Hillary Clinton campaign emails released by Wikileaks on Monday show Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden advising against a $15 minimum wage, a key progressive goal during these past four years.
In late April 2015, New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio sent an email to Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, campaign manager Robby Mook, and longtime Clinton aide and CAP chief Tanden offering them a preview of an email he would later send out describing the progressive agenda he planned to promote.
“Following up on my conversations with each of you last week, I want to keep you updated on the next steps in our efforts to organize progressives nationally to take on income inequality. Below is an email going out today for an event coming up in 2 weeks. I believe you will agree with much of this content. Please let me know if you want to discuss. Thanks – Bill,” he wrote.
“Should we care about this?” asked Podesta. The policy agenda DeBlasio laid out in the email included a $15 federal minimum wage.
Tanden shrugged it off.
“Substantively, we have not supported $15 — you will get a fair number of liberal economists who will say it will lose jobs,” she wrote back. “Most of rest seems fine (obviously trade sticks out). Politically, we are not getting any pressure to join this from our end. I leave it to you guys to judge what that means for you. But I’m not sweating it.”
Bear in mind this was only two weeks after thousands of workers in over 200 U.S. cities took part in demonstrations asking for $15 an hour.
The Center has been the object of increased criticism by observers who see it less as a center of progressive reform, and more as a Hillary Clinton White House in waiting.
Clinton senior aide Jake Sullivan, who Podesta included in his original reply, replied back that “John Podesta (and the Red Army) want to support $15!” — an indication that the campaign chair was leaning towards that policy request.
Tanden ended the email thread, writing back, “And when you say Red Army, you mean the base of the Democratic party, right? :) Just want to be clear here.”
Throughout the Democratic primary, Clinton opposed a $15 minimum wage — campaigning instead on a federal minimum wage of $12 an hour. However, the $15 minimum wage made it into the Democratic Party’s presidential platform — with the support of Tanden, who was a Clinton appointee to the platform committee.
Less clear, however, is if Clinton will abide by that platform. For example, in a Clinton campaign “Wonks for Hillary” email sent in early September, the campaign stressed that Clinton supports a $12 federal minimum wage and $15 “where economically feasible”:
A spokesperson for the Center for American Progress directed all questions to the Clinton campaign. Podesta did not respond to a request for comment. (Full disclosure: the author of this post worked at the Center for American progress from 2009 to 2012.)
Top photo: Secretary Hillary Clinton and Center for American Progress President Neera Tanden attend the “Why Women’s Economic Security Matters For All” panel discussion at The Center For American Progress on Sept. 18, 2014, in Washington, D.C.
More progressive (and more pro-growth/pro-job) is a government guaranteed basic income for all Americans combined with the abolition of a minimum wage. Jobs will be plentiful and optional, not essential, for survivial. The hodpodge of redistributive programs and complicated tax writeoffs (which is simply rent-seeking and grift for organized special interests). The basic income should be substantial allowing everyone to comfortably purchase housing, food, clothing, medical insurance, transportation, education, etc. The income tax code should be simplified, flattened and abolished at the low end (putting accountants and tax attorneys out of business). Nightwatchmen state with a substantial redistributive element providing basic income for all Americans. It’s a reasonable bargain between principled Glenn Greenwald left liberals and principled right libertarians. Sorry to the left but: minimum wage does increase unemployment at the low skilled end, leads to mechanization replacing human workers, and or increases the price of products and services to consumers. Sorry to the right but: there is no “free market” (optimally we abolish limited liability and intellectual property) and extreme economic inequality is unsustainable (and increasing given technology) and insufferable (depending on your taste).
The alternative is thinking people who respect liberty on left and right continue on with internecine warfare (while dividing on abortion/gay marriage and the above insoluble economic debates) so the most corrupt, ambitious, and unprincipled among us – Hillary and Donald – can rule us all.
