What do we call people who don't pay the help?

Well, in the past, they were known as plantation owners, or slave-holders, a hot topic for wokester leftists.

Nowadays, just say "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez."

She's got quite a track record of not paying the help based on her appearance at the Met Gala last year, according to revelations from the congressional ethics investigation on her.

She not only took "gifts" (really big gifts, which started with the $35,000 price of the ticket), but failed to pay in any timely manner the staff who fluffed her up in her famous "Tax the Rich" gown that got her so much fawning publicity.

According to TMZ:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez delayed making payments in regards to her Met Gala appearance two years ago — this according to the findings of an ethics investigation.

The NY congresswoman has been at the center of a Capitol Hill probe for about a year, and this week ... the results were released. According to the fact-finders, it looks like AOC and/or her staff were quite slow in paying people back ... to the tune of thousands of dollars.

The House Ethics Committee came down hard in their report, saying they have "substantial reason" to believe Rep. Ocasio-Cortez might have violated ethics rules for members of Congress, and maybe even broken federal laws pertaining to gifts and perks she received at the time of the Gala, when she walked the red carpet in a loud "Tax the Rich" dress.

According to them, it's unclear if AOC was ever going to pay people back for the dress, the makeup services, the hotel costs, the accessories, or anything else she received as part of her appearance ... and they go on to claim that the launch of this investigation seems to have spurred her and her staff to act. AOC has since paid off the tab ... about $7,700 all told.

This is an amazingly crummy way of treating tradespeople, who no doubt gave their all to make Ocasio-Cortez look like a million bucks for the other Beautiful People at that Vogue-sponsored gala.  Ocasio-Cortez makes a six-figure congressional salary, so we know she had the means to pay.  She just didn't want to, and had there not been a congressional ethics investigation, she might not have.

Most of these people who went unpaid for months weren't high-paid workers, as Nicole Gelinas wrote in her excellent description of the scandal for the New York Post.

It costs money to be a Kardashian-level celebrity: transportation, dress, hair, makeup, hotel room, manicure, shoes, handbag, jewels, boyfriend accessories.   

As AOC's lawyer assured Congressional ethics officials just after the gala, "the Congresswoman is paying personally for all other benefits including the rental value of her dress, handbag, and accessories, ... shoes ..., hair and makeup, transportation, and ... hotel room ... for staging."  

Oh, no! What to do? Just ... don't pay for these things, and hope no one notices.  

How? The fashion industry is famously exploitative. Struggling designers need exposure, and work for cheap to get it.  

So AOC got herself a haute couture dress – consultation, design, fittings, materials, and day-of styling, likely well above a ten-thousand-dollar value – from a Brooklyn designer for a billed cost of a $1,300 "rental." 

Good deal! But did she pay the $1,300? No. Her campaign staff called the designer to talk the price down to $300. That's how much AOC values weeks worth of labor.  

Then she delayed, by months, the paying of the staffers who gussied her up — the gown "rental," the shoe "rental," (Gelinas points out that these were questionable classifications), as well as the hairdo, the makeup, the car service, the hotel service, the boyfriend's accessories.  Only the manicurist got paid promptly because she demanded payment in cash up front.  (It makes one wonder if she's been burned in the past by people like AOC.)  The others got paid only after the congressional investigation got going.  According to Gelinas, "the makeup artist sent the bill to a collection agency, which said it was 'EXTREMELY overdue.'"  The hairdresser threatened to call the New York Department of Labor to make a complaint over the $477.73 bill.

Apparently, only the congressional ethics investigation actually motivated her to cough up.

Ocasio-Cortez preened around like a celeb because in her mind she was a celeb, and stiffing the little guys who do these things is what celebrities often do.  The little guys in that industry are forced to take it because the celeb's custom is "exposure" for them, but it usually doesn't work out that way, and even if it did, they still need to be paid.  It's one of Hollywood's crappiest games, and Ocasio-Cortez leaped in to embrace it with gusto.

That left a lot of people waiting for a paycheck after performing their services, something that wouldn't be tolerated in the restaurant industry or at hotels if the clients were ordinary people.  One set of laws for them...

Ocasio-Cortez, however, is a pol, and politicians are subject to more ethics rules on gifts than ordinary people, which makes her omission twice as egregious.  Pols know the rules and are very careful to follow them, but Ocasio-Cortez flouted them with alacrity.

She not only flouted the pay-the-help practice, but actually solicited the tickets to the event and then spent weeks with staffers attempting to make it on the up-and-up, not an illegal campaign gift, finally settling for AOC's tickets not being from Vogue (whose parent company has a Washington lobbyist, making it subject to ethics rules on gifts), but from Devil-Wears-Prada editor Anna Wintour, who must consider AOC a very good friend indeed to be handing her two free $35,000 tickets to her gala.

Of course, it has the look of cash for favors.  But like the unpaid help, it's of little concern to AOC.  Laws are for little people.  Socialist celebrities are different.  That's what AOC demonstrated here.  Who knew that AOC would have so much in common with Leona Helmsley? 

TMZ says that Congress gave AOC a pass on the tickets/gift violation, while AOC's induced payment of the help got her off the hook otherwise.  Haven't congressional investigators sent less tony congressmen to jail for less?  Think of Rep. Duncan Hunter, who spent campaign cash on trips to Italy.  He's out of office for that.  Why isn't she?

Image:  Twitter screen shot.