James R. Harrigan: teaches in the Department of Political Economy and Moral (?!) Science at the university of Arizona (apparently Harrigan isn't even a professor or perhaps even a lecturer).
Unmentioned in that bio: both are involved in a significant way with the Atlanta-based conservative/libertarian think tank called the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), where Davies is Milton Friedman Fellow (a position named in honor of the father of "free-market" economics), and Harrigan is F.A. Hayek Distinguished Fellow ( a position named in honor of the Anglo-Austrian free-market advocate who was the patron saint of both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.)
Why do these authors allow their works to be published in the mass media without identifying themselves in a relevant way so readers can judge the veracity of their opinions?
Actually that question answers itself.
Perhaps more important, why do publications like the Philadelphia Inquirer and others that run or give free or perhaps paid space or air time to the anti-Sanders and anti-socialist screeds of these two peddlers of reaction allow them to hide behind bland academic titles and affiliations? (To be fair, the bio paragraph below the article also mentions that the two men "host the weekly podcast 'Words and Numbers'," but since it's a print paper, there's no link and few would bother to look the site up. Nor is it mentioned that the podcast is a production of FEE.)
The answer to their deception of course is that the goal is to use propaganda, instead of reason and full laying out of the facts, to try and undermine the sound reform ideas of Sanders, AOC and others trying to bring the US into the 21st century with the kind of tax policies, health care programs, retirement systems and education systems that work perfectly well in places like Europe, instead of allowing the country to slip where it appears headed right now back into the Dickensian darkness of unregulated capitalism, desperate, impoverished workers and rapine environmental degradation.
So is this all part of a new attack campaign on Sanders perhaps, or let's say probably, based on prior history, orchestrated by the DNC and its favored candidates' campaigns? Well, it certainly looks that way. On July 19, the Washington Post ran an article saying Sanders employees were demanding wages to match his call for a $15/hr minimum wage. The same day, the three clowns on Fox&Friends were gleefully yucking up the pay scale Sanders is offering his "impoverished" campaign workers, calling it hypocritical. How does a such simultaneous attack happen? Usually we eventually find out some publicist, in this case no doubt from the DNC or one of Sanders' primary rivals, is pushing the story.
Left unsaid is that Sanders' $15/hr wage bill in the Senate, on which he is basing his campaign proposal, does not raise the national minimum wage to $15 immediately on passage. Rather, it raises it from the current $7.25 an hour,(where it's been stuck since 2009!), in increments, only reaching $15 an hour in 2024. His bill, which is being blocked from consideration in the Senate by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, calls for the minimum wage to be increased to $8.55 an hour immediately after becoming law, and then to $9.85 after a year, continuing upward until hitting $15, after which its level would be increased automatically to account for inflation, as with Social Security benefits.
So really, Sanders is already paying his campaign staff at a rate that's 75% higher than what they'd get during the current campaign if Congress were to pass, and Trump sign his national minimum wage bill, and Sanders were to pay them at that mandated rate.
Also left unsaid is that what Sanders has done, in allowing his campaign workers to form a union, and being willing to negotiate with them, and in offering to pay them a living wage significantly higher than minimum wage in a field - political campaign work - where exploitation of willing and dedicated staff is the norm, Sanders should at least be complimented for making an effort to be fair, not subjected to special criticism as these writers and media outlets are doing.
Getting information about the pay on various campaigns is difficult. Trump's campaign in 2016, for example, didn't hire campaign workers itself but hired outside contractors, who typically pay low wages-a situation likely to prevail this campaign season too. Glassdoor, the website that collects information on what various jobs and careers pay and on individual employers and working conditions, reports that typical pay for campaign field organizers, usually the bottom job in a campaign, are paying $33,000 a year (a bit lower than what Sanders is reportedly paying), but adds that many campaigns start their field organizers off as unpaid volunteers. This reality should be averaged into their annual pay as a zero, which would bring their total pay down substantially. Elizabeth Warren, perhaps Sanders' main competitor for the progressive Democratic vote this year, according to a recent article in the Daily Beast, is being slammed by many of her own campaign workers, for putting them to work on "Elizabeth Warren Fellowships," which are often unpaid, and are required to sign "non-disclosure agreements" barring them from complaining about their compensation and working conditions.
Personally, I think all this reporting on what campaign workers are earning is kind of silly. There's wa-a-a-a-ay too much money in US politics, and it would be far better if private donations to all campaigns were outlawed and if campaign workers were all volunteers working because they believed in a candidate, but as long as we have the grossly corrupted political system that we have, at least we can demand that the media covering elections apply the standard of fairness and equal treatment to that coverage, instead of deciding, like sharks or wolves, to operate in packs and to target certain campaigns for hit jobs, to favor others, ignoring their flaws and lies, and to ignore others altogether, which is the norm these days.
DAVE LINDORFF is a member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the uncompromised, collectively run, seven-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site. His work, and that of colleagues JOHN GRANT, JESS GUH, GARY LINDORFF, ALFREDO LOPEZ, LINN WASHINGTON, JR., and the late CHARLES M. YOUNG, can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net
(Article changed on July 25, 2019 at 22:24)
(Article changed on July 26, 2019 at 15:14)
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
