Gas Price Rant #10 Asteroid run run run · Monday April 21, 2008 by colin newell
From time to time you run into something so concise… so truthful… so simply scary… as to leave you breathless. This brief from the Tom Dispatch pretty much sums up that experience.
Read it. Take the 15 minutes. Drink a coffee.
And gasp along with me.
Warning: Your gas pains may become more acute with this material.
Solution: Ride a bus, car pool, bike or walk – and the discomfort will pass.
Walmart law-suit shocks even me · Wednesday April 2, 2008 by colin newell
I have ranted, in the past, about how totally and completely morally bankrupt the Walmart corporation appears to be; alleged exploitation of workers, unsafe working conditions, denial of health care coverage for almost 1/2 their work force, theft of hours, harassment of employees and on and on and on and on. The documentation backing all this up is staggering.
Now for an update: Enter Deborah Shank.
A devastating collision with a semi-trailer truck seven years ago left 52-year-old Deborah Shank permanently brain-damaged and in a wheelchair. Her husband, Jim, and three sons won a $700,000 accident settlement from the trucking company involved. After legal fees and other expenses, the remaining $417,000 was put in a special trust. It was to be used for Mrs. Shank’s care. Or so they thought.
Instead, all of it is now slated to go to Mrs. Shank’s former employer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc.
Two years ago, the retail giant’s health plan sued the Shanks for the $470,000 it had spent on her medical care. A federal judge ruled last year in Wal-Mart’s favor, backed by an appeals-court decision in August. Now, her family has to rely on Medicaid and Mrs. Shank’s social-security payments to keep up her round-the-clock care.
Wow. Walmart must be really hurting financially to go after this woman.
But are they? Not really.
Their C.E.O. made over 17 million dollars last year – his salary alone.
That is twice the average C.E.O. salary of 9.6 million.
So how do Walmart employees fair? They get $9.68 an hour – if they are full time. 26% of Walmart employees are part-time.
How do Walmart’s myriad subcontractor employees do World wide?
Between Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Indonesia, China and Swaziland, the average wage for a Walmart subcontractor is about 25 cents… an hour. When they actually get paid that is.
25 cents an hour. So you can save money.
Back to Deborah: – Less than a week after the Shanks lost their appeal, their son Jeremy was killed in Iraq… Ironically protecting the American Dream, freedom and the pursuit of happiness.
Get this: On the advice of consultants, Jim has divorced his wife, to make her eligible for public aid as a single and totally disabled person. After attending her son’s funeral, she still could not figure out why he was missing from the family circle.
So – how does this all happen with Walmart’s HMO? When Deborah signed onto the Walmart health plan, she agreed that her employer would be first in line for payment out of any subrogation. Yea, it’s in the fine print.
Subrogation – fancy word… It means that if an accident victim is paid out – and that victim was employed when the accident happened – and insured by the employers insurance company – and there is a big pay out – guess who has their hand out?
In this case… Walmart. Cutting the heart out of the American worker by hiring Chinese workers to make toxic junk (for 25 cents an hour) so you can buy something more that you don’t need – that you will invariably throw away – to fill up a toxic landfill in China.
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The cost of War - Iraq during election time · Tuesday March 18, 2008 by colin newell
With America’s mind on election time, I think, for the most of us (Canadians included) that we are spending more time looking South (and inwards) than to the Middle-East.
But at what cost?
The American media (and government) insists that we are at War.
The reality is – we are not at War at all (since no formal declaration of War has been made in Canada or the U.S.A.)
Yet the American media and government has consistently reminded us that there is a War on – and if we speak against it, we are:
Un-American, Unpatriotic, Un-Canadian, Liberal, supporting the terrorists.
Liberal. As if that is a dirty word now.
But what are the actual costs? Actual costs that touch us as individuals. As Families. As Communities.
Sure, the U.S. has spent 1.2 Trillion dollars on this War effort…
1.2 Trillion would pay for a national health care program. 1.2 Trillion would end child poverty in America. 1.2 Trillion in Cancer research would take us light-years closer to a cure. The same goes for AIDS research. Hey. 1/100th that amount could have rebuilt New Orleans a year ago.
And yet we dump 10 billion dollars a month into this all important war on Terror.
But what are the individual costs?
Ask a parent whose child, son or daughter has gone to War… and not returned. Or returned with pieces missing. With no hope of Peace. No closer to Peace.
Ask a spouse who sleeps fitfully every night wondering… if their loved one will come back – and what they are really fighting for. Ask them.
Now ask those that beat the drumbeat of War; in the media, in the Government, and within the mechanism of the Military-Industrial complex – Ask them:
Have your children gone to War? Chances are, they have not.
Of the most strident voices in American Conservative media today, the broad majority of those personalities have never been enlisted in the Service and have never seen a moments action In Country. Ironic huh?
Ask yourself and your friends and your co-workers; what is the cost?
Do not be afraid of being called a Liberal… or worse.
Our future and the future of our children is at stake. Today. And Tomorrow.
It is a sad, sad World · Tuesday March 11, 2008 by colin newell
U.S. House Democrats have failed in their attempt to overturn President Bush’s veto of a bill that would have prohibited the CIA from using water-boarding and other harsh interrogation techniques on terrorist suspects. Quoted: “we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists…”
Torture doesn’t work you moron. Study after study has proven this. Beat someone hard and often enough they will agree to anything to make it stop.
President Bush had vetoed the bill on Saturday and House Democrats could not muster the two-thirds majority they needed Tuesday to force the bill into law despite the veto. It would have limited the CIA to the 19 interrogation methods approved by the U.S. military. That would have banned water-boarding, a technique which makes the person being interrogated feel like he is drowning.
Meantime, while the War in Iraq is guzzling 12 billion dollars a month, George Bush is lampooning (and thumbing his nose at) fellow politicians (and the rest of us) with an off key version of The Green, Green Grass of Home with lines like:
That old White House is behind me, I am once again carefree, don’t have to worry `bout a crisis in Pyongyang. Down the lane I look, Dick Cheney is strolling with documents he`d been withholding, it’s good to touch the brown brown grass of home.
I think future generations will look back on this phase in Human history with great shame; murder, mayhem and genocide all gleefully advocated by George W.
