Monday, November 25, 2013
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Friday, November 22, 2013
what a bunch of assholes: Christian Militia Group On Facebook Conspires To Kill President Obama
right-wing activists are attacking Obama for quoting Lincoln
"On Wednesday's edition of Washington Watch, Blackwell said that Obama's reading was all part of a plan to expand government. Perkins accused Obama of "editing historical texts to remove God" and even cited the bogus claim that Obama consistently removes "endowed by their Creator" out of the Declaration of Independence.
Later in the program, Perkins said, "It really reminds me of the Old Testament Israel. What really brought Judea down, they were the remaining portion of the Jewish people: their failure to acknowledge God. They forgot Him and that is what I think we see happening before our very eyes."
- See more at: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/tony-perkins-attacks-obama-quoting-lincoln#sthash.o0W1BpNF.dpuf"Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Teen Thrown In Violent New York Prison For Years Without Ever Having Been Convicted
Bronx resident Kalief Browder was walking home from a party when he was abruptly arrested by New York City police officers on May 14, 2010. A complete stranger said Browder had robbed him a few weeks earlier and, consequently, changed the 16-year-old's life forever.
Browder was imprisoned for three years before the charges were dropped in June 2013, according to a WABC-TV Eyewitness News investigation.
At the time of the teen's arrest, Browder's family was unable to pay the $10,000 bail. He was placed in the infamously violent Rikers Island correctional facility, where he remained until earlier this year.
Now that he's free, the young man is speaking up about his experience.
"I spent three New Year's in there, three birthdays...," Browder, now 20, said in a recent interview with WABC, adding that he was released with "no apology."
In October, Browder filed a civil lawsuit against the Bronx District Attorney, City of New York, the New York City Police Department, the New York City Department of Corrections and a number of state-employed individuals.
The official complaint states Browder was "physically assaulted and beaten" by officers and other inmates during his time at Rikers Island. The document also maintains the accused was "placed in solitary confinement for more than 400 days" and was "deprived meals." In addition, officers allegedly prevented him from pursuing his education. Browder attempted suicide at least six times.
In an interview with The Huffington Post, Browder's current lawyer Paul Prestia summarized his client's experience as "inexplicable" and "unheard of." Based off one man's identification, Browder was charged with robbery in the second degree, he notes. It took three years to dismiss these charges, even though it was, in Prestia's words, a "straightforward case to try."
"The city needs to be held accountable for what happened," Prestia said. "[Browder] had a right to a fair and speedy trail, and he wasn't afforded any of that. He maintained his innocence the entire time, and essentially got a three year sentence for that."
Still, when Browder was offered a plea deal in January, he refused to take it, because he did not want to plead guilty to the crime, WABC-TV notes. (Had Browder been tried in a timely fashion and pled guilty to the crime, Prestia told HuffPost, he might have spent less time in prison.)
Prestia adds that his client has suffered lingering mental health problems, and though he's currently going to school for his GED, he's "clearly way behind from where he would have been."
"We need someone to be held accountable," Prestia said. "This can't just go unnoticed. To the extent that [Browder] can be financially compensated -- although it's not going to get those years back for him -- it may give him a chance to succeed."
The District Attorney's office said it was unable to comment, as Browder's allegations are currently the subject of ongoing litigation.
Incidentally, Browder's claims about his experience at Rikers Island are consistent with findings from a recent report commissioned by the New York City Board of Correction. The report, obtained by The Associated Press, notes that the use of force by prison staff has more than tripled from 2004 to 2013, from seven incidents of force per 100 inmates, to almost 25. Additionally, the number of self-mutilation and suicide attempts by Rikers inmates have increased by 75 percent from 2007 to 2012. According to the report, 40 percent of the city jail's 12,200 inmates are mentally ill, and many of these inmates are placed in solitary confinement "holes" as punishment.
media should stop comparing website that doesn't work all the time to a botched war that the media itself enabled
Not once but twice in recent days Meet The Press host David Gregory announced that the troubled launch of President Obama's new health care law is roughly the equivalent to President Bush's badly bungled war with Iraq. The NBC anchor was quick to point out that he didn't mean the two events were the same with regards to a death toll. (Nobody has died from health care reform.) But Gregory was sure that in terms of how the former president and the current president are viewed, in terms of damage done to their credibility, the men will be forever linked to a costly, bloody war and a poorly functioning website, respectively.
