A lot of Biden voters are having a lot of Biden buyer’s remorse.
Today’s entry is author Judi Ketteler, a freelance author out of Cincinnati. In an opinion piece for NBC News, she seems stunned that Biden and Democrats in Congress are gunning to take away her ability to make a living.
Last year, like many other Democrats, I took action. I campaigned, responded to social media misinformation and donated money to candidates. I celebrated when Joe Biden was announced as the winner of the presidency and when Democrats took back the Senate…..
….But now that Donald Trump is out of office, I'm facing a painful truth: The man I prayed would become president could sign a piece of legislation that would kill my career as a freelance writer.
It's the strangest political cognitive dissonance I've ever experienced.
Right now, my party is pushing a bill called the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, or the PRO Act, in an ostensible bid to help gig workers exploited by employers who won't give them health care coverage and other benefits. But because of a problematic clause in the bill, it's far more con than pro for me. The bill could end my ability to be my own boss, set my own hours and otherwise live the American worker's dream.
As Ketteler points out, the bill uses the outdated ABC Standard for determining if somebody is an employee or not. The test is:
(A) the individual is free from control and direction in connection with the performance of the service, both under the contract for the performance of service and in fact;
(B) the service is performed outside the usual course of the business of the employer;
(c) the individual is customarily engaged in an independently established trade, occupation, profession, or business of the same nature as that involved in the service performed.
Many freelancers across the country would be negatively impacted by this bill. It’s California’s disastrous Assembly Bill 5 on steroids.
Ketteler is 100% correct when she writes:
…don't enact sweeping legislation that squashes the vast majority of independent contractors and call it part of your plan "to create an economy where everyone can succeed." It's a great slogan, and it plays well on a Twitter video, but it's hypocrisy as long as the ABC test is part of your plan to do it.
Again, she’s absolutely correct.
But this is exactly what Ketteler signed up for by voting for Joe Biden.
Joe Biden is a creature of Washington. Specifically, he is a creature of Democratic Washington. He has been intertwined with major labor unions since he was first elected to the Senate in 1972. Major labor unions are pushing the PRO Act, much like they did AB 5 in California. They are doing that because it will, ostensibly, make more people employees instead of contractors and that, eventually, such workers would unionize. And that would create more union members, and increase the political power of labor unions even more.
The fact that the employees would only unionize because of employment conditions caused by their inability to be freelancers should not be lost on anybody.
What we saw in California should have made people stop in their tracks and realize that the law was a dumb idea and that nationalizing such a proposal was going to create an economic hardship on millions of Americans. But it didn’t, because Democrats in Washington are beholden to the big labor organizations that churn up volunteers and funnel donations to these Democrats. Big Labor doesn’t care about workers, even their own members: they only care about political power. And Joe Biden’s political career is dependent upon them. What else did you really expect?
There are a lot of people who are lifelong Democrats who have been sticking their heads in the sand about what the Democratic Party is all about. Ms. Ketteler is one of many Democrats across the country who I hope are learning a valuable lesson about all of this. When Democrats say they want to take from the better off, they’re always talking about you.
They bought the ticket. Now take the ride.