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Skarekrow
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So on top of being ultra-scummy already…this just happened.
Billionaire Owners Of Walmart Take Health Insurance Away From Thousands Of Employees To Save Money
Times are tough for the richest family in the United States.
The Waltons, and the executives they pay millions of dollars to run their Walmart empire, say they will stop providing health insurance for nearly 30,000 part-time workers to save money because, hey, when it comes to choosing between profits and the literal health of your employees, the answer is simple.
That’s the Walmart promise.
According to an announcement made on Walmart’s corporate blog, the company informed employees that many of them would likely be losing their health coverage, but not to worry because everyone is doing it.
We will continue to provide affordable health care to all eligible associates, including part-time, who work more than 30 hours. However, similar to other retailers like Target, Home Depot, Walgreens and Trader Joe’s, we will no longer be providing health benefits to part-time associates who work less than 30 hours. This will impact about 2% of our total U.S. workforce.
But if two percent seems small, it’s not.
As you may have noticed, Walmart is a massive corporation.
It employs millions of people, both in its ubiquitous retail stores and across the country in shipping, warehousing, and manufacturing.
In fact, it’s the largest private sector employer in the United States. Cutting just a fraction of those employees’ health insurance represents tens of thousands of people.
The company is quick to defend itself by pointing out that this is merely for people who work less than 30 hours a week, so many part-timers will maintain their health insurance.
Unfortunately, that’s not the whole story.
In almost all cases, it is the store and not the employee that decides how many hours he or she will work each week.
Walmart, like other corporations, is obsessive about ensuring employees don’t work enough hours to qualify for employee protections.
For example, if a manager knows that an employee is about to hit 30 hours (and therefore qualify for a whole suite of benefits) they may be encouraged to cut him or her loose early to avoid it.
In this way, the company can systematically deprive its employees of benefits while maintaining an image of social responsibility.
For those families, Walmart’s latest attempt to squeeze out profits by shortchanging its employees must be hard, but not surprising.
Walmart has tapped that well many times.
So often, in fact, that according to some estimates, Walmart employees are the single largest group of Medicaid recipients (even before tens of thousands will be forced into government-backed health insurance due to this latest cost-saving measure) and the single biggest group of food stamp recipients.
It’s important to note that all of this is not due to cold, hard reality getting in the way of wishful thinking.
Walmart could treat its employees better, it just doesn’t want to, because that would mean less money for the Waltons and the Waltons really, really like being rich.
If you’ve ever wondered how the Waltons stay the richest family in the country, the answer is: almost entirely through loopholes, tax dodges, and ethically murky dealings.
In an article for Bloomberg, writer Zachary Mider documents the almost-comically absurd lengths the family has gone to in order to avoid paying even a single penny more than they have to back to the country that has given them so much.
Alice Walton’s mother and brother poured more than $9 billion into trusts since 2003 that fund charitable projects like Crystal Bridges and are also designed to protect gifts to heirs from taxation. Another Walton pioneered a tax-avoidance maneuver that is now widely used by U.S. billionaires.
That’s right.
The Waltons are so good at avoiding the tax man that other billionaires plagiarize their tax dodging techniques.
They’ve turned greed into an artform.
So while Walmart may be sending its employees to the social welfare lines, it certainly doesn’t need to do so to remain profitable.
Last year, for example, Demos found that Walmart wound up with such massive profits at the end of the year that they could effectively raise the wages of every employee by around 50 percent and still have money left over.
Instead, they used around $7.6 billion on buybacks of their own stock — a Wall Street shell game used to artificially raise their share prices, which leads to executives and shareholders making healthy piles of cash and helping precisely no one else.
In the meantime, Walmart requires the American government to bail out its employees on a yearly basis.
Paying workers at rates far below the living wage, they encourage employees to enroll in any and every government assistance program they can find in order to subsidies their terrible income at a cost of billions of dollars a year to the taxpayers.
In a telling example from last winter, the company came under fire after it came to light that they were hosting a food drive at their stores… for their own employees.
After the story — a perfect example of Walmart’s lack of self-awareness — became a national outrage, the store pulled the food donation bins and apologized, but didn’t give any employees a raise.
Billionaire Owners Of Walmart Take Health Insurance Away From Thousands Of Employees To Save Money
Times are tough for the richest family in the United States.
The Waltons, and the executives they pay millions of dollars to run their Walmart empire, say they will stop providing health insurance for nearly 30,000 part-time workers to save money because, hey, when it comes to choosing between profits and the literal health of your employees, the answer is simple.
That’s the Walmart promise.