"Everybody looked at Bush through the prism of Iraq," Gregory explained. "Here, I think people are going to look at Obama through the implementation of Obamacare." It's Obama's defining event of their two-term presidency. It's a catastrophic failure that's tarnished Obama's second term, and will perhaps "wreck" his entire presidency, according to the media's "doom-mongering bubble," as Kevin Drum at Mother Jones described it.
But like the painfully inappropriate comparisons to Hurricane Katrina that have populated the press, Gregory's attempt to draw a Bush/Obama parallel is equally senseless. Bush's war morass stretched over five years, so of course it defined his presidency. Obama's health care woes are in week number six and could be fixed within the next month.
There's something else in play here though, as the Beltway press corps strains to anoint Obama as the new Bush, as it tries to convince news consumers that Obama's failures simply show how presidents are so alike, as are the crises they face and sometimes create. An American city drowned in slow motion following Hurricane Katrina? The United States launched a senseless, pre-emptive war that will drain the U.S. Treasury for decades to come? Well, Obama's Healthcare.gov website doesn't work very well!
This is the mother lode of false equivalency.
But note that the casual attempt to connect the current health care setbacks with the war in Iraq represents a particularly disingenuous attempt to downgrade Bush's historical failures, and to cover the media's tracks of deception.
Fact: You can't talk about the Iraq War as a political event without addressing the central role the U.S. media played in the botched run-up to the war, and the fevered and futile hunt for weapons of mass destruction. By suggesting that Obama's six-week health care crisis puts him in the same position of Bush following the Iraq invasion softens not only the magnitude of Bush's failures, but the media's as well. It's an effort to downplay the massive missteps that led to the war and to trivialize the staggering costs still being paid by Americans. (The Bush and media failures surrounding Iraq are forever linked.)
"No pundit should be allowed to use Iraq as a measuring tool until they are willing to have an honest discussion about their role in selling the country on Iraq," wrote PoliticsUSA's Sarah Jones this week. And she's right.
And as Ana Marie Cox at the Guardian noted, the media's early conclusion on the Iraq War was that it represented a stunning victory for Bush. "Just as we were quick to declare the Iraq War a success based on a shiny beginning and short-term successes, so has the mainstream press decided that the ACA is a failure based on a set of stubbornly dysfunctional websites." So not only did the press willingly trumpet White House spin about the need for war, but the press then swallowed White House spin about how it had all gone according to plan. (Here's Ron Fournier, now with the National Journal, reporting in 2003 for the Associated Press that Bush would soon announce that the war in Iraq was over.)
David Gregory has hardly been alone with his Obamacare-is-like-the-Iraq-War rhetoric. Of course, the right-wing media has been pushing the same in an obvious attempt to tarnish Bush and to minimize Bush's signature failure. (See Geraldo Rivera, S.E. Cupp, the Washington Examiner.) They are simply echoing Republican Party spin. "This is an unfolding disaster politically, in a way that's something like the Iraq war was for the Republican Party," Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) said this week. "If they don't get this fixed they're going to pay a horrific political price."
But the Baghdad talking point clearly crossed over into the mainstream. Aside from Meet The Press, Fournier appeared on MSNBC and insisted Bush's handling of the Iraq War was the best "analogy" for the health care problems dogging the White House, while the Associated Press warned that Obama could face a similar fate like the one Bush suffered in the wake of Iraq.
Keep in mind that to date, the Iraq War (once described by retired General Anthony Zinni as "brain fart") has claimed the lives of nearly 8,000 U.S. service members and contractors and more than 130,000 Iraqi citizens, and is projected to cost the U.S. Treasury more than two trillion dollars. If the costs of medical care of wounded veterans are factored in, the final Iraq War tab could reach between $4 and $6 trillion, according to a Harvard University study.
Why the media interest in connecting Obama's current setback to the monumental failure of the Iraq War? Whatever the motivation, the effect is that the false equivalency creates bogus presidential backdrop where Bush and Obama stand as equals; where the generation-defining war is similar to a flawed health care rollout.
But again, Bush isn't the only one who benefits from that flawed comparison. So does the press, which under a Republican president in 2002 and 2003 abdicated its most important role, that of independent watchdog.
As Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler wrote in 2005, the mainstream media's performance during the run-up to the war -- its inability and refusal to demand sharp answers to difficult questions about prewar intelligence --represented their most crucial newsroom failing in nearly half a century. "How did a country on the leading edge of the information age get this so wrong and express so little skepticism and challenge?" asked Getler.
Similarly, The New York Times' public editor labeled its paper's prewar coverage, "flawed journalism."
