign was really proud of the $2500 their campaign received from the National Right to Work for Less Committee. Of course there is a very good reason for that. The National Right to Work Committee is an extremist group and as we all have seen Rand Paul is an especially extremist candidate. He opposes the right of Americans to have and maintain a middle-class and falls into the most helpless realm of corporate apology and welfare condoned by his new mentor, Mitch McConnell. The difference is, Rand Paul was undisciplined enough to tell you how Republicans really feel about you.
Yes, Rand Paul has been caught on video telling you that your wages must fall because you are just too fat and sassy:
But of course as always with the greediest and least patriotic among us every policy they invoke is designed to enrich the very few and to hell with the rest of us. We should just be glad they pass out peanuts every week and fancy folks like Rand Paul will even talk to us. Of course, Rand Paul opposes Employee Free Choice too:
Paul also opposes the Employee Free Choice Act. Conway is for the measure. The Employee Free Choice Act, supported by a bipartisan coalition in Congress, would enable working people to bargain for better benefits, wages and working conditions by restoring workers' freedom to choose for themselves whether to join a union.
And of course in a state that is not Right to Work for Less Rand Paul could be particularly dangerous. The ideology he subscribes to is not only elitist, but it is a sham. In "Right to Work" states workers make far less money and have far less spending power:
A lot of people don't understand right to work really means the right to work for less. With right to work for less, abuses come from the bosses.
Right to work for less laws aren't designed to produce family-supporting jobs. They are geared to drive down workers' wages and put more money in the boss's wallet.
Paychecks in right to work states are a lot skimpier than in non-right to work states. Everywhere, union wages are higher than nonunion wages. The average paycheck of a worker in a right to work for less state is some $5,333 a year less than in other states ($35,500 compared with $30,167). Weekly wages are $72 greater in states with bargaining rights than in right to work for less states ($621 versus $549).
And as Barry Craig, history professor, author, and union member from right here in Paducah, Ky points out this ideology is particularly dangerous for our country and history bears this out:
The more money people earn, the more money they have to spend-and will spend. The old Kentucky State AFL-CIO "Union Wages Buy More" license plates are true.
But what happens when working people can't afford to buy consumer goods? Read some history, the subject I teach at a community college.
Employers engaged in union-busting and a race to the bottom on workers' wages in the 1920s. The result was the Depression the 1930s, America's worst economic crisis.
A major cause of the Depression was the weak purchasing power of U.S. workers. Many historians and economists believe the United States probably wouldn't have experienced the Depression had business and industry owners paid workers more. Then and now, more money in workers' hands translates into more money in store cash registers.
Of course all this is no surprise. We have known here for quite some time that Rand Paul is nothing new, exciting or different. He is a typical Corporate Republican and subscribes to the same vision of greed and idiocy that crashed our economy two years ago. Under his vision our country acquired massive debt, suffered incompetence and deregulation that led to disaster after disaster, and found millions of it's workers unemployed.
Lets hope Kentucky voters have the good sense this fall to ask themselves who they think needs to see their wages rise. Rand Paul, the Chamber of Commerce, the National Right to Work Committee, or them.