The title of the article is not supported by the content. The content clearly reads “I leave it to you guys to judge what that means for you. But I’m not sweating it.” The title said CAP was “against”. Frankly, I rather liked the conversation they were having. And, I supported Bernie.
Elan is a troll
I thought that moniker rang a bell, and sure enough, last April I posted this:
As that thread shows, this one constantly shrieks about how he’s done so well, just totally trashed whoever he’s arguing with. Most of us know what it means when a commenter feels the need to compulsively declare such victories.
The troll went away shortly after I posted the above, but now it’s back. Well, for as long as it stays this time around, I will simply post a link to my comment quoted above and state that Elan is a troll.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/the-minimum-wage-how-much-is-too-much.html
“a $15-an-hour national minimum wage would put us in uncharted waters, and risk undesirable and unintended consequences.”
There you have it. You called my argument laughable, but it turns out that Krueger did in fact go public with his opposition to a $15 minimum wage.
I wonder if I’ll ever get an apology.
Just see how this troll argues, folks. He shrieked below that “evidence based economists” support CAP on the minimum wage, even, claims Elan, “left wing economists.” Here’s his evidence and “reasoning”:
1. A guy Elan says is a “radical left” journalist on the staff at Vox — where all the radical lefties go to write, doncha know — and who publishes Hillary apologia;
2. Posted a tweet;
3. In which this “radical left” Hillary shill claims having had an “off the record” conversation with;
4. “Leftist economists” who;
5. . Warned of the “dangers” of a $15 minimum wage, but;
6. Couldn’t do so publicly, using their names, because they were scared shitless of a 75-year-old, white-haired, social democrat named Bernie and those who agreed with him on the minimum wage.
That’s it. THAT, according to Elan shows “what economists think” and that I am “deeply uninformed .” And now he offers Hilary hack Krugman for something.
Elan is a troll. Treat it accordingly.
You’re repeating yourself. Isn’t that what “crapflooding” is?
I just posted an article giving you an example of a left wing economist who pioneered the field of research on minimum wage that is at odds with the typical neoliberal evidence. (I don’t think its conclusions are totally accurate, but that’s another issue.)
In other words, I have provided evidence for my argument that Hillary’s position is in line with left wing economists who challenged the neoliberal synthesis from the 80s/90s.
If you have any response to that, feel free. I have already conceded that Matthews isn’t radical from your perspective, and I never wrote that they were only afraid of Bernie Sanders (you can check the post for yourself).
I’m not a troll; in fact, I’ve been more than patient with you. I do think it’s funny seeing you run around like a chicken with its head cut off, but only because I like watching idiots make fools of themselves. My arguments were substantive full stop.
For the benefit of others: I messed it up below, the enumeration and some of the phrasing. I should never comment until I’ve had two full cups of coffee. The above is the more or less rightversion.
Bye troll — you’ll be seeing me link to your hilariously inane “argument” here if you stick around; it’s a great example to show others why you are a troll and how you “reason.”
And now, I bid you adieu in this thread.
The NYTimes article was a killer one and you know it. All you can do is mutter about how I’m inane, squeal about non-sequiturs, etc but in your heart of hearts you know you got GOT.
It’s not good enough frankly. There is a host of econometric research that shows that minimum wage changes do not affect jobs in the short term – despite what neoclassical microeconomics would have you believe. This may be because many jobs are fixed in location and others pay higher wages already. The flaws in neoclassicalism are numerous and well-documented – mostly having to do with “rationality” (in-quotes because there are serious issues with it) and equilibrium assumptions along with the assumption of economic variables not moving together.
You’re wrong, but in any case I’m familiar with the research you’re talking about. That’s why I linked to it and referenced it throughout this thread. Alan Krueger is one of the big names in the field of minimum wage research.
