DEMOCRACY DIES IN OLIGARCHY

 

HE is why I, along with tens of thousands of others, cancelled my subscription to the Post, and why I will never buy from Amazon or shop at Whole Foods....

RATING THE ECONOMY

 

The secret to the GOP’s assault on your rights This is not a battle of left vs. right. It is a battle between democracy and autocracy. 11JUL22

 AS Robert Reich says in this piece from Nation of Change we are not in a battle of left vs right, we are in a battle of democracy vs autocracy. Politicians who have been bought and paid for by corporate America look to consolidate and strengthen their authoritarian gains at the local, state and national level in the coming 2022 midterm elections. It is not too late to stop that from happening. Democracy is not a spectator sport and for the love of our country we have to do everything possible to elect pro-democracy candidates to local and state offices and especially to the U.S. Congress to increase the number of  pro-democracy senators and representatives. It is a sad fact that republican senators and a vast majority of republican representatives can not be considered pro-democracy politicians and need to be voted out of office. "Democratic" senators joe manchin and kyrsten sinema are not pro-democracy politicians and need to be voted out of office. We need to support pro-democracy candidates, financially and / or by volunteering to begin to restore and protect our democratic Republic. REMEMBER, DEMOCRACY IS NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT!

The Secret to the GOP’s Assault on Your Rights | Robert Reich

The secret to the GOP’s assault on your rights

By

 Robert Reich

 -

July 11, 2022

This is not a battle of left vs. right. It is a battle between democracy and autocracy.

Democracy is not just under attack in America. In some states, it’s being lost.

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once suggested that states could serve as laboratories of democracy, but these states are more like laboratories of autocracy.

Take Wisconsin. The GOP has so successfully rigged state elections through gerrymandering that even when Democrats get more votes, Republicans win more seats. In 2018, Republicans won just 45% of the vote statewide, but were awarded 64% of the seats.

Wisconsin is one of several states where an anti-democracy movement has taken hold.

But it wasn’t always this way. In fact, Wisconsin pioneered the progressive era of American politics at the start of the twentieth century — with policies that empowered workers, protected the environment, and took on corporate monopolies. State lawmakers established the nation’s first unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, and strict child labor laws.

Teddy Roosevelt called the state a “laboratory for wise … legislation aiming to secure the social and political betterment of the people as a whole.”

But for the last decade, Wisconsin has become a laboratory for legislation that does the exact opposite.

After Republicans took control in 2010, one of the first bills they passed gutted workers’ rights by dismantling public-sector unions — which then decimated labor’s ability to support pro-worker candidates.

This move aligned with the interests of their corporate donors, who benefited from weaker unions and lower wages.

This new Wisconsin formula has been replicated elsewhere.

Republicans in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and North Carolina won a minority of votes in 2018, but still won majorities in their state assemblies thanks to gerrymandering.

In Texas, Ohio, and Georgia, Republicans have crafted gerrymanders that are strong enough to create supermajorities capable of overturning a governor’s veto.

Even more alarming, hundreds of these Republican state legislators, “used the power of their office to discredit or try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election,” on behalf of Donald Trump.

How did this happen? Put simply: years of careful planning by corporate interest groups and their radical allies.

And the corporations enabling these takeovers aren’t just influencing the law — their lobbyists are literally writing many of the bills that get passed.

This political alliance with corporate power has given these Republican legislatures free rein to pursue an extreme culture-war agenda — one that strips away rights that majorities of people support — while deflecting attention from their corporate patrons’ economic agendas.

Republicans are introducing bills that restrict or criminalize abortion. They’re banning teachers from discussing the history of racism in this country. They are making it harder to protest and easier to harm protestors. They are punishing trans people for receiving gender-affirming care and their doctors for providing it.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. There are still laboratories of democracy where true public servants are finding creative ways to defend the rights of us all.

Elected officials in Colorado and Vermont are codifying the right to abortion. California lawmakers have proposed making the state a refuge for transgender youth and their families. And workers across the country are reclaiming their right to organize, which is helping to rebuild an important counterweight to corporate power.

