This is the first in a periodic series examining why so many Americans back the GOP against their interests. The series is based on excerpts from my forthcoming book in 2022 "Voting Against Themselves: the GOP's Grip on America's Underclass" (Middle Passage Press)
North Carolina Republican Congressperson Virginia Foxx was fit to be tied when she spoke to a Fox News interviewer in March 2021. The issue that got her blood boiling was the Democratic-controlled House had just passed a measure that extended labor protections for workers. Foxx railed that this was nothing but a gigantic goodie bag giveaway to unions. The relatively tame bill in effect simply restored a couple of provisions of labor law put in place by former President Obama that required disclosure of payoffs from corporations for union-busting activities. It also gave unions the right to collect fees from non-union members who reap gains from union contracts and agreements but do not pay a nickel to the union for those gains.
Foxx's media outburst against worker protections was no surprise coming from a congressional representative who for four years up until 2018 got exactly a zero rating from an array of labor organizations. They included the American Federation of Government Employees, the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the Communications Workers of America, the National Farmers Union, and the United Food and Commercial Workers. They were a virtual who's who of unions that represented legions of white, female, non-college-educated, blue-collar, and rural workers. Many of those workers were in the GOP-controlled Red States.
Foxx's rant against greater worker rights for workers many of whom in her North Carolina district almost certainly had voted for her was hardly a surprise. She was squarely in the mainstream of long-standing GOP policymakers and representatives who waged relentless war on anything that even faintly did anything to protect, enhance, and expand worker pay, benefits, and protections. Study after study amply proved that if it was a choice between a law, initiative, amendment, or presidential executive order that was pro-worker, the GOP could knee-jerk go on the attack against it.
The GOP's relentless ingrained war on workers and the poor have had countless, even embarrassing, dire consequences for millions of impoverished GOP supporters. Start with what should be the most embarrassing of all. That's that the overwhelming majority of the poorest Americans by a lop side margin reside in counties that are in the Red States. In the January 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection, a survey of just who the Trump egged on insurrectionists was revealed to no surprise that the great majority of them were white and male. It also noted that only a small percent of them were businesspersons and white-collar workers.
The bulk of them were plain bread workers. A substantial number of them were lower-income, or unemployed. The financial status of the 200 plus persons charged with federal crimes in the Capitol Building takeover was even more revealing. Sixty percent had serious financial problems. Those included bankruptcies, notices of eviction and foreclosures, bad debts, and unpaid taxes that spanned more than two decades.
The bankruptcy rate of the defendants was double the average of Americans. One in five were one step away from being booted from their homes because of non-payment. In some cases, their financial woes weren't small. There were unpaid tax bills of $400,000
Then there was the case of Jenna Ryan, whose face was plastered over newspapers when she giddily shot a video that went viral of her illegally entering the Capitol Building. Jenna filed for bankruptcy in 2012 and was still in hock up to nearly $ 40,000 on a lien for unpaid federal taxes. Ryan, facing federal charges, in a moment of epiphany, confessed, "I bought into a lie, and the lie is the lie and it's embarrassing. I regret everything."
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