According to an announcement made on Walmart’s corporate blog, the company informed employees that many of them would likely be losing their health coverage, but not to worry because everyone is doing it.
We will continue to provide affordable health care to all eligible associates, including part-time, who work more than 30 hours. However, similar to other retailers like Target, Home Depot, Walgreens and Trader Joe’s, we will no longer be providing health benefits to part-time associates who work less than 30 hours. This will impact about 2% of our total U.S. workforce.
As you may have noticed, Walmart is a massive corporation.
It employs millions of people, both in its ubiquitous retail stores and across the country in shipping, warehousing, and manufacturing.
In fact, it’s the largest private sector employer in the United States. Cutting just a fraction of those employees’ health insurance represents tens of thousands of people.
The company is quick to defend itself by pointing out that this is merely for people who work less than 30 hours a week, so many part-timers will maintain their health insurance.
Unfortunately, that’s not the whole story.
In almost all cases, it is the store and not the employee that decides how many hours he or she will work each week.
Walmart, like other corporations, is obsessive about ensuring employees don’t work enough hours to qualify for employee protections.
For example, if a manager knows that an employee is about to hit 30 hours (and therefore qualify for a whole suite of benefits) they may be encouraged to cut him or her loose early to avoid it.
In this way, the company can systematically deprive its employees of benefits while maintaining an image of social responsibility.
For those families, Walmart’s latest attempt to squeeze out profits by shortchanging its employees must be hard, but not surprising.
Walmart has tapped that well many times.
So often, in fact, that according to some estimates, Walmart employees are the single largest group of Medicaid recipients (even before tens of thousands will be forced into government-backed health insurance due to this latest cost-saving measure) and the single biggest group of food stamp recipients.
It’s important to note that all of this is not due to cold, hard reality getting in the way of wishful thinking.
Walmart could treat its employees better, it just doesn’t want to, because that would mean less money for the Waltons and the Waltons really, really like being rich.
If you’ve ever wondered how the Waltons stay the richest family in the country, the answer is: almost entirely through loopholes, tax dodges, and ethically murky dealings.
In an article for Bloomberg, writer Zachary Mider documents the almost-comically absurd lengths the family has gone to in order to avoid paying even a single penny more than they have to back to the country that has given them so much.
Alice Walton’s mother and brother poured more than $9 billion into trusts since 2003 that fund charitable projects like Crystal Bridges and are also designed to protect gifts to heirs from taxation. Another Walton pioneered a tax-avoidance maneuver that is now widely used by U.S. billionaires.
The Waltons are so good at avoiding the tax man that other billionaires plagiarize their tax dodging techniques.
They’ve turned greed into an artform.
So while Walmart may be sending its employees to the social welfare lines, it certainly doesn’t need to do so to remain profitable.
Last year, for example, Demos found that Walmart wound up with such massive profits at the end of the year that they could effectively raise the wages of every employee by around 50 percent and still have money left over.
Instead, they used around $7.6 billion on buybacks of their own stock — a Wall Street shell game used to artificially raise their share prices, which leads to executives and shareholders making healthy piles of cash and helping precisely no one else.
In the meantime, Walmart requires the American government to bail out its employees on a yearly basis.
Paying workers at rates far below the living wage, they encourage employees to enroll in any and every government assistance program they can find in order to subsidies their terrible income at a cost of billions of dollars a year to the taxpayers.
In a telling example from last winter, the company came under fire after it came to light that they were hosting a food drive at their stores… for their own employees.
After the story — a perfect example of Walmart’s lack of self-awareness — became a national outrage, the store pulled the food donation bins and apologized, but didn’t give any employees a raise.
Skarekrow
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4 Cruel Things Corporate Execs Say About Americans Struggling to Get By
Some of the comments are so outlandish that it's hard to believe they actually said them.
The following statements, made by some of our top business leaders, show a remarkable disdain for struggling Americans.
Though their coments may seem too outlandish to have been uttered, or inappropriately humorous, all the speakers were serious.
1. Environmental Wisdom from Exxon and Monsanto
Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon, which has used tobacco industry tactics to cast doubt on climate change, summed up the whole environmental issue with his own unique brand of logic: "What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?"
Monsanto has no such moral compunctions over corporate social responsibility. A company director once said, "Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible." While Monsanto, according to Food & Water Watch, has "wreaked havoc on the environment and public health" with PCBs, dioxin, and other dangerous chemicals, the company reported in its most recent financial report to the SEC: "We are committed to long-term environmental protection."