But winning will ultimately require a fifty state strategy — with a Democratic Senate willing to reform or end the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade, protect voting rights, and protect the right to organize nationwide.

America needs a national pro-democracy movement to stop the anti-democracy movement now underway — a pro-democracy movement committed to helping candidates everywhere, including in state-level races.

This is where you come in. Volunteer for pro-democracy candidates — and if you don’t have time, contribute to their campaigns.

This is not a battle of left vs. right. It is a battle between democracy and autocracy.

Robert Reich

http://robertreich.org/

Robert B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. He served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fourteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "Saving Capitalism." He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, co-founder of the nonprofit Inequality Media and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, Inequality for All.

Defense contractors bankrolled campaigns of election objectors 3JAN22

hitler's beer hall putsch 9NOV1923

 CONGRESS added 25 billion more than what was requested by the Biden-Harris administration to the Defense Authorization Act, this report from Roll Call reminds us of who has bought too many members of congress to the detriment of America, especially our children, poor, working poor and middle class. Eisenhower and King both warned our nation and Christ Himself blessed the peacemakers as well as those who provide for the least among us. AND these donations prove the military-industrial complex is not interested in a strong American military to defend our democracy. NO, they are war profiteers, and they do not give a damn about the American people or our men and women in uniform. 

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." --Dwight D. Eisenhower

 "A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." - Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr

Introduction to the Sermon on the Mount

5 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them.

The Beatitudes

He said:

3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn,
    for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek,
    for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
    for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart,
    for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Defense contractors bankrolled campaigns of election objectors

Leading firms that paused contributions after the Jan. 6 riot quickly renewed their giving

By John M. Donnelly

Posted January 3, 2022 at 6:09pm

Leading defense contractors were among the most generous corporate contributors to the campaigns of members of Congress who voted not to certify the 2020 presidential election results in Arizona or Pennsylvania, according to a report made public Monday by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The contributions from the defense companies’ political action committees flowed steadily in 2021 to the reelection campaigns of dozens of election objectors and to Republicans’ Senate and House campaign committees and leadership PACs, the report said, after some of those companies had halted such payments after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

The rioters acted in response to an incendiary speech by President Donald Trump as lawmakers debated whether to turn away presidential electors from Arizona. After the riot, the House and Senate reconvened and rejected the GOP motion, 121-303 in the House and 6-93 in the Senate. Another pair of votes objecting to electors from Pennsylvania was rejected 138-282 in the House and 7-92 in the Senate. All of those in favor were Republicans.

Since then, the Boeing Company has given $346,500 to GOP campaign committees or election objectors' campaigns, more than any other company, the report said.

Separately, Boeing contributed to state attorneys general who have filed suits to overturn the 2020 elections in four battleground states, CREW found.

Other top-10 defense contractors' PACs also made the list of leading direct or indirect contributors to Republicans who voted not to certify the 2020 results. They are:

• General Dynamics: $233,500
• Lockheed Martin Corp.: $205,000
• L3Harris Technologies Inc.: $173,000
• Northrop Grumman Corp.: $151,000
• Raytheon Co.: $150,500

Contribution freeze was short lived

Of those, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon stand out because they froze donations for a while after Jan. 6. 

At the time, Boeing issued a statement noting, in part: “We will continue to carefully evaluate future contributions to ensure that we support those who not only support our company, but also uphold our country’s most fundamental principles.” 

Also last January, after Lockheed Martin froze its own political contributions after the Capitol riot, the company said in a statement that it “routinely evaluates and updates our political action committee contribution strategy to reflect our core values and the constantly changing political landscape and priorities.”

Since last January, however, donations to GOP members and campaign committees from Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon “have exceeded half a million dollars, including donations to some of the most anti-democratic members,” the CREW report said.

On Monday, a Lockheed Martin spokesperson said, “Our employee PAC program continues to observe long-standing principles of non-partisan political engagement in support of our business interests.“

A Boeing spokesperson declined to comment on Monday about the CREW report. Raytheon did not reply by Monday evening to a request for comment. 

GOP election objectors sit on key defense panels

Of course, defense contractors regularly give campaign contributions to members of the congressional committees that oversee defense spending. 

