Bernie Sanders by Gage Skidmore, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0/Original

Sen. Bernie Sanders has a made a career, if you can call it that, out of accomplishing nothing and yelling at people who actually produce value in this country. One of the chief tenants of his stalled Presidential campaign is a “living wage” defined as at least $15 an hour.

He’s relentlessly slandered companies as not caring about workers because they can’t pay the guy who flips burgers $15 an hour. Not that there’s anything wrong with working in fast food (anyone that takes the initiative to work deserves no criticism in my book), but financial realities are what they are and demanding more money than a job justifies just leads to faster automation.

Those financial realities never enter into the equation for Bernie though.

Well, unless it’s his own campaign.

SCOOP: For years, Bernie Sanders has traveled the country advocating for a $15 per hour minimum wage. His campaign organizers say they aren’t making that much, and they're using his words to protest for higher wages. Via @WaPoSean https://t.co/ZQgnT7jYrx

— Matea Gold (@mateagold) July 19, 2019

Unionized campaign organizers working for Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential effort are battling with its management, arguing that the compensation and treatment they are receiving does not meet the standards Sanders espouses in his rhetoric, according to internal communications.

Campaign field hires have demanded an annual salary they say would be equivalent to a $15-an-hour wage, which Sanders for years has said should be the federal minimum. The organizers and other employees supporting them have invoked the senator’s words and principles in making their case to campaign manager Faiz Shakir, the documents reviewed by The Washington Post show.

I must have missed the part of Bernie’s pitch where he said we must have a $15 minimum wage unless the employees are salaried and then you can work them to the point of making only $13 an hour.

This is typical of the kind of hypocrisy you see among socialists. Everyone needs to live quaint, modest lives unless you are Bernie Sanders. Then you can have three houses and be a millionaire, but it’s different because he wrote a book. It’s always “different” for the socialists in power compared to what they demand of everyone else.

The Sanders campaign late Thursday issued a statement lauding its union contract. “We know our campaign offers wages and benefits competitive with other campaigns, as is shown by the latest fundraising reports,” Shakir said. “Every member of the campaign, from the candidate on down, joined this movement in order to defeat Donald Trump and transform America. Bernie Sanders is the most pro-worker and pro-labor candidate running for president. We have tremendous staff who are working hard. Bernie and I both strongly believe in the sanctity of the collective bargaining process and we will not deviate from our commitment to it.”

This is so rich. Instead of saying “well, yes our rhetoric demands we practice what we preach,” Bernie’s campaign makes an appeal to what other campaigns are paying. How is that relevant? McDonald’s pays workers about what other fast food joints do. Does that stop Bernie from ignoring the realities of the job market? No, he keeps hammering them as uncaring and inhumane. By Bernie’s own standard, he’s uncaring and inhumane.

The appeal to collective bargaining is also pretty funny given his normal rhetoric. What’s there to collectively bargain about? Why doesn’t he just give them the $15 an hour average? I mean, he makes it sound so simple when he’s bashing private businesses for not doing that.

You can expect the other Democrats in the 2020 field to hit him on this, as they should. There is good news for Bernie though. His campaign is cratering anyway, so this will all work itself out in the end.

I’ve got a new twitter! Please help by following @bonchieredstate.