The media's malpractice during the crucial period of the run-up to the Bush-led invasion remains one of the worst journalistic failures in modern American history. That so many pundits, reporters and producers got the war story that wrong not only defied common sense, it helped lead the nation into a disastrous and costly war.
By suggesting the temporary health care woes are like Iraq, the press is doing its best to wash away the Iraq War stain.
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
@RepAaronSchock voted against sandy relief, is a climate denier and represents IL district hit hard by tornado. Step up pretty boy.
As many of you have probably already seen, the Midwest is facing severe weather, with the town of Washington, Illinois, already hit very badly:
"A confirmed large and extremely dangerous tornado" was spotted near Washington, Illinois, located about 145 miles (233 kilometers) southwest of Chicago, the National Weather Service said.Photos taken at the scene showed structures were reduced to rubble and houses ripped open in Washington, Illinois.
"There is a lot of debris," Sara Sparkman, a spokeswoman for the health department of Tazewell County, Illinois, where Washington is located, told The Weather Channel. "We do know that shelters are being set up in some of the communities because people are being displaced out of their homes because of the storms that hit."
Sparkman added that the storm had caused damage in Washington and Pekin, south of Peoria.
It came out of a fast-moving storm system that was headed toward Chicago and threatened a large swath of the Midwest with dangerous winds, thunderstorms and hail, U.S. weather officials said.
Tornadoes don't normally occur in the Midwest in November. Peak-tornado season there occurs in June and July. And, as we know, climate change increases the frequency and severity of such storms.
When I saw the tragic destruction of Washington and the ties to the broader issue of climate action, I wondered, "Who represents those towns in Congress?"
Republican Aaron Schock:
What do we know about Schock's record on climate issues?
He voted to bar the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases.
Congressional Summary: Amends the Clean Air Act to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from promulgating any regulation of the emission of a greenhouse gas (GHG) to address climate change.He's signed the "No Climate Tax Pledge" put forth by the Koch Bros' Americans for Prosperity:----Excludes GHGs from the definition of "air pollutant" for purposes of addressing climate change.
----Exempts from such prohibition existing regulations on fuel efficiency, research, or CO2 monitoring.
----Repeals and makes ineffective other rules and actions concerning GHGs.
"I pledge to the taxpayers of my state, and to the American people, that I will oppose any legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue."He also co-sponsored the Free Industry Act:
Amends the Clean Air Act to:Aaron Schock also voted against the Hurricane Sandy relief bill earlier this year.(1) exclude from the definition of the term "air pollutant" carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, or sulfur hexafluoride; and
(2) declare that nothing in the Act shall be treated as authorizing or requiring the regulation of climate change or global warming.
I will be curious to see his response.
In the meantime, stay safe, Midwesterners!Republican Aaron Schock represents IL district hit hard by tornado, voted against sandy relief & is a climate denier
As many of you have probably already seen, the Midwest is facing severe weather, with the town of Washington, Illinois, already hit very badly:
"A confirmed large and extremely dangerous tornado" was spotted near Washington, Illinois, located about 145 miles (233 kilometers) southwest of Chicago, the National Weather Service said.Photos taken at the scene showed structures were reduced to rubble and houses ripped open in Washington, Illinois.
"There is a lot of debris," Sara Sparkman, a spokeswoman for the health department of Tazewell County, Illinois, where Washington is located, told The Weather Channel. "We do know that shelters are being set up in some of the communities because people are being displaced out of their homes because of the storms that hit."
Sparkman added that the storm had caused damage in Washington and Pekin, south of Peoria.
It came out of a fast-moving storm system that was headed toward Chicago and threatened a large swath of the Midwest with dangerous winds, thunderstorms and hail, U.S. weather officials said.
Tornadoes don't normally occur in the Midwest in November. Peak-tornado season there occurs in June and July. And, as we know, climate change increases the frequency and severity of such storms.
When I saw the tragic destruction of Washington and the ties to the broader issue of climate action, I wondered, "Who represents those towns in Congress?"
Republican Aaron Schock:
What do we know about Schock's record on climate issues?
He voted to bar the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases.
Congressional Summary: Amends the Clean Air Act to prohibit the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from promulgating any regulation of the emission of a greenhouse gas (GHG) to address climate change.He's signed the "No Climate Tax Pledge" put forth by the Koch Bros' Americans for Prosperity:----Excludes GHGs from the definition of "air pollutant" for purposes of addressing climate change.
----Exempts from such prohibition existing regulations on fuel efficiency, research, or CO2 monitoring.
----Repeals and makes ineffective other rules and actions concerning GHGs.
