Legal documents allege Manchin has a financial stake in at least two WV companies that pay less than $15/hour and would have to pay their workers more if Manchin (and @SenatorSynema) signed off.
Neither company appears in Manchin's ethics filing:
One of the companies is a La Quinta, reportedly owned by Emerald Coast Realty... which is partially held by AA Properties, which Manchin DOES disclose owning on his ethics filing.
It's conceivable Manchin will deny AA has any stake in the La Quinta. Why?
Because the financial dealings are complicated -- involving longtime Manchin associates -- and past legal claims of AA stakes have been disputed before:
La Quinta nationally pays less than $15/hour for multiple jobs, according to Indeed.com.
The one in question, in Elkview, WV, pays even less.
Instead of $15/hour, Manchin is pushing an $11/hour minimum wage...
...which would mean a raise of eight cents an hour on average for La Quinta hotel housekeepers nationwide.
Manchin's stake in another company was first alleged by his own brother, John, who sued Manchin and a third brother for allegedly reneging on a seven-figure loan.
The suit claims Joe and Roch Manchin owned a WV carpet company now known as Wholesale Carpet Outlet (WCO).
John Manchin said he couldn't comment due to an NDA.
I emailed WCO and they said Sen. Manchin has never had a stake in WCO.
What's unclear is whether Manchin has an indirect stake via his brother or a third-party entity.
WCO didn't respond to my question about wages, but its PPP loan revealed data that led FederalPay.org to estimate its average annual pay at $22,896...
...which, in turn, if you assume two weeks paid vacation, translates into an average hourly pay rate of $11.01 an hour...
...one cent above the $11 rate Sen. Manchin supports.
To be fair, Manchin's finances are so opaque, he's been unsure himself of his assets.
But factoring in his other companies--e.g., coal and energy--and individual stocks he and family own (+$500,000 in one bank), odds are others working for Manchin are making less than $15, too.
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Pete Buttigieg testifies today on his nomination to run the Dept. of Transportation.
I spent almost a year covering Buttigieg. He refused to speak with me, so I’m going to thread some of the things senators could ask him about today.
In 2011, Jiha’d Vasquez, 16, was found dead, hanged, on a utility tower.
In 2012, Buttigieg became mayor and Jiha’d’s mother asked him for help with the case. Common Council records show Buttigieg was at the meetings where she spoke about her son.
Jones and a local NAACP official wanted help because her son’s death had been ruled a suicide…with no autopsy and no investigation.
For the law and order party, a thread on the Dept. of Justice guidelines for who should be considered for clemency.
Enough time is supposed to elapse between serving sentence and clemency for the recipient to have demonstrated good character.
Five years.
FBI is supposed to do a background check to assess a clemency petitioner's reputation, involvement in the community and charitable activities.
Presidents are supposed to consider how granting clemency to those in power or who breached the public trust may undermine and erode the rule of law and deterrent effect.
They're supposed to consider the impact on law enforcement and the general public.
Love to see media telling us this is the last we'll hear of Trump.
As if they won't still cover him.
Literally telling us we won't hear anymore from the man they're endlessly analyzing and focusing on as he leaves.
For more on how we won't hear from Donald Trump anymore, we go now to our reporter in the field who just tried to ask Trump about how we won't hear from Trump anymore.
What can you tell us about what Trump said about how we won't cover Trump anymore?
Farmer Paul Adams said he'd read about big farms that were somehow getting certified as organic -- flooding the market with organic milk, driving prices down and small farms out of business.
Their exchange was captured on video:
Paul couldn't remember the big organic dairy farm he had read about, but told me it was Natural Prairie Dairy Farms, one of a handful of big Texas farms that now produce more milk than all of Wisconsin's small dairy farms combined.
As Ti-Hua reports, Oklahoma's tribes would be powerless to prevent wholesale dumping on tribal lands or protect them from a vast array of toxic materials and pollutants.
The EPA never appears to have made the public aware that this decision-making process was under way.
As Ti-Hua first reported, the state's tribes were first told on Aug. 25--with a response deadline of Sept. 21, less than one month: tyt.com/stories/4vZLCH…