In this Congress, those oversight panels include numerous Republicans who voted against certifying state election results.

In fact, the majority of GOP members of both the House Armed Services Committee and the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense voted against certifying those results. 

So did three Republican members of the Senate Armed Services Committee: Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rick Scott of Florida. 

Defense contractors' contributions formed just a subset of the findings in the CREW report. All told, the group said, 717 corporations and industry trade groups contributed $18 million to 143 of the 147 members who voted not to certify voters’ presidential pick in 2020, their leadership PACs or to GOP campaign committees. 

On the other hand, the report said, half of the 250 companies that froze contributions after the Jan. 6 riots have continued to withhold them from those who sought to thwart congressional certification of the election results.

THE REAPER, THE SOWER, AND THE UNION & SOJOURNERS VERSE & VOICE 21&25OKT21

 

WORKERS across America have had enough of the class warfare that the 1% and corporate America have been waging against them since the fascist reagan administration. Congress needs to hold the line on any more cuts to Pres Biden's Build Back Better plan, they need to tell the dinos and republicans opposed to the BBB just like they took from the poor and the working and middle classes to pay for tax cuts for the rich NOW is the time to take from the 1% and corporate America to fund the Infrastructure and BBB legislation. E mail your representative  and senators and tell them it is time for the 1% and corporate America to pay their fair share, no more cuts to BBB, get it passed NOW! This from Sojourners.....

THE REAPER, THE SOWER, AND THE UNION

BY JESSICA FELIX ROMERO

The latest headlines are filled with news of worker shortages, delayed supply chains, and labor strikes. Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations strike tracker reports more than 181 strikes so far this year, with 38 of them taking place in the first two weeks of October, spurring the AFL-CIO to name this month “Striketober.” These strikes span all kinds of industries, from hospital workers to bourbon makers.

Workers are mounting an economic resistance, refusing to fill underpaid, dangerous jobs. Many are calling it the “Great Resignation,” as workers reevaluate their priorities and relationship to work, while others say it’s a reckoning of decades-long corporate greed and poor working conditions. Essential workers, who were considered heroes at the onset of the pandemic, are now demanding changes to workplaces and, according to Robert Reich’s recent opinion piece, “a total reevaluation of the very nature and quality of work.”

“No one likes to go on strike, let’s be clear,” Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO recently told CNN. “Strikes occur when people are pushed to a limit where basic fairness and equity are violated.”

As just one example, at John Deere, negotiations in 1997 created a two-tier system: New Deere employees were brought in with lower wages, no health care benefits after retirement, and pensions at about one-third less than their predecessors. A current Deere contract proposal amounts to 6-cent raise from what the “pre-1997” workers made 10 years ago and proposes to cut pensions for all new hires; it essentially creates a third-tier future workforce. In a new video, John Deere workers cited demands for fair pay and retirement benefits as they shared why they are striking for the first time since 1986.

Kellogg’s and Kaiser Permanente employees are also fighting two-tier wage and benefits proposals. The impacts of two-tier systems go beyond the individual hiring conditions and often lead to a slow dismantling of unions by causing divides among the workers and gradual erosion of solidarity. But the strikes of 2021 are bucking that trend with radical solidarity.

“Twenty-two years, and I finally got a job where it’s comfortable and I make decent money. But there are other plants; other people in this plant aren’t making the money they should,” says Rick Boer, a Deere employee of 22 years, in the video. Toby Munley, an employee of 18 years, said he’s fighting, “for the people that are out on the floor building these machines; I’d like to work around people that are happy and feel like they’re valued.”

For many of us, our workplaces are where we do the “good works, which God prepared for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10). Whether those works include producing goods, providing care, or serving our community, our work is vital to fulfilling the call to be part of God’s renewal of creation — and to fulfilling God’s purpose for each of us. Protecting working people today and in the future is holy, purposeful work, and strikers this month and throughout history are part of that mission.

To get a sense of how strike leaders tie their experiences on the line with their Christian faith, I reached out to my friend and colleague Theressa Harvey-Council, staff director of UNITE HERE Local 54, president of Local 54’s Black Leadership Advisory Committee, and a union member for over 32 years.

