Friday, November 06, 2015

Why I'm Incredulous of Polls and Union Endorsements


Fortune
Article cites Bloomberg politics polls, not the rate of campaign cash donations.

Los Angeles Timmes
Union leaders seem to be ignoring their members cries for supporting Bernie Sanders

In These Times
Examples of grass-roots union support for Bernie Sanders

U.S. News
A Union President chose Hillary over Bernie because "we need to win."

Forbes
Small donors are far from reaching their contribution limits, and they can donate again.

Open Secrets
Look how much cash Bernie Sanders has raised so far.
When I saw the headline at Fortune, I had to do some digging and sure enough, the media is relying on polling data, because after all, polls can tell you what you want to hear if you know who to ask.

Other media outlets are glomming onto the the counter-intuitive union endorsement of Hillary Clinton, who hasn't really been fighting for labor as much as Bernie Sanders.

One union leader said he personally loved Bernie but endorsed Hillary because he thought she had a better chance of winning, but the media and the union leadership cannot see the groundswell of support for Bernie coming from the rank-and-file.

It appears the media are presupposing a Clinton advantage based on the assumption that union leaders held a vote among the members. I couldn't find the rules for endorsing candidates, but The Daily Caller reported that Bernie and Hillary met with union leaders in a private meeting. which suggests that the rank-and-file union members don't have much of a voice in the matter.

Tuesday, November 03, 2015

Raising the Minimum Wage


I recently started a poll at Google+ asking "what if every minimum wage worker had an extra $7 per hour to spend?" It sparked a discussion about costs of doing business, inflation and potential reduction in employment.

I decided to collect some articles about it and I was not really surprised where the line was drawn on opinions and research "findings."

If you ever wanted to know which media source was liberal or conservative, looking up their opinions about raising the minimum wage is a glaring test.