Democratic Senator Joe Manchin has
been one of the most vocal
opponents and
critics of increasing the federal
minimum wage to $15 an hour.
And now we have a better
understanding of his own personal
financial interests that are
influencing his war against paying
people what they deserve to make.
Now Manchin justified his
opposition to the $15 an hour
minimum wage by saying the senator
understands the challenges facing
West Virginia small business
owners.
But Manchin has not publicly
acknowledged he's one of those
small business owners.
TYT Investigates did a great job.
This is Jonathan Larson's reporting
to kind of figure out what kind of
stakes Manchin has in this fight.
And here's what we know.
Court filings related to bankruptcy
proceedings and
a Manchin family disputes that went
public have identified some of
the companies in which Manchin
allegedly had a financial stake,
including a hotel and
a chain of flooring stores.
Both companies would apparently
have to increase employee pay if
Congress passes a $15 an hour
minimum wage.
Now the most relevant company in
this reporting has to do
with something known as either
Double A Property, AA Property, and
Manchin owns 50% of that company.
Okay, so
as TYT Investigates reports,
Double A Property is reportedly 50%
controlled by Manchin, and is an
investor in Emerald Coast Realty,
which owns a La Quinta Hotel in
Elkview, West Virginia.
At the Elkview, La Quinta,
Indeed reports that housekeepers
make an average of $8.81 an hour.
So imagine if they have to increase
the minimum wage there to $15
an hour.
Obviously, this would have not only
an impact on this business,
but it could have an impact
on the return of investment for
someone like Joe Manchin.
There are other details that I'll
share with you in just a minute,
but Cenk,
are you surprised by any of this?
>> Of course not, of course not.
So now these senators have
started double-dipping.
So in the old days,
it used to be just that the donor
contributions would go to them,
millions of dollars at a time.
We have non-stop stories about that
including $9 million from big
pharma, 36 million from health care
insurance industry, going to
republican senators on a particular
committee, I mean, they they're
buying these guys wholesale.
It's super obvious,
but now they also have
their own financial interests.
So you saw Kelly Leffler and
David Perdue just raking in money
during COVID times because they had
insider information on how they
could make more money.
So they transacted on the stock
market based on that.
Their fellow
corrupt senators were like, yeah,
I'd love to do that too.
So they let them off the hook.
But they did do it and
the voters of Georgia did not let
them off the hook by the way.
So now Manchin, it turns out,
is fighting a minimum wage
partly because he'd have
to pay higher wages.
So look,
there's two aspects of that.
And number one,
I'd love to see their books.
I know they're not going to show
the books to us, but
I bet you that they, this is a well
established mature industry.
It's not a new industry not young
industry, and in those kind
of industries, the profit margins
are fairly stable.
So I bet if I looked at those books
and I'm a business owner, and
I know exactly where to look,
I could show you how the workers
could get $15 an hour and
Manchin and his partners would
still make plenty of money.
But they do make more money by
paying their employees less.
That's just a fact.
So everytime he blocks a minimum
wage bill, Joe Manchin gets richer.
That's just just an absolute
fact okay?
And now the second part of
the thing that Ana just read you is
the average worker at
that place is getting $8.81.
Do you want to know what the
minimum wage in West Virginia is?
$8.75.
Now, what does that tell?
>> They're so generous,
that they're very generous.
They're paying cents more per
hour Cenk, be grateful, yeah.
>> Yeah, yeah, so whatever
the minimum wage is, that's what
people are going to pay, okay?
There'll be some mom and
pop shops who are good guys and
will pay more.
But overall most corporations and
companies, whether they're gigantic
or small, will unfortunately grind
you down to the bare minimum.
So look at that, they're paying on
average, on average only six cents
more than the minimum wage.
So all of those workers will get
a giant wage hike, an increase
in their salaries, if we pass
a federal minimum wage to $15.
That's why Joe Manchin thinks,
that's my money.
You're not going to touch my money.
He's going to vote no.
>> Yeah, that's exactly right.
And we talk a lot about money in
politics, and it's definitely
a pretty, obviously a corrupting
factor in our political system.