“My faith in the union and my religious beliefs are the same: ‘No weapon formed against us shall prosper,’” she told me. “It's gonna form, but not prosper. One day longer! One day stronger! When we fight, we win.”

FROM THE MAGAZINE: There Is Still Power in Unions

Typically, when Christians think of scripture that supports working people, we go to, “You shall not defraud your neighbor; you shall not steal; and you shall not keep for yourself the wages of the laborer until morning” (Leviticus 19:13) or, “The laborer deserves to be paid” (1 Timothy 5:18). But quoting Isaiah 54:17 and weapons formed against us? Not so much. We often hear sermons on the theology of work that convert Ephesians passages on the relationship between masters and servants/slaves to the modern work relationship. But those passages center the power of the wealthy, not the power of the working person.

Harvey-Council’s faith invites us into a new power dynamic where, in all spheres of our lives — including our workplaces — we have the “power at work within us … to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can as or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20). Working people with the courage to think larger and ask for more — more justice, more equity, more safety — are doing more than exerting a right to strike or negotiating a singular contract; they are setting possibilities for the future.

Striking workers, the working people organizing work stoppages, or the people creating new bargaining mechanisms beyond the traditional workplace, address the conditions of today and set vision for what the future of working can be. They also have an impact on the past. Jesus shares this time-bending paradox in the parable of sower and reaper in John 4:36-38:

The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.

The passage has poignant significance for me in the light of my father’s unexpected passing earlier this year. He was a machine operator in a union shop for over 35 years. I have memories of him attending union meetings, telling me about contract negotiations, and showing up for his union siblings in times of trial and celebration. When I had the emotionally taxing responsibility of going through his belongings and redistributing them to family, neighbors, and charities, I really only wanted to find one thing among his effects: his uniform shirt. Growing up I’d occasionally see him wear the shirt with his name, Tito, embroidered on it as he did handyman tasks around the house. He retired four years ago, and I hadn’t seen him wearing it since. I sorted through boxes of clothes and packed up yearly awards for perfect attendance, safety awards, the lamp he got when he completed 25 years of service — but no shirt. Then on the second-to-last day of emptying his house, I found a red tool bag in the corner of his storage shed. There, crumpled among socket wrenches and mismatched die pieces, I saw the flash of light blue: the uniform shirt. Overcome with emotion, I grabbed the shirt and held it close to my heart and sobbed. Fresh, body-shaking tears ripped through my body as I grieved his short retirement, that he didn’t get to retire until he was 70. Then those tears gave way to deep gratitude that he had the union that fought to make the working conditions better; in the end, that is actually where he spent most of his time. Like the reaper in the parable, my father entered into that which he did not labor, and life was better for it. He became part of the working people’s legacy by participating in the union and fighting for all workers. For the first time I experienced the spiritual power of that participation.

As Christians, we are called to model our work upon the life of Jesus who challenged unjust power structures and radically centered people. He calls us to a deeper unity in him, and that unity is present in the working people and communities that support them. The people on the picket line are our siblings in Christ, fellow pilgrims on the journey to justice and making straight the way of the Lord. When we show up in solidarity, we are bringing a living, breathing community of believers into this labor moment that will have generational effects. This “Striketober,” and this dynamic year of worker power, is defined by the people the movement is organizing for: the worker who is struggling now, and for future generations of working people who will take on these same jobs after current members clock out for the last time. As they say on the picket line, “One day longer! One day stronger!”

Jessica Felix Romero

Jessica Felix Romero is chief strategy and impact officer at Sojourners.

It's not a labor shortage — it's a wage and workers rights shortage 2SEP21

 AMERICAN Labor Day, the first Monday in September, created to keep American workers from joining forces with the rest of the world for fair wages, benefits and workers rights. The rest of the world celebrates Labor Day (with good reason) on 1 MAY. They are protected and provided for because of the struggles and activism of previous generations of workers. Americans continue to face exploitation, discrimination, neglect and abuse, in short class warfare to protect and increase the profit margins of corporate America and the politicians they have bought. This from The Hill just might document a new American labor movement....

