M. Patricia Smith’s nomination as Solicitor of the Department of Labor has moved forward with a cloture vote today along party lines. There should be an up-or-down vote on the nomination tomorrow or the day after. See SENATUS for details on the vote.

Senator Enzi, the leading Republican on the Senate HELP Committee, had been blocking the nomination, for no good, valid, or honest reason. As both Republicans and Democrats have done in recent years, he has abused the whole practice of filibuster (I’ll write more on that later).

To respond to his ignorant criticism would take volumes. Frankly, he is scandalous in his use of innuendo and distorted facts to paint those he doesn’t like as incompetent managers and liars (an example of his blathering at the Washington Examiner). I would hate to be his child and have made a mistake. Of course his blather is par for the course in Washington (a pox on both houses). If someone won’t bow to your personal agenda, destroy them by whatever means possible.

Sen. Harkin, no flaming liberal, provided the facts that refute Sen. Enzi line by line during his pre-cloture vote statements. The Congressional Record should have his factual testimony in-full by tomorrow. I encourage you to check it out.

So to my title above, ‘What does Sen. Enzi really want?’ I believe he wants the following:

• That workers not be educated as to their rights under the law.
• That low wage workers have no recourse when their wages are stolen.
• That any person or organization providing assistance only do so according to an approved script and to approved eligible individuals.
• That employers who skirt the rules, especially those who hire low wage and immigrant workers presuming that they can abuse them, be free to establish a system of indentured servitude.
• That disreputable, race-to-the-bottom, employers be free to re-establish the company store and a chit and voucher program.
• That rights are only for those in Sen. Enzi’s social and economic demographic.
• That the law is only a set of suggestions and optional guidelines, especially laws that protect the lower classes.
• That truth be subservient to agenda.
• That the United States be known as the land of permanent masters and servants.
• That the Republican Party abjure its tie to the abolition of slavery.

Amy Traub, writing at Huffington, gives a great narrative on the things Ms. Smith has done and works to prevent in New York in New York’s Hidden Crime Wave

And we thought crime in New York City was low. According to the NYPD just 418 robberies were reported in New York last week, along with 695 incidents of grand larceny. Not bad for a city of more than 8 million people. But the rosy numbers overlook a devastating series of thefts that never make it into the police statistics: last week the city may have experienced just 375 burglaries but it also saw an estimated 317,263 cases of employer wage theft from their own low wage workers. More than $18.4 million were stolen from wages in that week alone. And because the wage violations are systematic and ongoing, the crimes recur every week throughout the year.

The shocking new wage theft data come from research [pdf] unveiled this morning by the National Employment Law Project. After a rigorous study involving thousands of front-line workers in New York’s low wage industries, researchers documented the prevalence of New York City’s workplace violations for the first time.

The study reveals a crime wage centered on the city’s most vulnerable workers. More than one in five workers in the city’s low-wage industries was paid less than the minimum wage. More than three in four were denied the overtime pay they were legally owed. When workers tried to stand up for themselves (for example, by filing a complaint with a government agency or attempting to organize a union) they faced a high risk of illegal employer retaliation: being fired, getting their hours cut, or having the boss threaten to call immigration authorities. Not surprisingly, many workers decided to remain silent, even as they continued to work in dangerous conditions or saw their earnings stolen.

Imagine the destructive impact on New York’s families and communities. Although the average worker in the city’s low-wage industries earns just $20,644 a year, they lost an average 15 percent of that to wage theft. That amounts to an average $3,016 annually stolen from some of the lowest-income working families in the city…

Are you ready for your employer to arbitrarily cut your salary by 15%? That 15% cut isn’t for any good economic reason, and certainly no legal reason. It is just so you can continue to work the same hours at less pay, and he can take it home to buy himself a better bottle of scotch. Maybe he’ll share that scotch with Sen. Enzi. Wonder if he hypocritically likes it neat.

Funny that my son was recently studying indentured servitude. I can’t wait till my son learns about human trafficking. I will be able to point to Sen. Enzi (if he’s still there) as a proponent of the very things that aid in its continuance.