Bloomberg News this week offered the state of Washington as a powerful rebuttal to those who claim hiking the minimum wage would kill jobs. Washington, it turns out, has had the nation's highest minimum wage since 1998 and over the past 15 years enjoyed annual job growth well above the national average. New Jersey, too, has seen faster job creation since its new $8.25 hourly wage went into effect in January.

But not everyone Bloomberg interviewed is happy about those numbers. Joe Olivo, president of Moorestown, New Jersey-based Perfect Printing, opposes the raise for lower-income working Americans. But if that name sounds familiar, it should. As it turns out, "everyman" small business owner Joe Olivo is regularly trotted out as a right-wing poster child to protest the supposedly dire impact of the minimum wage, Obamacare, a millionaire's tax, the estate tax, unemployment benefits and just about anything Democrats advocate.

The ersatz small business job creator became ubiquitous in media stories after the Supreme Court's ruling in the 2012 NFIB v. Sebelius case that upheld the Affordable Care Act. But as Alternet, Balloon Juice, Media Matters and others documented, left unmentioned was the fact that Joe Olivo is a prominent member of and donor to NFIB, the National Federation of Independent Business. After reviewing segments from NBC and NPR in June 2012, No More Mister Nice Blog revealed that Olivo the printing proprietor was also a plaintiff:



Wow -- two news organizations covering the same story scoured the nation for a random small business owner to comment on that story -- and they both found the same one! How'd that happen? What are the odds? Well, as it turns out, Joe Olivo of Perfect Printing turns up quite a bit in public discussions of this and other issues. Here he is testifying against the health care law before House and Senate committees in January 2011. Here he is on the Fox Business Network around the same time, discussing the same subject. Here he is a few days ago, also on Fox Business, talking to John Stossel about the law. Here he is discussing the same subject on a New Jersey Fox affiliate. And here he is in July 2010 discussing small business hiring with Neil Cavuto on Fox News. Here he is opposing an increase in the minimum wage in an MSNBC debate a couple of weeks ago.

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