"Right to Work"

Scott Walker proves that pranks don’t work. Four years ago, when Walker first waged right-wing jihad on Wisconsin’s public sector workers, an old comrade of mine, “Buffalo” Ian Murphy, pulled off the single greatest phone prank ever. Posing as billionaire David Koch’s voice, Murphy managed to swagger his way past Gov. Walker’s aides and into the governor’s handset for a long 20 minute call, which revealed Walker as a grotesquely slavish Koch towelboy. Four years later: Walker is a top presidential contender, the Kochs are worth over $100 billion, Koch-backed groups passed “Right To Work” in Wisconsin…and “Buffalo” Murphy is an ex-con, jailed in 2013 for brandishing an unconcealed, fully loaded dildo at a mob of homophobic religious fanatics. As the saying goes, “The Koch is mightier than the prank.”

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A couple of years ago, I wrote an article for NSFWCORP (since acquired by Pando) exposing the ugly, racist roots of the whole “Right To Work” movement, tracing it back to the brains behind “Right To Work”: Vance Muse, the loonie anti-Semitic, anti-black Texan who coined “Right To Work” in the early 1940s, and worked Karl Rove-like to push through the first “Right To Work” laws in the South in the 40s and early 50s. Since a lot of people these days are not in tune with labor union struggles and what “right to work” laws even mean, my article exposing the KKK racist who started “Right To Work” created a bit of a PR headache for the union-busting movement.

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In the 1920s and 30s, before Muse invented “Right To Work,” he was notorious for lobbying against women’s suffrage, against outlawing child labor, against the 8-hour workday, and for “Americanization of the Supreme Court” to remove Austrian-born Jewish Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. Muse and his groups were investigated by numerous committees and the FBI, but he always landed on his feet thanks to his wealthy sponsors, ranging from Texas oil and cotton magnates, to northern petrochemicals titans like the DuPonts and the Pews.

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Today most of us, including liberals and progressives, couldn’t tell you what Right To Work is or why it’s bad. But Silicon Valley’s favorite politician, Rand Paul, is the Right To Work candidate for president. Rand Paul’s senate staff is led by people from Stan Greer’s National Right To Work Committee — including Doug Stafford, executive director of RAND PAC and Paul’s former chief of staff, previously vice president of the National Right To Work Committee.

No surprise then that Senator Rand Paul has been pushing for a federal “Right To Work” law covering all states, whether they like it or not. With all the Silicon Valley money pouring into his 2016 campaign coffers, a President Paul may just get his Right To Work wish.

  Pando