2. The Art of Delusion: How Business People Fool Themselves
This starts, fittingly, at McDonald's, where a company representative vigorously defended his burgers and nuggets: "We don't sell junk food...We sell lots of fruits and veggies at McDonald's...And we are not marketing food to kids."
Next, on to a company that hides overseas earnings, avoids federal and state taxes, makes $400,000 per employee, pays its store workers an average of about $12 per hour, pays its CEO $143 million a year, and operates overseas factories with working conditions that, according to the Economic Policy Institute, "reflect some of the worst practices of the industrial era." Their CEO Tim Cook says, "Apple has a very strong moral compass."
Such delusional heights are also reached in the financial industry, where Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is doing God's work, his colleague Brian Griffiths feels that we have to tolerate inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all, and Ponzi scheming JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon is not only not embarrassed to be a banker, but also proud of the company that he works for.
3. Talking Down to the Down & Out
It's hard to choose the most insensitive and condescending remark from people who seem to lack empathy for the less fortunate. Perhaps hedge fund manager Andy Kessler, who addressed the issue of why these homeless folks aren't also working. Ignoring the National Coalition for the Homeless conclusion that homelessness is caused by (1) a shortage of affordable rental housing, and (2) a lack of job opportunities, Kessler suggests they're homeless because someone is feeding, clothing and, in effect, bathing them.
Equally condescending is the Walmart executive who presumed to speak for his low-wage workers just before Thanksgiving, saying, "Walmart associates are really excited to work that day."
Now back to McDonald's, which had these infamous budget tips for its own low-wage employees: "You may want to consider returning some of your unopened purchases that may not seem as appealing as they did. Selling some of your unwanted possessions on eBay or Craigslist could bring in some quick cash...Consider bringing a brown bag lunch and skipping the takeout...You might also consider a temporary part time job to dig out of debt quickly."
But the condescension king has to be Charles Koch, whose foundation tried to convince half of America that they were rich: "If you earn over $34,000 a year, you are one of the wealthiest one percent in the world."
4. Paying Taxes with Imaginary Money
Tim Cook, the "moral compass" guy from top tax avoider Apple Corporation, blurted, "We pay all the taxes we owe - every single dollar." He has a lot of support. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey protested, "It's not Apple's fault that they're seeking to avoid paying taxes." And Rand Paul added, "What we need to do is apologize to Apple and compliment them for the job creation they're doing."
Exxon, which once said "any claim we don’t pay taxes is absurd", used a "theoretical tax" to account for almost 90% of last year's income tax bill. The Economist explains theoretical taxes: "Companies have two versions of the truth: the theoretical tax bill, calculated using accounting profits..and the actual cash tax they pay.."
Paul Buchheit teaches economic inequality at DePaul University. He is the founder and developer of the Web sitesUsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org and RappingHistory.org, and the editor and main author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.
Some of the comments are so outlandish that it's hard to believe they actually said them.
The following statements, made by some of our top business leaders, show a remarkable disdain for struggling Americans.
Though their coments may seem too outlandish to have been uttered, or inappropriately humorous, all the speakers were serious.
1. Environmental Wisdom from Exxon and Monsanto
Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon, which has used tobacco industry tactics to cast doubt on climate change, summed up the whole environmental issue with his own unique brand of logic: "What good is it to save the planet if humanity suffers?"
Monsanto has no such moral compunctions over corporate social responsibility. A company director once said, "Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible." While Monsanto, according to Food & Water Watch, has "wreaked havoc on the environment and public health" with PCBs, dioxin, and other dangerous chemicals, the company reported in its most recent financial report to the SEC: "We are committed to long-term environmental protection."
2. The Art of Delusion: How Business People Fool Themselves
This starts, fittingly, at McDonald's, where a company representative vigorously defended his burgers and nuggets: "We don't sell junk food...We sell lots of fruits and veggies at McDonald's...And we are not marketing food to kids."
Next, on to a company that hides overseas earnings, avoids federal and state taxes, makes $400,000 per employee, pays its store workers an average of about $12 per hour, pays its CEO $143 million a year, and operates overseas factories with working conditions that, according to the Economic Policy Institute, "reflect some of the worst practices of the industrial era." Their CEO Tim Cook says, "Apple has a very strong moral compass."
Such delusional heights are also reached in the financial industry, where Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein is doing God's work, his colleague Brian Griffiths feels that we have to tolerate inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all, and Ponzi scheming JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon is not only not embarrassed to be a banker, but also proud of the company that he works for.
