You might be amused by UAW Shreveport Local Rep Morgan Johnson's
comment about Sen Vitter that
"He'd rather pay a prostitute than pay auto workers."
but there is all kinds of truth floating around in that statement. You need to take a look at his record on various topics to see exactly how true it is.
Try to keep a few real basic things in mind about economics, labor is a commodity like any other when it is not organized and ordinary commodity market outcomes happen. Illegal immigration happens almost entirely due to one factor, better paying jobs. It doesn't happen because English is such a wonderful language or because the US has universal health care or because we have such a great reputation for treatment of minorities, it happens because of money. Vitter is one of the proponents of fences, yes fences to keep those illegals out and - if you haven't noticed - to keep them illegal. A damn fence does nothing to address the problem other than make it somewhat inconvenient, so the flow will continue. That continuing flow feeds the flooding of the labor market so that the commodity labor like any other commodity becomes less valuable. Simply put wages decline.
Now the converse is true of organized labor. Unions raise wages, not only in the sector they have contracts but also in any nearby or related sectors. There is a reason for the concentration of foreign makers in Southern right to work states, there is a reason a right to work state like Idaho exports so many contractors across the Oregon border, contractors going broke in Idaho. There is a reason plutocrats and by extension Republicans detest unions and it ain't ideological, it's all about who gets how big a portion of the pie. There is in reality a limit to the size of the pie. At a point the plutocrats don't get incredibly wealthy if they pay labor much because there is a limit to what the consumer will pay for a particular item.
I liked Morgan's comment but it doesn't go nearly far enough, we are his whores - any of us who work with our hands for a living. The dirty skanky whores are the illegals, bottom of the barrel easily dismissed and derogated and truly subject to police action if they get uppity. A bit more difficult are the ordinary whores, the unorganized labor, not so easily denigrated and not nearly as subject to policing, the simplest method is to replace them with the skanks and by association drive down their appeal. The high class hookers are a real problem, they have connections and an exclusivity so targeting them is a matter of opportunity, such as when their owners are having problems and would like some help.
You find something unhappy in the comparison of labor to prostitutes? Why? The most common rationalization for falling incomes and failing prospects is that laborers made unfortunate life choices, they could all have gone to colleges and been billionaires if only they'd chosen properly. Just like those hookers, bad choices made and the derogation of society for doing something unattractive. You like that less? Labor sells its body for a dime, these jobs eat the physique for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and some of them eat the mind. Enough years of construction will destroy joints and beat the cardiac system to pieces, line work does most of that and further grinds with mindlessness and repetition. Then add in that what is done is not respectable, the hands get dirty and calloused rather than paper cuts and it isn't carpal tunnel syndrome it's blown knees and shoulders and backs. There is no on paper product that generates money on the back of other paper generated money, there is some distastefully concrete item. Bend over son, you're getting screwed.
Vitter is a whoremonger and tool of the pimps and his incidental connection to the DC Madame is only instructive, not definitive because you can replace his unfortunate self with Corker or McConnell or any other of Southern Republican Senators with Labor in their cross hairs. McCain was crucified by that bunch for proposing to do something counter to the plutocratic interest with illegal immigrants. You have some idea it was low class rednecks? It was the plutocratic power structure that sank him using its tools of racism and class fear. Certainly, they played the losing end of the bargain against illegal immigrants, they've done it for years with the same tools. They and everyone with two live brain cells that talk to each other knows that to do something meaningful to curb illegal immigration the job magnet has to be removed - but that involves the other end of the scale, employers, people with actual money who support the Republican corruption machine.
No this isn't the corruption of selling a Senate seat, this is the basic corruption of the fabric of American life and values. It is the permanent creation of an illegal disenfranchised serf class. It is the absolute devaluation of labor, the creation of the perception of a monkey class of knuckle draggers unworthy of real compensation and a chance at a stable life. It is part and parcel of the fiction of trickle down economics or more sinisterly mislabeled supply side economics. It is a deliberate return to the Robber Baron Era, the very best model for it. If it means the destruction of the economy for the foreseeable future it is worth it to break unions and let the plutocrats pick up the broken pieces at fire sale prices. Who exactly do you think will own the broken factories and foreclosed houses? People with money? Well, of course people with money and who exactly will that be? Certainly not Toyota line workers whose pay will go into the toilet the second there is no union to keep away from the doors.
Does Vitter have enough brainpower to figure out whose tune he's playing on the whorehouse piano? If you've listened to him it is very doubtful you believe it and I certainly don't. He's the nickle's worth whore monger playing for the real Madame. Most of these dolts are just dancing at the ends of the money strings of their Madames, they're almost pimps, wanna be's jerking around without a real cut of the graft and profits thinking they're somebodies because they can fool people into voting for something they don't even believe. Oh yeah, when wishes are fishes we'll all be billionaires and they'll be an honest bunch. When wishes are fishes.