"I pledge to the taxpayers of my state, and to the American people, that I will oppose any legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue."He also co-sponsored the Free Industry Act:
Amends the Clean Air Act to:Aaron Schock also voted against the Hurricane Sandy relief bill earlier this year.(1) exclude from the definition of the term "air pollutant" carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, or sulfur hexafluoride; and
(2) declare that nothing in the Act shall be treated as authorizing or requiring the regulation of climate change or global warming.
I will be curious to see his response.
In the meantime, stay safe, Midwesterners!Proof that Wal Mart needs to pay their employees more
The photo above comes from the Walmart on Atlantic Boulevard in Canton, Ohio.
The bins aren't to collect cans for a food pantry somewhere else in the city. They are meant to collect food for Walmart associates themselves.
Here's some context. The average Walmart sale associate makes $8.81 per hour, according to the independent market research group IBISWorld. That translates into $15,576 a year if the associate works a full-time schedule of 34 hours a week. But that's actually pegging it quite high, as many associates have highly erratic or meager work schedules that don't allow them anywhere close to full-time status.
For a three-person household (two parents and a child, for instance), the 2013 federal poverty level is $19,530.
When their paychecks don't cut it, many associates turn to public assistance to make up the difference. Walmart's low wages and insufficient scheduling are behind the enormous costs to the taxpayer incurred by each store. One Walmart Supercenter costs taxpayers $900,000 in Medicaid, SNAP, housing assistance, and other forms of public assistance.
But beyond the numbers are the associates themselves, juggling unpredictable schedules and light paychecks, who see the food bins as a sign that the company sees their struggle as the rule, not the exception:
An employee at the Canton store wasn't feeling that Walmart was looking out for her when she went to her locker more than two weeks ago and discovered the food drive containers. To her, the gesture was proof the company acknowledged many of its employees were struggling, but also proof it was not willing to substantively address their plight.An analysis by Fortune shows that Walmart can afford to give its employees a 50 percent raise without hurting its bottom line. But low wages are only one part of the widespread culture of disrespect, retaliation, and indifference Walmart shows its employees.The employee said she didn't want to use her name for fear of being fired. In a dozen years working at the company, she had never seen a food drive for employees, which she described as "demoralizing" and "kind of depressing".
More than ever before, associates are standing up to this culture, and we're standing with them. On November 29, 2013, protests are planned at Walmart stores across the country, and all are welcome to stand in solidarity with associates.
Walmart is the nation's largest private employer. They have set the standard for an entire generation of business practices. Whether or not we shop there, what they do at their company affects all of us.
Lorenzo Garcia's “Catch an Illegal Immigrant” contest at the University of Texas canceled
A conservative group at the University of Texas has canceled its planned "Catch an Illegal Immigrant" contest this week, saying the effort "was misguided and that the idea for the event was intentionally over-the-top in order to get attention for the subject."
In a statement, Young Conservatives of Texas Chairman Lorenzo Garcia said members of his group feared they would have been punished or expelled if they went forward with the game on Wednesday. And he said the event might have put volunteers in physical danger.
Young Conservatives Chairman Lorenzo Garcia, former field director for Greg Abbott campaign. Garcia says his group canceled "Catch an Illegal Immigrant" contest on UT contest (Facebook posting on Young Conservatives of Texas site)
"After the University President and the Vice President for Diversity and Community Engagement released statements denouncing the event we planned as violating the university's honor code, I spoke with our chapter's members, and they are both concerned that the university will retaliate against them and that the protest against the event could create a safety issue for our volunteers."
Garcia is a former field director of Greg Abbott's gubernatorial campaign. The Abbott campaign distanced itself from the event, saying Garcia left his paid job as a field representative a few weeks ago. Garcia's organization has held controversial events in the past — including an affirmative-action bake sale in which students were charged different amounts for baked goods depending on their race. In his statement, Garcia acknowledged that giving $25 gift cards to students who "caught" fellow students wearing "Illegal Immigrant" signs was a bad idea.
Announcement of the planned "Immigrant Hunt" prompted university officials, including President Bill Powers, to denounce the idea and to call on the student group to call off its contest. Garcia denied that the game was aimed at diminishing Mexican-Americans and said the Young Conservatives of Texas just wanted to create a debate on the issue of illegal immigration.