There's no question about that and
we need to get the money out.
But there's a second half to that,
that I don't think
is discussed enough.
And that's exactly what
this story covers.
There's a huge problem right
now with Congress members being
invested in individual stocks,
having these types of
business investments and ownership
of certain private companies.
If you want to be a public servant,
then be an actual public servant.
You have to divest from individual
stocks, and you have to divest from
these types of businesses.
Because clearly it serves as
a giant conflict of interest, and
you're a lawmaker who's supposed to
be making ethical decisions on
behalf of your constituents, right?
You're supposed to serve the best
interest of your constituents.
How are you going to do
that If your business investments
conflict with you doing your job
appropriately and
serving the best interest of your
constituents appropriately.
It's a huge problem.
>> Right, and Jonathan Larson in
this story, and we'll have the link
down below, you can watch it later
on Youtube or Facebook.
Always check the description box
because we've got helpful links
there, especially to articles that
we talk about.
Anyway, Jonathan pointed out that
he might have interest in another
family business.
There's some conflicting
reports about that.
And Manchin proposed that maybe we
can do a compromise and
move minimum wage not to 15,
not to 15, but maybe to 11.
Now, you want to know what the
average worker there is, it looks
like based on the estimates that
Jonathan found, the average worker
in that company makes $11.01.
Gee, I wonder why Manchin wants to
move it to $11.
And then he'll get to say,
what do you mean?
I pay above average rates.
These guys are unreal man.
And everybody's gotten so
used to their corruption that
nobody even questions it anymore.
I mean, in any of the mainstream
and that's why I love
TYT Investigates, and
I love that you guys financed it.
Have you noticed in any
mainstream media articles,
and thousands of them say Manchin
is going to block the minimum wage.
But they all paint it as like,
he's representing his conservative
voters in West Virginia,
who by the way polling shows
are completely against him, right.
Even the republican Governor of
Kentucky is to his left.
And they never, ever clarify,
by the way, Joe Manchin might
literally be making money off
of blocking higher wages for you.
>> You know, one thing since
you mentioned the media and
I just wanted to add one quick
note to that.
One thing that's been kind of
frustrating in the coverage of
the House bill that just passed,
the stimulus package,
reporters are pretending as if
Biden's proposal from the beginning
was to extend unemployment
insurance benefits through June.
No, no, no,
that was the republican proposal.
Biden's initial proposal extended
unemployment benefits through
September.
And now the media is just reporting
on the House version of the bill as
if like, Republicans wanted to
scale it back to the end of May,
but these Democrats fought and
they got it to the end of June.
No, no, fighting means that you get
unemployment insurance benefits
extended through September as
originally planned.
And don't pretend like Democrats
didn't cave on that issue.
They certainly did cave on
that issue.
I bring it up because it's,
sometimes we have these discussions
about whether it's just negligence.
Maybe it's an oversight issue,
like what's going on?
But they know.
They know it wasn't so long ago
that corporate media was reporting
that Biden wanted the unemployment
benefits to be extended through
September, that literally in mid
February they were reporting that.
And now, all of a sudden they're
pretending that was never the case.
I don't know if they know, but
the internet exists.
I can look up the older articles,
and provide the evidence,
which I did on Twitter.
>> Yeah, and politicians haven't
caught on to that, but
partly because they have
a mainstream media establishment
protection racket for them.
So now they're just changing facts
on behalf of corporate politicians.
It's absurd.
I mean, the mainstream media acts
like it was born yesterday.
They're like the parliamentarian,
obviously the parliamentarian in
our system of government controls
everything, obviously.
But wait a minute, we never talked
about the parliamentarian before.
And for Trump,
we never discussed it once.
For the Bush tax cuts,
they completely, they fired
the parliamentarian and the VP did
whatever the hell he wanted.
VP Dick Cheney,
shocking that he did that.
Is anybody noting that?
Now finally, independent media is
forcing that into the conversation,
but mainstream media was like,
I don't know
what you're talking about.
I was born yesterday.
And so I believe the Republicans
and the corporate Democrats, when
they tell me the parliamentarian
rules everything in Congress,
even though it never has before,
come on.