Yes, she's one of ours
March 17, 2014
NC States economics Ph.D., now Seattle City Council member, Kshama Sawant "rips Freedom Foundation for a study she obviously didn't read".
One attendee asked Sawant about the economic consequences of increasing the minimum wage. In his comments, the gentleman noted that the U.S. territory of American Samoa had recently experienced significant economic damage after Congress mandated sharp increases in the territory’s minimum wage.
Sawant responded by claiming that the American Samoa study “has been done by some organization called the Freedom Foundation, which is a right-wing think-tank.” Her comments about the study’s validity were unequivocal.
“As an economist and as an academician,” she explained, “I feel strange calling it a ‘study’ because it’s a spurious analysis that has no basis in reality . . . Even by the standards of right-wing analysis it’s not that great.”
. . .
There’s only one-problem: the report was actually written by the Obama Administration’s Government Accountability Office (GAO), not the “right-wing” Freedom Foundation. While we have cited the study, we are not its authors.
We won't be bragging about her anytime soon.
Link courtesy of Patrick Sullivan.