Democrats don't really care about the little guys and gals: Column

It's funny how preachy politicians and activist groups can be when it comes to pet issues like "economic justice." Yet when it involves their private interests it turns into a case of "do as we say, not as we do."

Case in point crusading Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who said in her 2006 book All Your Worth that the idea that "you can make big money buying houses and flipping them quickly" is a myth.

If so, then in the 1990s Warren and her husband were myth-busters. According to a new report in National Review making hundreds of thousands of dollars buying a handful of houses at deflated prices and reselling them months or years later at a substantial markup.

Warren once said that "there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own," and proved the point by amassing wealth based on the uninformed decisions of those who sold their homes for much less than they were worth, some of them elderly.

In another case, the same labor leadership in Los Angeles that has been pushing hard for the city to impose a $15/hour minimum wage by 2020 now is lobbying this week for an exemption from the very law they were backing.

Local Federation of Labor honcho Rusty Hicks, part of the Raise the Wage coalition, argues that a loophole is needed for companies with union workers to have flexibility when it comes to collective bargaining, allowing "each party to prioritize what is important to them." Hicks has company in union bosses up and down the West coast where cities and towns have already adopted rules allowing unions to exploit underpaid workers. Even if the priority is forcing some workers to accept sub-minimum wages. This will make having a unionized workforce more attractive to employers, who will see it as a way to get cheaper labor; and after all, isn't providing low-cost labor what unions have always stood for?

Speaking of pay equity, the White House web site informs us that "despite passage of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which requires that men and women in the same work place be given equal pay for equal work, the 'gender gap' in pay persists."

However, "under the President's leadership, this administration has made significant progress" to end it – everywhere apparently except the White House. A 2014 study found that the average male White House employee makes $10,200 more than the average woman, a gap of 13%. This is identical to the pay disparity when Obama took office in 2009.

Maybe all these everyday people being victimized by liberal hypocrisy could use a principled champion. Hillary Clinton has promoted herself in that role, amping up her populist rhetoric to fend off potential Democratic challengers like Sen. Warren to her left.

However Hillary might seem a poor choice to carry this message. She claimed she and her husband emerged from the White House in 2001 "dead broke." That changed in the years that followed. The power couple miraculously made tens of millions of dollars solely through hard work and influence peddling.

Hillary Clinton said recently, "I think most Americans understand that the deck is stacked for those at the top." That might as well be her campaign slogan.

James S. Robbins writes weekly for USA TODAY and is the author of The Real Custer: From Boy General to Tragic Hero.

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