Perhaps we should have expected the attacks on construction workers’ prevailing wages, and union members contract wages when Republicans took over the West Virginia Legislature. We were warned they didn’t like blue-collar guys making decent money. But I have to admit I am shocked that they are now prepared to attack even the minimum wage in their quest to drive down paychecks and pad corporate profits.
Leading Republican Senator Charlie Trump specifically contemplated getting rid of even the minimum wage, as reported on MorganCountyUSA.org just this week. We are really coming to the point where you have to ask if there is any person in West Virginia earning a paycheck that Republicans don’t want to cut? First they didn’t want painters making $18 per hour, now they don’t want anyone making $8 an hour? How low can they go?
It’s not hard to see where this is coming from when you look closer. The endless millions in campaign contributions from out-of-state corporate groups have done their work on the mind of the modern Republicans. They now simply take their marching orders from billionaires like the Koch brothers, and nothing is sacred, not even the tiny minimum wage. Corporate America says jump, and Jeb Bush, Bill Cole, and JB McCuskey say “how high?”
Moneyed interests brought the party of “longer hours and lower wages” to power and moneyed interests are getting what they paid for. What in the world would make Jeb Bush go on TV and say Americans need to work longer hours when they are already struggling? With so many working people still living in poverty or barely keeping their heads above water, why would Senator Trump and Cole come out for repealing the paltry minimum wage? There’s only one reason: money.
From Home Yesterday.
In a dismally low-turnout election in November, Kentuckians elected Matt Bevin, a Republican Tea Party favorite, to the governor’s mansion, marking just the third time since World War II that the state has elected a Republican governor. Now, safely ensconced in office thanks to the apathy of the electorate, Bevin is taking action to implement his brand of oppressive extremist conservative politics at the expense of the rights of hundreds of thousands of Kentucky citizens.
Preferring unilateral action to reasoned debate or listening to the will of the people, Bevin issued a series of five executive orders yesterday that seek to undo the progress made by his Democratic predecessor Steve Beshear and further oppress Kentucky residents in the name of his twisted Tea Party ideology. In the most devastating move, Bevin reversed an order issued by Beshear that restored voting rights to some 140,000 non-violent felons who have served their time in prison. Kentucky is one of a handful of states where ex-felons have to personally petition the governor to restore their voting and civil rights after completing their sentences, with the result being that almost 200,000 Kentuckians are permanently disenfranchised because of prior crimes.The victims of this injustice are disproportionately poor and African-American, to the degree that one in five African-Americans in the state are disenfranchised as a result of the practice.
Preferring unilateral action to reasoned debate or listening to the will of the people, Bevin issued a series of five executive orders yesterday that seek to undo the progress made by his Democratic predecessor Steve Beshear and further oppress Kentucky residents in the name of his twisted Tea Party ideology. In the most devastating move, Bevin reversed an order issued by Beshear that restored voting rights to some 140,000 non-violent felons who have served their time in prison. Kentucky is one of a handful of states where ex-felons have to personally petition the governor to restore their voting and civil rights after completing their sentences, with the result being that almost 200,000 Kentuckians are permanently disenfranchised because of prior crimes.The victims of this injustice are disproportionately poor and African-American, to the degree that one in five African-Americans in the state are disenfranchised as a result of the practice.
Thus Beshear’s move to restore voting and other civil rights to these ex-cons was a historic move with the potential to reshape Kentucky politics, but of course that wouldn’t do for Bevin, whose disgusting Tea Party ideology preaches that crime stems from personal deficiencies rather than societal factors, despite the fact that ex-cons who are re-enfranchised have significantly lower recidivism rates. In spite of repeated promises made on the campaign trail to uphold Beshear’s move and to stand up to other Republicans on the issue, Bevin has revealed himself to be just as much of a lying, two-timing opportunist as so many other politicians.
In another order with devastating effects on Kentuckians, Bevin reversed Beshear’s move to increase the minimum wage for state workers and contractors to $10.10 per hour, bringing it back down to the federally-mandated $7.25 per hour, a rate at which someone would have to work a nearly 60 hour work week just to safely afford rent on the average Kentucky one-bedroom apartment. Bevin also hinted that he would like Kentucky to join the host of other backwards Southern states that have no minimum wage at all, saying that “wage rates ideally would be established by the demands of the labor market instead of being set by the government,” apparently admiring the dollar-a-day wages set by the ‘free market’ in the third world.
From Occupy Democrats.
