Thursday, July 19, 2018
If you hear about a social media company of a media organization that cites Snopes and a reliable authority, that’s all you need to know. They’ll lie to you, just like Snopes, and probably to assist a progressive political agenda.
Here’s an especially blatant example of Snopes’ fake fact-checking, as opposed to what they claim to do, which is to check fake facts, from 2016. It’s actually pretty funny.
The fact being checked:
Bernie Sanders has been criticized as hypocritical for only paying his interns $12 an hour despite his campaigning to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
Snopes’ unbiased and objective analysis:
WHAT’S FALSE: Bernie Sanders pays his interns $12 an hour.
WHAT’S FALSE: Bernie Sanders pays his staff workers $12 an hour.
Ah! It’s misleading to say that Bernie, who said during the campaign,
“Millions of Americans are working for totally inadequate wages. We must ensure that no full-time worker lives in poverty. The current federal minimum wage is starvation pay and must become a living wage. We must increase it to $15 an hour over the next several years.”
was a hypocrite who, as a meme circulating in 2016 claimed, he only payed his “staff interns." $12 an hour while simultaneously campaigning to raise the national minimum wage of $15.
Says Snopes, spinning like mad:
“It’s true Sanders pays his interns $12 an hour, as noted by a page on the candidate’s own Senate web site that clearly states that “interns are paid $12 per hour.." This, however, does not necessarily mean that Sanders gave himself a “pass." on his proposal to raise the minimum wage.
First, the above-displayed meme uses the confusing term “staff interns,." which has led many people to believe that the senator only pays his staff members $12 per hour. This pay rate, however, applies only interns (who in many occupational fields work without compensation or for very low pay in return for gaining valuable experience) filling positions available to college students and recent graduates seeking work in Congress…Second, the national minimum wage does not apply to internships. The Fair Labor Standards Act lists six criteria (such as “the internship experience is for the benefit of the intern.") that private sector companies may meet in order to offer unpaid internships, and Congress has further exempted itself from some of these standards. According to an article published in the Atlantic, only one third of U.S. senators paid their interns anything at all in 2013.
It should also be noted that these $12 per hour internships are for positions working as aides to Sanders in the U.S. Senate, not for positions on his 2016 presidential campaign staff.”
Why does anyone trust these hacks?
“Staff interns” means interns, not “staff.” The term is not misleading: the fact that “many people” can’t understand English doesn’t make that statement less than accurate. Interns are also members of a staff; I know: I’ve been an intern, and employed interns. If Bernie claimed that less than 15 dollars was “starvation pay,” then he had an ethical obligation not to pay anyone less than 15 dollars. It doesn’t matter that they were interns: minimum wage employees are always at the bottom rung of the work force. It doesn’t matter that lots of companies underpay interns; Snopes is making an “everybody does it” rationalization. Bernie was condemning that practice because “everybody does it”: how can Snopes cite that as a defense? It was entirely in his power to pay his most lowly employees the amount that he was condemning everyone else for NOT paying. It doesn’t excuse Bernie from the hypocrisy charge to say that the law allowed him to pay “starvation wages.” No law prevented Sanders from paying his interns whatever he thought was fair and right. He was exposed as a phony, but Snopes rushed to muddy the water in his defense.
This is typical of Snopes’ dishonesty and partisan propaganda. One post like this is too much, but Snopes does this kind of thing constantly. Amazingly, over at the primary Ethics Alarms anti-Snope post, Democratic operatives still write in and deny that Snopes is what it is: untrustworthy, dishonest, biased, and not very bright.
In related news, the developments where progressive cities have taken Bernie’s “do as I say, not as I do” advice are showing, as many of us have known forever, that when it comes to economics, Sanders has no idea what he’s blathering about.
That tale, however, is for another day.
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Pointer: MHM