"The reactions of some who claim that YCT is creating a demeaning or degrading environment on campus have been truly disgraceful," he said. "I have always viewed The University of Texas as a place where students could express their opinions—whether or not they were popular. Even though our event will not go forward, UT students, our state, and our nation need to have a serious discussion and debate about the issue of illegal immigration. I believed that our event would spark this discussion on campus, and though we will no longer be holding the event, I hope that the publicity surrounding the event will create debate among students." In a statement, the university said it supports free speech rights of students but is happy the group canceled the event.
Everything @RepPaulRyan has done boils down to: reduce taxes on the rich and reduce spending on the poor
From Paul Ryan, who's apparently hard at work on a conservative plan to fight poverty:
You cure poverty eye to eye, soul to soul. Spiritual redemption: That's what saves people.
Well, maybe so. But here on Earth, money helps out too. The quote above is from a Washington Post story about Ryan's newfound focus on poverty, and Jared Bernstein reads through the rest looking for some more worldly policy recommendations. He doesn't come up with much:
Then you read page after page, trying to figure out what the dude is actually saying he'd do to lower poverty, and here's what you're left with: vouchers, tax credits, and volunteerism.
All sizzle, no steak.
And is that not the story of Rep. Ryan? His is the classic example of the adage that if you've got a reputation for being an early riser, you can sleep til noon....His proposals to block grant major safety net programs (freeze their spending levels and hand them over to states), like SNAP and Medicaid, would gut their critical countercyclical function (as was the case with TANF). He
used the Heritage Foundation's economic wizards to predict the his budget would reduce unemployment to less than 3% (don't look for this forecast, though–his team pulled it once they actually, you know, looked at it).
For the life of me, I can't figure out the media's love affair with Ryan. Sure, he's young, fit, good looking, and he's not a screamer. He's also a smart guy who understands the details of the federal budget. But everything he's ever done—everything—boils down to a single sentence: reduce taxes on the rich and reduce spending on the poor. That's it. There's literally nothing else he's ever seriously proposed.
It doesn't even take much digging to figure out that this is what he's saying. You only have to be barely numerate, just enough to draw the obvious conclusions from his budget proposals (conclusions that he's very careful not to draw himself). When you do that, you find that his budgets always propose lower taxes and lower domestic spending. Much lower. How is it that so many people seem so willing to pretend otherwise?
Monday, November 18, 2013
WTF: WAL MART IS CONDUCTING A FOOD DRIVE FOR ITS OWN EMPLOYEES
CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The storage containers are attractively displayed at the Walmart on Atlantic Boulevard in Canton. The bins are lined up in alternating colors of purple and orange. Some sit on tables covered with golden yellow tablecloths. Others peer out from under the tables.
This isn't a merchandise display. It's a food drive - not for the community, but for needy workers.
"Please Donate Food Items Here, so Associates in Need Can Enjoy Thanksgiving Dinner," read signs affixed to the tablecloths.
The food drive tables are tucked away in an employees-only area. They are another element in the backdrop of the public debate about salaries for cashiers, stock clerks and other low-wage positions at Walmart, as workers in Cincinnati and Dayton are scheduled to go on strike Monday.
Chat wrap: OUR Walmart rep answers your questions about this story
Is the food drive proof the retailer pays so little that many employees can't afford Thanksgiving dinner?
Norma Mills of Canton, who lives near the store, saw the photo circulating showing the food drive bins, and felt both "outrage" and "anger."
"Then I went through the emotion of compassion for the employees, working for the largest food chain in America, making low wages, and who can't afford to provide their families with a good Thanksgiving holiday," said Mills, an organizer with Stand Up for Ohio, which is active in foreclosure issues in Canton. "That Walmart would have the audacity to ask low-wage workers to donate food to other low-wage workers -- to me, it is a moral outrage."
Kory Lundberg, a Walmart spokesman, said the food drive is proof that employees care about each other.
"It is for associates who have had some hardships come up," he said. "Maybe their spouse lost a job.
"This is part of the company's culture to rally around associates and take care of them when they face extreme hardships," he said.
Lundberg said holding the food drive at the Canton Walmart was decided at the store level. However, the effort could be considered in line with what happens company-wide. The Associates in Critical Need Trust is funded by Walmart employee contributions that can be given through payroll deduction. He said employees can receive grants up to $1,500 to address hardships they may encounter, including homelessness, serious medical illnesses and major repairs to primary vehicles. Since 2001, grants totaling $80 million have been made.
But an employee at the Canton store wasn't feeling that Walmart was looking out for her when she went to her locker more than two weeks ago and discovered the food drive containers. To her, the gesture was proof the company acknowledged many of its employees were struggling, but also proof it was not willing to substantively address their plight.
