Who says Walmart is not big hearted?

Just look at the chain’s outlet in Canton, Ohio, where management has set up bins for food donations, asking people to give generously to the poor, who otherwise will not have a Thanksgiving dinner. But the bins are not for customers – they’re tucked back in the employees-only area. Walmart’s Thanksgiving food drive is for its own employees, beseeching low-wage workers to donate to even lower-wage workers who can’t afford a family dinner on this national day of thanks.

Yes, this corporate colossus, with an annual income greater than 140 countries, wants its poorly-paid employees to buy food for fellow employees whose paychecks leave them in deep poverty. More astonishing is the corporation’s insipid, self-congratulatory insistence that the employee food drive demonstrates its deep ethical commitment to the welfare of all Walmart “associates” (as it grandiosely calls its beleaguered workers). A spokesman for the giant asserted that “This is part of the company’s culture to rally around associates and take care of them.”

But, of course, “the company” is not taking care of them at all. It won’t pay a living wage, won’t provide decent health care or other needed benefits, won’t allow workers to organize so they can have their own voice – and then abandons them to beg for scraps if they want to share in Thanksgiving with other Americans.
This is obscene, a moral outrage. Three Waltons – Alice, Robson, and Jim – are heirs to the Walmart fortune and are sitting on more than $33 billion apiece, profiting on the low wages the corporation pays. Oughtn’t they at least pony up a pittance from their prodigious inheritance for a few turkey-and-sweet-potato dinners on Thanksgiving? To push for a modicum of fairness, contact www.ForRespect.org.

“Is Walmart’s request of associates to help provide Thanksgiving dinner for co-workers proof of low wages?” www.cleveland.com, November 18, 2013.

“Wal-Mart Asks Workers To Donate Food To Its Needy Employees,” www.alternet.org, November 18, 2013.
“Gross National Income (most recent) by country,” www.nationmaster.com, November 2013.


Peeking under the Big Top at this year’s three-ring election circus

Election days can be as dizzying as a three-ring circus with all three acts going at once.
In the center ring of this month’s balloting circus was the New York City mayoral race, which spotlighted the dazzling, high-wire performance of Bill de Blasio. This progressive populist was practically unknown at the start, but his grassroots campaign, innovative policies, and loose style captivated voters and shocked the city’s establishment with a landslide victory.

Then came the lion tamers of Coralville, Iowa. Oddly, the beastly Koch brothers got involved in this small town’s elections, roaring in with money and right-wing swagger. Americans for Prosperity, the chief political arm of the multibillionaire extremists, ran a high-dollar campaign to defeat Coralville’s mayor and two city council members. But the people rose up on election day and kicked the Koch boys’ kiesters! Voters sent the rich out-of-towners scampering away, voting overwhelmingly to return all three incumbents to office.

Next was a very strange clown act that took place in (where else?) Texas, where a right-wing, white Republican won a seat on the Houston community college board of trustees. Curiously, he won in a district that’s predominantly African-American. How did Dave Wilson do that? By pretending to be black. In his fliers (which had no photos of him, but plenty of smiling African-American faces he took from the internet), Dave claimed to be endorsed by Ron Wilson – a popular black political leader. Actually, though, it was not the black Ron Wilson from Houston who’d endorsed the white Republican. Rather, it was Dave’s own cousin Ron, who’s also white and lives in Iowa.

After he “won,” Dave was unapologetic about his fakery, vacuously asserting that all politicians are “out there deceiving voters.” What a clown.

Billionaires reap a cornucopia of farm subsidy cash

As we approach our annual feast of Thanksgiving, please join me in expressing our nation’s deepest, heartfelt feelings for an extra-special group of America’s farmers: Thbbllllttttt.
That raspberry goes out to the 50 billionaires who’ve been farming the US farm subsidy program for years, harvesting a cornucopia of taxpayer cash for themselves or their corporate empires. The diligent watchdogs of the Environmental Working Group matched their own farm subsidy database with the “Forbes 400” list of richest Americans to unmask these Gucci-wearing Old MacDonalds. E-I-E-I-O, what a ripoff!

Among the richest of these faux-farmers are three Walmart heirs, whose personal wealth totals $100 billion. Then there’s investment huckster Charles Schwab, sitting on a $5 billion wad of wealth, yet pumping half-a-million dollars worth of rice subsidies into his California duck hunting resort. Also, corporate take-over artist Henry Kravis, who has amassed some $5 billion in wealth, took more than a million dollars from us to subsidize safflower, sunflower, and other crops raised on two of his ranches.

Especially jarring is the presence of such multibillionaire right-wingers as oil and entertainment tycoon Philip Anschutz and nuclear waste mogul Harold Simmons. They’ve expressed disdain for government spending on poor people and other “takers,” yet they’ve gladly taken more than $500,000 each in farm payments.
Actually, the Working Group’s tally understates the total haul by these mega-rich tillers of our public treasury. Many also harvest crop insurance subsidies, but Congress has dutifully outlawed disclosure of these names to the public, even though it’s our money they receive.

In fact, these billionaires’ most profitable ag products are the congress critters they keep in their corrals.

“Forbes Fat Cats Collect Taxpayer-Funded Farm Subsidies,” www.ewg.org, November 7, 2013.