But as he explains in the article I linked, most experts do not believe that raising the minimum wage beyond 50-60% of median wages would be a good idea. A lot of the research is on short term effects, and a big jump in the minimum wage could have very strong long term consequences. These studies show that the labor costs are almost immediately passed on to consumers, so while demand elasticity might be low in the short term, people adjust in the long term. Firms also adjust differently in the long term. Source: http://voxeu.org/article/long-run-employment-effects-minimum-wage
Lastly, all this has nothing to do with assumptions about perfect rationality.
P.S. Elan isn’t a “moniker”, it’s a name. That’s racist.
This is a big surprise? Progressives have to keep pushing the Democratic Party to be more progressive. With Senator Sanders pushing for a more progressive party and getting support from Democrats we need to keep the pressure on Hillary to be progressive. I think progressives are up for the job.
So much for “progress”.
As the NY Times front page beatifies Clinton today, the American sheeple march to their slaughter. Vote for her now to fight her later is the battle cry of the coopted left, and apparently the coopted Bernie Sanders. Meanwhile, the most progressive in the race, Dr. Jill Stein, is demonized as incompetent, anti-science, not qualified, etc., and the sheeple are buying it. We get the authoritarians we deserve when we don’t make the effort to educate ourselves. The Dems aren’t any more aware than the Tea Tards in terms of herd mentality. But they are certainly more corrupt.
Corporatist warmongers posing as Democrats is the Big Lie that too many refuse to admit.
Letting CAP go the way of the dodo would be real progress.
I suppose the good news is that with Trump imploding, the “Not Trump” argument against voting third party by the Hillary cadre should no longer be convincing to many of the suckers who were buying it..
With all the Republicans flocking to Hillary, real Democrats and progressives are free to vote their conscience.
Everyone knows that Clinton will not push a $15 minimum wage. But I do like the idea that the political bureaucrats of the Democratic Party call their base the ‘Red Army.’ Maybe some day the base will be that – the day they leave the bourgeois bureaucrats behind.
So, below a genius calling itself Elan shrieks that “evidence based economists” support CAP on the minimum wage, even, claims Elan, “left wing economists.” And his support for this is as follows:
1. A “radical left” journalist on the staff at Vox — where all the radical lefties go to write, doncha know — who publishes Hillary apologia;
2. Posted a tweet;
3. In which this “radical left” Hillary shill claims having had an “off the record conversation with;
4. Leftist economists off the record who;
4. Warned of the “dangers” of a $15 minimum wage, but;
5. Couldn’t do so publicly, using their names, because they were scared shitless of a 75-year-old, white-haired, social democrat named Bernie and those who agreed with him on the minimum wage.
That’s it. A single tweet by a Vox staffer — whom Elan hilariously characterizes as on the “radical left” — claiming anonymous, off the record conversations with terrified, allegedly left-wing economists. THAT, according to Elan shows “what economists think” and that I am “deeply uninformed .”
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Oops. Two #4s! WEll, I’m not sufficiently caffeinated yet.
Your obvious mischaracterizations, which I’ve patiently corrected several times, are pathetic to everyone with a >100 IQ. Such people are in small supply at The Intercept, but there you go.
I destroyed you and got under your skin.
It’s an Internet truism — because it’s true — that those who feel compelled to declare: “I won,” “I destroyed you,” “I eviscerated you,” “I accept your surrender” & etc, virtually always are deeply insecure about their intellectual performance and arguments. Myself, I’m essentially always content to let other bright people observe my interactions and reach their own conclusions.
Your preposterous argument is right below for all to see. All I did was hold it up to the utter ridicule and mockery it so richly deserves.
Have nice night, :)
You seem mad.
And cognitively incapable of navigating the thread of an argument if it triggers your fee-fees.
Yeah, I get shit like that all the time. You will find I can’t be baited into substantively replying with defenses for inane spewing like that. (I don’t need them.)
I’ll just repeat: “Your preposterous argument is right below for all to see. All I did was hold it up to the utter ridicule and mockery it so richly deserves.”