The employee said she didn't want to use her name for fear of being fired. In a dozen years working at the company, she had never seen a food drive for employees, which she described as "demoralizing" and "kind of depressing". The employee took photos of the bins, and sent them to the Organization United for Respect at Walmart, or OUR Walmart, the group of associates holding the strikes in Cincinnati and Dayton.
Vanessa Ferreira, an OUR Walmart organizer, said she "flipped out" when she first saw the photos taken by the Canton worker.
"Why would a company do that?" she said. "The company needs to stand up and give them their 40 hours and a living wage, so they don't have to worry about whether they can afford Thanksgiving."
The strikes against Walmart, which have been staged in the last several weeks across the country, including at stores in California, Florida and Illinois, are focusing on three issues: ensuring that no associate makes less than $25,000 a year, offering employees more full-time work and "ending illegal retaliation" against employees who speak out against pay and working conditions.
The first strike occurred last Black Friday at Walmart stores throughout the country. Though most associates remained on the job, many credit the event with being the public launch of the low-wage workers' movement. Efforts to raise the minimum wage would follow, including a bill pending before Congress to raise the federal hourly minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10. (The minimum wage in Ohio is $7.85.) In the time since, fast-food workers also have staged strikes, demanding the minimum wage be raised.
OUR Walmart won't say what is planned for this Black Friday, but the group has a news conference scheduled Monday afternoon in Washington, D.C. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Joseph Hansen, international president of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, are scheduled to announce organized labor's commitment to Black Friday efforts.
Lundberg said taken in this context, OUR Walmart had incentive to first misinterpret and then blow out of proportion the food drive at the Canton store as fodder for the campaign.
Erica Reed, an associate at the Canton store, agrees. She said food drives have been going on at the store for a few years, so she questions why they are becoming an issue now. Reed said past food drives helped her cope with her own problems, not caused by low wages but because of losing $500 a month in child support when the father of her four children went to jail. She declined to give her salary.
"It took a burden off me. I didn't have to worry about how I was getting my turkey to feed them Thanksgiving dinner," she said.
Reed said it was "ignorant" to question efforts to help people in need or blame Walmart for the economic realities of the labor force nationally.
"You can't find a decent job anywhere," she said.
Scott Stringer, a Dayton associate who said he intends to go on strike, said Walmart bears blame because of its dominance. He makes $9.30 an hour after five years with the company.
"Walmart sets the precedent for everybody, so if they make changes, everyone would follow suit," he said. "The economy and the United States, in general, would be a better place."
A question of salaries
Lundberg said nationally that associates make $12.87 an hour. The company considers those working at least 34 hours to be full time. He said the average full-time employee works 37 to 38 hours a week. That comes to an annual salary of about $25,000.
OUR Walmart places the average salary at between $8 and $10 an hour, based on glassdoor.com and other websites that compile salaries, often without company participation. Based on that range, the average associate's salary is roughly between $15,000 and $20,000 a year.
For example, after about a dozen years on the job, the Canton employee who took the photos makes nearly $12 any hour. But the hourly rate is misleading, she said. Though officially a full-time worker, the associate said she only made about $17,000 last year because the company has had a common practice in recent years of cutting hours.
Lundberg said this isn't true and that the company is committed to having full-time employees. For example, he said company-wide, 35,000 associates are scheduled to be promoted from part time to full time between September and January.
Ricki Hahn, a Dayton associate who intends to strike Monday, said poor working conditions -- and not money -- motivated her to speak out. She said supervisors consistently berating employees -- often in public -- is part of Walmart's culture. So is failing to address unsafe working conditions, such as unsecured shelving in a stock room that could fall on employees, she said.
The company says it has good working conditions, in terms of safety and employee relations.
Hahn, who makes $11.70 an hour after 7½ years, describes her salary as "pretty good'' since she knows it is hard for her to get credit for experience in her industry, and she would be back earning near minimum wage should she take a similar job at another retailer. Hahn said she is realistic about the salaries low-skilled workers should make. For example, she supports the federal bill to raise the minimum wage to $10.10, but believes the fast-food workers demand of $15 is too high.
While the Walmart strike isn't just about wages, it always seems to come back to money. Hahn is constantly reminded of this during the work day.
"Personally, it is difficult for me to stock groceries that I can't afford at the end of the day," she said.
Symbols both in food drive and strike
While Walmart officials and many employees see the food drive bins as a symbol of generosity, others see it differently.
"That captures Walmart right there," said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at Cornell University's labor school. "Walmart is setting up bins because its employees don't make enough to feed themselves and their families."