3. Talking Down to the Down & Out
It's hard to choose the most insensitive and condescending remark from people who seem to lack empathy for the less fortunate. Perhaps hedge fund manager Andy Kessler, who addressed the issue of why these homeless folks aren't also working. Ignoring the National Coalition for the Homeless conclusion that homelessness is caused by (1) a shortage of affordable rental housing, and (2) a lack of job opportunities, Kessler suggests they're homeless because someone is feeding, clothing and, in effect, bathing them.
Equally condescending is the Walmart executive who presumed to speak for his low-wage workers just before Thanksgiving, saying, "Walmart associates are really excited to work that day."
Now back to McDonald's, which had these infamous budget tips for its own low-wage employees: "You may want to consider returning some of your unopened purchases that may not seem as appealing as they did. Selling some of your unwanted possessions on eBay or Craigslist could bring in some quick cash...Consider bringing a brown bag lunch and skipping the takeout...You might also consider a temporary part time job to dig out of debt quickly."
But the condescension king has to be Charles Koch, whose foundation tried to convince half of America that they were rich: "If you earn over $34,000 a year, you are one of the wealthiest one percent in the world."
4. Paying Taxes with Imaginary Money
Tim Cook, the "moral compass" guy from top tax avoider Apple Corporation, blurted, "We pay all the taxes we owe - every single dollar." He has a lot of support. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey protested, "It's not Apple's fault that they're seeking to avoid paying taxes." And Rand Paul added, "What we need to do is apologize to Apple and compliment them for the job creation they're doing."
Exxon, which once said "any claim we don’t pay taxes is absurd", used a "theoretical tax" to account for almost 90% of last year's income tax bill. The Economist explains theoretical taxes: "Companies have two versions of the truth: the theoretical tax bill, calculated using accounting profits..and the actual cash tax they pay.."
Paul Buchheit teaches economic inequality at DePaul University. He is the founder and developer of the Web sitesUsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org and RappingHistory.org, and the editor and main author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.
Skarekrow
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All these Court Ordered Fines and Settlements against Wall Street Banksters this year for crimes committed from the 2008 crisis and massive Mortgage Fraud/Robo Signing etc., also including the Banksters guilty of Libor Manipulation.
Should either be split among the people at years end like a tax return or paid directly into a national unemployment fund or even a unemployment supplement as these Fu@$ing Bankster's raped the economy for trillions illegally, went unprosecuted, received record bonuses during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and even destroyed whole communities even major cities like Detroit.
Many of us working class men and women have suffered mentally and physically from dire economic loss, including homes, cars, families split up, lost jobs that have never came back, lost income that has never been regained, have had to start over financially, have full time work but since the crisis have taken upwards to a 50% pay-cut. Some are working 3 part time jobs for minimum wage.
People are going hungry and without health care, and the list of atrocities from the 2008 Financial Crisisal is nearly endless.
Give the money back to the people!
Should either be split among the people at years end like a tax return or paid directly into a national unemployment fund or even a unemployment supplement as these Fu@$ing Bankster's raped the economy for trillions illegally, went unprosecuted, received record bonuses during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and even destroyed whole communities even major cities like Detroit.
Many of us working class men and women have suffered mentally and physically from dire economic loss, including homes, cars, families split up, lost jobs that have never came back, lost income that has never been regained, have had to start over financially, have full time work but since the crisis have taken upwards to a 50% pay-cut. Some are working 3 part time jobs for minimum wage.
People are going hungry and without health care, and the list of atrocities from the 2008 Financial Crisisal is nearly endless.
Give the money back to the people!
Skarekrow
~~DEVIL~~
- MBTI
- Ni-INFJ-A
- Enneagram
- Warlock
When Poverty Was the Enemy, Not the Poor
Monday, 13 October 2014 13:46
By Tom Eblen, YES! Magazine | Op-Ed
President Lyndon B. Johnson on his Poverty Tour of Appalachia, April 24, 1964. (Photo: LBJ Presidential Library)
The poverty rate in the US would be 15 percent higher if not for the War on Poverty and government anti-poverty programs since 1967.
It has been 50 years since America launched the War on Poverty.
The Economic Opportunity Act and legislation to outlaw racial discrimination were the centerpieces of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s vision to create a Great Society.
Today, rather than a war on poverty, we seem to have a war on the poor.
Wealth inequality is growing.
State support for education is withering.
Social safety-net programs are under attack in Congress.
Many Americans believe that if people are poor, it’s their own fault.
The only “solution” for poverty that many people advocate is allowing companies to create jobs offering wages too low to support a family.
Although it is now widely–and inaccurately–portrayed as a costly welfare program, the War on Poverty was not a failure.
