A few blog posts ago I pointed out that the Progressive blogosphere and media must have Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s back. Everything she says will be scrutinized. If she does not get it 100% correct even if the sentiment based on real outcomes is correct, they will slaughter her to destroy her overall credibility. This is an example.
The Huffington Post reported on a recent spat between Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler about some statement she made about the minimum wage and a living wage.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) faced off with The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler in a heated battle over a fact check chiding her for playing “fast and loose” with the truth on living and minimum wages.
The statements in question came during a Martin Luther King Day Q&A last Monday with writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. While discussing economic inequality, the freshman congresswoman asserted that “a vast majority of the country doesn’t make a living wage,” lamenting that “you can work 100 hours and not feed your kids.”
“I think it’s wrong that corporations like Walmart and Amazon can get paid by the government, essentially experience a wealth transfer from the public, for paying people less than a minimum wage,” she added.
Debunking the lawmaker’s claim on minimum wage, Kessler turned to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, speaking to its manager, Amy Glasmeier, who noted the statement wasn’t quite accurate considering 2017′s living wage averaged just over $16 an hour. Still, Glasmeier acknowledged estimates are tough.
But Kessler gave Ocasio-Cortez credit where it was due, noting her “100 hours” remark was a low if anything.
However, when it came to her comments on Walmart and Amazon, Kessler pointed out that both corporations pay workers more than minimum wage, also contending her claim of a wealth transfer was flimsy based on a 2005 paper written by Jason Furman, who would later chair the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama Era.
Firing back at Kessler’s check, Ocasio-Cortez accused him of using “a Walmart-funded think tank as reference material for wage fairness,” raising him four Geppettos for his three Pinocchios.
That’s when Kessler clapped back, denying her portrayal of the Furman paper was even close to correct.
“She’s wrong,” he tweeted. “Don’t always believe what you see on Twitter. The article has been updated with a note explaining the provenance.”
First, we need to thank Ryan Grim for his objective assessment of the fact check. He rightfully suggested that Glenn Kessler retract the fact check of Ocasio-Cortez.
All these newspapers and pundits are quick to check every utterance, statement, calculation, or narrative that Ocasio-Cortez puts out there. Yet they have rarely given scrutiny to outright lies and policy statements put out by those on the Right and neo-liberals.
Where are all the definitive statements on the failure of supply-side economics that have decimated the middle-class? How do we know the statements by all its supporters are false? We are living through its failure that proves all papers written in support of it were likely academically manufactured lies to keep it alive.
I mentioned the following in the article “Why they fear Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
What is the short answer why they fear Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
Ocasio-Cortez is a leader in the largest potential voting block in the country, the Millennials. They are living the realities, the effects of all the wrongheaded greedy extractive policies of the past.
Millennials see themselves in her. That she lived paycheck to paycheck unable to immediately get an apartment in DC is the reality of many of her peers, anyone who’ve moved back home.
The long answer is even more dangerous.
The policies that Ocasio-Cortez promotes puts unfettered Capitalism at risk.
Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is beholding to no one. She beat a powerful incumbent who outspent her. Unlike many other politicians, she currently displays no instincts of being ideologically corruptible by those wielding the destructive tenets of the Powell Manifesto.
That freedom gives her the ability to articulate realities that few are willing to say out loud.
The powers will not relinquish their ability to pilfer the middle-class without a fight. And they will have all their peons and wards on the job ready to destroy anyone who they see as a risk. This 29-year-old scares them to death. She is a passionate leader because she inspires, has a spine, and owes her victory to no one but regular American citizens.
Let’s make sure we all have her back. She needs us as much as we need what she represents.