You know, Mona, it just occurred to me that since then some of the economists might have spoken out in public since then. Krueger for example:
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/11/opinion/sunday/the-minimum-wage-how-much-is-too-much.html?_r=0
“a $15-an-hour national minimum wage would put us in uncharted waters, and risk undesirable and unintended consequences.”
Everybody, let’s now watch the goal posts being shifted as Mona claims that a pre-eminent left wing minimum wage scholar and author of the first paper to assert that the disemployment effects of the minimum wage were overstated DOESN’T count.
For anyone just joining us, here’s my actual argument since Mona summarized it rather poorly.
1. CAP’s belief that a nationwide $15 minimum wage is unwise is shared by some left wing economists, even those who in the early 90s pioneered a “New theory of the minimum wage”. This work asserted that theories of large changes in unemployment caused by the minimum wage have been overstated by neoclassical economists, both Democrat and Republican.
2. Given that they haven’t come out in public to say this, how do we know they feel this way? Because many have been sounding the alarm off the record. Dylan Matthews writes about it here: https://twitter.com/dylanmatt/status/720786520509165568
3. Why might these economists fear making these claims on the record? Because academics are political, and they know if they make enemies with the left wing base of the Democratic party, they might not get nice gigs on the CEA or central banks, etc. Yes, this includes enemies with Sanders fans.
4. Is Matthews a neoliberal shill whose aim is to undercut expansions of the welfare state by fabricating these stories? I would argue no, given his sympathetic coverage of Universal Basic Income (http://www.vox.com/2014/9/8/6003359/basic-income-negative-income-tax-questions-explain ). But he hasn’t been kind to Bernie Sanders’s magical thinking, which has infuriated a lot of people like Mona.
5. In any case, even if Matthews was a neoliberal, it’s out of line to accuse him of fabricating stories.
Anyone reading the above two posts can ask themselves who has made their case more logically. I have a coherent thread, where you can follow the logic step by step. I have linked my sources and cited actual historical trend.
Mona’s “argument” is more of like that of a frenetic drug user playing whack-a-mole and going crazy every time I use an adjective she dislikes.
CAP was bought by neocons a couple of years ago, lock, stock and barrel, during that controversy over Netanyahu interview. That’s when we learned progressives were not allowed to have a think tank, and now we know Hillary Clinton is what we need to swallow as progressive.
The elites deserve what’s coming on November 9th.
What’s the scandal here? $15 min wage would cost a lot of people a job in many parts of the US
Reason #529 I will not be voting for Hillary Clinton.
LOL!
The horror: evidence based economists think that raising the minimum wage by more than 50% in some states — above the median wage in Mississippi! — will cause unemployment and deadweight loss.
For the lefties at The Intercept, when the answer doesn’t fit their agenda it’s always a neoliberal conspiracy against the working class.
No one of any note claims it’s a “conspiracy.” No, it’s manifest neoliberal policy which they do little to hide.
Sanders’ challenge forced Hillary to tap dance on the topic, but she’s a neoliberal and of course opposes anything close to a living minimum wage.
It used to be virtually only Republican hucksters making such claims. But when the Democrats went neoliberal they now do it as well.
As always, Mona, you’re deeply uninformed and unaware of it. Dylan Matthews polled a number of left wing economists, whose usual line is that *small* changes to the minimum wage have minor impacts on employment. They were too afraid of political fall out from ignoramuses like Bernie Sanders condemning them as corporate stooges, so the cowards only told him of the dangers off the record.
Older people of course will bear little of this pain, but I would not want to be a low skilled young worker where this passes.
https://twitter.com/dylanmatt/status/720786520509165568
“One really fascinating phenomenon: left-wing economists saying off the record that $15/hr is super-dangerous, but not saying that publicly”
“off the record” lol sure they did
Right, there you go. Journalists with years of experience and radical left wing views are just fabricating things. Smart crowd here.
