RIGOP deploys MAGA-style McCarthy tactics to smear Senate President Valerie Lawson
By Will Collette
Let's deal with some key facts about the Rhode Island General Assembly. If you get elected, you'd better not quit your day job. The annual salary for Rhode Island legislators is $19,817.
Unless you are retired or independently wealthy, everyone elected to the General Assembly has a real paying day job. Many are lawyers. Some are real estate agents, insurance brokers, teachers and cops. Some are health care providers. Some work in non-profits. Some are small business owners. Some make enough at their day jobs that they symbolically decline to take their salary.
A small number of legislators work for labor unions and, to hear it from the Republicans, only they should be disqualified from serving. Because "socialist." Yeah, if you work for a union, you must be a commie.
As you can see from their statement above, the RIGOP is really upset that the Senate elected Valerie Lawson as new President of the Senate, replacing the recently deceased Dominick Ruggerio who was also a lifelong trade unionist.
Lawson's crime in the eyes of the RIGOP is that she is also President of the National Education Association RI and doesn't plan to give up her day job.
Rhode Island is a deep-blue state with a long and proud history of trade unionism with union membership rates among the highest in the nation. So why shouldn't trade unionists serve in the General Assembly alongside all those lawyers, bankers, small business owners, etc.?
The Rhode Island Ethics Commission routinely rules on legislators' compliance with state law, either by reviewing complaints or issuing advance advisory opinions. Whether you are a banker or a union organizer, the same rules apply.
If we want a legislature where members are unencumbered by their day jobs, make the General Assembly a full-time job with salary and benefits befitting, and rules barring outside employment of any kind.
I am sick of Republicans and MAGAnuts treating organized labor as if it was organized crime. That's no more logical or fair than considering all businesspeople to be bloodsuckers.