If not for government anti-poverty programs since 1967, the nation’s poverty rate would have been 15 percentage points higher in 2012, according to a study published recently by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
For the many Americans committed to fighting economic injustice, the War on Poverty offers some valuable lessons.
It showed what can work–and what is still working.
It can even work in some of America’s poorest places, such as the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky where Johnson traveled in 1964 to launch his “war” from the front porch of a poor laborer’s cabin.
As a young adult, Robert Shaffer accompanied his father to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963 and was inspired to action by Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech.
Shaffer went home to New Jersey and started organizing poor people to push for economic justice.
His work soon attracted the attention of the new Office of Economic Opportunity (the OEO).
But Shaffer wanted to work on the front lines, not in some Washington cubicle.
He had read Harry M. Caudill’s 1962 book, Night Comes to the Cumberlands, which chronicled the poverty, economic injustice, and “desperation of the spirit” in an Eastern Kentucky controlled by coal companies and absentee landowners.
Shaffer told federal officials, “I’ll take the job if you’ll send me to Kentucky.”
The Economic Opportunity Act required the “maximum feasible participation of the poor” in decisions about the use of federal development money.
But many state and local politicians and business leaders in Kentucky saw that kind of power-sharing as a threat, and they ignored the requirement.
In one example, the federal government took back a major grant from the eight-county Cumberland Valley Community Action Agency because it refused to give poor people a voice.
The OEO sent Shaffer to Kentucky as a special technical assistant to reorganize the agency so funding could be restored.
“Those who lost control of the grant funds resented the new agencies,” said Shaffer, now 84 and living in Berea, Ky. “Those people weren’t used to somebody else having money to work with that they didn’t control. Sometimes it was a pretty hostile environment.”
Later, with federal money and diverse local leadership, Cumberland Valley and other community-action agencies in Kentucky achieved notable successes. They leveraged social services to create businesses, taught job skills to poor people, and created small construction firms and manufacturing companies owned by their workers.
Among those companies’ products: handmade crafts, upholstered furniture for Sears Roebuck & Co., and high-end dresses for Laura Ashley, Inc.
“Before long, products being produced in some of the poorest counties in the nation were being sold in fine stores in New York City, Dallas, Chicago,” Shaffer said.
Unfortunately, many of those companies later went under after free-trade agreements sent manufacturing jobs overseas to low-wage countries.
“There’s a difference between welfare and economic opportunity,” Shaffer said. “And, to me, that’s the exciting thing about what we experienced here.
We were using social services for economic development and ownership.”
Shaffer worked closely with Hollis West, one of most successful community action agency leaders in Eastern Kentucky.
He was also one of the most controversial because of his confrontations with the bosses who controlled the poor mountain counties.
At their behest, Gov. Louie B. Nunn tried to get West fired.
“These programs helped get a generation of families jobs,” said West, now 83 and living in Lexington, Ky. “We just had to find ways to get all sides working together.”
Their experiences showed them anti-poverty programs work best when poor people are involved in policy decisions. “You’re never going to change the culture of Appalachia until you have a legitimate organization of the poor and their allies,” Shaffer said. “The majority of the people in the mountains are just as capable as anyone else if they have the same education and economic opportunities as anyone else.”
Johnson’s passion for ending poverty was not shared by his successor, Richard Nixon.
By the early 1970s, the Nixon Administration had killed or neutered many War on Poverty programs.
Shaffer said he and other special technical assistants from around the country were called back to Washington in 1971.
The OEO was then headed by Donald Rumsfeld, who, as Secretary of Defense three decades later, would oversee the war in Iraq. “They said, ‘You’ve been doing a wonderful job, you’ve accomplished a lot of good things … but we cannot expand the program so we’re going to terminate it,’” Shaffer said.
But one organization that Shaffer and West were instrumental in creating in 1968 survived.
Originally called Job Start, it is now Kentucky Highlands Investment Corp., based in London, Ky. It grew under the leadership of Thomas Miller, who moved Kentucky Highlands into the venture capital business in 1972.
The mission has expanded even more under Jerry Rickett, the director since 1989.
Kentucky Highlands says it has helped create more than 18,000 jobs in the region since 1968 by providing more than $275 million in public and private financing to more than 625 businesses.
The result: $2.1 billion in wages and salaries and $400 million in tax revenues.
“You’ve got to have a job if you want to overcome poverty,” Rickett said. “That’s what this company has always been about.”
The coal industry, which for more than a century created an almost colonial economy in the mountains, has been cutting jobs for three decades.