Elan, as a general rule the commenters here, the ones who think well of the writers, are pretty smart and savvy. So, when you spew shit like: “Journalists with years of experience and radical left wing views” about Dylan Matthews, most of us are gonna know you are peddling horseshit.
Matthews writes for fucking Vox. No one who is “leftist” — much less “radically” — writes for Vox. (Or, if they do, they end up leaving.) No one who is “radically left” writes Hillary apologia like this dreck: The key question on the Clinton Foundation is whether it saved lives. The answer is clearly yes.
Go try to sell neoliberal lies somewhere else — they will never fly here.
Right. The insisted on being “off the record,” so Matthews reported it anyway.
Yup, sure thing. A bunch of “left-wing” economists spoke neoliberal truth, but feared the well-known-as-ferocious Bernie Sanders — so, dangerous as they think the $15 minimum wage is, they just couldn’t say it publicly.
pfffft
To repeat: It used to be virtually only Republican hucksters making such claims. But when the Democrats went neoliberal they now do it as well.
You have it exactly backwards. It used to be universally agreed that minimum wage hikes had dis employment effects, until various left wing labor economists published studies asserting otherwise. Now even “wonky” leftists have cover for their dangerous ideas, but the experts are much more cautious and afraid of the magnitudes of these raises.
It’s funny explaining this to you, because you’re so convinced of your own expertise while demonstrating your ignorance so plainly.
And yeah, claiming that Dylan Matthews is fabricating (for no good reason since he seems to support the min wage) is absolute nuttery. The people on this site are maybe one step above infowars.
I have nothing backwards. Only Republicans used to oppose modest increases of the minimum wage, and they’d so so shrieking about dire unemployment. Now, Democrats do it, now that neoliberals control and infest the party.
But then, you seriously expect us to take Dylan fucking Matthews as someone who is on the “radical left.” So you’re kinda impaired. If not cognitively, then in the character (honesty) department.
Politicians of all ideological hucksters pander to their ignorant supporters (e.g. you). Sanders did this quite effectively. I was talking about expert labor economists. And yes, Dylan has a number of radical positions on things like immigration and charity. But that’s not really the point.
In the several times I’ve seen you post here, I’ve always noticed a pattern: selectively replying to the least important parts of the argument (like whether Matthews is “radical left” or merely mainstream liberal) instead of the important parts:
1) There’s no evidence that Matthews has or is motivated to fabricate stories about left wing labor economists.
2) Most left wing labor economists now (public ally)claim the disemployment effect of a min wage hike is small. This is a change from the older position where across the spectrum experts thought it was larger.
3) the incongruity of 1 and 2 is concerning
If youre not going to even try engaging with 1)-3) to the substance of my argument, I’m not going to bother replying to you.
That’s a mish-mash of non sequiturs, unsupported assertions and name-calling. (Enumeration doesn’t change that.) It remains a FACT that, and I repeat: “Only Republicans used to oppose modest increases of the minimum wage, and they’d so so shrieking about dire unemployment. Now, Democrats do it, now that neoliberals control and infest the party.”
As for this:
You spewed that absurdity about Matthews as a way to shore up his creds here and render acceptable his claims about anonymous, supposed “left-wing economists” who were, doncha know, off the record for fear of that menacing, 75-year-old, white-haired social democrat — except Matthews tweeted what they said “off the record.” [eyes rolling].
Matthews and you both spout a pile of preposterous statements, and now that I’ve embarrassed you on the matter of his purported “radical leftism,” lo, it’s totally unimportant. Why, it’s “the least important part of the argument.”
pffft
Lol, as expected, you have no comment on the substance of my argument. By the way, if you could read you’d notice that I said the economists feared ignoramuses LIKE Sanders, not him alone specifically.
And no, it’s not important whether Matthews is merely radical from my perspective and not yours (an even more deeply unhinged radical). It’s much important that he’s entirely sympathetic with these economists work in documented ways, so fabricating stories about them is utterly preposterous and stupid.
