Attack of the Think Tanks

When the Heritage Foundation’s think tank starts attacking the minimum wage, and telling the unsuspecting public how a $15 an hour minimum wage will hurt only them, the public should question who is funding the think tank. The Heritage Foundation’s think tank tries to come across as a concerned, parental figure wanting you to believe that they are looking out for you when they tell that an increase in the minimum wage is actually bad for the workers, will cause business to shutter and hurt the economy. These pearls of wisdom are not only wrong, but are financed by the Charles and David Koch. The brothers who would like to eliminate the minimum wage, and control local, state and federal governments with their American City Council Exchange and the American Legislative Exchange Council, which writes bills that politicians, who have aligned themselves with the brothers, pass that makes legislation benefitting the Koch dynasty. Think tanks started around the 1900s by people, like steel baron Andrew Carnegie at the Carnegie Endowment, and Robert Brookings at the Brookings Institute, and the Hoover Institute on the campus of Stanford University. Its members now includes George Schultz, Richard Allen, Newt Gingrich, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. These people are all anti-union and would abolish a minimum wage if given the chance, which the conservative-leaning Heritage Foundation supports this ideology and the preservation of the Free Market principles. Think tanks serve the economic and political interests of the corporate elite. Think tanks are mostly nongovernmental organizations that seek to influence public policy to the detriment of minimum wage workers, in this case. The way think tanks get credibility is that they do oral presentations and written briefs in front of prominent committees, which is then part of an official record and then often cited by journalists and academics as fact, with no research or validation of the information provided. This is how the hit piece about the $15 an hour minimum wage was put in the Record Searchlight without any fact checking. None of the arguments against increasing the minimum wage holds water. When the think tanks take up the fight to stop the minimum wage increase, you know the conservatives are scared of losing control. The Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institution, Brookings Institution, Carnegie Endowment, American Enterprise Institute, Round Table, Rand Corporation, and many others are funded by millions of dollars each year and they are not spending this money to help the proletarians, it is spent to help the oligarchies. People need to look closely at who is writing the hit pieces and what they stand to gain from the failure of whatever they’re railing against, and who is funding the attacks.