It's not a labor shortage — it's a wage and workers rights shortage

BY LANE WINDHAM, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 09/02/21 09:30 AM EDT

As we approach Labor Day, America’s working people are deep into a protracted general strike. Millions are refusing to go back into low-wage, no-benefits jobs that require they abandon dignity and rights at the workplace door. Their struggle has brewed for 40 years as wages stagnated, benefits vanished and public policy offered working families little reprieve. Employers complain that too few people are returning to work, but America’s “labor shortage” is really a shortage of good wages and workers rights on the job. 

Recent jobs reports show an uptick in the numbers of workers returning to work, but payroll tallies are still more than 5 million shy of pre-pandemic levels. Restaurants, retailers and hospitality firms say it is especially difficult to hire, and some blame generous unemployment checks. However, even those states that have rescinded supplemental unemployment benefits are finding that many people remain hesitant to take the sorts of jobs that are on offer.   

The pandemic shook up what workers want and expect from a job. America cheered front-line workers during the early days of the pandemic, banging pots and pans for health care workers, honking for delivery drivers, and thanking cashiers. But these workers’ wages remain too low to cover rising housing, education and health care costs. You’d need an average of $25 an hour to rent a modest two-bedroom apartment, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, and minimum wage workers can’t afford rent anywhere in the nation. An extra dollar or two more just isn’t cutting it for most people, especially when they’re putting their health on the line.   

Meanwhile, women are still shouldering the bulk of unpaid child and elder care, a balancing act that the pandemic has made nearly impossible. Nearly 2 million women dropped out of the labor force during the pandemic, and many did so in order to take care of their kids or sick parents. It’s no coincidence that the sectors having the most difficult time staffing up — food service and retail — are majority female occupations. Women are looking at their paltry options and voting with their feet by staying home.   

This isn’t the first time Americans withheld their labor to turn big societal changes in their favor. W.E.B. Du Bois posited in his masterful "Black Reconstruction in America" that enslaved people engaged in a general strike when they ran away from plantations, took up arms and sabotaged cotton production, forcing President Abraham Lincoln’s decision to end slavery. When President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first Depression-era revision to labor law gave employers the upper hand, general strikes in San Francisco, Minneapolis and the textile industry helped convince him to pass the National Labor Relations Act. 

The U.S. is at another such historical crossroads due to the pandemic, and working people are weighing in by staying home. In the 1970s, employers started creating the kinds of bad jobs that are now the norm; they started hiring part-time, contract labor, lowering wages and benefits, and attacking workers unions with new vehemence. Meanwhile, U.S. policy didn’t keep up. It abandoned working people to the whims of corporations and the market. America’s working women and men are now looking at these bad jobs and the lack of governmental oversight and support, weighing the risks and personal costs, and deciding that they just aren’t doing it anymore.

Working people’s reluctance to rush back into poorly paid and precarious jobs could help bolster Democrats’ chances of passing the $3.5 trillion budget resolution agreement, which marks a long-overdue expansion of the federal social safety net. This legislation could help get people back to work and keep them there because it gives workers many of the supports they need to navigate today’s economy. It would expand child care, create universal pre-K, boost affordable housing, offer free community college, enact paid family and medical leave, support long-term home care, and expand Medicare. Alongside higher wages, these wraparound supports would mean that people who wait tables, deliver packages and ring up customers can finally pay rent, afford health and child care, and even send kids to college. 

This Labor Day, working women and men are deeply fed up and ready for the kind of economic game changer that will improve their lives for decades to come. Until they see more rights and support, they might just choose to stay home. 

Lane Windham, Ph.D., is the associate director of Georgetown University’s Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor and author of “Knocking on Labor’s Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide.”

Walmart 1MAR21

IF you saw the movie ARGO you must remember the saying that was repeated time and again throughout the film. If you never saw it it is "Ah go f^@k yourself'".  Every time you shop at walmart or sam's club you "f^@k yourself.  I do not shop at walmart or sam's club and I haven't shopped there for over 30 years because I became aware of the walton family's greed a long time ago. They are the main reason America lost so many manufacturing jobs to the prc / china. Because of the volume of product they sell they threatened companies with not carrying their products if they didn't lower their prices for walmart and the only way most of these companies could do that was to move their manufacturing operations to the prc. Please sign the petition by Sen Bernie Sanders I VT to the walton's calling on them to raise the minimum wage for their employee's to $15.00 an hour and I hope you will stop f^@king yourself, stop shopping at walmart and sam's club club until they do. (PLEASE NOTE the goal was to reach 25000 signatures, they are exceeding that so go ahead and sign your name. AND you are counted when you press submit even if you do not make a donation.) Check out the links at the bottom of this post for more on walmart.  