If the names Card and Krueger don’t mean anything to you, please just stop replying. You know nothing, old lady.
Goodnight
The Center for American Progress is a corporate tool. That’s where they get much of their funding.
Every sentence regarding this bitch should begin “Confirmed liar Hillary Clinton…”
Like Trump, she fools only those who want to be fooled, or those scared to death of her like Obama and Sanders.
The problem with the “fight for twelve” is that it’s not alliterative. Any economist will tell you that.
clinton is the queen of incrementalism. i’m surprised she even went as high as $12 given her “here’s some bread crumbs for you peasants” economic outlook.
as for the “jobs will be lost” nonsense, it’s been debunked in most areas where the $15 increase already happened. and if someone’s business is so delicate and fragile that an increase to a meager $15/hr causes it to collapse then maybe they need to rethink their 5 year plan and/or take a refresher course at the local community college.
apparently you have never run a business and clearly don’t understand economics
Also would like to point out no where is currently at 15 an hr. They are in the phase in
So you care about those employees but if you collapse the business they work for no big deal right? Who cares if they lose their jobs as you feel good about yourself
Also min wage favors giant corporations over the little guy
They’re not going to change until the torches and pitchforks are outside, that much is clear.
Boycott Center for American Progress– writer OBVIOUSLY EARNED A LOT MORE THAN $15/hr.
Sign Petition to CLOSE DOWN CLINTON FOUNDATION.
Here’s another amusing story about the Clinton Foundation, the Podesta Group, the Center for American Progress, and American and Russian nuclear energy interests, courtesy Wikileaks:
What’s the Podesta-Uranium One connection?
How does this affect U.S. foreign policy and ‘geostrategic interests’?
Now, about that military drone base in Niger next to Arlit’s uranium mines, recently set up by U.S. AFRICOM:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article193542.html
Conclusion: Hillary Clinton is all about war piggery abroad – which serves Wall Street’s interests – and the status quo at home – which also serves Wall Street’s interests. That’s her “private position”, which is the only one that matters.
Gee, Zaid, do you mean that it’s not clear whether or not Clinton will follow in the footsteps of virtually every other president in history by ignoring platform planks at will, or even the platform as a whole?
Well, I suppose. . . ;^(
That “most progressive” Democrat platform in history will be toilet paper at the DNC headquarters 5 minutes after Clinton is elected (if she is).
A friend who went to Sanders’ rally in Bangor this weekend said he talked about his and Hillary’s progressive platform. The guy loses credibility by the minute. Disclosure, I voted for him many times as a VT resident, and in the primary, which I am fairly sure was rigged in Mass.
Liberals should take this moment to show that they care about low wage workers because, right now, it’s not clear that they actually do.
Liberals may. Clinton’s only a liberal in the sense of Phil Ochs’s famous song.
In other words, she’s a regular liberal. That song is about liberals from a socialist perspective, not about bad liberals from a good liberal perspective
thank you for bringing my attention to this artist, first i’d heard of him and i absolutely love “love me, i’m a liberal” it’s like my theme song right now as all those around me are EXACTLY that sort of liberal.
… but now I’m older and wiser
And that’s why I’m turning you in…
So love me, love me, love me
I’m a liberal.
You buried the lead. The fact that they refer to their base as “The Red Army” is damn telling.
“Politically, we are not getting any pressure to join this from our end. “
Discounting completely Bernie Sanders campaign and supporters, in addition to the demonstrations for a $15 an hour wage.
Of course, by noting that “Politically, we are not getting any pressure” the Hillary campaign means those that can actually pressure them politically: banks, big business and corporations.
Perhaps the Democratic base needs to find a candidate who will listen to them. The current Democratic party is not acting Democratic.
Agreed. Their end doesn’t include individuals who need a minimum wage to stay afloat, top-heavy as it is with the self-serving money/power brokers who run the party.
You do realize these emails predate Bernie announcing his presidential and were long before he gained his substantial number of supporters?