Decades of state government efforts to attract large corporate employers from outside the region have resulted in few jobs that pay more than minimum wage.
It has largely been a top-down effort.
But Kentucky Highlands focuses on home-grown entrepreneurship: training people who have the aptitude and helping them get capital to start and grow businesses.
The capital comes from government grants and loans, private foundations, and, increasingly, banks and other private investors.
Kentucky Highlands also partners with dozens of other organizations on projects.
A recent focus has been building about 25 energy-efficient houses a year for low- and moderate-income families and helping with a state initiative to expand broadband infrastructure so people can take advantage of information-economy jobs.
Kentucky ranks 46th nationally in broadband coverage with 23 percent of the state’s residents, primarily in Eastern Kentucky’s mountains, having no online access.
After leaving Kentucky highlands in 1981, Miller went on to work in economic and community development in San Francisco, Tennessee, New York, and Africa.
But when it came time to retire, he moved to Berea, where he continues to advocate for more effective Appalachian development strategies.
Kentucky Highlands is doing the right things, he said, but it will never be big enough.
In the 1990s, the Clinton-era Empowerment Zone program brought Eastern Kentucky $40 million in tax breaks and loans, some of which still fund a $13 million revolving loan fund that Kentucky Highlands says has leveraged $120 million in private investment.
Miller thinks a new, massive infusion of investment capital is needed, an Eastern Kentucky Venture Fund of at least $250 million organized by successful business leaders from across Kentucky.
The region also needs more trained entrepreneurs who know how to use that money to grow and diversify the economy.
“There are no silver bullets,” Miller said. “It’s probably a 50-year strategy, at best, and the first 10 years aren’t going to be pretty. But we know that this investment strategy works in Eastern Kentucky, that betting on the people here is the thing to do.”
Like other parts of the Central Appalachian coalfields, Eastern Kentucky remains one of America’s poorest places, with high unemployment, drug abuse, and other social problems that grow out of joblessness.
But substantial progress has been made–in living conditions, educational attainment, health care, and infrastructure.
And what set that progress in motion was the War on Poverty.
“Dad worked in the coal mines and did other jobs. He was a very hard worker, but he didn’t have an education,” said Darlene Sharp, 61, who was a teenager with six brothers and sisters when the War on Poverty came to Knox County.
Her father managed buildings that housed the new educational programs, and her mother got a job at one of the factories West helped create. “A lot of people worked there,” she said. “I’m sure that every one of them was people who had no employment before. Without the programs, there weren’t very many jobs. It helped them be able to take care of their families and meet needs. I know it helped my family.”
At its core, the War on Poverty was not about a handout, but a hand up.
It was about creating economic opportunity and giving poor people the skills and support they needed to take advantage of it.
And it was about giving poor people a voice in decisions affecting their lives.
A half-century ago, Americans made a commitment to fight a war on poverty, and we could do it again.
Creating a society that is more fair, just, and prosperous for everyone is a fight worth winning.
Monday, 13 October 2014 13:46
By Tom Eblen, YES! Magazine | Op-Ed
President Lyndon B. Johnson on his Poverty Tour of Appalachia, April 24, 1964. (Photo: LBJ Presidential Library)
The poverty rate in the US would be 15 percent higher if not for the War on Poverty and government anti-poverty programs since 1967.
It has been 50 years since America launched the War on Poverty.
The Economic Opportunity Act and legislation to outlaw racial discrimination were the centerpieces of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s vision to create a Great Society.
Today, rather than a war on poverty, we seem to have a war on the poor.
Wealth inequality is growing.
State support for education is withering.
Social safety-net programs are under attack in Congress.
Many Americans believe that if people are poor, it’s their own fault.
The only “solution” for poverty that many people advocate is allowing companies to create jobs offering wages too low to support a family.
Although it is now widely–and inaccurately–portrayed as a costly welfare program, the War on Poverty was not a failure.
If not for government anti-poverty programs since 1967, the nation’s poverty rate would have been 15 percentage points higher in 2012, according to a study published recently by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
For the many Americans committed to fighting economic injustice, the War on Poverty offers some valuable lessons.
It showed what can work–and what is still working.
It can even work in some of America’s poorest places, such as the Appalachian Mountains of Eastern Kentucky where Johnson traveled in 1964 to launch his “war” from the front porch of a poor laborer’s cabin.
As a young adult, Robert Shaffer accompanied his father to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963 and was inspired to action by Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have A Dream” speech.
Shaffer went home to New Jersey and started organizing poor people to push for economic justice.