Mills, the Canton community activist, said the issue of the food drive drew her in because for her it represented another case of corporations behaving irresponsibly and then leaving the less fortunate to "clean up the mess." She said if employees can't afford Thanksgiving, then Walmart should pay for turkey dinners "with all the fixings and all the sides."
Mills successfully worked toward getting Canton to pass a law requiring banks and other financial institutions to put up bonds so the city wouldn't be left paying to maintain the homes on which these institutions foreclosed. Many of these foreclosures were the result of subprime and predatory loans, she said.
"I call it the reverse Robin Hood effect," she said.
Walmart sees the strikes as a symbol without substance. For example, during the highly publicized strikes in Los Angeles earlier this month, the company said no more than 20 associates participated, though there were about 275 demonstrators.
Bronfenbrenner said the company is misinterpreting the low numbers of workers on strike.
"There were many work places, that when the striking workers returned, many workers inside stood up and clapped," she said.
Both Dayton strikers Hahn and Stringer say they have strong support, even if fellow workers won't join them on the picket line.
"A lot of friends of mine at work want to go out on strike, but they fear that they won't be able to support their families if something happens," Hahn said.
That something could mean losing a job, said Ferreira, the OUR Walmart organizer. She said she got fired after participating in the 2012 Black Friday strikes. Ferreira was terminated some time after the strike on trumped up charges of staying on break too long, she said.
Lundberg said Walmart has a very strong anti-retaliation policy.
Hahn and Stringer see themselves at the beginning of a movement that they believe will mushroom.
"We'll be speaking out for other areas, like Cleveland, that aren't striking," Hahn said. "Just because they aren't striking Monday, doesn't mean it can't happen there soon."
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Enrollment figures underscore Obamacare debacle
"Less than 50,000 people had successfully enrolled for insurance coverage through the problem-plagued HealthCare.gov web site as of last week. The figure is less than 10 percent of the Obama administration's target for October of 500,000 enrollees in private insurance plans via the federal insurance exchange set up under what is commonly known as Obamacare.
The failure of the government web site is a reflection of the irrational and reactionary character of the entire health care scheme, whose architecture and structure are dictated by the profit interests of insurance companies and hospital chains, not the medical needs of the American people.
The Wall Street Journal, which spoke to two people familiar with the matter on condition of anonymity, reported the unofficial figures on Monday. The White House has said it will release its own figures sometime this week, but White House spokesman Jay Carney cautioned on Tuesday that the numbers "will be lower than we hoped and we anticipated."
In an October 24 disclosure, the administration said that only 700,000 people had thus far completed applications in all 50 states, including on the federal web site covering 36 states and the 14 web sites in states that have set up their own exchanges. This figure provides no indication of how many of these people have actually succeeded in enrolling in a plan.
The debacle at HealthCare.gov, where technical problems have blocked many users from completing insurance applications or even creating accounts, has prompted growing disaffection among congressional Democrats, many of whom have been strong backers of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) but are up for reelection in 2014. So far, 11 Senate Democrats have indicated they support extending the enrollment deadline, currently set at March 31, 2014.
Delaying the deadline is strongly opposed by the insurance industry, which fears that an extension will shrink the pool of new customers purchasing plans, particularly younger, more healthy people who are less costly to insure. Under the ACA "individual mandate," individuals and families who are not insured through their employer or a government program such as Medicare or Medicaid must obtain insurance or pay a penalty. If enough people do not enroll, the entire health care overhaul is threatened, as it is based on the private insurers' ability to turn what they consider a reasonable profit.
Washington-based consultant Avalere Health reported Monday that about 49,100 people have enrolled at the state-run sites, excluding the states of Oregon, California and Massachusetts. New York's exchange reported 13,300 enrollments through November 10, the highest among the states, while Washington state had the second highest, at 7,300.
Earlier figures from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected that 7 million people would enroll via the ACA exchanges through 2014. The exchanges would have to be signing up about 100,000 people a day to get anywhere near this number. Bob Laszewski, an insurance industry consultant based in Virginia, told Bloomberg News, "We're talking about 20 to 30 transactions a day, per state, leaking through the system, it's so bad."
The White House has initiated a "tech surge" in an effort to resolve the problems at HealthCare.gov. Chris Jennings, deputy assistant to the president for health policy, told reporters, "We are working 24-7 to ensure that the site is working smoothly for the vast majority of users by the end of November."
