There was at least one person in the room during the hearing for the nomination of P. David Lopez for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission who needed to be asked how they manage to "show up to work with a straight face" -- and that person's name was not P. David Lopez.
What a disgusting display everyone was treated to by Senator Aqua Buddha this Thursday: Rand Paul freaks out on workplace equality enforcer: ‘How do you show up to work?’:
On Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) attended the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing regarding the nomination of P. David Lopez to serve as General Counsel and Charlotte Burrows to serve as a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).
The EEOC’s job is enforce federal anti-discrimination laws in the workplace and to investigate claims of discrimination.
Sen. Paul’s line of questioning suggested that he believes the very existence of such regulatory bodies creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, that anyone who looks hard enough for discrimination in the workplace will find it, eventually.
In some cases, the agency will investigate workplaces where there appears to be a fundamental inequality in the business, where women and minorities are given lower-paying, low-prestige positions, even if no one at the business has complained.
Paul appears to find this idea outrageous.
Here's more from Charlie Pierce:
Brogressive man-crush and Most Interesting Man In Politics (tm/Time, Inc.) Senator Aqua Buddha dropped by a Senate hearing on the nomination of a gentleman to a post on the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission. The senator wasted no time in providing yet another example of what a different kind of Republican he is, and how he is the unquestioned leader of a merger of the libertarian Right and the libertarian Left and the avatar of a new politics of heterodox inclusivity. Or something.
In some cases, the agency will investigate workplaces where there appears to be a fundamental inequality in the business, where women and minorities are given lower-paying, low-prestige positions, even if no one at the business has complained. Paul appears to find this idea outrageous. "Do you realize the downside of the unlimited nature of going after people with no complaint and what this is going to do to business? I mean, do you not understand what we've got to somehow balance that we want people to have jobs?" he asked Lopez.
ABHORRENT, I tells ya. Jesus, somebody hide the dictionary, OK?
"How can you show up to work with a straight face?" he demanded. "I don't understand why you wouldn't resign immediately and say, ‘This is abhorrent.'"
"This is so against what everything America stands for," he blustered, "that you would go after people where there's been absolutely no complaint, run them through the wringer and use the threat of the bully nature of your office to punish business and as a consequence punish their workers. I don't get it." Paul went on to describe the agency's investigative practices as "entrapment" and "a crime."
I look forward to his taking this one out on the trail, "Ladies, take your complaints to the EEOC, in which I do not believe, and don't worry, we'll protect you from retaliation."
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