His work soon attracted the attention of the new Office of Economic Opportunity (the OEO).
But Shaffer wanted to work on the front lines, not in some Washington cubicle.
He had read Harry M. Caudill’s 1962 book, Night Comes to the Cumberlands, which chronicled the poverty, economic injustice, and “desperation of the spirit” in an Eastern Kentucky controlled by coal companies and absentee landowners.
Shaffer told federal officials, “I’ll take the job if you’ll send me to Kentucky.”
The Economic Opportunity Act required the “maximum feasible participation of the poor” in decisions about the use of federal development money.
But many state and local politicians and business leaders in Kentucky saw that kind of power-sharing as a threat, and they ignored the requirement.
In one example, the federal government took back a major grant from the eight-county Cumberland Valley Community Action Agency because it refused to give poor people a voice.
The OEO sent Shaffer to Kentucky as a special technical assistant to reorganize the agency so funding could be restored.
“Those who lost control of the grant funds resented the new agencies,” said Shaffer, now 84 and living in Berea, Ky. “Those people weren’t used to somebody else having money to work with that they didn’t control. Sometimes it was a pretty hostile environment.”
Later, with federal money and diverse local leadership, Cumberland Valley and other community-action agencies in Kentucky achieved notable successes. They leveraged social services to create businesses, taught job skills to poor people, and created small construction firms and manufacturing companies owned by their workers.
Among those companies’ products: handmade crafts, upholstered furniture for Sears Roebuck & Co., and high-end dresses for Laura Ashley, Inc.
“Before long, products being produced in some of the poorest counties in the nation were being sold in fine stores in New York City, Dallas, Chicago,” Shaffer said.
Unfortunately, many of those companies later went under after free-trade agreements sent manufacturing jobs overseas to low-wage countries.
“There’s a difference between welfare and economic opportunity,” Shaffer said. “And, to me, that’s the exciting thing about what we experienced here.
We were using social services for economic development and ownership.”
Shaffer worked closely with Hollis West, one of most successful community action agency leaders in Eastern Kentucky.
He was also one of the most controversial because of his confrontations with the bosses who controlled the poor mountain counties.
At their behest, Gov. Louie B. Nunn tried to get West fired.
“These programs helped get a generation of families jobs,” said West, now 83 and living in Lexington, Ky. “We just had to find ways to get all sides working together.”
Their experiences showed them anti-poverty programs work best when poor people are involved in policy decisions. “You’re never going to change the culture of Appalachia until you have a legitimate organization of the poor and their allies,” Shaffer said. “The majority of the people in the mountains are just as capable as anyone else if they have the same education and economic opportunities as anyone else.”
Johnson’s passion for ending poverty was not shared by his successor, Richard Nixon.
By the early 1970s, the Nixon Administration had killed or neutered many War on Poverty programs.
Shaffer said he and other special technical assistants from around the country were called back to Washington in 1971.
The OEO was then headed by Donald Rumsfeld, who, as Secretary of Defense three decades later, would oversee the war in Iraq. “They said, ‘You’ve been doing a wonderful job, you’ve accomplished a lot of good things … but we cannot expand the program so we’re going to terminate it,’” Shaffer said.
But one organization that Shaffer and West were instrumental in creating in 1968 survived.
Originally called Job Start, it is now Kentucky Highlands Investment Corp., based in London, Ky. It grew under the leadership of Thomas Miller, who moved Kentucky Highlands into the venture capital business in 1972.
The mission has expanded even more under Jerry Rickett, the director since 1989.
Kentucky Highlands says it has helped create more than 18,000 jobs in the region since 1968 by providing more than $275 million in public and private financing to more than 625 businesses.
The result: $2.1 billion in wages and salaries and $400 million in tax revenues.
“You’ve got to have a job if you want to overcome poverty,” Rickett said. “That’s what this company has always been about.”
The coal industry, which for more than a century created an almost colonial economy in the mountains, has been cutting jobs for three decades.
Decades of state government efforts to attract large corporate employers from outside the region have resulted in few jobs that pay more than minimum wage.
It has largely been a top-down effort.
But Kentucky Highlands focuses on home-grown entrepreneurship: training people who have the aptitude and helping them get capital to start and grow businesses.
The capital comes from government grants and loans, private foundations, and, increasingly, banks and other private investors.
Kentucky Highlands also partners with dozens of other organizations on projects.
A recent focus has been building about 25 energy-efficient houses a year for low- and moderate-income families and helping with a state initiative to expand broadband infrastructure so people can take advantage of information-economy jobs.
