BATON ROUGE – Behind closed doors, the leaders of the GOP paymasters at LABI are perfectly frank with their own members as to the true intentions of the bill they’re pushing to attack the constitutional rights of Louisiana workers. In a video posted to their internal website, LABI leader Lane Grigsby says: “I want everyone to understand – is not a cost issue, per se,” adding: “It’s an issue of cutting off the funding to unions.” According to LABI, people hung up on the distracting arguments over cost benefit analysis for taxpayers are “just not getting the philosophical concept of what we’re doing here. This is a fatal spear to the heart of the giant.”

The ‘”giant” Grigsby and his fellow lobbyists are using the legislature to spear is the constitutional right to association promised to Louisiana taxpayers and American citizens everywhere. The shameless glee with which the GOP donors abandon any pretense of their public arguments about saving money or payroll protection shouldn’t surprise anyone familiar with LABI’s ongoing assault on the working men and women of Louisiana.

“The LABI leadership is on video, on their own site, making liars out of Stephen Waguespack and Rep. Lance Harris and every other lobbyist and operative that has been trying to sell this bill as anything but what it is: an attack on working men and women, an attempt by the lobbyists to use the influence they purchased in the legislature to attack the constitutional freedoms of Louisiana taxpayers,” said Stephen Handwerk, executive director of the Louisiana Democratic Party. “The truth is out there, in living color, and it isn’t pretty.”

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