At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, with the very rich getting much richer while working families face increased desperation, Walmart and its owners, the Walton family, have become the poster children for corporate greed.

And it is time that we stood up to that greed and the unfettered capitalism which sustains it.

Here is the reality. The Walton family is the wealthiest family in the country and is worth more than $200 billion, which is more than the bottom 40 percent of Americans combined. Yet somehow, they continue to oppose the idea of paying their workers a living wage of $15 an hour. They think the taxpayers in this country should have to subsidize the needs of their low wage workers who are forced to go on food stamps, Medicaid and other forms of public assistance.

This is a family that has made more than $50 billion during the pandemic – yet many of their workers reported going into work without the protective gear they needed during that same pandemic, and few have any paid leave they can use.

This is a family whose eldest son has spent more than $225 million on an antique car collection, including Ferraris, Porches, Maseratis, and a 1936 Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic that won top prize at the The Peninsula Classics Best of the Best Award in Paris — yet 55 percent of Walmart’s hourly workers have reported struggling with hunger.

This is a family with another heir to the Walmart fortune, Alice, who has amassed a private art collection worth an estimated $500 million, a $25 million two-floor condo on New York’s Park Avenue with 52 windows overlooking Central Park, and a $22 million 4,400-acre ranch in Texas — yet tens of thousands of Walmart workers are forced to rely on food stamps and public housing in order to survive.

Now, I have never understood how one family could have so much money and feel the desperate need for even more. I would think that with all those cars and homes and cash, they might just be able to raise the wages of their employees to a living wage and still afford to get by.

Because the greed above just scratches the surface of the Walmart family’s pathology.

In 2005, Walmart was forced to settle a child labor law case. That same year, they paid a settlement for denying workers meal breaks.

In 2016, they were found to have used sweatshop labor.

In 2017, they were sued by female employees for discrimination based on gender.

And here is something else you may not know:

The Walmart family — despite all of their wealth — is the largest welfare recipient in the country.

While they make these huge profits, buy their cars, their art, their homes, and more, they pay their workers wages that are so low that Walmart workers need distressing levels of public assistance just to get by.

A 2020 study by the Government Accountability Office found that in Arkansas, where Walmart was founded and has its headquarters, 1,318 workers receive SNAP benefits, which is 3.1 percent of the state’s total SNAP recipients. And another report showed that in 2013, Walmart cost taxpayers more than $6 billion in taxpayer-funded public assistance — and just four years later, for good measure, Walmart gave more than $8 billion in stock buybacks.

This is all possible because of the low wages they pay their workers, and compliments of U.S. taxpayers.

So to the Walton family, I say to you, maybe you cannot understand what it is like to make $11 or $12 an hour in this country, but your workers need a raise. No one can live in dignity working a full-time job at those wages.

Amazon raised its minimum wage to $15 an hour.

Costco has raised its minimum wage to $16 an hour.

And it’s time for Walmart to do the right thing as well.

Sign my petition: tell the Walton family that their greed has got to come to end — pay your workers a living wage of at least $15 an hour.

As Americans, we must ask ourselves one fundamental question, and that is whether or not this is the kind of country and economic culture we are comfortable with.

I am not. And I don’t believe you are either.

Thank you for making your voice heard.

In solidarity,

Bernie Sanders

ADD YOUR NAME

 

Paid for by Friends of Bernie Sanders

PO BOX 391, Burlington, VT 05402

WALMART USES TAX CUTS FOR EMPLOYEE BONUSES

The Walmart Heirs Give a Measly Amount to Charity 18SEP14

The senator from Walmart thinks a $10.10 minimum wage is 'too much, too fast' 7FEB14