Kentucky ranks 46th nationally in broadband coverage with 23 percent of the state’s residents, primarily in Eastern Kentucky’s mountains, having no online access.
After leaving Kentucky highlands in 1981, Miller went on to work in economic and community development in San Francisco, Tennessee, New York, and Africa.
But when it came time to retire, he moved to Berea, where he continues to advocate for more effective Appalachian development strategies.
Kentucky Highlands is doing the right things, he said, but it will never be big enough.
In the 1990s, the Clinton-era Empowerment Zone program brought Eastern Kentucky $40 million in tax breaks and loans, some of which still fund a $13 million revolving loan fund that Kentucky Highlands says has leveraged $120 million in private investment.
Miller thinks a new, massive infusion of investment capital is needed, an Eastern Kentucky Venture Fund of at least $250 million organized by successful business leaders from across Kentucky.
The region also needs more trained entrepreneurs who know how to use that money to grow and diversify the economy.
“There are no silver bullets,” Miller said. “It’s probably a 50-year strategy, at best, and the first 10 years aren’t going to be pretty. But we know that this investment strategy works in Eastern Kentucky, that betting on the people here is the thing to do.”
Like other parts of the Central Appalachian coalfields, Eastern Kentucky remains one of America’s poorest places, with high unemployment, drug abuse, and other social problems that grow out of joblessness.
But substantial progress has been made–in living conditions, educational attainment, health care, and infrastructure.
And what set that progress in motion was the War on Poverty.
“Dad worked in the coal mines and did other jobs. He was a very hard worker, but he didn’t have an education,” said Darlene Sharp, 61, who was a teenager with six brothers and sisters when the War on Poverty came to Knox County.
Her father managed buildings that housed the new educational programs, and her mother got a job at one of the factories West helped create. “A lot of people worked there,” she said. “I’m sure that every one of them was people who had no employment before. Without the programs, there weren’t very many jobs. It helped them be able to take care of their families and meet needs. I know it helped my family.”
At its core, the War on Poverty was not about a handout, but a hand up.
It was about creating economic opportunity and giving poor people the skills and support they needed to take advantage of it.
And it was about giving poor people a voice in decisions affecting their lives.
A half-century ago, Americans made a commitment to fight a war on poverty, and we could do it again.
Creating a society that is more fair, just, and prosperous for everyone is a fight worth winning.
Skarekrow
~~DEVIL~~
- MBTI
- Ni-INFJ-A
- Enneagram
- Warlock
Oh my!
What a fuck-tard.
Trey Radel, Busted On Cocaine Charge, Voted For Drug Testing Food Stamp Recipients
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/19/trey-radel-drug-testing_n_4305348.htmls
What a fuck-tard.
Trey Radel, Busted On Cocaine Charge, Voted For Drug Testing Food Stamp Recipients
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/19/trey-radel-drug-testing_n_4305348.htmls
- MBTI
- INFJ
- Enneagram
- 9 Mediator
You gotta wonder if he's really that stupid...
My take is up until now he felt he was "protected" and insulated from the rules of law. Something changed....
I love these stories...for it shows me things are changing. He's a Republican...and they've been the ones in control for long time.
Or....maybe he's a pawn his superior decided to sacrifice in some power play.
I almost never think they're THAT stupid. Arrogant? Oh god yes. You should see what goes on in TX with the congress. But they're not stupid...nooo....they're all powerful and above the law and above the working class. They make southern slave owners look like Oprah Winfrey. Hahahahahahahah
Skarekrow
~~DEVIL~~
- MBTI
- Ni-INFJ-A
- Enneagram
- Warlock
I’m sure it was something like that…or it could have been the opposing party that just found some dirt…who knows.
I agree that he probably felt protected…both because he makes more money than the average Joe and by his party and it’s backers.
Skarekrow
~~DEVIL~~
- MBTI
- Ni-INFJ-A
- Enneagram
- Warlock
Top One Hundred Activist Documentaries You Can Watch Online
http://www.filmsforaction.org/top-100-documentaries/
http://www.filmsforaction.org/top-100-documentaries/
Skarekrow
~~DEVIL~~
- MBTI
- Ni-INFJ-A
- Enneagram
- Warlock
[h=1]JPMorgan Chase Seeks Incentives to Build New Headquarters in Manhattan[/h]http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/17/n...n-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=1
Why is JP Morgan Chase asking for lavish public subsidies?
Don’t they have enough money?
WTF?
Why is JP Morgan Chase asking for lavish public subsidies?
Don’t they have enough money?
WTF?