As living wage campaigns are succeeding in cities and counties across the country, corporate profiteers are fighting back. They are pushing legislation at the state level that would ban local governments from enacting ordinances that pay higher than the minimum wage. They don’t want local taxpayers to be allowed to ensure that workers are provided with a wage that enables them to meet their most basic needs.

In Washington State, where the minimum wage of $9.32 an hour is the highest in the country, Seattle officials are working out a plan to enact a living wage ordinance of $15/hour. Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, where the corporate stranglehold of the state legislature intensifies as the session draws to a close, extreme rightwing legislators attempted to push through a law based on a model bill written by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) that would put an end to any local unit of government’s attempt to secure decent wages and conditions for workers in their jurisdictions.

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But reality doesn’t seem to concern the ideologues pushing the measure, SB 626, through the Wisconsin state senate. In fact, the bill’s author, Rep. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) who represents one of the wealthiest districts in the state, doesn’t even know what the federal minimum wage is, let alone the local living wages his bill is targeting, as he confessed during a recent public hearing.

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Calling them “inflated wage ordinances,” in a recent hearing on the bill Kapenga said the efforts of local governments to raise workers out of poverty should not be funded by state taxpayers. He actually invoked the Boston Tea Party in response to a question from Sen. Nikiya Harris (D-Milwaukee), who asked: “How is this a local control bill and not a control of locals bill?”