The White House has brought in Jeffrey Zients, who is set to become President Obama's top economic adviser in January, to oversee the effort to fix the site. The selection of Zients, a multimillionaire investor and management consultant, is indicative of the intimate connections between the Affordable Care Act and the health care industry.
Zients once worked at Bain Consulting, formerly headed by 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. He founded Portfolio Logic, a small private equity firm with a stake in PSA Healthcare, a pediatric home health business. The White House contends that Zient's health care investment does not constitute a conflict of interest with his work at HealthCare.gov.
The Obama administration is also increasingly relying on private insurers for technical help to repair the problem-ridden web site. Last week, Chris Jennings and White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough attended the board meeting of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the insurance industry's main trade group, to discuss the crisis.
Skeptical that the administration will get the web site up and running by the end of the month, insurance companies are pushing the White House to allow them to enroll people eligible for subsidies directly through their own web sites.
Insurers have been initiating enrollments through the exchange since the launch, but at one stage in enrollment they have to connect to HealthCare.gov to determine whether customers' incomes qualify them for government subsidies. This part of the system is malfunctioning, so insurers are seeking a bypass that would give them direct access to the federal platform that determines a consumer's eligibility for subsidies.
Under this, the insurers are demanding that they be compensated for any underestimation of subsidies that might occur, and that they be allowed to keep any extra subsidy money they might accidentally be paid. The insurers would also have direct access to potential customers' personal data, including tax records and immigration and other records from the Department of Homeland Security
Although a decision has yet to be made allowing this direct access, in a recent statement, White House aide Jennings said that the administration was "continuing to pursue additional avenues by which people can enroll, such as direct enrollment through insurance companies, that will help meet pent-up demand." Under direct enrollment, the individual insurers would have no obligation to tell customers about competing plans available to them.
The very fact that the government is considering allowing insurance companies to bypass the government exchanges and directly enroll individuals required under the new law to buy health coverage underscores the Potemkin Village character of the entire health care overhaul. It is a scheme for further enriching the health care conglomerates and slashing corporate and government costs by reducing coverage for tens of millions of working people, while leaving more than 30 million people without any health insurance."
Cronyism: Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s husband will make millions from sale of 60 USPS buildings
"In charge of selling the facilities for the Postal Service is CB Richard Ellis Group, one of the world's largest real estate companies, chaired by San Francisco financier Dick Blum. CBRE, which has worked with the post office since 1997, was awarded the exclusive contract to market Postal Service facilities in 2011. Blum is married to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a relationship some critics of the post office have duly noted.
"Historically, USPS has worked with multiple real estate service providers. The new contract enables USPS to consolidate these activities with one service provider," CBRE said in a statement at the time.
On its website, CBRE shows 57 post offices nationwide listed for sale or in the process of being sold. [...]
As for accusations of a conflict of interest and suspicions that Feinstein may have influenced the awarding of the contract to her husband's firm, Feinstein's office strongly denies the charges.
"Sen. Feinstein is not involved with and does not discuss any of her husband's business decisions with him. Her husband's holdings are his separate personal property. Sen. Feinstein's assets are held in a blind trust. That arrangement has been in place since before she came to the Senate in 1992," said Brian Weiss, Feinstein's communications director. In 2012, Feinstein voted for an amendment to a postal reform bill that would have temporarily halted post office closings. The amendment was defeated in the House.
Both the Postal Service and CBRE insisted the 2011 contract was competitively bid. The Postal Service is an independent agency that reports to Congress, but there is no indication Congress plays any role in the awarding of contracts.
This is not the first time Blum's business dealings have led to accusations of cronyism. From Wikipedia:
Blum's wife, Senator Dianne Feinstein, has received scrutiny due to her husband's government contracts and extensive business dealings with China and her past votes on trade issues with the country. Blum has denied any wrongdoing, however.[3] Critics have argued that business contracts with the US government awarded to a company (Perini) controlled by Blum may raise a potential conflict-of-interest issue with the voting and policy activities of his wife.[4] URS Corp, which Blum had a substantial stake in, bought EG&G, a leading provider of technical services and management to the U.S. military, from The Carlyle Group in 2002; EG&G subsequently won a $600m defense contract.[1]
In 2009 it was reported that Blum's wife Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation to provide $25 billion in taxpayer money to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp, a government agency that had recently awarded her husband's real estate firm, CB Richard Ellis, what the Washington Timescalled "a lucrative contract to sell foreclosed properties at compensation rates higher than the industry norms."[5]
Dianne Feinstein, ranked in August 2012 as the 14th richest U.S. politician, has a net worth estimated to be $70 million."
